Doom Asylum, like many of my board game ideas, has a long history. At some point in my life I became aware of the fact that there was a board game called Arkham Horror; I didn't know anything about this game and it kind of lingered in the back of my mind. Later, my brain decided that the game was actually called Arkham Asylum and took place in the Batman universe, with all of the cool Batman villains. Gradually details began to fill in and it was turning into a really awesome game.

Eventually, I decided I had to buy the game, but when I looked for it, I couldn't find it. What I found was Arkham Horror and that was not the game I wanted at all. Arkham Horror is a geek game -it has a lot of rules, a little known theme (Lovecraftian demon fighting) and is probably pretty fun, but not the kind of game I could play with people I know. My only option was to create Arkham Asylum myself.

Initially, I was planning to base my game around the Batman universe but I don't have the rights to any of those characters and I realized I'd be better off making up my own anyway. The first step was getting figures to represent the villains; I did some research and discovered you can buy individual 'hero clicks' figures online for less than a dollar apiece. I bought a bunch of superheroes and villains that covered all of the stereotypical bases, and yes, there were a number of Batman characters.

I love games where the concept of the protagonist challenges your expectations, so naturally, I wanted the players to take the role of the villains themselves. The idea that came to me immediately was that the players would each start with a random villain and move around the asylum fighting and recruiting other villains in order to grow their teams. In this respect, the game is a lot like Pokemon.

Each villain has special powers, this is what makes comic book characters so interesting and therefore, powers would have to be fundamental to the game. In fairly standard RPG fashion, I came up with a set of stats (mental attack, mental defense, physical attack, physical defense and quickness). I devised a combat system that allowed me to create a circular system of weaknesses (like rock, paper, scissors) and then I started creating villains to fit the different stats combinations.

Each villain also has three powers and the villains and their powers quickly became humorous caricatures of the villains or heroes the were modeling (for example 'the Joker', became 'the Jiggler'). I ranked the powers in order of value; each villain would start out only able to use his first power, but as the player proceeded through the game, he would be able to earn experience points (which I represented as counters -pennies, in my case) that could be awarded to the villains. Each experience point would unlock another power. These same experience points could also be used to make an attempt at winning the game, so the players always had a choice to make -grow stronger or take a stab at winning.

Throughout the design process I wanted to keep the game accessible to casual players. I tried to avoid hard-core gaming conventions wherever possible, and where they were unavoidable, I kept them as simple as I could. I wanted a game that anyone could win, even if the more skilled players had a better chance.

In the end, I think Doom Asylum turned out to be very fun, particularly if you have a group of gamers who can get into the theme and do a little role playing (read the villain bios -if any of them make you laugh, you're a potential player). Where it does not succeed is in being casual. Although casual players are able to understand, and even enjoy the game, they will not win. An experienced gamer with an eye for strategy will win almost every time.

I learned that a casual multiplayer game needs two things:

• each player should be able to understand the rules
• each player should be able to win

Evidently, assessing the relative strengths and weaknesses of two groups of 3 or 4 villains each is not something the casual gamer can do repeatedly without getting overwhelmed. Where an experienced gamer can almost immediately tell exactly who to attack to create a weakness in the enemy, a casual player needs a few minutes. When played amongst groups of similar-skilled players, Doom Asylum is a blast and a lucky die roll can make or break you, but when the skill levels vary, the game will be significantly less exciting.