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Welcome aboard the Pandora Celeste! Enjoy your flight, because it’s likely to be short…
You may have seen the recent news article about this game, but here’s a quick reminder: Pandora Celeste is a fast-paced card-driven board game for 1-6 players that pays gleeful homage to space-survival movies and plays out in around 60-120 mins, depending on the scenario.
We’re looking at a thematic representation of a certain mega-famous sci-fi horror movie, and that is no bad thing. This, then, is a game that’s already causing a big stir for two reasons. Number one, that folding box/gameboard. It’s a genius idea that works as a storage solution and also a way to speed along the set up process. Imagine your fellow players’ faces when they see it unfold. Number two is something we touched on previously: some pushback from a minority of hobbyists who believe Pandora Celeste is too similar to a big name on the scene. Are they perhaps ill-informed in their reactions? (Spoiler: I believe so.)
Let’s talk with designer Mike Ibeji for the inside track on one of the big conversation starters of indie board gaming so far in 2024. Oh, the game is live on Gamefound as we speak and smashed through its target in 32 hours. They must be doing something right…
Let’s get the important stuff out of the way: name your favourite sci-fi movies that you know for a fact you wouldn’t survive. Mine would be Independence Day, because you better believe I’d be one of the idiots dancing on the rooftops for the aliens’ pleasure.
I think Edge of Tomorrow is an underrated gem. It’s a very clever premise with a really interesting monster that’s a great challenge to evoke in a game. But I wouldn’t even get off the beach, let almone manage to kill a Mimic!
Personally, I prefer the Terminator franchise over Alien, Predator or The Thing, though I like them all.
I’m still haunted by Donald Sutherland pointing at me with his screaming lips turned inwards from his version of Invasion of the Body Snatchers – though I think the 1950s (1960s?) original is still a masterpiece.
Dark Star and Attack of the Killer Tormatoes have their own distinct charm – as does Them!
And I’m a great fan of Dr Who, when they get it right. Blink is one of the cleverest – and scariest - mini-monster movies I think I’ve ever seen.
Give us some background. Is this your first board game? If so, what did you do before this?
I’ve been designing games for my mates since I was 9 years old, but I never really took it seriously until a few years ago. Tbh, I was having too much fun making history docs for television to go looking for another career. And then I woke up aged 50 and realised that I’d never done what I’d always dreamed about, which was publish a board game. My mates joke that most men have a mid-life crisis and trade their wife in for a newer model – Mike has a mid-life crisis and gets his wife to help him publish a board game. Though the impetus actually came from my wife Lynn, bless her. More on that later.
What's the first board game you remember playing? And what's the first one you fell in love with, and why?
When I was 12 years old, I was bored one day and rooting around in my mum’s library when I stumbled across a tiny little booklet called ‘Discovering Toy Soldiers’. Well, that title’s catnip to a 12-year-old boy! But it turns out this book wasn’t actually about toy soldiers, it was about this weird and interesting hobby called ‘wargaming’; and it had a set of simple Napoleonic rules in the back of the book to try out. So me and my best mate at the time got out all our old Airfix Napoleonics and set them up – still with the flashing on their bases so they kept falling over – and spent an entire weekend playing a Napoleonic battle.
And we were hooked!
We soon progressed onto Ancients and then discovered D&D. We couldn’t get hold of a copy of the D&D rules for over a year, so I designed our own version that we played to death.
My research on Ancient Roman wargaming got me into university, where I discovered modern boardgames. The rest – as the cliché goes – is history: though in my case it actually was history!
Who’s on the team? How well does the team interweave together?
Remember my lovely wife Lynn? She’s the team. To cut a long story short, I sold Pandora Celeste to a small Indie startup in 2019. Then the Pandemic hit and one of the casualties was that startup – though they were kind enough to revert the rights of Pandora back to me before they shut up shop. And at that point Lynn said to me: “Why don’t we publish it ourselves?” And here we are. I’m the Designer and she’s the Project Manager, so it’s a true labour of love.
We also have 3 artists on the team. The original art for the box cover and our first 4 characters was done by a Brazilian artist called Rick Bastos. I then discovered Kris Fosh, who had made Escape From Flat Earth, so we’re on exactly the same wavelength – he fleshed out my original Ship design and did all the cards plus our first 3 Big Nasties. More recently, I reached out to James G. Dunn, because I kept finding myself pointing to his ‘Ripley & Friends’ as a touchstone for the kind of manic glee I wanted our artists to infuse into the project. He’s also on the same wavelength and has embraced the project with enthusiasm, as you can see from his art on the Time Jumper, the Ular and our other 3 Crew, Greaseball, The Kid and Science Officer Keni.
