The History of Mussades
Back in 2012 (While I was in uni studying Game Design) I joined my first ever game jam: Nordic Game Jam 2012! It was hosted at the IT University of Copenhagen, where I was also a student at the time. We made a board game: Mussades.
Mussades is an Arabian themed race-to-the-finish board game using hexagonal tiles. It is a fast paced board game that revolves around the central mechanic of having only 3 room tiles in play. Whenever a new room tile is revealed, the old one is discarded, and any players on that tile are out.
I haven't thought about that game for a while now but it surfaced recently in a group chat with some of the people I created it with. We got into a bit of a nostalgic deep dive, trying to find both the oldest and newest version of the game. As we chatted along, I thought to myself: "This nostalgia trip could be a great blog post! Even if it's just to work through my own thoughts and memories."
And here we are! Let's dive into the history of Mussades. (Keep in mind that the timeline here is mostly from memory. I might be remembering things incorrectly and/or out of order. I could have started digging through old emails, chats, and papers, but most of this was written on my phone while I was lying on the sofa with a sleeping baby on my chest.)
Jams and fears
The task of creating a game in 48 hours seemed incredibly daunting to me and, to be completely honest, I let that scare me away from joining any of the teams working on computer games. Instead, I found myself sitting in what was then known as the Design Lab where there were supplies to create analog games instead. I figured that was much safer than trying and failing to make a digital game.
(This fear of failure during game jams is something I have since overcome and I'm happy to say I've failed at many game jams since then!)
I don't remember exactly how the team got together (It's been 14 years. Cut me some slack here...) but I somehow managed to end up at a table with 4 of the most awesome people I know. I didn't know all of them at the time, which is also a part of the "Game jam charm" that I've since come to love! At the time, however, I was mostly feeling like the imposter in the group. The one who had no idea how games were supposed to me made. The one who had never done it before.
That didn't last long.
Again, there is much I've forgotten from the jam. It was a long time ago and we were all quite sleep depeived by the end of it. Together we designed, cut, glued, taped, played, tested, and iterated. We also had a great time doing it! The game developed into a backstabbing racing game where all movement was based on action cards.
As a team, the five of us worked really well together and we developed a connection that lasted through the game jam and beyond. (Later we even went on to start a company together.)
When the time came to submit, we took a bunch of pictures and uploaded the rules. I don't know how many seconds we had left before the deadline but I don't think it was a lot. Then we set up the table for people to play. I remember, even during these post deadline moments, that we still had the design mindset and that the ideas kept coming.
Presentation time came around, along with voting and winners. Have you ever tried to demo a board game in an event primarily tailored to digital games? It's challenging. But we had a couple of great storytellers in our team who, somehow, managed to dig out that extra bit of energy to pull of an engaging presentation.
And it worked!
It was chosen as one of the 12 finalists in the game jam as a whole. It also won the Best Board Game Award and the Jury's Choice Award from David McCarthy, GREE.
From prototype to prototype
The Best Board Game Award came with a prize: A professional print of the prototype! The prize was offered by one of the sponsors of the event and I remember meeting with a representative of the company at the university shortly after. The whole team gathered for the meeting and we spoke about the game, its future, and we played the prototype. At the time it was a rough game jam prototype where the winner was mostly chosen by the luck of the draw. We agreed that we should spend a little time further developing it before getting the prototype printed.
Over the next months the five of us met regularly. We played the game, iterated on it, then played again. We socialized and snacked. It became a weekly gathering for us as we worked on the game, almost always meeting in the same meeting room overlooking the ITU atrium. (Meeting box A3.03, if memory serves...)
Over time we lost contact with the sponsor. They stopped responding to us and we were unable to get hold of them. The company liquidated shortly after and we never got our prize.
Still, motivated and energetic students as we were, we were convinced that we could still bring the game forward! We kept churning at it. Polishing. Iterating. Speaking with other people in the board game industry who urged us forward!
At this point the design process took a more practical turn as well. I believe the game had 13 hexagonal tiles at this time, each with a unique cut around the edge. Producing a game with a custom shape cardboard tile in it is expensive, and 13 custom shapes even more so. Especially if you're students without any real jobs.
It was also around this time we realized that we had over optimized the game and lost some of the magic. In trying to make it less luck based, we've also managed to remove much of the chaos of the game. The game had a better flow now, sure, but it's also lost a large piece of its charm.
A couple of detours
With 2013 approaching we developed a plan: We were going to join Nordic Game Jam 2013 as a team again. This time out goal was to create a board game that was easier and cheaper to print! Something we could use to fund Mussades.
This blog post is already getting long, so I'll save the story of Wanted: Igor and the story of Kvasir Games for another day. Suffice to say we both succeeded and failed. W:I won an award for being the Most Sellable Board Game and we did go on to print it! As it turns out, simply having a sellable board game to sell doesn't mean it will sell. The 100-200 copies still in the basement can attest to that...
