Croco Tiles

‍Croco Tiles is a new compact game I developed for SmartGames in 2025, though its origins actually trace back to 2024. When we design a new game, we usually create several variations before deciding which one to finalize. But sometimes, one of the unused ideas still feels too good to throw away. That’s exactly what happened during the development of Counting Sheep. One of the early versions featured safari animals instead of sheep, and several colleagues were disappointed when we didn’t go with that version.

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‍Still, it wouldn’t have made sense to simply rework the game with a new theme — that would have been Counting Sheep in disguise. So when I revisited the idea, I decided to change as much as possible, keeping only the safari theme and the general look. The changes started with the foundation: the new board and pieces are built on hexagons instead of squares.  The objective also changed entirely. In Counting Sheep, you needed to get the right number of animals in specific areas of the board. In Croco Tiles, there’s no counting involved — the goal is to make sure all your animals can reach water to drink. There are two types of “drinking” animals: elephants and giraffes, all of which must stand on land. There’s also one crocodile, which must be in the water. Naturally, the crocodile complicates things: elephants and giraffes are not allowed to drink from any pond that contains the crocodile — a little touch of wildlife realism that fits nicely with the theme. However, the drinking animals posed a few design problems. The trunks of the elephants would overlap adjacent pieces, making handling the ones below harder. This was easily solved by placing the elephant on pieces with their trunk overhanging hexagons that are part of the same puzzle piece. For the giraffes, I used a different approach. I made their necks bendable. When you’re playing, you keep the necks upright so they don’t get in the way. But when you want to check if they’re positioned correctly to drink, you can gently bend them forward. This feature wasn’t just for fun — it was also a practical necessity . Like most compact SmartGames, Croco Tiles includes a transparent lid to hold everything in place, and without bendable necks, it wouldn’t be possible to close the game box at all. These 2 different solutions for the different animals also add variation to the gameplay. The transparent puzzle pieces with elephants will always cover part of the pond they are drinking from, while the giraffes will always drink from ponds covered by other puzzle pieces than their own. BTW, without the drinking part, the game would have looked as an hexagonal version of Camouflage North Pole. And although that was a nice game, I don't like to repeat myself.

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‍From a gameplay perspective, the crocodile also adds another layer of strategy. The correct placement of the elephants and giraffes depends in the first place on the fixed layout of the board (land or water), but the crocodile’s position depends on the placement of the other animals. Originally, the puzzle pieces only included animal figurines, but that made the crocodile piece hard to lift once placed. So we added grass and rock elements to make them easier to manipulate. They also make the board look more lively and added color, so that was a nice bonus. One small design detail worth mentioning: the giraffes’ front legs are slightly spread apart — just like real giraffes do when they drink. That was a late-stage request from one of my bosses. Personally, I don’t think such details matter much. If you want something realistic, a game is not the best match, because in real life animals are not attached to puzzle pieces anyway. For me, the theme’s main purpose is to support and clarify the rules — and to make the game visually appealing. In the end, puzzles are not a lesson in biology, but should work as a game. But if a small tweak like this makes everybody happy (and it doesn’t break the design), then it’s fine for me.

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‍This is the last game I designed in collaboration with my colleague Leighton, who passed away in December 2025. For twenty years, we collaborated on more than a hundred SmartGames and several toys for SmartMax. He will be deeply missed, not only for his exceptional work but also for his kind and compassionate nature. I am grateful for every moment we shared together. Almost all of my designs have his fingerprints all over them. 

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‍Croco Tiles will be available late summer 2026.