IQ-Circle

This year, while designing new IQ games, I stepped out of my comfort zone, but not in the way you might expect. Typically, I keep a concept in my mind for a long time. Only after thoroughly thinking it through (sometimes for months or even years, occasionally overthinking it) and feeling confident in its potential, I start working out the details. However, in this case, the concept was so straightforward, that there was not much conceptual work. IQ-Circle, but also IQ-Square, IQ-Pentagon and IQ-Hexagon are the result.

 

The idea stemmed from a request by my colleagues to create IQ games that looked less like kids toys and would appeal more to teens and adults. While I believe many adults already enjoy our standard IQ games, not everyone is aware they exist. Adults who don’t frequent toy shops—because they don’t have children, or their children have outgrown toys—are unlikely to encounter SmartGames. One objective of this new range was to broaden its appeal and make it suitable for sale in other outlets, such as bookstores, gift shops, and museum stores where adults could see them. To distinguish this new subcategory from the existing IQ games, I approached the design process differently. Our standard IQ games always use the same rectangular or square game board format, with variation coming from the game mechanics. For the IQ-Deluxe series, however, I flipped this approach: each game has its own uniquely shaped board, while keeping the same game mechanic (simple packing problem). Although each game has different looks, they are tied together by a common theme. In this case, the theme was “geometric shapes.” From there, the development process unfolded naturally. We developed puzzles based on circles, triangles, squares, etc. Once we had enough choice, we picked the ones we liked best and developed them further. That’s why there’s no IQ-Triangle yet: while we created two versions, the puzzles for the other shapes were simply more compelling. However, I may give it another try in a year or two, depending on the success of the first IQ-Deluxe games. Another distinction is the presentation. Unlike the standard IQ games, the IQ-Deluxe series comes in a more premium, black box with a larger, more durable challenge booklet.

 

At the start, IQ-Circle was entirely different from the final version. It featured a circular game board filled with puzzle pieces made of balls. While visually appealing, it was too obvious for a game concept that was already very straightforward. I prefer to surprise myself during the design process, and this version didn’t achieve that. Additionally, the balls were arranged on a hexagonal grid, which seemed more fitting for IQ-Hexagon than IQ-Circle. To break away from the hexagonal grid, I experimented with arranging the balls in concentric circles. This adjustment created a new challenge: the outer circles required either more balls or larger balls. I opted for the latter. Though the result looked simple, it gave each puzzle piece a distinct character, as the pieces were now composed of balls with varying diameters. However, this also introduced a new limitation: the placement options for each puzzle piece on the grid were severely restricted. Segments with smaller balls could only fit near the center, while those with larger balls could only fit on the outer edge. I spent months fine-tuning the puzzle pieces until I found a combination that worked. In the final design, each puzzle piece can be adjacent to at least three other pieces on both sides, allowing for a variety of configurations. Striking a balance between possibilities and restrictions is crucial for any packing puzzle. Too few possibilities make it impossible to create enough challenges, while too few restrictions lead to non-unique solutions—unless you compensate this by revealing many hints in the setup. Since the puzzle was already relatively easy, I didn’t want to simplify it further by showing too many hints. But I added extra restrictions to the game board itself. The largest concentric circle includes ribs that divide it into sections of varying sizes. These ribs eliminate rotational symmetry, ensuring that solutions cannot be placed in just any orientation, again avoiding the need to show too many hints in the challenges.

 

For me, IQ-Circle is the most beautiful and fascinating of the 4 IQ-Deluxe games. But on the other hand, it’s also the simplest to solve. To make the harder challenges difficult enough, these challenges don’t show the position of (all) the ribs. Since there is only a limited number of challenges with unique solutions like this, IQ-Circle has more easy challenges and less hard ones. As usual, the development process of the game was a lot easier than that of the packaging, where too many conflicting opinions about the final direction made it more time consuming and frustrating than needed. Originally, we had the intention to show the actual game through a window of the packaging. Therefore we would not store the booklet underneath the transparent lid, because this would obstruct the view on the puzzle pieces. Later we decided to use a closed box with an image afterall, but at that point it was already too late to change the design of the game board and transparent lid, because the moulds were already finalized. So in these IQ-Deluxe games the cardboard packaging is not only a gift box but is also needed to store all components. The different shapes of the game boards would have made placing a square or rectangular booklet underneath the lid unpractical anyway (except for IQ-Square).