RICHARD RAYA
Hide Cecilia
Richard’s first game to be published, Hide Cecilia has been licensed to longtime game publisher R&R Games. Beginning as a class project in the very first year of his MFA program, Richard served primarily as mechanic designer, generating the overall format of the game and defining new mechanics through rounds of iteration. Along with two teammates who, in addition to giving rigorous feedback on the mechanics, provided vital visual and organizational efforts for the game, Richard helped guide Hide Cecilia through many rounds of redesigns, and eventually successfully pitch the game.
Hide Cecilia doubles both as a tense strategy game and an outrageous party game. Look out for it at game stores in the near future!
Shared Skies
Shared Skies (working title) is Richard’s MFA thesis game, currently in development. Inspired equally by classic tactile strategy games like Connect 4 and Blokus and game-centered anime like Yu-Gi-Oh and Hikaru-No-Go, Shared Skies seeks to be an easy-to-learn and intuitive game that gives the players a sense of exhilaration, mastery, and the satisfaction of executing a long-building plan.
Shared Skies is a two-player competitive game. The game has had several identities, including a long chapter as a deck-builder. The mainstay in each design, though, is a rotating ring of black-and-white stones used to build patterns. The players share a central space on the board, and both use both colors of pieces, but can only directly manipulate the stones currently on their side of the board; players can pass, smash, shoot, or squish their stones over to the enemy’s board to influence their set-up, or can focus on building a desired pattern on their own side of the board.
At times, the patterns of stones have been used to summon cards that provide both potential short-and-long-term benefits to one’s ability to influence the board state (the cards ostensibly coming from unique decks built by the players a la a card battler or deckbuilder). Currently, though, the game has eschewed the cards in favor of a simpler (yet still quite complex) version that focuses on the physicality and tactical movement of the components; Richard most recently showed this version at Pax Unplugged.
The eventual goal is to publish this game. Stay tuned!
Richard’s oldest and most enduring passion, Richard has been making tabletop games his entire life. From pen-and-paper exploration and combat board games to, eventually, using fan-made tools to homebrew content for board games like Arkham Horror, Dead of Winter and Battlestar Galactica, to now creating original, professional-quality board and card games, Richard consistently prioritizes simple-but-unique mechanics, strategy, and exhilarating “a-ha!” moments.