Later in 2013 a few of us joined the Exile Game Jam. Ir rather, the Exile - Not a Jam, which it was officially called. The idea was simple: Do not create something new! Instead bring your existing side projects and ideas and take a few days away from your day-to-day to work on them.
This event led to the creation of yet another Mussades prototype, only this time digital! This prototype was created in (If you're a millennial who grew up on the internet you might want to look away now, lest you suddenly feel old) Flash with ActionScript 3.
2013 was also the year where we, as a team, lost the university as a common ground. By summer we all graduated and we slowly started drifting apart. People got jobs, some kept studying, and some moved away. I still have memories of sending company related papers back and forth to get everyone's signatures.
This loss of common ground was also a big part of the reason why we decided to try to gather up and meet once a year in our respective countries. The idea was to gather physically once in a while to build momentum and do the kind of board game prototype iteration that's hard to do online.
The first year we all went to Malta! It was June 2014 and we had a blast prototyping both new and old games! We also did sightseeing and swimming, making sure to take advantage of the Mediterranean summer. We also prototyped alternative game modes for Mussades and gave the tiles a fresh redesign with more space on each tile.
I'd love to be able to say that we still meet up like that, but the truth is that Malta became our one and only trip together as life pulled us in different directions.
Time did what time does
Years later, the project lay abandoned. I still held on to the "One day... One day the game will be released!"-mindset in the back of my mind. In 2016 I picked it up again after reaching out to the other team members and making sure they were OK with me taking over the game as a solo thing. They were, and I set to work planning a Kickstarter campaign for funding.
Now I might be a somewhat qualified and experienced game designer, but I am in no way artistically inclined. I have tried, on several of my projects, to create my own artwork but I've never succeeded in creating something I'd call "good looking". And the vast majority of successful Kickstarter campaigns have one thing in common: Appealing visuals.
So I did my research, made my plans, designed with stretch goals in mind, set up the project on the website, and then just never actually went through with it. No matter what I did, it just never felt like it would succeed. I had recently moved to a Sweden and I had literally zero savings to invest into the project, so it got put on hold yet again.
A few more years went by and 2019 came around. I moved into a new apartment and while unpacking I again came across our little prototype. I was in a better place then, more financially stable and able to spend time and energy on it. I allied with another friend of mine. Someone who was not part of the original team, but who had been close to us the whole way and knew the project well. She and I started testing again. We played the game repeatedly, focusing less on the design of the game and more on the presentation. We talked about a thematic redesign, we cleaned up and clarified rules and card texts, and we brought the game to a couple of events for playtesting board games. It was a fun and nostalgic few months!
I don't think I need to remind anyone what happened once 2020 came around. As the lockdowns swept across the world, social gatherings became a thing of the past and we were unable to keep the work going. It didn't help that the two of us also got stuck on separate sides of a country border, effectively preventing even the two of us from meeting up and working on it. Mussades got put aside once again.
And now we're here
It's 2026 now and another six years have passed. During those 6 years I met the love of my life. We bought an apartment together. We even have a 4 months old baby now. Life is a lot different now than it was in 2012.
Still, I keep in touch with some of the original Mussades people. We have a chat group named after our Stardew Valley multiplayer farm, which again was named after our company. It was in this chat one of them sent a message a few days ago. She was packing to go on an easter trip to a cabin and was looking for board games to bring. She had come across one of the 2013 prototypes and was asking if either of us remembered the rules.
We did. We had several iterations of them, in fact. And we had a nice nostalgia trip talking about the game for a while. Turns out, it's still alive within each of us. Hidden away, tucked beneath other and more pressing parts of our lives, lies a small spark of flickering light. A dream once put aside but not forgotten. A dream of bringing this game of our to life.
The conversation went as those kinds of conversations often go. It was nostalgic and filled with memories. It carried wishes for getting back together and reliving the old days. Inspirations and a desire to create something together again. The conversation also reminded me of something else: That mine is not the only heart where Mussades holds a special place.
As for the future
Who knows what it holds? Personally I have another game I need to wrap up first. Then there's the fact that a tiny human is now living in our apartment. But the dream is still there and the prototypes still exist.
Looking back, Mussades was more than a game. It was a shared adventure that created connections none of us had expected. It's a defining memory of our days at ITU and the time we spent there together. I worry that the magic of Mussades lies not in the game itself, but in the journey that everyone involved shared. It might be best to leave it at that and let the past be past. But then again, what if it could be something more? We'll never know if we don't try and if it can create an opportunity for some of us to work together again then I'm all for it!
So to answer that one person on Youtube...
Maybe one day.
