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An Interview with Designer Tomas Miliauskas
Some time ago, news reached the board game community that a new board game prototype had been created at Baltic Boar. It was recently showcased at the Kaunas Book Fair and other events. Baltic Boar designer Tomas Miliauskas revealed that the project is an adaptation of one of the most successful video games ever created in Lithuania. In this interview, Tomas shares the latest details about the upcoming game, its mechanics, and the creative challenges behind its development.
Tomas, tell us about the latest prototype being developed at Baltic Boar.
I am currently developing a board game based on the popular video game Human: Fall Flat. It will be a block puzzle game. Players will push and pull blocks, changing the architecture of the game environment as they go. So, just like the well-known video game, the board game will be three-dimensional and will be built around similar physics-based interactions. This should make it especially recognizable and familiar to fans of the original game.
The game has changed dramatically throughout development. I had a vision of what I wanted it to look like, but for a long time I could not figure out how to make that vision work. It was only about four or five months ago that I created a prototype version I was truly proud of, and that became the starting point for the version we are developing today. I have not seen another game quite like it, so I am particularly proud of its mechanics and design. I hope it will be something truly unique.
Why did you decide to create a board game based specifically on Human: Fall Flat?
What fascinates me about Human: Fall Flat is that it is very silly, childish and, at the same time... strange. The characters do not have faces, yet they run around, bump into things and fall over like babies. I think that is a very unique creative choice.
The video game is physics-based, and the way those characters fall and crash into each other is the funniest and most entertaining part of it. Recreating that same feeling in a board game is very difficult because board games rely much more heavily on the player's imagination.
Until quite recently, your game prototype was black and white, while the latest publicly demonstrated version is already fully illustrated. How did the process of creating the visual design go?
I created the design myself, although several students from the Department of Graphic Design at the Vilnius Academy of Arts also contributed to it.
The original video game is built from polygons and has a fairly simple visual style. Translating that kind of primitive computer graphics into a board game looks rather unusual, so one of the biggest challenges was finding a visual solution that would still look appealing.
My colleagues at SneakyBox created some charming figures for the prototype. My colleague Tomas 3D-printed them, and Beatričė painted them. When I brought out the latest prototype at one of the events, with the figures and all the components, and set everything up on the table, I had a real moment of realization. Everything fit together perfectly, and the whole game looked so colorful and alive.
At the Kaunas Book Fair, even people who had never played the video game kept stopping to look at the three-dimensional components, especially the boxes seen in the video game and the iconic yellow dog. The new design brought my rather primitive prototype to life.
The game's mechanics have been tested for months at various conventions and board game clubs. Did anyone ever suspect that you were actually developing a Human: Fall Flat game?
Yes! Before the project was officially announced, I could not talk about it. Once, some playtesters heard the rules and immediately asked, "Is this Human: Fall Flat?" At the time, I could not say either yes or no. I had to keep the secret.
Recently, at one event, I had the opportunity to test the prototype with someone who said he actively plays the video game with his friends. He was really excited and immediately gave me even more ideas for how I could make the game more lively and bring it even closer to the original theme. When people recognize the IP in my prototype, they immediately become very interested.
How does the Human: Fall Flat theme come through in your adaptation?
In the board game, you take on the role of one of the Human: Fall Flat characters, running through levels, pushing boxes and trying to climb increasingly large mountains while collecting coins. It is a highly interactive game. My goal was to create a board game that would feel like a children's playground, where you can do silly things with your friends.
The prototype includes various elements from the video game. A lot of attention is given to interactions between players: you can pick up another player, carry them, drop them, push a bulldozer or a rock onto them, or otherwise cause trouble for them. We wanted to give players the same sense of freedom they experience when playing the video game.
There are no coins in the original Human: Fall Flat. How and why did you introduce them into the board game?
With this game, we are also trying to appeal to fans of traditional board games, so we chose a very simple concept such as collecting coins. It is something everyone can easily understand. At the end of the game, you toss the coins into the air to determine their point values.
I liked a story told by the creator of the video game, Tomas Sakalauskas, about what happened after he created Human: Fall Flat and started looking for a publisher. Tomas could not decide whether to release the game with Curve Games or publish it himself. To make the decision, he tossed a coin into the air, and that ultimately led to the path that shaped the game's future success.
So I thought that tossing coins should also become a mechanic in my game – one that ultimately determines how many points the players have collected.
The video game features different themes known as Dreams. Will the board game have something similar?
While developing the game, and even while writing the rulebook, we are trying to preserve the original theme as much as possible. That is why we also plan to call the levels in our game Dreams.
For those who have seen the prototype, it is no secret that the first Dream already implemented in the current playable version is Train. Pushing trains is a fairly simple and easy-to-understand concept, while also being highly iconic. In one of the first and most important Dreams in the video game, you push trains. In the future, we will create more Dreams, but I do not want to reveal them just yet.
What stage of development is the Human: Fall Flat board game currently at?
We are currently at the late prototype stage. The design has been created, the core game mechanics are already finished, and we are still working out the smaller details with our playtesting groups. We hope to finish and release the game soon – probably not this year, but next year.
Who do you see as the main audience for the game?
The target audience includes Human: Fall Flat fans, as well as board game enthusiasts who are interested in new mechanics and want to try something that is genuinely different from what is currently available on our market.
We hope that every fan of the original game will want to try this version as well. Everything will be highly recognizable, from the box design to the characters and the Dreams.
Follow Baltic Boar on Facebook and Instagram for the latest updates, and stay tuned for more news about the Human: Fall Flat board game!
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