Shugendo & Minikin City, Same Designer's DNA

GrantOkay, so get this. I'm standing in a hall in the Ruhr area that is, and I quote, "The world's largest public fair for board games." Miles, you've been there.

MilesEvery year. Rows of tables, thousands of people just playing. Not buying, not networking, playing.

GrantSpiel Essen literally says that on their own site, that playing is the heart of the whole thing.

MilesIt is. And normally, this is where we'd do the scouting report episode. Nine boxes to watch, blah, blah.

GrantRight, the here's what's hot list.

MilesWe're not doing that today.

GrantNope. Plot twist.

MilesOne designer, Simone Luciani, has two brand-new games dropping at the same convention. Same brain, two totally different boxes.

GrantWait, same guy, same weekend, two releases?

MilesSame weekend. One's a heavy push-your-luck deck builder about sacred mountains and yokai spirits.

GrantAnd the other one's this compact, lighter city-building thing.

MilesTotally different scale, totally different feel on the table.

GrantSo here's our real question today. Forget the convention buzz. What actually makes a game feel like a Luciani game?

MilesIs there a fingerprint underneath both of them, or is it just his name on the box?

GrantThat's what we're cracking open. Two boxes, one designer, one signature to find or not find.

MilesWhich means before we open either one, we've gotta talk about who this guy actually is.

GrantSo who is this guy actually? Because I feel like half our listeners just heard Luciani for the first time.

MilesFair. Simone Luciani's from Fermo, Italy. Been designing for over a decade now.

GrantAnd his greatest hits are what exactly?

MilesTzolkin, Grand Austria Hotel, Lorenzo Il Magnifico, Barrage. His BoardGameGeek designer page lists him as the guy behind complex medium to heavy Euros, and that's exactly the resume.

GrantBarrage alone should tell you everything. That's a game about hydroelectric dams and resource competition, and it's brutal.

MilesRight. Optimization, tight resource loops, spatial puzzles. That's the toolbox everyone associates with him.

GrantAnd it's not just Barrage doing that. Tzolkin makes you commit workers to a calendar wheel and then wait turns to see if the placement pays off. And Grand Austria Hotel's got that push-your-luck dice draft sitting right up front. Different systems, same appetite for making you sweat before you see the payoff.

MilesRight. Even wrapped in worker placement, he finds a way to make you flinch before the reward lands.

GrantOkay, but he doesn't do it alone, right? I keep seeing other names stapled to his games.

MilesThat page also credits him as a frequent collaborator. Tascini, Gigli, Brasini, Mangone show up again and again as co-designers.

GrantWait, so is a Luciani game even a signature of a solo signature, or is it a signature of a whole design circle?

MilesThat's the question hanging over this whole episode, and it gets murkier. He's currently head of development at Cranio Creations, so he's not just designing, he's shaping what that whole studio ships.

GrantSo he's got his fingerprints on stuff he didn't even design solo.

MilesExactly, which makes isolating the Luciani touch trickier than just naming his box credits.

GrantDoes being head of development actually give him a say over games he's not even credited on?

MilesThat's the murky part. A development head is shaping rules, balance, and pacing across a whole publisher slate, not just the titles with his name on the cover.

GrantSo some of what feels like a Luciani touch in a Cranio game might just be him quietly steering from the development chair.

MilesWhich makes today's experiment even trickier. We're trying to isolate his voice, and his voice might already be baked into half the catalog, whether he's credited or not.

GrantAll the more reason to stick to the two games where his name is actually on the box. Here's what's wild, though. Two brand-new games with his name on the box dropping at the same convention in completely different weight classes.

MilesShugendo and Minikin City, both Essen 2026 debuts, both credited to him.

GrantOne's a sacred mountain push-your-luck deck builder about yokai spirits.

MilesAnd the other's a lighter city-building game. Same designer, same show floor, wildly different box sizes.

GrantSo is there an actual thread connecting those two, or is a Luciani game just code for likes optimization puzzles, no matter what mechanic he's holding?

MilesThat's what we're about to find out.

GrantWhich is why narrowing it to these two specific credited boxes matters. It's the cleanest test we're gonna get of his voice without the development chair noise muddying things.

MilesGood point. Let's actually run that test.

