I’ll confess, I was a bit surprised by the runaway success of Drillers. The concept, sending junkyard mechs scuttling through collapsing mines to hoover up gems, is enchanting. I thoroughly enjoyed the board game‘s light, streamlined deck-building. There’s a reason why, back in July, I called it my game of the year so far. (It’s since been surpassed, but Drillers is still pretty dang good.)
Still, it’s hard to predict the path of a hype tornado, and even I didn’t see this one coming. Drillers rose to the top of tabletop hotness around its Gen Con release, with show copies selling out at speed. Since then, it feels like every third forum post I see asking when it’ll be available in the US. Or in the UK. Or when a reprint is coming. Or where all the stock is generally. Publisher CGE is, it seems, racing to keep up with demand.
It turns out the designers of Drillers are just as surprised by its popularity. I caught up with Adam Španěl and Roman Bednár at this year’s Essen Spiel, where Drillers continued to receive healthy attention. I weaved between crowded tables – demoing Drillers and CGE’s next hype beast, Kingdom Come Deliverance – and ducked into a backroom to ask the pair about the hit on their hands.
“Gen Con was very overwhelming”, Španěl tells me. “Nobody expected that level of success.” “Before the show, we were trying to estimate how successful it would be, and we thought the target audience was maybe not that broad. But, apparently, it resonated really well with people.”
Before Drillers, Španěl had just a handful of design credits under his belt – most notably 2020 Golden Geek nominee, Project L. Drillers was Bednár’s debut design, and he says “I was amazed to experience something like this with my first game”. “I tried analyzing why the success was happening, and I think it’s because, around Gen Con time, there weren’t many mid-heavy, family-friendly eurogames coming out – so we filled a niche that was missing.”
Bednář, a digital artist for CGE, began collaborating with Španěl when he brought a prototype to the publisher’s game testing events. “When I was a kid I loved mining games”, Španěl tells me. Drillers’ origin story can actually be traced back to a specific series of mining board games – Motherload.
“There was something about the game loop”, he explains. “You had a small machine that, at first, could only dig a few layers before you ran out of fuel and needed to go back to the surface.” “You’d sell something, and you’d get a little stronger, and you do things a bit faster.” If you’ve had a chance to play Drillers, this loop should sound very familiar.
“There’s something about this cycle of surfacing, going back to safety to upgrade, and managing when to go back up, that felt so satisfying to me”, Španěl adds. “I’ve spent long years trying to find a game that would scratch that same itch. And, when I failed to find it, I just had to make one.”
After many “long evenings discussing mechanics and brainstorming ideas”, Drillers slowly took shape. Španěl tells me the biggest challenge was encouraging players to fully explore the board. “Players rarely play the way I imagine”, he says.
“One big problem we kept coming back to was, when you’re discovering new floors as the game progresses, the correct way to play is to go as deep as possible to open new floors.” “But, time and again, players just stayed on the surface, and the game didn’t really move forward”, he explains. “We had to do quite a lot of small stuff to motivate players to go deeper, so they would enjoy the game the way we intended.”
There may have been trials, but many view the finished result as triumph. Drillers isn’t an earth-shattering innovation, but it’s a sleek game of approachable strategy. “I’m proud of how tight the whole gameplay arc is”, Španěl says. “It’s a bite-sized experience that leaves you wanting more, asking what you’d do differently next time. When we start teaching the mechanics, you see a spark in people’s eyes.”
The worst anyone can accuse Drillers of is lengthy downtime between turns, or a lack of variety after a few plays. That last hiccup could easily be solved with an expansion or two – a topic the designers remain tight-lipped on for now. Still, Španěl assures me he has several projects in the pipeline. “I’m already working on lots of top secret, exciting stuff.”
Want to learn more about the year’s best board games? Check out the hits in our guide, or ask for recommendations in the Wargamer Discord.
Source: Wargamer
