Welcome to Spotlight, a Ding & Dent interview series. We aim to spotlight minorities in games media and the gaming industry and talk to them about the things they are passionate about.

On our first Spotlight is game designer and e-sports writer Sydney Engelstein, co-designer of Space Cadets, the follow up Space Cadets: Dice Duel, Survive: Space Attack! and most recently, The Dragon and Flagon.

Say hello Sydney!

Hello!

I know who you are because I’m a gigantic nerd. For those who whose feelings about boardgames are less (shall we say) intense, please tell us about yourself!

My name is Sydney Engelstein and I am one third (the best third) of the Engelstein design team. It’s me, my dad, Geoff, and my brother, Brian. We have designed several published games, such as Space Cadets, Space Cadets: Dice Duel, Survive! Space Attack, and The Dragon and Flagon. More on me specifically, I’m currently a college student, studying Anthropology and Japanese. I write online about professional League of Legends for Rotowire.com as well as doing some freelance creative pieces for Wyrd Games.

The best Engelstein.

Clearly the next game from S. Engelstein will be about Japanese Anthropology.

I’d play it.

So would many others, surely.

Sydney’s most recent game is about a fantasy bar brawl with 3D furniture you can throw at your enemies. What’s not to love?

Enough about design for now; let’s talk about Sydney the Gamer. What games are you super psyched about right now and why are they blowing your mind?

I unfortunately don’t have an easy way of keeping up with all the new games since I am a poor college student in the middle of nowhere Ohio, but I do play a lot of old stuff with my tabletop club at school. I’ve been perusing the local game store for new content, since we mainly play Mysterium and Diamant, and am excited to pick up Junk Art because it seems super cool. I also have to mention Time Stories, because despite being disappointed by The Marcy Case I keep playing the new modules? I’m just excited to see the point and click adventure games I used to play as a kid attempted in board game format.

Point and click adventure games were my jam! Getting lost in Daventry or guiding Manuel to his final Fandango. Is there anything from the games of your youth that you’d like modern board games to emulate that they haven’t?

There’s a straight line from one to the other.

Well one way in which I personally found Time Stories to be lacking was in its amount of puzzles. Point and Clicks were all about puzzles, but Time Stories only has one or two per module. I recognize that it is quite difficult to work in, but I would love to see a game go out on a limb and really try and incorporate puzzle solving.

On a somewhat related note: what trends in the industry are you excited by? What do you want to see more of?

Personally, my favorite types of games are fast paced, crazy, dexterity games (Did I mention that I designed Space Cadets: Dice Duel?), and I’ve been very excited to see them gaining in popularity. These days we seem to see more real time portions of games, both in cooperative and competitive, and I’ve been finding games that really think outside the box and bring in new, creative mechanics. I’ll sit down and play a euro game every now and then, but if a game makes me jump up and down and scream, I’ll remember it.

Not included: a jumping and screaming game designer. Or exploding console.

Speaking of jumping up and down and screaming: I understand you’re huge on League of Legends. We’ll come back to that in a minute, but oh man, Mechs Vs Minions! As a big LoL fan AND a board gamer what are your thoughts on this crossover?

I do happen to be quite a big League fan, so when I saw the game announced I was rather excited. I was also a little disappointed because I’d been fantasizing for a while about getting a job at Riot through designing a game for them, but that was more of a young girl’s pipe dream. I don’t know much about Mechs Vs Minions, only what I’ve seen from the YouTube videos announcing it and explaining how to play. It seems pretty interesting, with a little bit of a continuous story component, perhaps similar to Mice and Mystics? It’s a bit disappointing that it doesn’t reflect the MOBA experience, though. I do love the lore and characters of League of Legends, however, so I’m excited to get a chance to experience new stories with them. Not to mention the adorable miniatures.

Yordles: Left. Minions: Right. Mechs: Also left.

I think them doing the Yordles was really the best choice. What’s not to love about adorable, kooky elf-like cuties?

Not to mention that they’re one of the only brand specific character subsets League has. Yordles are terribly marketable.

Speaking of League: Who is your favorite champion, and why is it Ezreal?

Ha. You’re funny. Not that I don’t read some Ezreal fanfiction every so often, but I’m a Support main through and through. Love me some Nami. And Sona. (P.S. TSM! TSM! TSM!)

Arcade Sona best Sona. Also: ew, TSM scum.

