PONDUS - 00
It's 2022 and I thought I could figure out Roll & Move.
The idea was this:
You're a wandering wizard on the hunt for the orbs of power. This is a very serious endeavor, but every character you come across (except for the orb holders) do not take you seriously. They're in costumes, putting on a show for you. Your Magic is unstable. As you traverse the landscape, you will need to make tough decisions to survive the whole way. It is very important to you to get all 4 Orbs of Power. For what is a wizard without an Orb to Ponder over?
And it's fine. But it's really random. Dice tend to be that way.
Meanwhile, I was playing more board games than ever after discovering that many have solo modes. I didn't have to wait for the big Saturday game night, I could play on weekday nights. I could discover more ideas, learn, get inspired. There are 2 games during this era, early in my solo board gaming journey that really influenced me; Scythe and Expeditions (both designed by Jamey Stegmaier)
In Scythe (shown above), players use a very clever action placement system to move around on a giant map and race for a number of achievements. You simply move a token to 1 of four spaces and take a top and bottom action. These get more powerful as you play and reveal more icons. Super clever. I got Scythe because Stonemaier's newest game at the time Expeditions had just come out and it's a kind of Sequel game and idea really peeked my interest.
Expeditions was the real influence for me. In this game, players manage a hand of cards to take actions on this hex map, taking the top and bottom actions of the cards they play like in Scythe, along with the race for achievements. Sequel makes a lot of sense. The solo was much improved as well. (Nearly 8 years had passed since Scythe was launched) In this solo mode, the 2 ai bots moved very quickly with just a flip of a card. You did not have to think about its turn or position relative to you like you did in Scythe. Fantastic game.
2 big things stood out to me immediately about Expeditions:
- It's a great game, lot of fun decisions by placing a card and taking the top and bottom action if you meet the right conditions.
- It's too big. As shown above, my only table at the time, it couldn't fit all 4 players. The hexes are large to accommodate cards in between, as collecting them was based on adjacency.
As a design exercise I thought, is there a work around to these large hexes?
I ended up with this.
What if there was a token with a shape/color in between hexes. and When you need to make a decision, you would reference the adjacent shapes and make a choice.
Off to the side would be a small area with cards and tiles next to these tokens. Need to draw a card? Your options are circle, X and Starburst. We're cooking, I thought.
It's 2023 now and I remembered Pondus.
If you're a wandering wizard on the hunt for the orbs of power, surely there are others doing the same. If multiple wizards were on the hunt, I imagine they may attack each other. What if Pondus was also a Battle Royale game? And what if instead of random dice rolls, every decision in the game was a choice, but we keep the unstable magic angle?
Enter Dominoes.
In the first draft of Pondus, your magic type was constantly shifting each turn. Here, as you explore the map, you'll pick up magic dominoes and assign them to a magic type of your choice. Shown above, this player placed their 4:1 domino so that the 4 is a Fire type and the 1 is a Holy type. Later when they use the magic domino, they can decide how to use it, either as a Fire 4 or a Holy 1.
Now every move we're pondering...
Thank you for reading this design diary for PONDUS.
This is both an experiment in me getting better at documenting my process and trialing this pckt blog thing. If you enjoyed this journey so far, share it on bluesky! and tell me in a comment you want more.
PONDUS is coming to Kickstarter in October 2026 during their Witchstarter event.
Follow the project here if you don't want to miss the launch: