What started as a small hobby between father and daughter has turned into a full-fledged board game with publisher Stonemaier Games.
Senior Business Analyst and BCIT alumnus Hoby Chou and his 6 year old daughter, Vienna, have landed themselves a publishing deal for a game they created and fine-tuned over the last several years. Partially inspired by best-selling game, Scythe and the classic My Little Pony, My Little Scythe takes players through a magical animal kingdom world invented by Vienna.
“My work at BCIT is very strategy and goal focused, I have to make sure that the strategies are aligned with the goals. Whether it’s working in an organization or playing a board game, you need to know what the goals are,” says Hoby. “Drawing from my work experience really helped with the design and development of My Little Scythe.”
Vienna had the vision and Hoby had the skills to turn that vision into a reality. In 2017, an early prototype of their game won a Golden Geek Award for best print-and-play game and topped the Board Game Geek list for hot games. While the original game pieces were My Little Pony figurines, the publishing deal has allowed Hoby and Vienna to get creative with a whole new world and characters for the game.
“The biggest lesson from this process is to put personal inhibitions aside and focus on the customer – in this case, my daughter and her friends. I had to let go of a lot of aspects of the game that I thought were needed but weren’t as important to her,” says Hoby. “It all comes back to the end customer and it’s a lesson that I take to heart in my career.”
If you want to get your hands on My Little Scythe, you can either order online or pick up one of the first games at the BCIT Bookstore this August.