To immediately jump to the Late Pledge page of the game go here:

Michal: Hi Leo and welcome back to The Boardgames Chronicle blog! For those who do not know you, could you please briefly tell us what do you do for a living, what games do you play?

Leo: Hi, I’m really glad to appear on your blog again! 🙂

By education I am an architect of buildings, but by choice I became an architect of games. Practically right after finishing my studies I signed a contract for publishing my first game with a publishing house – that was BRETWALDA, which unfortunately still hasn’t been born. After finishing my work on that game at the turn of 2022/23, I started working on new projects. In the last few years I have worked on several titles, but at some point I focused only on one, namely PRINCIPES, which I decided to publish independently this time.

A few months ago, a crowdfunding campaign for the game took place on Gamefound, which ended with an unexpectedly great success, and now the Late Pledge stage is ongoing. At the moment, I am 110% focused on delivering the project as efficiently and with as high quality as possible.

As for my tastes and what I play, I am definitely a fan of strategic area control games, preferably historical ones. Contrary to appearances, there are not that many such games on the market – that’s why I decided to change this and create my own series. 😉

Michal: Despite this being interview, I believe we will not start the main part with the question but huge congratulations for enormous success of Principes crowdfunding campaign. Nicely done!

Leo: Thanks, as I mentioned, despite my optimistic nature I didn’t expect such a result. I estimated the ceiling for this project (set in a rather niche history – Polish Middle Ages) at around 300,000 euros – it turned out I greatly underestimated the potential.

Michal: I believe many people – including myself – ask themselves a question: what contributed to such a successful result of the campaign? (over 1500% funded!) The trends show that this form of financing the boardgames slowly and steadily declines but you evidently hit the bull’s eye!

Leo: First of all, I don’t know if crowdfunding is really doing so badly – out of the 10 highest-funded projects on Gamefound, all are from 2025 and 2024, so the trend still seems upward. However, competition and the number of projects on the platforms has indeed increased a lot, and they fight for the support of backers – which hits smaller and medium creators the hardest…

As for the secret of PRINCIPES’ success – I think many factors contributed to the final great result. It’s a bit awkward for me to say, but I believe I managed to design a very well-functioning and engaging game, thanks to which player and YouTuber reviews were very positive. On top of that, the visual design of the project obviously plays a key role – it grabs attention immediately. I also tried (and I think I succeeded) to build a Polish fan community long before the campaign – throughout 2024 I was regularly reporting on the step-by-step development of the game on the Facebook fanpage.

Another important factor was that the period the game tells about is simply fascinating (seriously, without exaggeration – it’s the Polish Game of Thrones), and this story has been somewhat neglected in our culture, with many people waiting for a game set in this world.

Many people in Poland had already tried to create a game about the division of our Kingdom, but no one ever finished it – anyway, somewhere in the Polish collective consciousness (or subconsciousness) this story was begging to be translated into the language of games. That emotion helped me a lot, hence about 2,500 orders from Poland alone.

Michal: Now, let us look into the future of the project. What are the immediate next steps? What are you working on currently?

Leo: At the moment I’m working on designing the additional cards for the expansion, then I need to write its rulebook. At that point all components will be ready and I will move on to the stage of final testing. In parallel, I will be creating the Atlas Historicus (an accessible booklet presenting more details about the world of the Divided Kingdom). I also still need to design the Playing Cards addon. There’s quite a lot to do, but also a lot has already been done since the campaign ended – I invite you to check the latest Updates on the campaign page, where I regularly report all progress.

Michal: Could you please also remind us of the general schedule which you designed for the finalization project? And more or less when you expect the ready product to start reaching the supporters?

Leo: The current plan is to hand over the files to partners for translation in November, so that by the end of the year everything is ready for production. Production will take place in the first quarter of 2026 (the process of creating molds for the models has already started now), and delivery to backers is scheduled for May.

Michal: Another delicate question – but I am obliged to ask in the name of all the interested players – whether the constantly changing situation on the US tariffs front have any impact on your project? And what countermeasures do you plan for the possible materialization of that risk?

Leo: The situation is still quite unstable and it’s hard to predict what it will look like in a few months when it will be necessary to cover the shipping costs for US backers… We’re all keeping our finger on the pulse, and in any case I will do everything in my power to make sure it all happens with as little harm to the supporters as possible.

Michal: Let us come back to the game itself. One of the things I was interested in when we were doing the first interview, and which was also high on your agenda, was solo mode for Principes. How does the work in this area progress?

Leo: I have recently finished working on the solo mode. I think I managed to create quite a satisfying, princely puzzle – in an area control game such a mode is quite a big challenge – for more details I invite you to Update #31 on the campaign page, where I present not only a detailed description but also a full playthrough.

Michal: Let us say that I just learned about Principes and I am really fascinated with the game. Can I support it still? Is there a way to do it – like a late pledge?

Leo: Yes, the Late Pledge has been active since the end of July and will be open for some more time – you are very welcome – since it opened, over 200 new backers have already joined.

Michal: Thank you very much for the interview! Any last word you would like to add?

Leo: Audentes fortuna iuvat! – Don’t be afraid to dream and be bold in action! 😉

For all interested, here you can find more information about this fabulous game: