Welcome to the end of our first season, which we like to refer to as “The Sonnburg Saga”.
First and foremost, we would like to say a HUGE thank you for playing our game! We hope it jogged your brain in all the right ways, and that you had as much fun playing it, as we had making it.
We really like to engage with our players, and love to share with you how we came up with some of the puzzles or some of the story. But as you can imagine, this is a place full of spoilers, and we really try not to spoil our games. So, if you got here on any other way than playing this game, then please, do go back and play it through!
We’ll wait, we promise!
Just go on, play the game!
Done?
FOR SURE?
Well, here come the spoilers! Buckle up! 🙂
This game, much like Dinner Party (our Game 5 in the same season), started with a title that we just uttered on a day and sounded so intriguing!. “Scattered Thoughts”… We saw a lot of potential in it, and since all our games make at least a small nod at Scattered Cards (Game 2 of this same season), we thought it would also be poetic to tie up all the loose ends. You know, like a season finale should.
But the story went through radical transformation between the first draft and the final version of the game. In the beginning we thought that the game would be about the undercover officer’s thoughts. Because they have been found by the mob, who wanted to take revenge on them. So they got abandoned in a place with their thoughts and partial amnesia, and now they were trying to figure out who they were, and what happened to them. But that wasn’t sitting too well with us. I mean… how does E.F. end up at the place where she is abandoned?…
Then we thought: all right, we could actually have two stories. One, with the rogue officer who is wanted for crimes she has been framed for. And another one where an Enigma Fellowship member has been trapped underground and you need to save them. The way it was supposed to play out is: the trapped colleague of yours finds a way to escape from the underground chamber, but on their way to the exit of the labyrinth, they find another person locked up. So they free them, and exit together, just to have that poor person immediately arrested, who recognize her as being the rogue officer! TUN-TUN-TUUUUUUUN!!! We were even trying to make the game be playable by two teams at the same time. (kind-of one for each story).
But in the end, as we were lining up all our puzzles for this game we realised that it would be best, if she was missing the whole game, and the “thoughts” on the cards didn’t belong to her either.
When we say that the story was different until a very late stage (about 10 days before shipping out the first games), we really mean it. We were both talking about what is happening in the story, when at a point Orsi asked Anuj about the rogue officer’s story??? You see, Anuj thought all along, that the officer disappeared RIGHT after the Scattered Cards fiasco, because she was being framed and presumed a traitor and mob-member. While Orsi thought that she actually returned to duty, and then someone, somehow dirtied the image, and then she had to flee. Truth be told Orsi did cry a bit, when we decided that in spite of what happened in the Scattered Cards, the undercover Officer never even got a change to return to her “normal person” life. But ultimately, it was the most believable choice for the story, wouldn’t you agree?
Since the very beginning we knew that we wanted to have card based puzzles once again. So Orsi sacrificed an old deck of cards we had in the house, to write on and chip and chop and fold. It was a literal massacre of cards that week. Until we came up with enough ideas that we could build the game on it. And the only thing we can say is, that not all of them made it into the game…
Some of you might know this, but some of you may not: we are a two person company, based in Bremen, Germany. We do the stories, the puzzles, the websites, 99% of the designs, the audios (HUGE shoutout to Anuj here, who brings the real atmosphere to our games with both of these!!!), the cutting, the chopping, glueing, packing, labeling… all on our own (except when mom and dad are able to help assemble or cut things). But we rely on machines to help us wherever possible.
So we were very happy when we managed to get away on a vacation this year, to the delicious and beautiful (and warm) Italy. Even though Dinner Party was a direct result of that trip, the parts from the Castello di Dolcci were still inspired by the things we saw and experienced in Italy. After visiting Rome, and learning about the history of their water fountains, we knew we had to include something about aqueducts in this game.
Pizza Fritta! 
Some more good food 
Serving pots for food in an old Roman restaurant 
Public drink water fountain in Rome 
An old, public drink water fountain in Pompeii, was still functional till a couple of years back 
Underground Aqueducts in Rome, under an old house.