How long has it taken to develop Pandora Celeste? Did development fit comfortably into your daily life?
I design games in my sleep – literally. I wake up in the middle of the night with yet another game design buzzing around my head, and I have to get up and write it down or I won’t get a wink of sleep for the rest of the night.
So sometime in 2002, a friend of mine ran a semi-role playing game which was basically an updated version of Awful Green Things from Outer Space, where we were stuck on a ship with every kind of Sci-Fi Nasty you could ever think of chasing us into dark corners. And I woke up some time later with the shape of Pandora Celeste forming in my head.
Cut to 2018 and I had a game which ran for about 4 hours that my gaming buddies absolutely loved and I was about to start pitching it to publishers when Nemesis burst onto the scene. So I shelved Pandora and bought both Nemesis and Lifeform which came out at exactly the same time. But neither of these did what Pandora did – and my mates kept saying they’d rather play Pandora whenever I tried to get Nemesis onto the table. So I picked up Pandora from the shelf, dusted it off, and set about creating a space survival game that played out in 90 minutes, where you were the hero (or villain) of the movie, rather than one of the extras who got killed in a variety of arbitrary ways.
What’s the main inspiration behind Pandora Celeste? Which board games it’s similar to? What kind of gamer would you recommend Pandora Celeste to?
The inspiration is the movies. We basically wanted a game where you felt like you were Ripley, or Sarah Connor, or Arnie, or Danny Glover, or [insert favourite character here]. But, as you can probably tell, I love these movies – and the thing I love most about them is their predictable absurdity . The characters will always split up and back into dark corners, though that is the stupidest thing you can do under the circumstances. Someone will inevitably jury-rig a flamethrower and set fire to the place – though you can happily run through fire completely unharmed as long as you don’t stop in it. There will always be a scene in the vents or the sewers or the tunnels or whatever cramped space the director can think of next. And the hero(ine) will always end up with something Nasty inside them which they have to surgically remove – and then will run around freely as if nothing had happened, barely an inconvenience – though they will occasionally wince to remind us that they’ve just had surgery.
Oh, and no Hollywood scriptwriter can actually write a movie that doesn’t have some kind of parenthood issue. So the hero(ine) will be haunted by the ‘child they left behind’ and inevitably seek redemption by risking their lives to rescue the cute little waif or pet substitute which has inconveniently placed itself as far from the escape pods as possible.
And don’t forget the obligatory countdown which leads to the Final Showdown with the Big Bad!
My friend Dave tells the story of going to see Aliens with me back in the day. He’d already seen it, but had got himself into a place where he’d forgotten most of the details. Then, as he tells it, in the 20 minutes between them coming out of orbit and going down to the surface, where they’re introducing all of the characters: “Mike told me who was going to die, how they were going to die, and what Ripley was going to use to fight the Alien Queen in the Final Showdown.” And to be honest, that wasn’t me being a smartarse, that was these films being as brilliantly and comfortably predictable as chewing gum or ice cream.
So I hope this game will put a smile on the face of anyone who loves these monster movies as much as I do, and who would like to spend an hour or two being chased around a rusting tin can by something Big, Bad and Nasty.
Off the back of this question, there have been some comments dotted around forums and social media regarding Pandora Celeste’s likeness to a certain other game. Would those making the comments feel differently if they took the time to learn more about the game?
Ah, the Nemesis in the Room. We address this head-on in our FAQs here: https://gamefound.com/en/projects/guntower-mike/pandora-celeste/faq
But to summarise: yes, superficially we look a lot like Nemesis and there’s a reason for that.
Nemesis is based on a very famous movie franchise which is immediately obvious from the look of its Intruders and the setting of the game. Those movies, along with many others, are the exact same inspiration for Pandora Celeste. So we’re bound to have exactly the same setting and tropes, because we’re evoking exactly the same kind of movie – albeit in a faster, funnier, more anarchic manner.
Yes, anybody who has actually taken the time to sit down and play Pandora can see that while we begin from exactly the same starting point, we bear virtually no resemblance to the way that Nemesis plays out. We’re faster and simpler, much more chaotic – and we have a lot more laughs! I always know a game is going well when my players laugh with delight as they realise that they’ve stumbled wide-eyed into one of the classic tropes of the genre without realising it. As one of our playtesters once put it: “Almost everything about it gets you to make the decision that puts you in a budget sci-fi movie by trying to ‘play properly’.” And that, right there is why I designed the game!
Further, given how many board games exist that could be called similar to others thematically, would you say that there’s plenty of room for variations on a theme within the hobby?
