Imagine a table of Battlestar Galactica. Everyone was just discussing how to get through the crisis, and the next moment, someone's move makes you stop.
Is he helping, but just doesn't have enough resources in hand? Or is he deliberately pushing the situation toward something worse? You think back on earlier choices and suddenly feel that every step has another explanation.
Now imagine another evening. No ship is on the brink of destruction; you and your friends are placing stickers on a village map, discussing where to go next and what you want this place to grow into.
The emotions at the two tables are worlds apart. On one side, trust is wavering; on the other, curiosity urges people to keep exploring. And behind both of them stands Corey Konieczka.
Why would a designer skilled at making people tense also want to make a warm village? Following his path from Fantasy Flight Games to Unexpected Games, you'll find that this turn wasn't so sudden after all.
What changes is the emotion players are meant to experience; what persists is his interest in turning emotion into concrete game choices.
1. Turning a hobby into a job, starting with one part of someone else's work
In a 2009 interview with him, Konieczka said he had been designing games in his spare time from very early on, and once he realized this could become a career, he worked seriously toward that direction. He also mentioned fond childhood memories of playing Acquire.
The studio's official bio confirms that he joined Fantasy Flight Games in 2005 and went on to spend fourteen years there, taking part in the creation of games and expansions such as Battlestar Galactica and Star Wars: Rebellion.
A more specific starting point remains in his 2019 career retrospective "14 Years": when he first arrived at FFG, he designed bosses and equipment for World of Warcraft: The Board Game.
This beginning lacks the drama of single-handedly creating an entire universe, yet it is very useful for helping us understand professional design.
A piece of equipment doesn't automatically work just because the idea is interesting. It has to connect with characters, combat, and the choices players can make; a boss also has to be put back into the whole game before you know whether the challenge is meaningful. Creators must learn to connect the part they are responsible for with other people's work.
From the player's perspective, what we get is a complete box. Behind the box, however, are many decisions at different scales: what a reward gives, how an encounter ends, what a character does when they are most distinctive.
Only when these local decisions point together toward one kind of experience does a game feel complete. And precisely because of this, when someone's name later becomes familiar, we still need to remember that many large works are completed by teams together.
2. Battlestar Galactica: crisis requires cooperation, and cooperation makes suspicion hurt more
Speaking about the origins of Battlestar Galactica, he explained in an early interview that he loved the original series and actively sought to join the project. Initially, he and Christian T. Petersen discussed ideas such as cooperation and Cylon traitors, and then, inspired by the series, they developed victory conditions and component design.
This account puts both the original discussions and the later work in their proper places. The work has clear lead creators, as well as shared brainstorming and team contributions.
For players, what makes this experience special is that the necessity of cooperation and the uncertainty of identity happen at the same table.
Let's continue the hypothesis from the opening. If you didn't need others at all, suspicion would just be spectating; but you happen to need the other person's help, and you don't know whether they are reliable, so every negotiation gains an extra layer of weight.
You can't just look at the effect of a certain card; you also notice who suggested doing this, who has stayed silent the whole time. A result that looks less than ideal makes the whole table recall what happened before.
This tension doesn't require the author to write out every line of dialogue in advance. The rules provide a shared goal and the possibility of disagreement, and players begin to explain each other's behavior. The story moves from one person's action into another person's understanding.
In my view, this is also a very valuable direction for licensed games. A familiar name draws people to the table, and the relationships that form at the table let players personally experience the memorable contradictions of that world.
When we are still arguing after the session about what someone was really trying to do at the time, the drama has already entered our own memory.
3. After fourteen years, he gave his next attempt a new name
In 2019, Konieczka founded Unexpected Games. The official introduction states that it belongs to Asmodee North America and hopes to stay small, making novel, thematic, and approachable experiences.
This is not a new business card that a person who has already done everything finds for himself. From his later interviews about the studio, you can see that the freedom to choose projects also comes with many new tasks.
In a 2024 interview with Jedi News alongside Josh Beppler, he recalled that before Beppler joined in 2022, he himself had to do design, development, organizing external playtests, coordinating with art and graphic design, as well as social media and marketing arrangements. Having someone join to share the work was important to him.
Such a list restores the everyday side of "founding a studio."
You may start the morning excited about a new game, but in the middle of it you need to handle documents, feedback, and communication. An experience that exists only in your head, in order to become a product that strangers can buy, open, and keep playing, has to pass through many people's hands.
Freedom is shown not only in what subject matter you can choose, but also in whether you are willing to arrange time for those choices, organize cooperation, and repeatedly explain what you want the game to become.