It was lovely bringing back Chief Bevering, as well as some other characters mentioned in the Scattered Cards. But did you notice, that there was a background character, who got to come back, as a reference? He’s small and furry and likes pizza? (check out the newspaper if you don’t know what we’re hinting at…). But more than anyone else, we were so happy to bring back Professor McEwan in this game. Ultimately, he IS the first character we created for our games, and if you stay with us in Season two, we promise we’ll take you on more adventures with him.
With each game we learn something new… And that was not different with Scattered Thoughts either. This time we learned about a new paper type. While we have used a very thin paper before, and we were sure we could make the overlaying map puzzle work, it turned out that our thin paper map from Professor McEwan was not thin enough for the “old-looking” map (brown background) that was found in the underground refuge. We tried to draw the lines thicker on the old map, but all of a sudden it felt so horribly ugly, that we knew we had to change something.
One of the many magical powers that Anuj possesses is… finding things on the internet (finding things in the house is something that Orsi is better at). So he found this new kind of thin paper, that we now refer to as “transparency” – which actually did the magic! And that was another glorious day, which saved Orsi from having to redesign one of the puzzles again…
How did you like the puzzle to unlock the main entrance to the underground tunnels? We actually have the stages it took to get from an idea to the puzzle in the game. The paper on the left, with the thick black like slithering through it was the absolute prototype of the idea. Orsi drew it up quickly, and yes, she always uses either s “cheesy” or really funny thing to say in the puzzle for the first draft. If both Anuj and Orsi like the idea, then it gets further refined, sometimes made easier, sometimes harder. And sometimes it will not fit the current game, so it will just end up as an idea at the back of our journal.
Have you ever heard of or played a game of MaiMai?… No? well, don’t feel bad – we actually came up with it ourselves. BUT we had really good inspiration for it! Apparently, SKAT is not the only German card game played with just 32 cards. There is a much easier game, called Mau-Mau, played with the same kind of 32 card-deck, but of course different rules. We love introducing our players to new games, but it’s always such a hard task to convey just as much information (e.g.: rule set) as you need, without making the game feel like a lecture. So, this time around we took the liberty of coming up with our own game, which had only the rules that you needed in order to solve the puzzles. As for the name: there is a Chinese fast food chain that Anuj and Orsi really enjoy eating from. And the name of the chain is: Mai Mai. So we thought, a made-up game can have an almost real, but made up name as well, right?
We want to tell you a little bit about the old looking map that you have found in the underground chamber. The map itself is absolutely made up, buuuut! it started out as the outline of Easter Island, but had to be changed when Orsi noticed, as she was tracing the island, that some of the markings for chambers were lying outside the edges… so we expanded our territory! The name Captain Kevin Holt on the map is a nod to one of our favorite TV Series: Brooklyn 99 (Cpt. Holt, and his husband Kevin). As for the last date of update on the map (11 March 1944) that is based on a real date from the WWII, relevant in the area in which Castello di Dolcci is situated (around Firenze).
If you have ever bought anything from IKEA before, than you might have found some similarities to it with our own IKAN company (or at least that’s what we were going for)… Did you know, that in spite of all their furniture names sounding like just acronyms, they actually refer to cities in Sweden? So that was another small easter egg we tried to sneak into the game. The name of the gated exit on the underground chamber was NOIDA – a city in India, bordering the capital New Delhi. And Noida actually *is* an acronym: New Okhla Industrial Development Authority. How interesting, isn’t?
How did you like the postcard in this game? Orsi really liked it, and she had a good laugh, when even herself did not notice the barcode looking entrances on the buildings. This is now our second game with a postcard – we had some in the Lost Knowledge as well. Would you like for us to make a postcard package available in our online-shop?
Have you ever explored all the options in our online shop? For example, did you know, that we offer to ship you two games at a time, keeping the shipping costs at lowest possible? Because of that we are very conscious about what components we put in our games, and what is the final weight we reach. We need to make sure that any of our games can fit in 200g (or 7oz). And this game is no different. We made sure to put only items you would physically use in the envelope, like the assembly instructions for NOIDA, or the contents of the Sonnbox account. But for example Jeff, the waiter’s story, did not make it onto paper, because you can always solve that just by reading from our website.