GrantAll right. Heavier box first. Let's go up the mountain.

MilesShugendo it is.

GrantSo Shugendo, sacred mountain push-your-luck deck builder, and it's one of the actual Essen 2026 debuts.

MilesRight. That's the pitch straight off the brief.

GrantA designer who spent a decade on worker placement suddenly does yokai and mountains?

MilesI dug up a Gen Con hands-on report, and it turns out Shugendo isn't a standalone idea at all.

GrantWait, what do you mean?

MilesThe report ties it into Devir's ongoing Kemushi Saga line. So this is a continuation, not a fresh universe.

GrantHuh. That changes how I read the theme.

MilesNot that it'll trip you up if you've never touched the earlier Kemushi Saga games. It's not homework.

GrantSure, but it tells you Devir sees this as a shared universe worth building on, not a one-off cash in on the yokai trend.

MilesIt also spells out the loop. You're playing cards to build farms and wells.

GrantOkay, homesteading stuff?

MilesAnd it sounds cozy until you remember every card you play to build another farm or well is also a card that might flip a Yokai instead.

GrantSo the homesteading and the horror are stitched into the exact same deck.

MilesBut every card you play risks revealing a Yokai, and reveal too many and the run collapses.

GrantThat's the push-your-luck hook right there. Build the farm, don't wake the ghost.

MilesExactly, and that's where I wanna poke at it a little.

GrantGo on.

MilesIs the Yokai actually doing anything mechanically that a generic draw and bust system wouldn't do anyway?

GrantYou think it's just reskinned Can't Stop with lanterns?

MilesNot dismissing it, I'm asking. Farms and wells could be resource cubes. Yokai could be a bust card.

GrantSure, but the framing does work on me a little. A well going dry feels different than a number going to zero.

MilesDoes it change your decisions, though? That's the test.

GrantFair point. If the Yokai just spikes bust probability with no other effect, it's flavor text.

MilesHere's the other side of it, though. Even a pure bust probability spike changes the math you're doing every turn, so it's not nothing, even if it's not narratively load-bearing.

GrantSure. Dressing changes how the decision feels even when the numbers underneath are identical. That's basically the whole theming debate in one sentence.

MilesRight, and we don't have the rule book in front of us to settle that.

GrantNo, we don't, but it's the right question to ask before anyone crowns it a masterpiece.

MilesAgreed. Set that aside for now.

GrantHonestly, that's the tension I wanna track across the whole episode. Where does theme actually change the decision, and where is it just a coat of paint on the same math? Because if we can't tell the difference, then every theme is interchangeable, and none of this design work matters.

MilesGood frame. Let's keep it in our back pocket and revisit it once we've seen how Minikin City handles its own version of the same problem.

GrantBecause the wild part is Luciani's other Essen box goes the complete opposite direction.

MilesOh, completely. We're talking a 30-minute filler.

GrantSame guy, same convention, same weekend practically.

MilesOne's a mountain full of ghosts. The other is apparently a quick city builder.

GrantLet's go find out what that one's actually doing. Okay, 30-minute filler. Let's get the numbers out of the way first. Miles, what does the BoardGameGeek listing say?

MilesIt's Luciani again, but this time he's got a co-designer, guy named Matthieu Verdier. Cranio Creations is publishing it in 2026, two to five players, about 30 minutes.

Grant30 minutes? That's Shugendo's evening in a single round.

MilesAnd the complexity rating backs that up, 1.67 out of five on BGG. That's featherweight.

GrantSo we went from sacred mountain to sacred coffee break.

MilesBasically, but here's the fun part. The game's own tagline is about winning tricks, placing these little Minikin tokens, and building the best city.

GrantWait, tricks? Like trick-taking?

MilesTrick-taking-adjacent, yeah. That's not something I expected from him at all.

GrantHuh, that's a genre swing.

MilesIt is, but then you read what the cards actually do, and it stops feeling like a random genre swing.

GrantGo on.

MilesCranio's own product page lays it out. Each card has two jobs. The colors and values on it give you an immediate reward the round you play it.

GrantOkay, normal trick-taking stuff.

MilesRight, but the icons and effects on that same card only score at the very end of a game and only if you've placed enough Minikin tokens on it along the way.

