by Scott Nelson

My Vision

The journey of Ibyron: Island of Discovery started in 2008 with an initial concept of designing a meaty game. I loved playing Antiquity, and my wife, Anna, loved Roads & Boats, so with that in mind, our work was cut out for us.

The first rendition was a pretty neat idea on paper, but the real implementation of it was less than stellar. Though it was a start, it was not going to work for what I wanted to design. I did have some meat in there, but for the most part it was pretty easy choices. I couldn't have that.

As with most games of that 2000-2005 era, we used the typical "founding of a settlement" setting and a technology tree of sorts to build buildings. The idea came more into an actual "founding of an island village" later in the design process.

I wanted a less linear path, and this is where Antiquity came into play. In Antiquity, the path you take is whatever you want to do, with no particular technology trees to advance upwards. Ibyron, known as "Tribute and Taxes" at this early period of development, had a small tech tree, but everything else was a progression along a path: A->B->C. I had created three paths, and those paths headed you to the next building needed along the same path — but I didn't want that. Nope, not this time.

On Standby

Further testing was put on hold until I could get a grip on the vision I was after. I wanted to make a deeper game and felt I had a good start, but it needed a re-start. Anna saw what I was after but couldn't figure out what was missing...at least not at this time.

I put the "vision" on the side and worked on a way to wrap the theme around the mechanisms. So far, the theme revolved around an advanced CATAN or perhaps a lesser Roads & Boats with no logistics.

With Diver Down in heavy development with another publisher, we decided to set Ibyron aside for a little while and focus on DD, but that was when Anna came to the rescue.

Anna Dives In

"Logistics", you say? That was what my wife threw at me one day. She had taken my base ideas of resource collection and buildings, then added land to move around upon.

Until then, Ibyron had been a virtual theme with no game board — just a player mat to indicate what was built. Anna added a pawn to move around to do the certain actions. The game was now a tad longer, but a lot more thought went into each action, including a new action of moving. The map was static, but I didn't think anything more was needed at the time. I was just happy it was working into a fun game.



Early prototype boards for "Tribute and Taxes"
Utah: Saltcon and BGDG

Shortly thereafter, as a member of the Board Game Design Guild of Utah (BGDG), I took the design to a meeting for playtesting purposes. It was "eh" for all players, including Alf Seegert, Ryan Laukat, and Steve Poelzig. Having the game trashed by such great guys was a bit of a letdown, but that is what the guild is for — people willing to tell you, "Your baby is ugly".

With a few helpful comments and some "praise" on the good ideas, I headed back to the drawing board. The name held on for a few years until in a conversation around tax time, someone named Steve told me, "No wants to be reminded of doing taxes". Thus, the theme changed as well as the name. Though one would still pay tribute and taxes were used, the name would not indicate that.


The Ion Award is a game competition for unpublished designs held during SaltCON, a Utah-based board game convention instigated on the heels of A Gathering of Strangers.

The Ion Award deadline was fast approaching, so after a major rules rewriting, I entered "T&T" into the competition. It didn't even make the first cut. Components, playing time, and depth were all stumbling blocks. Members of the BGDG are also involved in the Ion Award, and in addition to the judges' feedback for the first cut, members gave me a couple of other tidbits for why it probably didn't make the cut.

The game submitted to the Ion Award
Old rulebook cover
After the Ion

With the competition over before it ever began, I decided to change the name, and the "Island of Ibyron" was born. (Many thanks, Steve!) I took Ibyron to SaltCON the next year and showed it to a couple of publishers to no avail.

As judges of the Ion Award, these publishers have also read a lot of rules to this point, so I did not get more than a walk by, despite the game being set up on the table and me begging "Take my rules, please" — well, that's probably how it felt to publishers. I do not suggest this method to get your foot in the door as nothing came about it...or so I thought.

After a trip to my game closet and some marker usage on Carolus Magnus tiles, I created a random island each play
Around this time, Wayne Dorrington offered his services for illustrating a few games in his spare time. Ibyron was added to his list, and this is when the game began to take shape. With Wayne's great art, Ibyron: Island of Discovery came to life. The components were just a bunch of wooden bits, so not much of a theme could be had from them alone, but the theme came through in the art.

Before switching to squares, I used hexes for the village
The player mats went through a few renditions, but came out great as well
With Wayne working on the art, I added the design to the BGG database in a print-and-play format. Most pnp crafters decided to wait for the art to be finished, and rightfully so since it played much better with his artwork.

Around this time, I was still shopping the design to various publishers, mostly in Germany. After one copy came back to me trashed by the mail, I decided against the publisher angle for this design.

The island as hexes with components cannibalized from various games
The Game Crafter, Part 1

I found The Game Crafter to be helpful in getting Ibyron published, but they had a few problems that nothing could fix, so a lesser game was released with me purchasing all of the copies sold except two. With Wayne's art on the box, land tiles, village mat, and player mats, the game was a finished product — but I kept thinking it didn't play right with the land tiles included.

