The burglars arrived at the same day at the same bank to steal the diamonds. Everyone is trying to stop everyone else from stealing the diamonds that they want for themselves, so naturally they’re also trying to rob one another. They’re here to get rich, not make friends…

Your goal in the party card game Burglars is to have the most diamonds at game’s end, which occurs when all diamonds have been stolen from the bank. To create that bank at the start of play, place the 25 diamonds in the middle of the table. Players shuffle the cards, then each receives four cards.

At the start of a turn, the active player declares whether they’ll rob the bank or another player, then they roll the die to determine how many diamonds they’ll steal. This die roll can be modified by the cards everyone plays — whether positive (green) cards or negative (yellow) cards — after which the player receives from (or gives to) the bank or an opponent the appropriate number of diamonds. The player takes three more cards from the deck, then ends their turn.

Final art of the game is now complete and soon the game will go to the production planning the release this winter.

This is the first game by Konstantinos Pattakos and we are really excited about this co-operation.  Konstantinos was born in Athens in 1981. He studied Linguistics in Athens and London, and found true happiness in figuring out universal rules, first in language, then in anything else. He is working as a Greek teacher for the past ten years in various locations, such as London, Brussels, Cheltenham, and of course Athens. He has also worked as an editor for various magazines, and as an academic proofreader. Konstantinos has two brothers and a sister, so our house growing up has always been a playground.

In a conversation we had with the designer, we discovered more things such as his favorite games and how he was involved in the games designing. As the designer states:

“As common as it may sound, my favourite board game has always been Risk. Not all its versions of course. But I think it’s one of the few games that force you to feel the war mood, thus emerging you totally in the gameplay. After a few rounds, it is rare not to see the players throwing the dice with the same ferocity they would actually be having when charging towards the enemy. I always wanted to try and translate this into my games; I made a rule that, if friendships are ruined because of your game, you know it works.

The concept of Burglars actually comes from D&D. I used to play a Paladin character, and ever since I’ve been trying to make up for all that goodness. My previous game is called “Crazy Bloodthirsty Barbarian”, which I think makes a better example for my point. After I finished this, I thought it was appropriate to develop a game with another kind of “bad” RPG characters, so the thieves came straight into mind. Thieves became burglars, and dungeons became banks, but the concept stayed the same.

Every concept gets better if you add the word goofy of course, so your burglars are quite goofy. Mostly because during the game they end up forgetting about the diamonds in the bank’s vault and start stealing one another”.