At Table love supporting and giving a voice to our community of creators, and this time, we got to chat with Dominik about his journey into board game design. Dominik opened up about the experience of creating his new game, Neon Hope, including the challenges of multiple redesigns, the importance of playtesting, and the thrill of getting ready for the launch of their Kickstarter. We’re excited to share his story and hope it brings a spark of inspiration to anyone on their own design path. You can find the full interview at the end of this article!
Hi Dominik! Thanks for joining us today at Tabletop Creator. Could you start by telling us a bit about yourself?
Dominik: “My name is Dominik, and I have been working on my own game for like four years now. In my previous career, before I started my own small indie gaming studio, I’ve been working in marketing for a video game company, and before that, I was a journalist. So four years ago, I kind of kicked off my journey to try to make my first game, and now we are basically on the path to launch the game on Kickstarter.”
That’s a huge career shift! What inspired you to move from journalism to game design?
Dominik: “I think I’ve always been interested in game design. I’ve been reading a lot of articles about the topics. I don’t know if you remember, but Mark Rosewater, the lead designer of Magic: The Gathering, he had been publishing this design column for years in the past, and I read that for a long time. That led me down this path to seek out more game design information, and I think these days, we live in this overabundance of resources. Nowadays, you just go on YouTube, and there are channels dedicated to teaching you about game design. It’s great, and I think to come back to your original question, four years ago, I’d always been thinking, ‘Oh, maybe I could do my own game,’ but I never really had an idea of what I wanted to do.”
Neon Hope sounds like it’s something very different in the genre. Could you tell us more about the inspiration behind it?
Dominik: “Neon Hope is a cooperative storytelling card game. It has a near-future cyberpunk-esque theme, but it’s before the dystopia has been fully realized. You play as people who are still trying to prevent the worst from happening. To tie back to what I’ve said earlier, we specifically chose a setting that’s more contemporary, so the stories feel like something that’s not too far removed from the reality that exists today. For inspiration, one core influence has been the world built by the game Netrunner. They took the idea of cyberpunk but wrote a future drawn from contemporary themes… looking at what we have today and imagining how that might become more dystopian has been a big influence.”
How have you approached the storytelling aspect within the game?
Dominik: “There are some storytelling games out there, but they’re often not very nuanced. A lot of storytelling in board games boils down to clear-cut scenarios, like, ‘Oh my god, the orcs have captured someone, now you have to rescue them.’ There’s an opportunity to provide narratives that are more nuanced, where there are hard decisions that aren’t just good or evil. I wanted to make a game that told a story like this. And on top of that, I noticed that in card games, you often have to build a deck before you play, which is great for certain players, but for many of us, we don’t have the time for it. I wanted to create a game where you could start playing right away, but it still provided a similar experience to deck-building games.”
What has the development process been like? Have there been any challenges?
Dominik: “Making any game is tremendously hard, something a lot of people underestimate. For me, I remade Neon Hope like eight times from the ground up until it resembled what it is today. You have to build up a huge resilience, accepting that this is part of the process. You might find that the idea isn’t bad, but you haven’t found the right execution yet. For example, we had some core ideas that just did not work at all in the beginning. I’ve learned that in game design, you need to redo your game many times until you find the right approach. There were even moments when other game designers would challenge me, and I’d think, ‘There’s no way to make it better.’ But then I’d sit with my co-designer Francesco and realize they were right, and we’d go back and redo an entire system to improve it.”
You’ve mentioned playtesting quite a bit. How important has playtesting been to Neon Hope’s development?
Dominik: “Playtesting has been crucial. We started with private playtesting with friends or other game industry people on Tabletop Simulator, and once we went through eight iterations, we started printing the game and testing in the real world. It was then that we moved from fixing major design elements to refining details based on real-world feedback. I can only encourage anyone making a game to find playtesting communities because it’s invaluable for pushing your game forward. You can even create your own local events, which helps bring in testers and creates a space where people know they can come to try new, unpublished games.”
You recently presented Neon Hope at Spiel. How was that experience?
Dominik: “Presenting Neon Hope at Spiel was amazing. I’ve been going as a visitor to Spiel for nearly 10 years, but presenting your own game there is a whole other experience. We got so much positive feedback, and it really made me confident that we have a great game. It also showed me there’s genuine interest in this type of game. People, content creators, and just general players came by our stand to check out the game, and seeing their excitement really boosted my confidence for our upcoming Kickstarter launch.”
What’s next for Neon Hope and for you?
Dominik: “We still have some things to do, like showing the game to more people, which is one of the most challenging aspects for first-time creators. You go to events, so people see that it’s a real game and not just some guy on social media saying he’s making a game. I think that’s really important in board gaming because people need to see it’s real. So we’ll be attending more events, and hopefully, we’ll be able to crowdfund successfully on Kickstarter.”
Thank you so much, Dominik, for sharing your insights and journey with us! We’re excited to see Neon Hope come to life.
Watch the full interview with Dominik Schönleben and learn more about Neon Hope!
We hope you’ve enjoyed our first ever interview! We hope to be able to continue bringing you the experiences of other game designers, such as Dominik’s. We love sharing stories like this and hope that hearing about Dominik’s journey encourages more creators to keep building, experimenting, and sharing their own unique games. Thanks for being part of this journey with us! Want to read more from Dominik? Check out this article right here!
