Game Designer Q&A: Matchmakers by Sylvain Baudet

Link to Matchmakers BoardGameGeek

Matchmakers featured in our Tokyo Game Market blog here

Introduction: Sylvain Baudet is an outdoor sports enthusiast and board game enthusiast. Matchmakers is a team based trick-taking game with themes of outdoor camping and mountain climbing. With inspiration from other games, Sylvain has created a game that allows for enough tension and decision making to feel a real challenge. What better way to represent himself as a new board game designer than combining two things he’s passionate for his first published game!

1. Sylvain, thank you for agreeing to do this interview!It’s nice to know you’ve successfully returned from your recent climb, haha. Anything you want to share about your experience with climbing Marmolada Mountain in Italy? Were there any opportunities for you to play games while you were resting in your ascent?

Haha True we spoke about that ! Well we had barely time to eat, drink and sleep during the 2 days ascent. But yes I usually like to play on rest days after a tiring outdoor session. I feel like it is “deserved” 🙂 That’s actually how I came to board gaming ! Funny story, we met Alex Honnold on the wall. I believe he is quite famous here in North America.

2. Would you say mountain climbing is your favourite outdoor sport and that’s why you chose it as a theme for Matchmakers?  Did you have any other outdoor sports that you wanted to use as a theme?

I like many outdoor sports but if i had to choose I believe it would be paragliding. Because the feeling of flying like an eagle is something really amazing ! But yes the theme of Matchmakers is fitting well with the gameplay. There is a basecamp where you are trying to make the right group of animals to go on an adventure. Either buddies or couples. And the trumps are mountain guides as well.

3. This is your very first game and it’s impressive that you’re going to show it off at Essen Spiel and Tokyo Game Market. How was the experience of making your own game from idea to final product?

It is both very enriching and very challenging. You have to learn by yourself all the steps from making a prototype, sometimes scraping everything and restarting, working with an artist (who by the way is Japanese and doesn’t speak English), working with the factory, managing the logistics, doing the communication etc…

Good thing is, once you did it once, it is easier for future projects 😁

4. There are a lot of inspirations for this game - Yokai Septet, Swiss Jass and Bannish. What do these games evoke that you specifically enjoy?

When i played banish for the first time, i had mixed feelings because the banish mechanism was brilliant and mean but the rest of the game left me a bit disappointed. I wanted to make a game that could use the full potential of it. And yokai septet, what can i say about this game. Except that it is to me one of the very best. A great source of inspiration : both elegant and crunchy. I wanted to design something that would push players and challenge them as much as yokai septet does.

5. Did you have any challenges with the game design? Was there anything you wanted to implement but couldn’t include in the final product? 

I mean yes I guess like most of the designers. You go through various states of mind from “I won’t make it” to “Oh that actually looks great”. Especially for TT games and little card games where a little change can completely impact the gameplay and the behaviour of players. In my case, I believe that the game really stood out when I found out the push your luck scoring mechanism, the card repartition (pretty unique i believe) and also the trumping system from Jass.

Overall I am very happy with what I packed inside the game. Maybe i would have liked the rules to be a tiny bit more elegant but I wasn’t ready to sacrifice more gameplay for that 🙂

6. Was there anything else that you wanted to incorporate in Matchmakers but eventually not included or cut by game design?

Yes ! I had the idea of a game using the system of cat in the box (cards with no colour). It will be for another design.

7. The artwork by Osamu Inoue (Artist for Cat in the Box, Mushroom Sort, Dominion: Rising Sun) is absolutely stunning. How did you decide on the artist? Did you have a particular look in mind and/or did Inoue-san come up with something that would work with your game’s theme?

Yes she does amazing art! I organized an online play with her, her husband (the author from savage bowl) and a friend who was translating the discussion. They liked the gameplay and accepted to work with me. Then she created the whole universe and the choice of colours. I let her go free as much as possible for the design.

8. Your game looks super cute but is that indicative of the gameplay? What can people expect from Matchmakers in terms of difficulty?

Haha! The rules are quite simple. But the game is twisting a lot of the habits of a casual trick taking player. So the first games are usually dense. And then you get to understand new ways of playing. It’s a game with lots of depth. I haven’t explored everything after 200 plays.

There are too many games where you play a few times and never pull them again because the twist is cool but repetitive. I wanted to design something that you can play all afternoon with some friends at a coffee place. Actually one time we did play all afternoon with non gamer friends. And that’s when i assumed the design was getting close to what i wanted 😂

9: What are some of your other favourite trick-taking games? How about other board games in general that you like?

1. Yokai Septet : Perfection, elegant, brainy, accessible, addictive. 

2. Savage bowl : Meanness, Classic feel, high interaction, hand flexibility

3. No Loose Ends : Card counting, precise bidding and a little amount of bluffing
   

I play a ton of board games, usually with high player interaction. My favourite genre is Negotiation games, bluffing and deduction games and economic games. And trick takers of course !

10. Do you have any other games currently in the making?

Yes of course. But i can’t say much about it yet. Except that the theme and the game is exciting for everyone who has heard about it. But for that reason I need to keep it a secret for now. We are still working on it actively.

I would also like to make a reimplementation of an old game from japan. It has a lot of potential, I wonder why no one has done it before. Probably because no one knows about it haha. This again i have to keep secret until i can get it signed.

11. Anything else you’d like to say or promote about yourself?

My first love will always remain outdoor sports. I used to train for mountain guiding so I professionally practice many sports from skiing, rock & ice climbing, paragliding, surfing, foiling, skydiving and many more. All these activities are getting affected by global warming. I hope we can adapt our behaviours to make it a better world for our future generation