I’m a gamer. I love boardgames and I love sci-fi and fantasy. And like most gamers, when another space 4X comes out, or another fantasy dungeon-crawler, or another zombie game, my immediate reaction is: “Great! Here’s another take on the genre that I love!” It’s not: “How dare they clone [insert favourite game here]!”
So I’m slightly baffled by the reaction of some hard-core Nemesis fans who have never played Pandora and are simply reacting to the basic premise, which is: ‘You wake up in a spaceship to discover there’s something Big & Nasty on-board.’ They see that and immediately assume that we’re ripping off Nemesis, rather than recognising that this is the opening scene of at least half the movies ever made in this genre.
I mean, how different is that from: “Zombies are infesting your town and you must battle to survive,” which is the premise of every Zombie game out there. But fans of Zombicide don’t immediately jump to the conclusion that [insert new game] is a rip-off of Zombicide.
But for every hard core fan who can’t see past the opening premise, there are at least another 5 Nemesis lovers who recognise that just because we’re set on a spaceship doesn’t mean we’re ripping off Nemesis. So we’re good.
Have there been any major hiccups during development, and if so how were they overcome? How has playtesting helped in this area?
We decided right from the start that we wanted a proper Vents System on the board. Not the usual design in these games, where you enter the vents at Point A and emerge like a wormhole at Point Z; but a real warren of tunnels and vent nodes that overlaid and mirrored the Ship, which you could crawl through and encounter all kinds of Nastiness, as well as the Ship’s pet alien and other interesting stuff – cos let’s face it, every one of these films has a scene like that in it somewhere, doesn’t it?
Only problem was, our playtesters were quick to tell us that if the Vents were just printed on a 2-dimensional board, it got very confusing at times remembering what was in the Vents and what wasn’t. So we decided, let’s make the Vents 3-dimensional. After all, how hard can it be?
Well…. After several failed experiments, Lynn and I had got to the point where we were almost falling out over this, when I was opening a new Kickstarter that had just arrived and getting the minis out of their vacuum-formed insert. And I remember stopping in my tracks and thinking: “Hang on a minute. You can make these things out of clear vacuum-formed plastic!”
So we put together a proof-of-concept prototype using hard acrylic because that was the only way we could build the insert without mass-producing a thousand copies – and it worked! So what you have in Pandora Celeste is a box which folds out to become a 3-Dimensional gameboard on which the heat-moulded card insert acts as a 3D Vents System which overlays the board and holds anything in the Vents on a separate level above the rest of the Shipmap.
It's not the first time any game has done this, but it’s a perfect solution to our design problem and it gives the game a fabulous table presence!
Which is your favourite mechanic within the game?
That’s a hard one.
I love the Push-Your-Luck mechanic in our combat system, which makes you feel like you are in control of your own fate – but also gives you just enough rope to hang yourself with . I also really like the fact that your Action Cards are your Hits – so the more Wounds you take, the more handicapped you become.
But my metric for this game is always ‘does it feel like the movies?’ In fact there’s a line in the front of the Rules which says: “If in doubt, ask yourself ‘what would happen in the movie?’ and interpret the rule that way.”
So my favourite mechanics are the ones which make you think or act like you do in the movies: The simple mechanic of forcing Skins the Company Android to pick a Company Agenda if s/he draws one – which means that nobody ever trusts Skins! Or the ‘You First’ card, which makes the PDA of the crew member you play it on beep so loudly they become the First Target of every Nasty on the Ship. Cos every one of these films has a scene where you’re hiding from the Big Bad, and as it turns away, someone calls your communicator and exposes where you are!
This is becoming a bit of a hot topic. What’s your thoughts on AI in game design? This doesn’t apply directly to your game as you have an artist with a distinct human style, but there are games out there which are heading to crowdfunding that seem to rely on it heavily. Is there room for AI in game design? Is there a limit to its acceptable use?
As a small Indie creator who is strapped for cash, I can see the advantages of using AI art, especially during the development and prototyping stage of the design process. It becomes more problematical when AI then starts to put artists out of a job – and I would hate to be in a world where your only option was AI art because all artists had been priced out of work.
So from my POV, I could see a happy medium where you design and test a game using AI art, but when it comes to publishing the final version, you employ a human artist for the final look. That’s basically what we do in television with music and archive – though at the low-budget end of the spectrum, very few TV companies can afford to do anything other than go to an off-the-shelf music library for their music because composers are expensive. So there are no easy answers to this.
Pandora Celeste is a blend of the competitive and cooperative game styles. Was this borne out of the theme, or was it always your intention to take this direction?
I like giving my players choices – I don’t want to force them to play a certain way. And that’s how we approach the semi-cooperative nature of this game.