The Initiative was the new studio's first game. In a retrospective at the end of 2021, he talked about his nervousness when announcing it, and about how players' support let him breathe a sigh of relief.
That record has a distance very familiar to creators: you have been with the work for a long time, but others are seeing it for the first time. What you have accomplished before can bring experience, but it cannot answer all the questions of this attempt in advance.
4. From puzzles to adventure, letting surprise find different shapes
Another piece of behind-the-scenes work on The Initiative especially shows how this experience lands in the details.
In his year-end retrospective, Konieczka wrote that the game contains word puzzles, as well as interconnected clues and cards, so translation was very difficult. He prepared a fifteen-page translation guide for this, and the team worked with partners in different languages.
When we usually talk about narrative, we tend to think only of the sentences in the story. But in a puzzle game, a sentence may simultaneously be a clue, and the length of a word may affect difficulty. Passing on the literal meaning may not necessarily pass on the moment of discovering the answer.
For readers, this experience also reminds us that surprise is not a promise that says "you will be very surprised." It requires precise arrangement of information: what is seen now, what is remembered later, what can be reconnected.
In an interview with him about The Mandalorian: Adventures, he talked about another combination: ideas inspired by the series met adventure concepts extended from some of The Initiative's mechanisms.
This game was co-created by him and Josh Beppler. Returning to the familiar Star Wars world does not mean returning to exactly the same experience; the two talked about cooperative gameplay and the new direction brought by the action system.
Looking across these works, creative experience seems like a material that keeps growing. A method formed in one game can be brought to another subject matter and asked anew, but it needs new judgment before it can serve a new goal.
We also don't need to understand every change as a break with the past. Sometimes a new work simply places a part of old experience that had not yet unfolded into a more suitable position.
5. If you don't have to create despair, can you still make people want to keep playing?
With Cozy Stickerville, this question becomes especially intuitive.
In an interview with him published by the studio, Konieczka said he had felt he was repeating similar designs and wanted to try a different kind of work. Dorfromantik made him curious about how a game you cannot lose maintains interest; Animal Crossing and Stardew Valley also became references for his thinking.
So stickers, story, exploration, and village building entered the same concept. He talked about how this time he hoped the emotion left behind would be curiosity and wonder.
Looking at this direction and then thinking of Battlestar Galactica, it's easy to notice only the contrast: before, he made people suspect their friends; later, he made people build together.
But there is also a continuous thread here. The former makes players want to know who the other person really is; the latter makes players want to know what they will encounter on the next exploration. The pressures of the two kinds of curiosity are different, yet both can become reasons to keep acting.
Of course, this is only our observation when comparing works; it does not mean they use the same set of rules. Warmth also doesn't mean no choices are needed: if every table ends up going to exactly the same place, the traces of your own participation will fade.
As the village gradually retains changes, actions gain visible consequences. You can see what you have experienced together, and along these traces discuss what you want to do next. Compared with saving a ship, the problem is lighter; but investment in choices still needs to be carefully designed.
In March 2025, Unexpected Games announced that he was stepping down as studio head. In a public letter, he explained that after more than nineteen years in tabletop games, he wanted to pursue other interests, thanked the people he had worked with and the players, and stated that the studio would continue to operate.
Therefore, looking back at his résumé today, we cannot still write him as the person currently leading this studio. The works will continue to reach players, and a professional identity can also enter its next stage of change.
From amateur production to professional design, from large licensed works to a new studio, and then to exploring new interests, what is perhaps most worth keeping from this journey is how he constantly changes the questions he wants to ask.
At first, we thought that knowing a designer meant knowing roughly what he would do next. Reading this far, I instead look forward more to creators being able to give us a chance to deviate from expectations.
Imagine that village laid out again, someone reaching out to pick up a sticker, someone suggesting going to look at a corner not yet explored. This time, you don't have to guess whether he is a traitor.
You all just want to know what will happen next.
【chengcheng's interactive topic】
Do you prefer games that make you tense, suspicious, excited, or relaxed and curious? Is there a familiar designer who once made you see them anew with a work of a completely different temperament?
I'm chengcheng, see you next time in Creator Story!
#CreatorStory #CoreyKonieczka #UnexpectedGames #Galactica #BoardGameDesign
Sources and further reading: 2009 interview with Corey Konieczka: design experience and Battlestar Galactica Studio official history and founding background 2019 retrospective by Corey Konieczka: 14 Years (old site now redirects to news page) 2021 year-end retrospective by Corey Konieczka The two lead designers discuss The Mandalorian: Adventures Corey Konieczka on the design shift in Cozy Stickerville Departure announcement and the public letter from Corey Konieczka