GrantSo you're playing the card twice, basically, once now, once later, if you set it up right.

MilesExactly. You take the quick win today, or you gamble that you'll come back and finish the job before the game ends.

GrantThat's a bet on your future self.

MilesIt is, and in a 30-minute game, your future self doesn't have much runway.

GrantNo way you're building to a payoff four turns out in a filler.

MilesYou'd think, but that's the tension. Every card is asking you to choose between the guaranteed small thing and the delayed big thing.

GrantThere's an industry piece covering the reveal that actually names this. They call the compact format and the fast optimization decisions the designer's signature style.

MilesWhich is a weird thing to say when there's two names on the box.

GrantRight. That's the question I keep circling. Is that Luciani's signature, or is it Verdier's? Or is it just what happens when the two of them sit down together?

MilesBecause Cranio Creations credits it as a co-design, not Luciani-with-an-assistant.

GrantSure, but Lorenzo Il Magnifico was co-designed too, and everyone still calls that a Luciani game.

MilesFair. Maybe co-design is just how he works, and the signature survives the collaboration.

GrantOr maybe we're about to find out it doesn't, and the signature's actually a Cranio Creations house style, not a Luciani one.

MilesNow you've got me second-guessing the whole premise of the episode.

GrantGood. Hold that thought because now we've got both boxes sitting right here, the mountain and the city.

MilesOne's a much longer, heavier sit with Yokai dread. One's 30 minutes of trick-taking with a delayed payoff.

GrantOn paper, they've got nothing in common.

MilesOn paper. Let's actually look at what's underneath both of them.

GrantSo here's my question after cracking open both boxes. What actually connects them?

MilesSame spine, different skin.

GrantWait, say more.

MilesShugendo's giving you a small guaranteed farm or well right now, and it's dangling a bigger score if you flip one more card and don't wake a Yokai. That's the whole tension.

GrantRight. Take the safe pile or reach for the scary pile.

MilesNow look at Minikin City. Colors and values pay you immediately every round, no risk. But the icons and effects on those same cards, they only pay off at the end and only if you've packed enough Minikin tokens onto that card first.

GrantSo it's not risking a bust. It's risking irrelevancy.

MilesRight, and that's a sneakier kind of risk. Nobody at the table gasps when a card just quietly doesn't pay off.

GrantNo dramatic bust, just a wasted turn you don't notice until scoring. That's almost crueler.

MilesExactly. You're banking a small sure thing now or committing resources towards a bigger payout you might never cash in.

GrantOkay, that's the same shape. A weighty deck builder about Sacred Mountains and a 30-minute filler about tiny buildings are running the identical decision. Small guaranteed reward or bigger conditional reward you have to earn. Different theme, different player count, different complexity number, same spine underneath. That feels like something.

MilesIt does. But I wanna poke at it before we crown it.

GrantGo for it.

MilesBanking versus risking isn't exclusive to Luciani. That's half of push-your-luck design going back to Reiner Knizia. Every dice chucker with a bust mechanic runs some version of this.

GrantSure, but these are both engine-driven. You're managing hand, a board state, timing your risk instead of just praying.

MilesThat's a meaningful difference to me. It's not chance for chance's sake. It's chance layered onto a system you built. Give me a concrete case, though. Walk me through an actual turn where that shows up.

GrantSure. In Shugendo, you've got a farm card locked in, guaranteed points, sitting right there. Flip one more card for the well, and you might trigger the yokai and lose the whole take. In Minikin City, you can cash a card's color value this round for a small guaranteed bump, or hold off and dump Minikins onto it, hoping it clears the endgame threshold. Same fork every turn. Take the sure thing now or gamble on the bigger number later.

MilesMaybe. Or maybe that's just what modern Euro design does with push-your-luck now, and any credited designer working in the space lands here eventually.

GrantSo is this actually Luciani's fingerprint, or did we just find the toolbox every Euro designer keeps in the garage?

MilesThat's the real fight now. Two boxes, one shared decision engine.

GrantI'll go further. Even the emotional temperature is the same. Both games make you second-guess a choice you already locked in, right up until the reveal.

MilesWhich might be the real signature. Not the specific tokens or cards, but how long he makes you sit in that doubt.

