by Paloma J. Pascual

Hello, board gamers! We are Paloma J. Pascual and Abraham Sánchez, a.k.a., Conexion Games, two passionate board game designers from Spain, and this diary is a behind-the-scenes look at our journey stepping into the world of creating Eurogames.

Time Never Stops

It's not easy to pinpoint exactly how Orloj: The Prague Astronomical Clock was born as it is the result of many small factors. What we can say for certain is that, as board game enthusiasts, we experienced the COVID period in a very special way: surrounded by game boards, dice and meeples. That time not only allowed us to create our first projects, but also pushed us to take a step further: to start designing our first Eurogame, our favorite type of game.

Driven by motivation, we began imagining the possibility of combining two of our favorite mechanisms: the rondel and worker placement. However, we were clear that the goal of this combination had to feel organic and original, bringing something fresh to the table. With this in mind, we set to work.

The next step was to find a theme that fit perfectly with the rondel and made sense. Many ideas came and went, and after all kinds of trials, we found the key: What's the most famous rondel in our daily lives?

The clock.

The idea of the clock captivated us from the beginning. It deeply inspired us; "a clock never stops", we kept telling ourselves over and over again. From that thought, we began to shape Orloj's personality: a worker-placement game without rounds and without a maintenance phase. In essence, one that "never stops". To achieve this, we needed to implement worker management through continuous blocking and unblocking and a turn structure that always follows the order marked by the hands of the clock.

Pencil and Paper

The possibilities offered by clocks and gears captivated us. Moreover, we wanted the game to be set in a world in which players could create or repair clocks. We didn't yet know that the theme would still have a surprise in store for us.

We like every element in a game to be justified and meaningful. Clocks have two hands, so we had to use them. In real life, you can't control time...but what if you could in a game?

We were sure that interaction would come from the clock hands: a shared element managed by all players. On their turn, they could move only one of the two hands to choose which action to take by placing their worker. We loved this idea of placing workers on the clock face to mark action selection. The game was starting to come alive.

Prototype March 2022
Our prototypes always start drawn with pencil and paper, allowing for quick corrections and adjustments, and so the first tests began. The design was on the right track: We already had a theme, we felt comfortable with the mechanisms, and we were having fun during testing. We had a skeleton upon which to build the game and had achieved the level of interaction we set out for at the start.

It Works Like a Clock

We tested the design again and again until we felt it was ready to leave home. The community of game designers in Spain is close-knit, which allowed us to test it with our circle of designers. After refining many of the game's mechanisms, we created a more pleasant functional design that allowed us to continue with more comfortable development, and at this point the prototype began to leave our circle. It was time to bring it to events, submit it to contests, and present it to publishers. By then, we were already working simultaneously with both a physical prototype and on TTS.

In the summer of 2023, with the mechanisms already well-developed, we decided to showcase the game at a playtesting event called Protos y Miguelitos (Albacete, organized by Ultima Ronda), and this was the result:

Prototype Summer 2023
The feedback we received was excellent. Playtesters found the use of the rondel original and had a lot of fun trying it out. They told us "the game works like a clock".

Showcases and Prototype Contests

In November 2023, the Board Game Convention (BGC) — a board game event with a prototype contest — was held in Málaga. We decided to sign up, not fully aware of how important that decision would be.

Initially, our goal was to test the game with the general public, people not used to testing prototypes. At these events, there's also time to talk with publishers. Among them was Perro Loko Games, who had already tested our game before.

The event was a success for us, both personally and professionally: We won the Best Expert Game Award at BGC 2023, which gave us visibility and recognition. It also led to Chus, the editor at Perro Loko, falling even more in love with our clocks and deciding to publish it.

Orloj Is Coming...

The time had come to work with the publisher and create a complete product. Perro Loko Games is a small but demanding publisher, where every decision is thoroughly debated and where they work meticulously on the development of each release, as we would soon discover with Orloj.

From the start, Chus proposed some adjustments to the theme. The game would be set around Prague's astronomical clock, the Orloj. The beauty of this clock and knowing that Amelia Sales would handle the game's artwork thrilled us.

Cover and back cover artwork
We were also lucky enough to have visited the Orloj during a trip in 2009, and we even have a replica of the clock at home, so it all made sense!

At that moment, we knew the product would be spectacular, but we also had a great challenge ahead: adapting our game to the new theme. By this time, we already had the help of Perro Loko's development team. An intense process began, transforming the prototype into the new theme, while preserving the original soul and fun.

Initial designs proposed by Perro Loko
The new objective for players became constructing and decorating the calendar below the clock. Staying true to our love for interaction, we decided to create a market for these elements, with costs increasing as the game progressed.

Prototype January 2024
Perro Loko played a key role in adapting various elements of the Orloj into the game. The apostles were represented by gears to emulate their real-life behavior. The rooster and the moon, which appeared later, were integrated as a risk-reward mechanism in which each moving part of the game could be pushed at the cost of receiving penalties. The rooster's call would determine when to account for these penalties, creating flexibility but also tension when trying to eliminate them.

More than six months of joint work with the publisher, playing 2-6 games per week, resulted in refinement in several directions:

The Orloj
The main challenge was the rondel, which evolved from the two hands into the iconic astronomical clock. As the game's core, we tried countless variants and, together with Perro Loko, defined the rondel seen today, where the small hand became the main action selector and the large hand an inner circle that moves to configure secondary actions according to the player's strategy.

Worker Demand
In a quest for optimization, players sought ways to avoid passing to recover their workers. The game defined itself through a continuous blocking-unblocking cycle of workers to fulfill the premise that the game should never stop.

Forcing the Mechanisms and Penalties
Development evolution,July-December 2024The game contains several moving parts: the apostles' gears, the clock hand, the secondary actions dial, the construction zone hammers, and the moon. These mechanisms were linked to the game's tracks, with the rooster system added to allow extra movements at the cost of penalties.

Game Duration and the Rooster's Crow
The game has to end with the calendar fully built, synchronizing this with the game duration and the rooster's crows in which penalties are paid. Many tests were conducted to reduce the potential for infinite combos and downtime while keeping the final calendar construction intact.

Asymmetries
To add replayability, besides the stained glass tiles at the end of the track, common objectives, and final scoring with assistants, we implemented the hammer system. This added asymmetries, ensuring that gameplay felt different in each session.

At SPIEL Essen 24
A great effort by the entire team has brought the project to its fullest potential. We sincerely hope the game is warmly received by the community in recognition of all the work invested.

Special thanks to the development team at Perro Loko Games (Jorge, Carlos, Motedu, Cipri, Christian, Mikel, Hato and Chus) for their constant support and tireless work, to our friends who are always willing to playtest our prototypes, and to all the playtesters whose feedback made this project a reality.

P.S.: If you have read this far, please leave a clock emoji in the comments! Thanks a lot.