by DAVID VAQUERO

October 15, 2023 — A car speeds along a nearly deserted road somewhere in Teruel, heading towards Madrid. Inside are three passengers, two of them fast asleep in the back. The driver, lost in thought, suddenly switches off the radio. Something just sparked in his mind. Just a flicker of an idea, but one that would become the biggest creative challenge of his career as a game designer.

That driver was me. I slowed down as we passed through a quiet village and — don't follow my example, keep your eyes on the road — I opened a private WhatsApp chat and recorded a 15-minute voice note full of random, half-formed thoughts.

I've always believed in jotting down every idea you have, no matter how vague. They disappear as quickly as they arrive, and we tend to overrate the ones we forget. Taking notes lets you revisit them later and realize, in most cases, they weren't that great.

But this one, this messy, mumbled idea, turned out to be something worth digging into. The next day, I re-listened to the recording and trimmed it down to the essence: "Each player places a numbered meeple face-down in a grid, then when revealed, majorities are resolved by rows and columns to earn rewards."

That blurry concept quickly became the mechanical core of Pulitzer — and at the same time, the theme clicked into place. Why journalism? It was the first theme that made sense in my mind alongside the grid mechanism. From that seed, the game began growing in all directions.


That minimal grid became a set of newspapers. Players published different kinds of stories to earn income, the first "something" in my idea, which they used to keep their paper running and fund new investigations. The other rewards became direct benefits, contacts, modifiers for columns, and prestige and reach for rows.

At first, I imagined players as freelance journalists, with numbered meeples representing actions of varying strength. You could publish in different newspapers, reach out to whistleblowers, travel across the U.S. in search of leads, or hang out in Manhattan clubs hoping for exclusives.


But something felt off...

So I started doing my homework. Looking through past winners of the Pulitzer Prize, I noticed the prize often went to entire teams or editorial departments, not just individuals. That made something click: It made more sense for players to run investigative teams within a newsroom. The meeples would now represent staff members with different levels of experience, from interns to veteran reporters who've seen it all.


That one shift changed everything. I set the game in the 1970s, with the Pentagon Papers and Watergate as a backdrop — and that's when the "final" version of the personal investigation board was born.


Once the game started working well in tests, I did the classic designer thing: searched BGG to see whether anything like it existed. I couldn't find a single game that used pins and string in the way mine did. That's good news...but also terrifying. If no one's done it, is there a reason? Will it be impossible to produce? Am I overcomplicating things?


At that point, I reached out to Tranjis Games. We're friends, and some of them were already curious about the game. I showed it to them, not with the intention of pitching it — just to share it. Honestly, I didn't think it was a "Tranjis-type" game, but sometimes life surprises you: They played it, loved it, and wanted to publish it. And when the team gets that excited, how could I not jump in headfirst, too? Having a publisher as enthusiastic as you are is a rare gift.


From that moment, it became a race: destination SPIEL Essen 25. Pulitzer had already been in development for months, with countless tweaks and tests, but there was still a long road ahead.

Then the marketing team dropped a challenge: "It really needs a solo mode." And I said yes...a bit too quickly.

Here's the thing: I'm not a solo gamer. And that became the biggest hurdle in the whole process. I spent weeks brainstorming, bingeing solo-focused podcasts (shout-out to Solo en Balda!), even reaching out to other designers for advice or help. I didn't want a watered-down version of the main game; I wanted something that felt equally rich and challenging, but nothing clicked.

Until one night, around 1 a.m., I was watching TV, half-asleep, and someone said the word "government". That was it. That was the spark.


I remembered everything I'd read about the Pentagon Papers. What if the solo mode wasn't just solo, but also playable as a two-player experience? What if players represented the Times or the Post, racing to publish the leaked documents while fighting off pressure from the U.S. government?

I didn't go to bed until 3:30 a.m. that night. First, I sketched everything out on the kitchen whiteboard, then I wrote it up on my laptop. The solo and two-player variant had taken shape.

Two new factions entered the game, both versions of government agents. Blue agents acted openly, with revealed actions; red agents stayed hidden until resolution, representing the darkest operations from the deepest corners of the state.

A couple of nights later, a colleague tested that first draft. In the following weeks, many more tests followed. During the day, we polished the multiplayer mode. At night, it was all about solo and two-player.


Eventually, we hit a point where everything started falling into place, and just like that, we were headed into production.

That phase deserves its own story, maybe a production diary in the future? Who knows.


For now, I just want to say thank you. To everyone who played those early versions, shared feedback, brought their ideas, or simply believed this game was worth making, Pulitzer exists thanks to you.

David Vaquero