Central Michigan University Press’ thirteenth game, Line by Line, will debut for crowdfunding on October 20th on BackerKit! As we introduce the public to this marvelously cozy, collaborative poetry-writing game, we are also delighted to highlight its creators! Today’s profile focuses upon Line by Line‘s designer: Tilak Vyas!
Tilak Vyas is a game designer, composer, and writer in Toronto, with a Bachelor of Fine and Applied Arts in Game Design from Wilfrid Laurier University. He has scored three plays. The first won the National Theatre School’s award for Best Composition, and he directed the pit for it himself. CitaDrill, the base-building roguelike he produced with Studio Moka for publisher Cobra Teku, took Best Strategic Roguelike at Too Many Games
He has taught poetry in Ontario classrooms and works in math curriculum. All of it is the same job in a different medium, handing a craft to someone who is certain they don’t have it. Line by Line is his first published game. It began in a high-school writer’s craft class, the year he worked out that a poem was something a person had assembled, and that in principle he could assemble one too
He drafts on printer paper stolen from an office. There is a leatherbound journal from Buenos Aires that he is saving for the good stuff. The good stuff is still on the printer paper.
We sent Tilak a list of questions to dive deeper into the creation of Line by Line and his thoughts behind it. Read on for more!
Q: What is your background with poetry and games?
I’ve been reading and writing poetry since my grade 4 English class, when I realized language could be playful. I’ve always loved being entertained, so much so that a revelation that simple was enough to send literacy straight to the top of my subject tier list. I didn’t take poetry seriously until my high school Writer’s Craft class, where Mr. Stephen Murray connected being playful with being intentional, and showed me that the difference between the two is where meaning lives. I’ve been writing whenever I can ever since. From my signed edition of Margaret Atwood’s Paper Boat to the scrolls of stolen printer paper that will probably make up my collected works posthumously, poetry has been a part of my life for a long time. More recently I’ve had the chance to bring it back into classrooms, first as an educator and now as a game designer.
It came as no surprise to my parents that I went on to a Bachelor of Fine and Applied Arts in Game Design and Development at Wilfrid Laurier University. That same fascination with being entertained followed me into my academic life, until the question shifted to what it actually means to be entertaining, and how something positive can come out of our playful nature. At Laurier we focused on making games to change the world, and on letting our values drive what a game can achieve. Line by Line is my first published board game, and it launches alongside CitaDrill, my first published video game.
Q: What motivated you to create this game? Where did the first idea come from?
Line by Line began as the final submission for Dr. Scott Nicholson’s Analog Game Design course in the fourth year of my undergraduate degree. It was heavily inspired by Mr. Murray’s grade 12 Writer’s Craft class and by Anne Lamott’s guide to writing and life, Bird by Bird, which is also where the title comes from.
Since I started teaching poetry, I’ve wanted to reconvince classrooms that playing with language is worth doing, not only as a form of expression or creativity, but as an exercise in communication and representation. Line by Line is my confident attempt at bringing that play back, and at stealing a little of the limelight from math.
Q: Did the theme, the goal, or the mechanics come first? How did you pair them together?
The goal, absolutely. The grounding element from start to finish was “I want players to leave the table having written poetry.” Or more precisely: “I want everyone at the table to create a piece of poetry together.” It was clear to me early on that getting people writing, getting them talking about their writing, and above all finding a way to strip away the judgment and raised eyebrows that fledgling bards face, all had to sit at the centre of the game. I’m thrilled we found a way to make that happen.
Pairing it all together was honestly the easy part. Once we had the goal, we layered on one piece at a time, tested rigorously and without attachment, and pruned out everything that didn’t work, slowly shaping the game we have today. We never had to change that central goal, though we certainly went looking for a reason to, and that tells me a lot about where the heart of this one sits.
Q: How did you develop the world of Line by Line? What were some of your influences?
It will come as no surprise to anyone who plays the game that Legends & Lattes was sitting on both my and Gretchen’s bookshelves while we were thinking through the world. We knew we wanted a café setting for the cozy aroma and the warm thoughts, and anchoring it in fantasy gave us a setting more open to experimentation, with less thematic pressure to take the work any more seriously than you want to.
Quill, the mascot, or as Vicky and I have been lovingly calling them, “the little friend,” came out of Vicky’s imagination, and the game is infinitely better for it. I’ll admit, perhaps off the record, that the idea for Quill did arrive after an evening Vicky and I spent debating game ideas and watching Studio Ghibli’s Arrietty. Not to say that had any influence, but.
Q: What was something you chose not to include in this game? What were some challenges that you overcame while designing this game?
So much. Looking back, I think the game is better for having less. We originally had cards about writing style, cards about forms of poetry from around the world, cards about writing in a second language, wild cards that asked the table for a word everyone had to use, and on and on. Every one of them made the poetry more authentic and handed players another tool to write with, but each also added a layer of complexity that newer players were getting lost in. In the end, a more distilled and repeatable experience was the way to go.
Honestly, not knowing what should and shouldn’t be in the game, trying to honour the complexity of poetry while keeping the subject accessible, was one of the hardest parts. I’m only glad to have had Gretchen’s guidance and a whole suite of playtesters (thank you all) to make those decisions easier.
Q: What do you want players to take away from your game? What do you want them to learn/feel/reflect upon?
I want every player to leave with something new they’ve written, on their own or together. This is absolutely the most important part. Whether you reflect on how you feel about writing, or on the subject matter of your poem, is a gift only you can give yourself, but leaving with something you wrote is a door we can open. That’s all there has ever been to Line by Line: the desire to get people to give it a shot and enjoy what comes out of the effort.
Q: What is your favorite part of this game? What has been your favorite part of this experience?
The collaborative writing, by far. Trading lines and building a piece of writing together is something I adore having achieved. It’s consistently the most fun part of the game.
***
Thank you, Tilak! You can follow Line by Line‘s prelaunch page right now at https://www.backerkit.com/c/projects/central-michigan-university-press/line-by-line?ref=tilakqna to prep for the launch on October 20th! We can’t wait!