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GACHIJO - Four Ninja and the Castle of Treasures: Episode 1
Written by Hiroshi Maeda, GACHIJO team leader
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Welcome to the world of GACHIJO.
My name is Hiroshi Maeda, creative director and game designer. In this "Designer's Diary," I would like to write about the game's backstory and background that is not written in the rulebook, the setting of characters and items, and its relation to Japanese history. This first post is the story of the beginning of this game's development.
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Getting to know each other on BGG
Three years ago, I was suddenly contacted by Martin Nedergaard Andersen via BGG message. I knew his name and some of his games, but we were an unknown Japanese indie team, so to be honest I was surprised.
But we exchanged emails and video chats, and I got the feeling that he and I would hit it off. I found out much later that we were about the same age.
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From Mummy Maze to GACHIJO
Out of our communications, we decided to collaborate on a new game based on his unpublished work "Mummy Maze". The game is very unique in the way the maze walls move under the standing pieces, and I really liked the idea.
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The original Mummy Maze was very simple, in a good way, but as we were brainstorming together, we got excited and decided on the direction we wanted to take, making it like a ninja treasure hunting in a castle!
However, it took two years of trial and error to determine the basic design requirements, such as the number of spacescells on the board, the number of layers of transparent sheets, and the number of walls, and then another year of test play and rule adjustments. It took three years to finally achieve the form shown in the photo below.
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During that time, we also developed and released Bossa (6 editions) and Pipo, so we did not devote all of our time to this game, but 3 years is still quite a long time! We put that much passion into it, and we are confident in the quality of the game.
So what kind of game is the finished GACHIJO?
Martin will tell you this next time.
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Thank you for reading.
Please look forward to the next post!
Hiroshi Maeda, GACHIJO Team Leader
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Martin Nedergaard Andersen is a Danish game designer who has published +250 different games around the world. His first work was published in 2007. Outside of inventing games, Martin immerses himself into the world of travel 4-7 months of the year and is also a writer and photographer documenting his travels. The original design of ‘Gachijo’ was developed in collaboration with the team from Banana Moon Studio Sapporo.
Banana Moon Studio Sapporo is an innovation and creative design company led by Hiroshi Maeda who has won many awards in Japan. They are based in Hokkaido, the northernmost part of Japan, and 2020 marked their 30 year anniversary since the company was founded. They started making games in 2019 and publishing games under the brand name Banana Moon Games. They have created 15 game titles, and have run a few successful Kickstarter campaigns including the beautiful 2 player game made by local paper artisans in Japan, “Bossa” and “Bossa 2023”.
