Corey Konieczka Explains His Goals in Designing Mansions of Madness

Oct 4, 2010

Straight from the preview page over at Fantasy Flight Games, designer Corey Konieczka talks about what he was looking to accomplish with FFG’s latest addition to their H.P. Lovecraft inspired games: Mansions of Madness!

Here’s Corey: For some time, I’ve wanted to create a modular board game that focuses on telling an immersive story in which everything happened for a reason. One of my main goals with Mansions of Madness was to create a game in which the story is not merely smoke and mirrors, but in which evil plots are actually happening behind the scenes. Also, I wanted a purpose behind each unique item that players discovered, rather than having them drawn out of a random deck.

At the same time, replayability and versatility were a must, so that players don’t always know what to expect. Every grand story arc would have many plausible outcomes, many possible side paths, and a depth of buried information. I wanted a game that made players feel like they were in a movie, with every clue uncovered helping them understand what is going on, and tension becoming tangible as they progressed towards the finale. My goal was to design a game in which every single element was about telling this story. A game that sucked players in and refused to let go. A game that hid reality behind a veil of theme, so thick that it could be an engrossing novel…

…and I think we’ve succeeded at this with Mansions of Madness.

Read the rest of Corey’s thought’s on the FFG preview page.

I’ m sure I’m not alone in looking forward to the game hitting shelves in time for Christmas as well as Elliott’s exclusive coverage of Arkham Nights later this month!

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Jeff McAleer

Founder/Editor-in-chief of The Gaming Gang website and host of The Gaming Gang Dispatch and other TGG media for fifteen years, Jeff takes on any and all sorts of games but is especially ready to tackle roleplaying games and strategy games. He's been involved with the hobby since he was just a wee grade school lad, over four decades ago.