The Unseen Origin Story

Hello everyone.

I am Tyler Luckau, one of the designers for Windmill Crusaders, and I've been thinking.

Dangerous, I know.

Our founder, Mark Hansen, was a creative who loved to share everything he did. He wrote blogs about our first game, a fascinating scripture card game Seeker's Quest. He wrote stories as blogs and yalked about the writing of those stories. He shared his thoughts on scripture and spiritual experiences, he had a blog focused entirely on his dutch oven cooking, and yet another for his music.

He was so incredibly open about all this, that I wonder if perhaos we should incorporate some of that here. Perhaps this will help foster connection, and community from us to all of you.

So, here I am, to talk about Unseen. This is the first game we've finished on which I was the primary designer.

I didn't join on with Seeker's Quest until after it was published in 2014, and for quite a while while I shared occasional ideas I mostly just played the game, rather than make it.

The Heroes Tale was something I helped with design more, however it was still a project belonging most to Mark. Brendon and Jacob.

I acted in a way as a consultant for Wyrmheist, where Jacob often asked my opinion, and I helped playtest many other games we are still working on. I often made my own and brought them to playtest, but I was rarely happy with the way my games typically played. All of my games but Unseen have returned to the drawing board at this point. Especially my dinosaur and paleontology game concepts. As a paleontologist, I have found myself rather particular about the dinosaur games I may put out.

Unseen, however, felt like a rush of inspiration. It wasn't a perfect game from its conception, but it advanced much faster than anything else I've made.

So heres the story: In July of 2023 I was staying up late, doomscrolling. I came across a post talking about an ancient board game, nirdic I think. It may have been hnefatfl. I saw a small board with wood pieces in an intruiging arrangemenf, and it got me thinking about how cool if would be to make something like that. What could I do to break the mold of board games and come up with my own avstract strategy sort of game. What would be my version of chess, checkers, or go?

As I began drifting off to sleep, these were my thoughts. I had not fully fallen asleep when I had some ideas. I decided to write the down before forgetting.

This is the note I took that night:

"Idea for a game: small board, unique cool looking pieces, some old design. One side is clarly the front, with a face and eyes. Goal: elimimaye all opponents pieces. You do so by moving your pieces. You take turns moving one piece at a time. If at any point a piece does not face another piece, it is eliminated. Each player gets perhaps 4 regular pieces and 1 piece that has 2 faces on opposite sides, and one with 2 faces at right angle. A die is rolled. And each time a 1 is rolled, you may place a wall instead of moving a piece. Walls block the line of sight and can be the cause of elimination."

You can see how this became Unseen as we kmow it now. As long as you ignore the late night spelling errors. The game was intended to be on a much smaller board than it ended up being. I wanted a 5 inch by 5 inch board.

The final board of version 1.0 was 10x10.

The following day I expanded on those ideas and wrote

"Setup: each player places all their pieces in a semi circle on opposite sides of the board, facing each other, the 2 sided piece on one end the right angle piece on the other end. Each player takes 6 wall pieces and sets them aside. Place the d6 in easy reach of all players.

Decide the first player by a staring contest.

How to play:

The first player rolls the die.

If it rolls 1-5, the player moves a piece to anywhere on the board.

If it rolls a 6, that player places a wall instead.

If at any point while all non eliminated pieces remain on the board a piece does not face an opposing piece, that piece is eliminated.

Play continues until all of one player's pieces are eliminated. The player with remaining pieces is the victor. "

I had a playtestable veraion with a paper board and paper squares for the pieces that weekend, and tried it out with Mark while we were at a Farmers Market.

That playtest made evident numerous issues. Most notably, I needed a method to determine what a piece could see.

Further, while I had not written it down, the idea of Free Movement was already knocking around too, and was used for the first playtest, though not clarified.

After a few tests, I foubd pegdolls, and thought that they held a look that, with some modification, would be lerfect for my game. I imagined a blank face of only eyes, on the roubded head, and I loved the idea of players being able to paint and customize their pieces. So, before long I had some peg dolls from hobby lobby and had taped them to paper squares for play.

Eventually the dice was removed, the angles marked on based, and the game was feeling much more elegant. The greatest trouble at this point was balancing how walls are placed and the elimination timing. Eventually, the 3 phases of play solidified itself, and by the end of that same year I had originated the idea, I was feeling good about the game. I needed only to get a solid looking board and bases for it, and solidly written instructions. That took far longer than I intended. I had initially planned ti use The Game Crafter, as we had for Seeker's Quest and Wyrmheist, but I found should I do that, the game would necesserily sell for $70. I dislike selling the game for even its current price of $35, half that. If I was able, I would sell it for $10 or $15 a copy.

So that was out of the question.

I found the same issue when I searched out other self publishing game companies, and so my only recourse was to publish it myself. I arranged to find where would be the cheapest ways for me to get peg dolls, bases, a board, walls, and a box. This finally became Unseen 1.0. I would make about 8 copies at a time unless demand increased faster.

We first introduced it at Fan X of 2024, but had no copies to sell. We first sold it online through Etsy, but had only 1 purchase. Disheartened, we tried again in Timpcon 2025, and did sell out.

However, at this time, inflation, tarrifs, and paper shortages made multiple components required more exspensive.

As I said, I greatly dislike charging too much, so I went back to the drawing board on where I source my components. In this process, we reviewed the instructions, and some minor changes were made. Most notably, our board was expanded to a standard playmat, and walls in play at the beginning were added, as I found certain areas of the board were almost exclusively used in further testing. This further proved to break up the gane and add more variety. I was initially uncertain about changing the game from it's 1.0 versoon, but gradually came around to why it was better this way.

Eventually, we finally got Unseen 2.0 ready for you. It retains the origional $35, while feeling better than ever and having better components. We officially released it for sale on August 1st, 2026 at the Provo Card Convention.

We have exspansions in the works, with the upcoming exspansions being a 3-4 player exsoansion, and the Towers, a new type of wall on which a piece can be placed. In this blog design series, I will give updates on these exspansions, and you will be able to follow along, ask questions, and even give suggestions!

So make sure to follow to hear more on Unseen, it's exspansions, Thomas's upcoming Zeen Warriors project, Tales from Raptir Hill, and out many other projects in the works.

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Thank you for reading.

Buy Unseen Here