This weekend I finally finished all pieces for my physical version of the digital board game, Archon, by Freefall Games to Atari 8-bit computers.

I use the word finally, but the process has really been quite fast. Each icon takes about two hours to print and I’ve of course spen several hours in Qubicle Constructor to create my version of each 2D-original. Despite my graphical shortcomings, I’m very pleased with the results.

Archon is nothing less than a brilliant and innovative game of its time; it was created 30 years ago by Jon Freeman and Anne Westfall, whom I’ve been in contact with during the whole process. Even though they have explained that Archon once was created with the intention that it was not supposed to be able to do irl, I know that they themselves had some thoughts of doing just that – thought of creating Archon: the Board Game.

Jon Freeman explains:

Thoughts, yes; attempts, no.

One goal with Archon was to do a “board game” that couldn’t actually be done as a real board game – only on a computer. Having done that, I (naturally) gave considerable thought to how it might be converted to a pure board game. As I recall, I did come up with a plausible framework, but it’s been so many years that I’ve largely forgotten whatever I had in mind.

However, in my hunt for other procects around the web I have not been able to find any images of someone doing exactly the same thing; thus I do not know if this is the only physical board game of Archon of its kind – but I do know that it’s quite possibly so.

All icons are created out of their two-dimensional Atari originals, which means that a general rule is that the three-dimensional icon should look similar to its counterpart when looked at from the side.

With the exception of those pixels that do not stick together side-by-side (and thereby cannot form a body irl) I’ve stuck to this rule.

Below is a short image gallery with original music by Tommy V. Dunbar from the C64-version:

This is the complete Flickr-gallery of the Light team – the good side.

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This is the complete Flickr-gallery of the Dark team – the evil side.

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What happens next? I will finish the board, which will be about 55 centimeters in all directions and actually pretty bulky. After that, I will probably publish all 3D-models at Thingiverse.com and my own website, archonboardgame.com – where I will also showcase each one of them

Well, that’s it for now – have a great Sunday evening!

 

EDIT 21/11-2013: I have now been in contact with Jon Freeman again, and Free Fall Games has given me explicit permission to publish the 3D-models of the Archon board game on Thingiverse. You can find them all, download and print them from here: http://www.thingiverse.com/thing:187973

In fact, mr. Jon Freeman himself said:

We think they are marvelous.