As I put it: ‘Surviving’s just a way of keeping score.’ So when the Abandon Ship Protocol sounds, our players always have a choice. Do they race to complete their Agenda which will give them the Decouple Codes to get off the ship on their own? Or do they opt to work together, which means they all have to be on board the Escape Vehicles before they will take off, but they can Power Up those escape vehicles faster as a team than as an individual. It's a classic Prisoner’s Dilemma – and it only takes one of them to break ranks for all Hell to break loose.
But it’s also very thematic. You’ve all seen the film where everyone’s working together until the villain’s secret agenda is revealed and it degenerates into what one playtester described as ‘a knife-fight in a phone booth.’ That’s Pandora Celeste! But equally, I’ve run games where everyone’s worked as a well-oiled team – until they get overrun by the Nasties at the last minute.
And that, too, is Pandora Celeste. The game is very carefully designed to make you feel like you won or you lost by the skin of your teeth, and even I am amazed at how often it all comes down to the wire!
What do you play in your spare time between sessions?
I’m an omnivore. My only metric for a game is that it has to be well-designed. So I love Eclipse and Dune Imperium as much as I love Everdell or Colosseum. I think Gloomhaven is brilliant and one of my all-time favourite games is Scythe, though I’m atrocious at it.
Which one game do you wish you'd designed yourself?
Root is a work of absolute genius. How it manages to make every single faction completely asymmetric and unlike any other faction in the game – and still maintain a reasonable level of balance is breathtaking! Cole Wehrle, I am not worthy. And I can’t wait to try Arcs when it arrives.
What advice would you give to other prospective designers? What advice would you give to yourself after a spot of time traveling?
It’s a cliché, but playtest, playtest, playtest. And get as many blind playtests of the game as you possibly can. But even before that, the best piece of advice I can give anybody is ‘just do it!’ I’ve met so many people who say: “I might like to design a game one day.” That’s not how it works. You wake up in the middle of the night with an idea banging around in your head and the only way you are going to get any sleep for the rest of the night is if you get up and do something about it.
That’s what I would tell my younger self. I’ve been dreaming of publishing a game for most of my life, but I didn’t actually get round to doing it until I was in my 50s. I wish I’d started earlier – but at the same time, I’ve had a wonderfully rewarding life, so I don’t regret any of the things I’ve done in its stead.
How has the support been from the board gaming community?
People who have tried the game have been wonderfully supportive, as have all the lovely people who have given advice on game design forums etc. I am also blessed with the luck of having an absolutely wonderful wife and a group of friends who have rallied round to help whenever we’ve needed it.
Just recently, 2 friends reached out to me to volunteer their painting services for our minis, completely unsolicited. And that’s not the only thing they’ve done for Pandora in the past.
Thank you Lynn and thank you Peeps. I couldn’t have done it without you.
How does it feel to finally launch?
A relief to be honest – and slightly terrifying. We have a very loyal following who are going to take us a long way towards funding, but there are no guarantees in this life and I just hope that people can see the love and passion that we’ve poured into this game and respond to it.
We'll finish on another vital question. Given how many sci-fi movies and novels are filled with dystopian futures and human-chomping aliens, is the future really bright, or is it simply a lucky dip filled with exciting ways for everything to end?
The future is what we make of it. As I look at the rise of populist politicians trying to drag us back into the 1930s, one of my more morbid jokes is: “How long does it take to forget the lessons of history? About 80 years based on what’s happening now.”
But it doesn’t have to be like that. We are living in the Golden Age of all Golden Ages. Centuries from now, people may look back on this time and say: “It was amazing! You could fly anywhere and communicate almost instantly with people on the other side of the world. And most people lived in a level of comfort that kings could only dream of in centuries past!” To be honest, I hope they don’t: because if they don’t it will be because we’ve managed to avoid dragging ourselves back into the Dark Ages and people are even more prosperous then than they are now.
But I’m with Ridley Scott. No matter what happens in the future, it won’t be all bright corridors and people in colourful uniforms – the working corners where people get things done will be as dark and gritty and full of crap as they ever were. And the poor ol’ working Jo piloting a spaceship to the Colony Worlds will have to cope with poor working conditions and stuff breaking down ‘cos that’s the way the world has always worked – let’s just hope that s/he doesn’t have to deal with the Company using the Ship as a testbed for alien bioweapons as well, eh?
As mentioned at the start, their crowdfunding efforts over on Gamefound are going all guns blazing, I’d get involved quick if I were you: Pandora Celeste by Guntower Games - Gamefound
You’ll also find Guntower Games on Instagram, give them a follow and a positive comment: Lynn Ibeji (@pandoraceleste_boardgame) • Instagram photos and videos