Tiling Game - Coincidences
Way back in the 1980s I tried to get a game published consisting of tiles that fit together to make mathematical patterns. I tried many games publishers and at last it got accepted for publication by Gibson Games - one of the largest games companies in the UK. If you go into any toy shop in the UK, you see shelves of games by them.
Primary school connection
The director of Gibson's Games who answered my letters was called Roger Heyworth - when my Mum heard about that she asked if he could be Fred Heyworth's son.
Fred Heyworth was the headmaster of the primary school in Brightwell-cum-Sotwell - a small village in Berkshire where we used to live - so he taught me when I was very young.
Isn't the internet wonderful :). A quick search turns up Fred Heyworth`s History of Brightwell-cum-Sotwell
My mother knew that his son was keen on board games, and that he went into management, and had a job something to do with his interests.
So - after we had exchanged a few business letters about my game idea, I asked him if he was the same Roger Heyworth son of Fred Heyworth. And he said that, yes, he was!
It really can be a small world sometimes! That was also reassuring - not that I expected any special treatment because of the connection, and he had already said they were keen to publish it. But Fred Heyworth was a straightforward, no nonsense down to earth headmaster, and so it was reassuring to be dealing with his son.
Roger Heyworth died 2000
Sadly Roger Heyworth - the one who I corresponded with about the game - he died in 2000
In my last letter from him he said that he couldn't do much any more, because he was ill and had had to leave his job.
Here is his orbituary
Roger Heyworth orbituary
Trouble with Tiles
Sadly in the end they were unable to publish the game. They tried many different people to produce the tiles. But when they did the test sheets of tiles - they couldn't - with the 1980s technology - make them with sufficient accuracy at a low enough price for them.
The problem was one of alignment - they wanted to use similar machines to ones you use for jigsaw puzzles - and alignment is not critical for those. Shift the cutter a couple of mms to the right relative to the art work and it doesn't matter at all.
But for my tiles, they had lines on them that had to run smoothly onto the neighbouring tiles in all directions after you rotate the tiles around - but if you had the cutter aligned just a few mms to the right - then when you turn the tiles around, then they get misaligned.
It's double the amount also - so doesn't need to be much of a mismatch - say the worst case was a 3 or 4 mm cutter misalignment between the cut lines and the artwork (I can't remember what it was now) - then after rotating one of the tiles through 180 degrees, that's a 6 or 8 mm jag in the lines. The lines weren't that much wider than that and had to be quite narrow. It was just unacceptable, didn't have the nice smooth flowing lines which made the game so attractive visually.
Plastic Tiles - International Collaboration with Germany
They were so keen on the game, that they tried many manufacturers over a period of some years - but couldn't find anyone able to do it. Later on they looked into the idea of using plastic tiles made in injection moulds for the tiles instead, using a company in Taiwan to make the tiles. This looked like it would work, but was too expensive for a first time new game - especially because my game had a large number of distinct tiles - and they would have had to pay a hefty one off cost for making the mould for each tile. I can't remember the total cost now, but was many thousands of pounds, a large amount to spend upfront on a first time game by someone who has never published a game before. So, they were going to do it in collaboration with a company in Germany - so publish my game internationally to cover the costs - unusual for a first game by a new author.
But eventually the German company pulled out of the collaboration - and that was the end of it. One of the reasons, probably, was because by then a similar game - not identical - but close enough to be quite similar had already been published. It was developed by some people in New Zealand. And - apparently they actually got the idea for their game at about the same time as me, and had been selling it in a small way in New Zealand for some time, but we didn't know about that.
I can still produce my game, it's different enough so it is clear it's not just a copy of their one - and I came up with the idea independently. So - wasn't so much that they felt that they would be challenged by them. Rather that with another similar game appearing on the market at the same time, one that had already been underway for some time - it was one extra factor in their decision not to go ahead with the collaboration.
Software Company Interested in the Game
Then a while later Roger Heyworth was contacted by a software company that wanted to produce it as a computer game. I had written a program that lets you play it as a computer game - which I used for printing out the tile, and also for testing it - my program could go through lots of simulated games, to test probable outcomes and such like, useful for fine tweaking of the rules.
But - in the end that didn't come to anything either.
Continuing Work on My Program
Also as well as a board game, it was a puzzle game too, and my program could do automatic counts and tests of the solutions of all the puzzles (many different puzzles, based on various ideas in mathematics).
So - I continued to work on it for some time, for the several years that they were interested in it, and for a while after, devising more and more puzzles.
Also devised a couple of smaller subsets of the original game with fewer tiles that would cost less to produce. Also tried various ideas for making the lines "fuzzy" so the misalignments were less noticeable.
I tried to interest Gibson's games in these smaller subsets - but it was too late, by then the boat had sailed as it were, what with Tantrix already launched and well underway.
The Competitor - Tantrix
The other game is Tantrix which was invented in 1988 I see from its wikipedia entry - so actually - mine came earlier I thought of the idea in 1987. I remember because it was the same year as SN1987a
Image of the 1987 supernova - the closest supernova to us observed since invention of the telescope, in 1987, in the Large Magellanic cloud SN 1987A - I invented my game in the same year this hit the astronomy news - a big event in observational astronomy - so a date that I'm not likely to forget :).
But they got off to a quicker start, and it hit the international games market in 1991 which was just when Gibson's Games were trying to get this collaboration deal with the German company finalized.
So that's another coincidence - that someone else invented such a similar game at around the same time I invented my game. It's the sort of thing that does happen in games - not that remarkable really, not like the director being the son of my village school headmaster - still, is another coincidence in the story.
Oh - and there was another puzzle again invented around the same time as I had my idea, but a bit later, this is Rubik's Tangle, which is a pure puzzle game, no multi-player aspect to it, published in 1990 - the games company knew about that already before the German collaboration but didn't see it as a serious competitor - mine was different enough for it not to matter.
