Interview with Jim Brikman and Brent Vincent from Adacio – developers of «Latice»

Good day everyone! It’s a pleasure for us to make another interview about very special game called «Latice»! It’s a perfect game for friends and family meetings and team-building. So, we arranged a conference with the developers of this kickstarter project Jim Brikman and Brent Vincent from Adacio:

BoardGameKing: What can you say about your project in general?

Jim and Brent: At Adacio, we love board games. We grew up playing classics like Scrabble, Monopoly, Risk, Cranium, Pictionary, lots of card games, chess, checkers, and more recently Settlers of Catan, Carcassonne, Exploding Kittens, Splendor and many others. Our goal is to create the next great board game that you will play with your friends and family for years. Just this past week, we released a Kickstarter campaign for our first game, LATICE.

LATICE is an abstract strategy game for 2-4 players where you match tiles by color and shape. You win by being the first player to play all your tiles, taking advantage of special tiles and squares on the board. LATICE has no language, culture, age or gender barriers and can be played by just about anyone. It takes 20 minutes to learn, 20 minutes to play a game, and a lifetime to master.

LATICE has been extensively play-tested, but we’re looking for feedback to make it even better. We’ve released a free version of LATICE that you can print at home and we’d love people to try it out and let us know what they think: Latice Print & Play (free, PDF). If you like the game, please back us on Kickstarter!

Latice

BoardGameKing: What makes your project special?

Jim and Brent: We believe four things make LATICE stand out. The first thing most people notice during play-testing is the clean, elegant design. We’re working with Ludo Fact, one of the best-known game manufacturers in the world, to produce LATICE, so the final version should look beautiful. We’re also developing a LATICE mobile game that will let you customize the tiles to give the game an even more personalized look and feel.

Second, LATICE is very quick to play. A typical game takes about 20 minutes, which makes it an ideal choice for families (with impatient kids), parties (with impatient friends), and busy parents (you can get in a game while the kids are sleeping). Third, LATICE is very quick to learn. There are only a few rules, the gameplay is centered around colors and shapes, and there is no complicated math, so it’s accessible to just about everyone. By the time you’re done with your first playthrough, you’ll know all the basics.

Finally, fourth, even though the game is very quick to learn and play, it still has remarkably deep strategy. There are only a few rules, but they combine in surprising and delightful ways. During play-testing, people loved the ability to use special wind tiles to rearrange tiles already on the board, as that opened up a huge world of possibilities. As you play LATICE, you’ll learn to plan your turns and extra moves ahead of time, and to play both offensively and defensively based on your knowledge of the remaining tiles.

BoardGameKing: Do you plan any expansions after successful campaign on kickstarter?

Jim and Brent: Our first priority is to take care of the people who back us during the Kickstarter. LATICE First Edition is exclusive to the Kickstarter campaign: we want to reward our backers with packaging that recognizes their early support for the game. After the Kickstarter campaign, we’ll be responding to the feedback we’ve received from customers, many of whom seem quite interested in themed LATICE tile sets and others who are are interested in lower-budget (student) or premium editions of the game.

Latice Gameplay

BoardGameKing: What are your favorite board games and which one inspired you to create your own game?

Jim and Brent: As I kid we had a tradition of playing games when we visited our grandparents, including checkers, chess, pinochle, rummy, Scrabble, Set, Uno, Rummikub and Stratego. What inspired me is that great board games let you have fun and also connect with people you care about, which I think contrasts with a large number of distracted or passive experiences in our (often device-centered) daily lives. In our playtesting, we’ve seen LATICE connect people, and I’d love to see LATICE still connecting people fifty years from now.

BoardGameKing: Is it complicated to understand the rules or not? Is this a family game or for board game fans only?

Jim and Brent: The rules are very simple to understand and you’ll know all of them by the end of your first playthrough, which takes about 20 minutes (download the full LATICE rule sheet here). This makes it a great family game that I regularly play with my six and nine year old daughters.

That said, just because it’s easy to learn doesn’t mean it’s only a game for kids. You can learn the rules of chess quickly too, but those simple rules open up a huge world of strategic possibilities. Likewise, while LATICE is accessible to kids, we think adults will love it too, and hardcore abstract strategy fans will enjoy challenging each other and trying to find the optimal gameplay strategy.

Latice Tile Racks

BoardGameKing: Why did you decide to use kickstarter? Are you going to release the game only after the successful campaign or it doesn’t matter?

Jim and Brent: We’re a small startup, so we don’t have the production or marketing budget of huge game studios. We see Kickstarter as a wonderful way to raise money to produce the game, get the word out to the gaming community, and, perhaps most importantly, to get feedback from gamers so we can make the game better (on everything from the rules to the tile racks and box). We hope the campaign will be a success, but we are determined no matter what: we’ll find a way to get LATICE out there.

BoardGameKing: Make some wishes to our readers.

Jim and Brent: Our wish is that your readers take the time to play more games. We think games are a wonderful way to relax, have fun, learn, and get to know people. Set up a weekly game night with your friends. Set up another one with your family. And set one up at work too. In fact, we’re encouraging all companies to host a weekly game night as a way to help coworkers bond. We’re even hosting an open game night at the Adacio office in Saratoga, CA. Read all about it in here: Forget trust falls and ice breakers. Here’s a team-building exercise that actually works.

Thank you so much for reading and don’t forget to support Jim and Brent with their kickstarter campaign because this game really worth to play! Please, comment if you like our interviews and support game developers!