GrantAnd whether that's a signature or a coincidence.

MilesWe should settle that.

GrantYeah. Let's actually figure out which one it is. Okay, so here's the collaboration question again, and I think we can actually settle it.

MilesGo for it.

GrantLuciani's whole catalog is a rotating cast. Tascini, Gigli, Brasini, Mangone. His name almost never stands alone on a box.

MilesRight. That's on his own BGG designer page, isn't it?

GrantYeah, straight from BGG's own designer page. He's credited as a frequent collaborator with all four of those names, on top of running development at Cranio.

MilesSo if he's basically always paired, why does Shugendo feel like the one voice and Minikin City feel like two voices arguing?

GrantBecause I don't think the pairing changes the toolkit. It changes the dressing.

MilesMeaning what?

GrantMeaning the banking versus risking spine shows up whether he's flying mostly solo on the mountain or splitting credit with Verdier on the city cards. That's the part that travels.

MilesHuh.

GrantIf Verdier had actually rewritten the core tension, Minikin City would feel like a different genre. It doesn't. It feels like the same gambler's brain wearing a smaller jacket.

MilesI'll give you that one. The mechanic surviving a co-credit is a stronger argument than anything either of us said last segment.

GrantThank you.

MilesDon't get used to it.

GrantNoted.

MilesBut I still want the harder question answered. Is a Luciani game actually a design language, or is that just us, critics, players, whoever, squinting at two boxes and finding a pattern because we went looking for one?

GrantFair. Play devil's advo-- No, I'm not gonna say it. Just imagine if he'd released Shugendo alone this Essen. No Minikin City. Would we even be talking about a signature?

MilesProbably not. We'd just call it a good push-your-luck game.

GrantExactly. It's the pairing that makes the pattern visible, which means some of this is us doing the work, not just him.

MilesSo it's real, but it needed two data points to prove itself.

GrantThat's my verdict. The toolkit's genuine. Small guaranteed piece, bigger risky piece, dressed differently every time. But calling it fully proven off two games in one convention season is getting ahead of ourselves.

MilesWhich honestly is a great excuse to do this again.

GrantOh, I already know where you're going.

MilesKnizia's got a pile of releases every year. Rosenberg's got his farming stuff and his weirder stuff. Wehrle basically reinvents his own wheel every project.

GrantWehrle's the one I actually want. That guy contradicts himself on purpose.

MilesRight. So put two Wehrle boxes side by side and see what breaks.

GrantSame trick. Different designer, different toolkit, same question. Is it a fingerprint or a coincidence?

MilesI like it as a format, honestly. Way more interesting than another trade show wrap-up.

GrantIt's basically forensics for board games.

MilesSure, let's call it that.

GrantSo Luciani, provisional verdict, the risk versus reward spine is his, the collaborators shape the flavor around it, and we're filing it as confirmed but early.

MilesAnd we've got a whole list of other designers to put through the same test.

GrantWhich means we should probably talk about how people can actually get their hands on Shugendo and Minikin City before we run off chasing Wehrle. So where do we land? Is Simone Luciani a guy with an actual voice, or did we just get lucky with two boxes that happen to rhyme?

MilesI think he's got a voice. Small box, big box, doesn't matter. You're still deciding whether to bank the sure thing or reach for the payoff. That choice showed up whether he was working solo or splitting credit.

GrantAnd that's the part that got me. I walked in ready to call it coincidence.

MilesRight, and you walked out-

GrantMostly convinced. Mostly.

MilesThat's fair. One Essen season isn't a body of work, but it's enough to say the pattern's there and worth watching.

GrantWhich is exactly why we wanna do this again. Two boxes, one credited name, see what survives.

MilesKnizia says an obvious one, Rosenberg too.

GrantWehrle for sure. If you've got a designer you want us to crack open like this, tell us.

MilesHead to thedesigndeck.com or find us on social. Drop the designer, drop the two games. We'll do the digging.

GrantWe genuinely want the suggestions. This format only works if we've got good pairs to compare.

MilesNew episode drops every Thursday.

GrantAnd honestly, days like these, comparing two boxes side by side, that's my favorite kinda homework to do.

MilesSame. See you Thursday.