A quick playthrough on rough squares indicated the game could be played on the tiles

Ion Award, Year 2

Ibyron, full of beautiful art in the game and rulebook, was well received and even made it to the top 4, which was a new way to cut the number of entries down, unlike the top 10 of years before.

The same publisher from the year before who had glanced at it and taken my rules remembered the design and was more interested in it thanks to the facelift. After testing, they found the game too long for them. I took notice of that, too, and with one change shortened the game by half. That still wasn't enough for the publisher's continued interest, but I liked the design more, and playtesters did as well.

The first published product from The Game Crafter and print and play on my part which ended up in Germany for another year in transit and testing.
Rahdo's Runthrough

Around this time, Ibyron was noticed by Richard Ham, a.k.a. Rahdo, and he added it to his anticipation list. With his runthroughs being fun to watch, I thought I'd try to get one to him. This was quite a feat, eventually accomplished by a friend of a friend who took a copy to SPIEL, with Richard dropping by their booth to pick it up. Wow. That worked — but it was only half the job.

Wayne did a great job with the rules layout; I only wish I could write rules worthy of it
Rahdo's had so many games on his plate I thought there was no way he would have time to play it, let alone review it — but after a campaign by me, the Heavy Cardboard guild and others, the game went to number 1 on his anticipation list, which meant he would do a runthrough. (It helped that Victory Point Games released Healthy Heart Hospital at this time, so for everyone who thumbed that list, thank you tons.)

While waiting for Ibyron to move through Richard's runthrough queue, someone crafted a print-and-play copy and filmed their after-play remarks. I was excited to learn that they liked it and gave it a mostly positive review. With that on my mind, I was excited to see what Richard thought. A month later I'd find out.

After a couple of rule rewrites by others — I was told a few times that mine were pretty but bad — Richard ran the game through its paces and filmed it. Though it was in his wheelhouse on most fronts (no direct take that, not too light, etc.), the game was too wide open and sandboxy for him and Jen.

Youtube Video
That notwithstanding, Ibyron popped onto the radars of a lot of gamers who were looking for just that. A few publishers showed up to say hi, but no one willing to take on the design. Sigh. I wanted to get it to the players. I mean, that's why we make games, mostly...or at least why Anna and I do.

The Game Crafter, Part 2

What a stroke of luck. The Game Crafter was advancing its publication technology at this time, including adding laser-cut tiles. I was excited because I thought that new tech would do the land tiles justice and be affordable. It took a couple of months, but my prayers were answered, with The Game Crafter now offering custom-cut tiles.

My many attempts to figure out how to create the tiles failed, then I had the bright idea to ask Wayne Dorrington to help me since it was his art and his profession to do similar stuff that I was learning. He sent me a couple of files, and I was able to optimize them for my purpose.

Final version from The Game Crafter
And that is where the journey came to an end.

Or Did It?

Out of the blue, in 2019 the game found a publisher willing to do a professional printing. The publisher held the design under contract until early 2023, and over the years development continued — adding and subtracting buildings, actions, boards, and tokens. The final revamp took out a resource, then added another; changed the market, then removed it entirely; changed a market-based building; changed the solo game; added another solo game that continues the saga; rewrote the rulebook; bumped the player count from 1-4 to 1-5 — the list goes on...

Eventually that publisher dropped the project due to a personal situation (I understood perfectly why), so I jumped into the publisher seat to make the game happen. I hired Harald Lieske for new art and touch-ups. Between Wayne and Harald, I hoped to bring to the world what makes Ibyron special — but that didn't happen as most crowdfunding backers would be non-U.S. and shipping costs were brutal.

The Next Chapter Begins...

One day in 2024, I noticed an odd post to Ibyron: a picture of the player board...with new art. Jan Skornowicz had taken my game and some of the art ideas, then created another version of it — but in addition to new art, it featured a different way of playing the game, with the exact same results, but in an easier to digest way.

This version had two player boards per player instead of just one, and the entire player aid was incorporated into that second board, so this version had the same footprint as the second edition. I was amazed at the way it was put together, and I had to try it.

After contacting Jan for permission, I printed out the two files per player and sat down to play a game using the new art. Turns out that the game played in a shorter amount of time, and you could more easily figure out which choices were available each turn. What's more, you didn't have to dig around the tokens on the island, so the game was less fiddly as well. Developers have a keen eye to what works and what doesn't, so I had to hand it to Jan — that version was player friendly, whereas mine was...not so much.


The Year 2025

There you have it. Those who want to can craft a nice copy and scrounge up the wooden bits needed. Jan has a print-and-play copy of his own doing and has also uploaded it on Tabletop Simulator. I have the second edition on TTS as well, but it has no frills — just a sandbox to play in. In thinking about both versions, Jan's would be easier to play on. Good luck. If you want more information, feel free to GM me.

Scott Nelson
Ropearoni Games