Game Preview: Quinamid

By W. Eric Martin
September 5, 2007

Publisher: Third Dynasty Games
Designer: Antony Brown
Players: 2
Ages: 8+
Playing Time: 15 minutes
Price: €25
Languages: English, German, French, Spanish, Dutch & Italian
Release Date: October 2007

You’ve undoubtedly encountered this winning condition before, so let’s get that out of the way first: The first player to create a line of five counters wins. Naturally there has to be a twist. The twist for Quinamid, says designer Antony Brown, “is that the counters are placed in a series of five boards of differing size that are formed to make a pyramid.”

On a turn, a player must make one of three moves:

• Place a counter in a vacant space,
• Rotate a board (including those boards above it) 90 degrees, or
• Move a board (including those boards above it) one position in any orthogonal direction.

Says Brown, “A game is often completed in two or three minutes, so it’s often better to play a best-of-five series and employ different strategies, which would take around 15 minutes.”

The idea for Quinamid first came to Brown nearly two decades ago. “My memory on why I originally invented this game has become a bit hazy over such a long time, but I do remember I used it as a mental exercise in computer programming in artificial intelligence,” he says.

Brown continues, “Like most people outside the board game world with a good game idea, I always believed you had to get a large publisher to produce the game due to the massive initial set-up costs.” His work as a consultant, with one new job after another, brought him into touch with many different people, including Mike Oakes, a contributor to Counter magazine. Oakes helped Brown remake his prototypes in addition to playtesting the game and reworking the rules.

With prototype in hand, Brown searched the Internet for someone to make the game. “I was struck by the idea that I could get a chess manufacturer from India or China to do all of the manufacture, and I could just add the instructions and a cardboard box to finish,” he says. “As it turned out, I ended up getting a response from a wooden toy manufacturer from China who lent over backwards to deliver my wooden games almost based on a couple of photos of my game in cardboard and a couple of sketches.”

Brown says the simplicity of the rules—which can be downloaded from the Quidamid website in six different languages—is one reason he really likes the game. “Kids can easily grasp the concept and start playing in a couple of minutes,” he says. “They can also play in such devious ways, which makes it very enjoyable and challenging for both of you. The game also has a very high I-could-do-better-next-time factor, even for the winner, which keeps you coming back for more time after time.”

Future projects from Brown include a multi-player version of Quinamid and a game about property developers called Plum and Slum.

Pictures - Click the picture for a larger version
	Opening moves
	Everything comes in a tidy 7” x 7” wood box

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