How did you like the card designs in this game? We absolutely loved them! We created the design not long after our vacation, so we felt that putting the Roman numerals on it was so fitting, don’t you think? Since we got a Cricut machine (not an ad), we don’t feel limited about making items that need to be cut out. Like a deck of cards, for example! The cards went through multiple iterations, and we mean not just the colorful designs for the back, but also what the letters and suits will look like on them. We have to say, every day feels like Christmas, when we get back printouts from the printing company!
But sometimes, no matter how well you have tested a game, or a design, things may not turn out the way you intended them. We had 3 things regarding the cards that we had to work around – but one of them actually worked out in our favor.
One, was the fact that the numbers (7, 8, 9 and 10) on the cards were written with Roman numerals – which are technically letters (I, V and X). So as we were writing the hints for the Scoring sheet puzzle, we realized that this could cause confusion. That is why Mr. Grumpy at the Blue Lotus says, that Roman numbers are just numbers. Narration to the rescue!!!
We always cross-test each others’ puzzles 
Trying to keep the cards organized before packing them up 
Games are ready for shipment, dining room is ready for a cleanup!
The second thing was regarding the cards you find in the shipping container – with the “handwriting” on them? Yes. Well, we forgot to add those onto the design before we sent it off for printing. We only noticed (you might have guessed) when we did the first hands-on play-through. So what do we do now? We cannot just throw away so many cards. But it would take too long for us to write the things by hand as well… So Cricut (not an ad) came to our rescue once more! The little device can not only chop and cut, but also use a pen to write things. So… that’s what we did, with a thin, permanent marker. And Anuj added the texts on the design as well, just in case we will ever have to order a second round of them.
And the last and funniest, luckiest mishap was: the two Queens of spades! That was actually not planned, and caused some spike in adrenalin when we saw it. The designs were all right when Anuj first made them. Orsi even cut them out by hand, and built the full set of all 4 suits. But then we had to move them to better fit with our cutting design, and any programmer will tell you, that copy and paste is the best and worst thing while working on a computer. So yes, a boo-boo sneaked in. But we only noticed once we got to that particular puzzle in our test-through of the game. We were actually thinking about how to indicate to the player which cards will hold the real address to the mob’s meeting, so we laid out all 8 cards to look for similarities. That’s when it hit us that we have a printing error!!! So first we got scared and upset, and we started thinking about how to salvage the situation, when almost simultaneously it hit us: THIS IS PERFECT!!! Not only similar, but two of a kind! And all of a sudden a puzzle and the whole game was saved 🙂 Sometimes you just have to accept the unexpected, and work with it.
Did you ever wonder how much time it takes for us to produce a game? Well, considering that we both have a fulltime job, we can technically only work in the afternoons and weekends. So we usually need about one week to come up with the first full version of the story. Then a week to find and fit in the puzzles. Then about a week to design everything, and get some things printed. Once all the prints are there, we take about a week to test all the puzzles and fix all the plot holes, about a week for making the websites and hints, and at least a week for the audio, sometimes even more when voice actors are involved. And we still have production (cutting, chopping, folding, packing). So about 6-7 weeks. Considering that we took on the challenge to deliver a game every two months, this pace gives us barely any time between games. We are practically always working on something. So we truly apologize, if some of our games exceed the shipping date that we aim for. But we really hope that the quality of our stories and puzzles make up for the extra time you might have to wait to play a new game.
We love to hear back from you! It really keeps us going to know that there are people out there who like and value what we do. Of course a shoutout on Instagram or Facebook, or a review is one way of spreading the word about us, we appreciate it just as much when we get a private message, however short, from our dear players.
So please, talk to us! Let us know what you thought about the game? Do you want an Enigma Fellowship card-deck, filled with puzzles? Would you be more interested in having your own Enigma Fellowship postcards? Or would you like us to do a live video, where we can talk to all our dear players?
A big thank you from these two crazy creators!
Thank you for reading through! We hope had fun playing, and finding out more about the road that lead us to this game.
We will hopefully see you with out next game. Until then, stay safe and healthy, and may the truth be revealed to you via knowledge and perseverance!
