The Making of Opera IV

By Hans van Tol
October 17, 2009

Designer: Hans van Tol
Publisher: The Game Master

Players: 2-4
Ages: 12+
Playing time: 90-150 minutes
Release date: October 2009
Languages: English, German and Dutch
Price: €40
Links:

[Editor’s note: Part 1 of this series covered the inspiration for Opera, part II detailed a sidetrack in the realm of family games, and part III examined an overload of strategic possibilities.]

On October 15, 2009, the first games of Opera were produced, so after many years of development, Opera is ready – finally!! Although I had planned the production months ago, it is still just a few days before Spiel that the game will arrive there. I hope everything is as it should be when I have the first game in my hands tomorrow morning…

Prototype IV

Okay, right, the creation of Opera. How did we get here? In the last prototype a lot of things were already there: the budget table, the composers, a lot of characters, a lot of buildings, the episodes. Still though, some quite important steps had to be made. In prototype IV, some very important changes and additions were made. Maybe you will notice a few…

• The ladder of fame is brand new. You can find it in the picture: the numbers 1 to 6 on the right side where you can find the portraits of the six composers. I even believe I can see Bach popping up there, taking the place of Vivaldi. Bach makes some quite characteristic music, but definitely did not ever write an opera. Shame on you, Hans! Fortunately I did some more research, and he later got suspended from the game, with Händel taking his place.

• Each player can now invest in separate opera buildings that were not shared. The only thing which was still the same is that the players could perform operas from different composers in the same city. But this time the interaction in income was organized much differently.

• In prototype III – the “gamers prototype” – money was introduced in the game by splitting victory points into VPs and money. And now the money became cold hard cash, borrowed from our favourite Cuba game. Although the design of the money is different in Opera, ducats survived the last development rounds.

• Also quite new was the fact that you could earn VPs in several ways, not only by attracting many visitors to your performance. The performances brought income, and the income was used to invest in new buildings. The players could expand their own empire now. The special buildings, just to the left of the ladder of fame, will not survive the next development round.

What’s more, with some of the characters the players could receive victory points. If you look carefully at the opera buildings, you will notice that we had not yet added the “Main Halls” which would give extra points during the counting rounds. Counting rounds? Also not yet in the game.

Starting in May 2008, Ruud Kool had assisted me in changing the slow moving Opera into a locomotive in which the game play became clear, straight-forward and compact. The fun in the game came back! By September I felt that the game was getting close to completion, but we would still need another nine months until the last rule was written.

The Characters

The Characters in the game came to life in prototype IV. You can find the Connoisseur (Esperto), the Choirmaster (Maestro), the Architect (Architetto), the Critic (Critico) and the Master of the Court. Who is this guy? The Master of the Court made sure that a beautiful lady would enter the game in a later development phase.

The roles were quite the same as they are now. You can find the “Hof” which is “Court” in English. At that time there were five places at the Court, which we decreased to four later in the development. We have been struggling an awful lot with the fees of the different Characters in the game. How much would they cost, how strong would they be, and how much would the players invest in the budget phase in order to have enough levels to activate the different Characters during the game? Also we wanted to make sure that they were all balanced and none of these guys (until now) would have a dominant role.

Spiel ‘08

Although I had already been talking with some business partners about our Opera project, I did not have the feeling the game was really finished. In October 2008, during Spiel, we presented the game to our German partner, who was also taken by the theme, the game play, and the unique combination of rather innovative game elements. This encouraged us to improve the game even further.

Spiel was especially important because it gave me a first glimpse at the work of one of the main creators of the Opera game…

[To be concluded...]

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