Collection: All Jack Hanauer Games

As with most good things in my life, it started with my wife! Growing up in Britain, I thought that ‘board games’ basically meant Monopoly and Scrabble… with a few things like Dungeons & Dragons for the real enthusiasts. It was only when I met Alice, who is German and so grew up with board games as a part of everyday life, that I learned how much more there was out there.

Then one year we were given a game that had won one of the prestigious game awards, I wasn’t that impressed, and I thought, ‘I can do better than this!’

I soon discovered that it wasn’t as easy as I’d thought… but it was the beginning of a wonderful journey – a journey that I am still thoroughly enjoying some twenty years later.

Probably knowing when to stop. You can take a good concept in so many different directions – which one will you choose? The one that you think is the most fun? The one that you think will have the broadest appeal? Or the one that you think the publisher will prefer? And of course different publishers are looking for different things, so you might find yourself going in a dozen different directions at the same time.

That’s one of the great things about working with SimplyFun – the lines of communication are so open and easy that you can present a concept, and if the way you have rendered it isn’t quite right for them, instead of it being the end of the road, it will simply become the beginning of a new conversation.

I don’t think I really have one!

I came up with the idea for Poles Apart while I was on holiday. Not that I really think of game design as work, but I had made a conscious decision to switch my brain off and just relax for a couple of weeks. I barely made it a couple of days! I found an old sketchpad in a drawer and started doodling away… and when I came up with the idea I couldn’t leave it alone.

It wasn’t the most relaxing holiday I’ve ever had, but, as the game came to life in front of me and the excitement grew, it was certainly an exhilarating one!

A decade earlier I was helping my wife set up her stand at a trade fair… and was subsequently surplus to requirements for the next four days.

I found a quiet corner in the exhibition hall… and by the end of the week I had come up with a brand-new game, from start to finish.

It would later become my third published game – and I didn’t need to change a single thing about that original design I had come up with at the fair.

I suspect that a change of scene is always good for coming up with new ideas, and I find being in a non-pressured environment helpful as well – I am much more likely to come up with something good if I am not even trying than if I am at my desk and feel I have to invent something… but that feels more like an anti-method than a real process!

That’s probably another example of what I just mentioned. As a writer and storyteller (hence my first SimplyFun game, The Reel Script), I love the English language… but I also find it pretty infuriating. All those crazy spellings, all that potential for confusion and misunderstanding… and all those words that sound the same but mean something completely different.

That was the seed of the idea right there: was there a way of turning that frustration into something fun? I certainly hope so!

And we hope so too! Thanks so much Jack for sharing some insights into your creative process. Jack’s most recent game with SimplyFun, Nebulous Connections is now available on our site.