Still - when you add Rubik's Tangle + Tantrix - two strong competitors, not just one - it probably didn't help :).
It's also related to the game of Continuo - a much older game but somewhat similar ideas - I did know about this game as we played it as a child - but mine was different enough to be a new game.
I'd like to share images of my game - but it's best not to at this stage in case I do try to get it published in the future.
Flowing Lines in Maths
So - this is not my game, but some tiles I did for work in maths - the idea of flowing lines like this is common in maths - including the Penrose tiles of course - so it's not really too surprising that several people came up with this idea independently.
Also this:
They came out of work I did into looking for tiles that can fit together - but only to make non repeating patterns - a generalization of the Penrose tiling - the main thing I did there was to add the colours - the patterns were already discovered - and to come up with a proof that they can only fit together in non repeating patterns - but - that's unpublished research
(long story but basically I tried to get it published but gave up rather quickly when the referee of the paper didn't seem to realize even that it was intended as a proof of a new result - and dismissed it as an unoriginal survey of existing work in the field - gave up rather too soon there).
My game used hexagonal tiles with flowing interlacing lines like Tantrix
My game though used hexagonal tiles like Tantrix (these non repeating Penrose tiling type patterns are kind of hard to work with as a game).
What it shared with Tantrix is the combination of hexagonal tiles, and use of flowing lines across the tiles that interlaced with each other.
More on hexagons with flowing lines
BTW in case you are interested - not a game - but just found these Hexagons for Quilters - someone has taken the idea into quilting which is rather fun :).
And here is someone talking a little bit about the maths involved in finding all possible combinations of tiles - there are several other such games - Path Tile Games - From Here to There
Extra Tweaks
There is a lot more to my game than Tantrix - a couple of extra tweaks that meant you could make a far wider variety of patterns with the tiles - which opened the way to puzzles using ideas from many different areas of maths.
The extra tweaks also added an extra something to the multi-player tiling game as well - an extra objective you don't have in Tantrix, and can't have because it hasn't got the right tiles to make it possible.
As to what those tweaks are, better not say here :).
Technology Moved On so could Try Again
Technology has moved on since then, surely you could publish the tiles with greater accuracy now - and - nobody else has reinvented my game exactly - the other one just has similarities - and is still a new interesting idea (so - don't want to put too many details here) - so I'd like to give it a go again some time.
I also have it as a program - the one that software company was interested in publishing in the 1990s - but it's for Windows 3.1 - so it would need a major overhaul to get it working in Windows 8 :).
(The main problem is getting it to work on Windows 95 or later as there was a big change at that point in how Windows programs work at the lowest level). I would imagine probably a month or two of work - plus maybe another few months getting it more polished.
So - could also release it as a program with a few months of work finishing it and polishing it. I do sell my own software after all, that's my business (small sole trader type business writing software and selling it over the internet). But back then - I was advised it's best to release it as a hardware game first. Expect that's still the case - so would probably try it that way still, Even today I can see the benefit of doing it that way - as it's probably easier to release it as a board game if it doesn't yet exist as software - possibly synchronous launch of both?
So - would be nice to give that a go some day. But far too much on just now :). Can't really take a couple of months off at present to work on it. Maybe next year, or year after or something??
Other Games I Invented
Oh - and it's not the only game I've invented.
I got involved in inventing games full time and designed quite a few others based on many different ideas from maths and recreational maths.
One of them - a game with connections to peg solitaire - got accepted by a games agent - but they didn't manage to place it with any of the games companies.
That was the main thing I did for a few years - invented a variety of different games and did my best to get games published. (I was unemployed and doing this as my way to try to get back into work). But didn't manage to duplicate the success of that first game - it is a really really hard market to get into as a first time game inventor.
Still have boxes of games and ideas for games up in the attic, and I have a program I wrote for the peg solitaire related games as well as the one for the tiling games, and another program that plays several games I invented for a small board 18 by 3 squares - it's able to act as your opponent for one of the games so you can play each other or play against the program, with different difficulty levels.
Hard to get your game even seen by anyone
Nowadays most games companies just won't look at games submitted by a first time inventor who hasn't got any previously published games. You have to go through a games agent instead - rather like publishing a book. But when it comes to Board Games the games companies don't even have a slush pile. They send it back with a polite letter saying that they haven't looked at your submission - and suggesting names of a games agent to apply to instead. And you have to pay the games agents a fair amount just to look at your idea, with no guarantee that they will accept it.
Nearly all the big games companies do this - and even smaller ones also - at least - that was the situation in the UK in the 1990s. I was lucky that Gibson's Games didn't do this when I first wrote to them - don't know if they do now but wouldn't be surprised if they do .
They don't want to look at it, I think partly because of the legal implications if they happen to invent a similar game to your one - that you might think they have stolen their idea.
Even Gibson's games - though you might think I had a bit of an "in" - they get sent so many game ideas - and my first one caught their imagination for some reason - but they weren't interested in my other ideas. I tried with a couple of them. Or perhaps they wondered if they would be as much of a tricky thing to publish as my first idea :). After all they spent a lot of time on it for some years trying to get it published - with no success.
What would I be doing now if this story had turned out differently? :)
I sometimes wonder what my life would be like now if it had taken a slightly different turn back then. I'd probably be a full time game inventor rather than a music software programmer. And my music software Tune Smithy and Bounce Metronome Pro - I'd surely not have had the time to write them - might not have explored the ideas at all. Might be writing here still but probably on totally different topics :).
About the Author
Robert Walker
Writer of articles on Mars and Space issues - Software Developer of Tune Smithy, Bounce Metronome etc.Studied at Wolfson College, Oxford
Lives in Isle of Mull
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