We’ll see who’s laughing when we take an honorable third place to the Korean teams.

It hurts because it’s true.

Lee Sang-hyeok, aka Faker, widely considered one of the best e-sports players on Earth. He does not play for TSM.

As someone who’s dipped a (very small) toe into game design, it’s always baffling to me how mind-bendingly difficult it is. What made you want to get into design? Was there a specific inspirational game/moment/strike of lightning or?

I am honestly not a traditional model for getting into game design. My brother and dad had already designed and published one game, The Ares Project, before I got involved in it at all.

I’m imagining a copy of this in the Engelstein’s house with the corners chewed by a young Sydney.

Due to that, I was approached with a partially created game concept, several mechanics, and two experienced design partners before starting, so my first game was relatively painless. Now that I’ve spent some time working on a solo game, I can see where all the horror comes from. It’s incredibly overwhelming to have to come up with everything and test everything all on your own, and having a design team several feet away from me at all times made it so much easier. It made it so that when a strike of inspiration happened, I could immediately approach my dad and suggest it, without the pressure of pulling together an entire prototype around a mechanic before showing it off.

Will we be seeing any S. Engelstein solo work in the near future?

Certainly not the near future, college is really hard, dude. Board game design is not the career I have in mind or am hoping for, but there’s always the possibility that sometime down the road I might come up with something.

I’m keeping my fingers crossed for Japanese Anthropology: The Game.

One last design question: A great joy in life is playing a game and having a unique mechanism completely take off the top of your head. Can you talk about a design decision in a game that blew your mind? (cardboard or otherwise)

I vaguely mentioned above that I was working on a game. It’s actually a project for school working on creating a simulation game for educational use in Anthropology classrooms. In my research I came upon many interesting role-playing and simulation games that don’t usually show up in our conception of a board game, but the one I was the most blown away by was Dog Eat Dog.

(Calvin’s note: If you, the reader, don’t know about Dog eat Dog, here is SU&SD’s review - it is one of their finest pieces of work)

I haven’t played it, partially because I don’t really have a group for it but also partially because I’m scared to, but I’ve read about it and read through several lengthy accounts of gameplay. It’s a role play based colonialism simulator, and from what I’ve heard it can be an exceptionally powerful emotional and intellectual tool. I’m amazed by games such as that which can change the way you go about your life. I wouldn’t want to play it every day, but it’s an incredible concept that I’d love to try sometime.

I agree. It's nice to think of games as thought provoking emotion machines but honestly so many of us play them to get away from the emotionally exhausting Real World. Speaking of which: What are you really passionate about right now that isn’t gaming related that our audience needs to get into right the heck now?

Oh man. This is sort of gaming related (and definitely not anything new), but I’ve been so into Critical Role.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=i-p9lWIhcLQ

It’s a show on Geek and Sundry with a bunch of nerdy voice actors playing through a D&D campaign. It’s very witty and charming, and I love all of the characters. There’s a lot to get through if you’re just starting out like me, but it’s certainly worth it.

Ooh that sounds fun. Should I start from the beginning or is there a specific episode that’s a good jumping off point?

I’m the type of person who absolutely has to start something from the beginning, but I’m sure there’s tons of recaps out there so that a new watcher could pop in anywhere.

We’re almost at the end Sydney - thank you so much for your time! Final question: Do you have anything you want to plug?

For all my League of Legends fans out there, check out Rotowire.com for our upcoming Summer Split recaps and Worlds coverage. Also, keep an eye out for Wyrd’s October Chronicles, which will hopefully contain one of my short stories!

How can our audience get in touch with you?

I have a Twitter: @Why_Not_Fly and I’m also on Facebook under Sydney Engelstein. I’m not actively posting, but if you send me a message I will see it and get back to you! If you try those methods and I continue to be unavailable it’s probably because I’m swamped with homework. Try reaching out to my dad @gengelstein and he’ll call me to make sure I’m not dead.

Thanks for your time! And thanks to you the reader for reading Spotlight.

Spotlight - Sydney Engelstein

Calvin Wong

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Calvin's Corner - Fog of War: the Twilight Struggle Killer

Episode 47 - Other People's Fun

Charlie's Take - Gloom of Kilforth

Episode 46 - Wasteland Express Delivery Service Review

Raf Reviews - Spoils of War

Raf Reviews - Oaxaca

Bonus Episode - Warhammer 40k Dark Imperium