By Zé Mendes
You may have heard something about this story, but that Saturday, June 10th, was one of those wonderful days. It was the first day of Diversão Offline 2023, and in the morning, before the public entered the event, we set up the game World Wonders on the press room table. That was the spot where the game would be available for play during the two-day event.
Then, Tom Vasel, the man with the colorful tie, arrived. He was there just for an interview with the Glyptodon Studio team (which you can read about in the following pages). As they were sitting at the same table where WoW was set up, Tom couldn’t help but look at the “wonders”. At the end of the interview, they invited me to join and present the project to Tom. It didn’t take more than two minutes, but the seed had already been planted.
TO GO OR NOT TO GO TO DIVERSÃO OFFLINE?
Before we continue, I need to tell you a secret. I (Zé Mendes) didn’t know if I would actually go to Doff this year until mid-April. At that time, I was anxious because I wasn’t sure if the World Wonders prototypes would arrive from the factory on time. So, I didn’t see a reason to participate in the event without having my great project of the moment ready to present.
Then, I saw a post from the Diversão Offline profile announcing the presence of the “man with the colorful tie” at the event and sharing a brief story about his life. I had no idea that Tom was also a missionary. I talked to my wife and said, “we have to go there at least to shake this man’s hand.” That’s when I bought the tickets and reserved the hotel.
A DAY TO REMEMBER
Let’s go back to June 10th. I remember that the presentations didn’t stop. We barely had time to eat or drink something during the day. It was a quick pace, and soon we were back at the table to continue playtests with national content producers. Most of them played and loved the game, which gave us a great sense of accomplishment.
There was also a table in the MeepleBR gaming area with one of the only two copies of World Wonders. People could put their names on the waiting list to play. Everyone we talked to loved the game and was excited to get it soon. So our day was already “wonderful.”
At the end of the day, around 6 pm, we were exhausted and hungry. We were almost closing the door of the room when Vinícius from the Caça Jogos channel and our game designer friend Zuzu (Rodrigo Sampaio Rodriguez) arrived and asked if they could play.
In the peak of exhaustion, I apologized a thousand times and asked if they could come back on Sunday, as we had already finished the day’s schedule, and I was eager to rest.
But the day of wonders was far from over. At that very moment, a hat and a colorful tie emerged from the midst of the crowd, accompanied by a giant security guard. Tom Vasel stood before us and asked, “I don’t want to be rude, but could I join you and play a game of this?”.
I looked at Vini and Zuzu and said, “Didn’t you guys want to play?! Come on, sit down, let’s play!!” (lol). We were all very excited, and time passed quickly at that table. We had almost 60 magical minutes of English jokes and an epic game where Tom won by just 1 point.
He must have built about 8 monuments in that game. He had been praising the game the whole time, but at the end, he said, “This is the best game I’ve played this year. I need to take it with me”.
I had mentioned to him 2 or 3 times that Arcane Wonders (the partner publisher releasing the game in the United States) would give him a copy of the game during Gen Con. But he insisted. “I need to take this game with me because I want to show it to everyone… Zee has to see this.”
At that moment, I looked at Thiago Leite, who is the editor of MeepleBR and Glyptodon, asking with my eyes, “What now? Are we left without a copy?” He just made a hand gesture like “Let him take it!” (Laughs). And so, our only copy of the game with the official name on the box left Diversão Offline at the end of the first day.
At this moment, Renato J. Lopes from marketing and the CEO of MeepleBR, Diego Bianchini, arrived with two Ludopedia awards, one for Luna Maris and another for the Draftosaurus expansion. They looked at us, not understanding the expression on our faces. We congratulated them on the awards and then told them what had happened. We were all amazed by everything that happened that day.
The rest is history! Everything happened so fast, an incredible experience with divine intervention fitting all the pieces together at the right time. A few weeks later, the Dice Tower video came out, and the big surprise: the game received the channel’s Seal of Excellence with two ratings of 9. After that, we saw World Wonders spend some time on the Board Game Geek hot list, reaching the third spot.
Here in Brazil, it became the most anticipated game by the public on Ludopedia. During the pre-sale on July 7th, the number of simultaneous sales was so high that it crashed the payment platform on MeepleBR’s online store, and as a result, the first batch sold out in 3 hours. If this problem hadn’t occurred, it would have sold out within the first hour.
Now we’re waiting for the game to arrive here and amaze the tables. Meanwhile, it will be released in the United States in August during GenCon and in Europe in October during the Spiel Essen in Germany.
Thank you all for the support!