by JOEL ESCALANTE

In 2021, my brother Rafael and I came up with the idea to design a climbing card game in which you try to play out your hand to avoid earning negative points.

The core idea was to design the game around cyclic trumps so that all four suits will become trump at some point of the game, depending on the cards previously played at the center.

The initial idea for the theme of the game was Chinese mythological creatures as in 2019 I did a two-week vacation in China and learned about these amazing creatures: Qilin, Xiezhi, Fènghuáng and Shenglong. This gave the initial name to the game: "Qilin".


After the initial test, we realized that we needed a wildcard suit to make it easier to complete card melds in the game, so we added a golden suit that could be melded with the four basic suits.


After more testing, we also decided to add effect symbols as the effects would help the game be more dynamic and fun. These effects would be activated only in pairs of cards of the same symbol, and they allow the one who played them to discard cards or to force the other players to take extra cards from the pile.


At this point, the game had a total of 108 cards, and we sent it to publishers through email and video since we were in the middle of the Covid pandemic and unable to travel to international conventions — but at this time it was rejected by the publishers.

In 2022, we submitted "Qilin" to the Hippodice Designer Competition, but didn't make it to the finals. Finally in 2023 we were able to travel to the SPIEL Essen convention and present it to publishers, some of who showed interest. Strangely, at SPIEL Essen 23 we met Simón Weinstein and José Manuel Alvarez from Fractal Juegos and presented some games to them — but not "Qilin".

But later in 2023, Laura from Fractal Juegos traveled to Mexico for another convention and at that time she took "Qilin" for further review with her team. After their testing, they saw the potential of the game and communicated their interest to us.


At the beginning of 2024, we signed the contract and started the development phase. We polished the game together with Simón and José, streamlining the rules after exploring different options. Another suggestion was to change the theme to a Mexican one, specifically fantasy creatures called "Alebrijes", and we logically agreed with enthusiasm.

For the illustration of Alebrijes Fractal Juegos wanted to include a famous Mexican illustrator, Gaby Zermeño, to complete the team for the project. We sent a proposal for the native animals of Mexico to be included. Later, the Fractal Juegos team told us that they wanted to include the "ajolote" on the cover of the game box, and we found this to be a great addition as the ajolote is a unique and recognized animal from Mexico.

The animals of each suit grow to larger and more powerful alebrijes from number one to number five, as with the wildcard suit where you can find the ajolote at number five.

When playing, you want to meld your alebrijes in pairs of the same number and same suit with the help of the wildcard suit. Also, you can take advantage of the effect symbol that can help you win a round. After three rounds, whoever has best handled their alebrijes cards and has the fewest points wins.


During development, we tested the game a lot in Mexico and Chile, as well as together through Tabletop Simulator. The process was very good as we felt the enthusiasm at the tests and the friendliness and sincerity, so we want to thank Simón, José, Laura, and all the Fractal Juegos team involved in the project. Simón added this note on our diary:

We also want to thank our family, friends, and the Mexican designer community that gathers at the designers' meetings that always help us with the testing of the game prototypes.

It was a long road for this game to be published, but we are very happy with the results and sincerely hope that people enjoy playing the game and find it refreshing in the climbing card games category. Also, we hope that people like the illustrations of the "alebrijes" characters and find the quality of the game in general to be a complete and enjoyable experience.

Joel Escalante