Designer Diary: Behind the Trees of Wispwood

by Reed Ambrose

Wispwood is a magical forest filled with lights luring the most curious of cats. With each light—wisps from the old tales — and tree tiles, you grow your forest, placing individual tiles together as "tetris" shapes. Your forest is alive, like a slow breath inhaling and expanding until the round is over. Between rounds, your forest breathes out, removing the tree tiles but keeping the wisp tiles in place, revealing a unique spatial puzzle in your forest to solve the next round with a bigger grid size. Explore the whimsical woods and fulfill the wishes of the wisps to create the brightest forest!

For nearly nine months, my morning routine in Texas consisted of checking messages from Czechia.

If you'd like to know how I got there, you can learn more in detail on how the game Wispwood, came to be in this designer diary. What awaited me each morning were messages from CGE, i.e. Cat Game Experts (or Czech Games Edition) with their creativity, critiques, and more on the development of Wispwood.

It's been a fun and challenging ride, strapped into the roller coaster with them. I am thankful for how they develop games, involving me from the start and throughout the entire process. Their pawprints are all over the game, and not only is the game better for it, but so am I. Here's a broader look behind the trees at some of the game's development.

Theme and Title

Themes and titles are often changed by publishers, but CGE kept my quirky theme of cats chasing fantasy lights in the forest. I added cats to my prototype because of their desire to chase laser lights. I was humored by the thought that they would love chasing other magical lights like wisps, too.

To my surprise and joy, the theme was kept! I was thrilled about keeping the theme because it is a favorite literary element of mine, and I have long loved the idea of ignis fatuus. The Latin phrase can be translated to "foolish fire", an umbrella term for all lights leading followers true or astray in a marsh or forest, e.g. will-of-the-wisp.

"Foolish Fire" was the name of my original prototype. Admittedly, I loved that title and probably a bit too much, but after some brainstorming, the current title was suggested.

Let me clarify what I mean by "some brainstorming". I mean CGE is very unique in how they operate, allowing anyone in the company, regardless of their role, to weigh in at times on certain creative decisions with their games, and the title was one of those. I've never brainstormed on any idea with so many invested and creative people, much less one of my own ideas. The names and banter were plentiful, and it took a bit to agree on one, but I am thankful for the one we landed on. Wispwood is a perfect name for a forest where wisps playfully lure cats.

The Wisps

The game has four types of wisps: Jacks, Witches, Hearts, and Orbs. I wanted each type of wisp to feel unique and magical. I've written a little bit of lore about them here in another design diary. Nearly a decade ago, I created a world of different light sources, naming each light source type, and I'm thankful I was able to maintain some of that during this process. Even though most of the lore's depth isn’t in the game, I hope you feel a deeper sense of Wispwood's theme and setting because of it.

As the art progressed, the wisps continued to embrace their identities, and I enjoyed watching the progression by the artist, Štěpán. You can read more about his process and thoughts here. I know Štěpán and many others had ideas for the direction of the art, and it wasn't easy managing expectations, but his art evokes the wonder I had imagined.


At first, I thought I wanted all of the wisps to have faces and expressions, but I've come to realize that it didn't fit the tone of this game as much. In the end, the wisps strike a nice balance between a playful, magical side and a serious side. The idea being to not mislead someone to think the game is only for children. However, no promises if the wisps mislead you in the forest. That's on you.


The Goal Cards

While the core of the game didn't change much in development (i.e creating polyomino shapes out of individual tiles and keeping only the wisp tiles in your grid between rounds), the most intense development and playtesting happened with the goal cards. These cards are how you score the different wisp types as well as the trees in your grid. You have five cards to choose from for each type of wisp and tree, using only one per type each game. Based on these cards, you earn points for how you spatially place wisp and tree tiles in your forest grid.

Each wisp is known for working a certain way, and for the most part that still holds true to how I originally designed each type to score, but the details changed and improved a lot along the way with the expertise of the development team and the feedback from playtesters. For months, we tested a ton of iterations for each type, considering how to improve their conditions and even trying some wilder ideas.

There were a lot of passing cards and ideas back and forth on programs like Slack and Miro. We started with four cards of each type, but our task was to create five per type. We created much more than that for each, but eventually landed on the five best for each. Along the way, Min and Elwen of Lost Ruins of Arnak joined the development team and further pushed the game forward, especially regarding ideas and details for the cards. I'm thankful they did!


I'm pleased with how different each card feels, especially within its own type. For example, all Jack cards feel the same in that they are trying to avoid other Jacks, but each Jack card feels different when playing and yet remains true to the flavor of Jacks. I can say the same for each type of wisp and how they are intended to be played.

Your forest grows differently each game, not only because of the variety of scoring cards, but also because of where you place shapes and wisps and how those wisps remain as obstacles in future rounds.

The Pond

In the middle of the playing area is the central board where you draft your wisp tiles and choose your shapes to add into your forest. Before CGE, I had the board representing part of the forest, but early in development they made it circular and divided into different sections, allowing players to piece it together, making the game more variable.

Eventually, the circular nature transformed into a mysterious pond where the wisps gather in the forest. The pond gave the setting more character, and the game a more pleasing aesthetic overall. Lastly, the pond center was added with the reflection of the moon to further complement the nighttime atmosphere.


The Cats

What I added to be silly became a focal point more than I ever knew. I know people love their cats, but I did not add cats for that reason, per my reasoning above with their instinct to chase lights. The cats and their art were more intensely debated among the CGE team than just about anything else in the game. My guess is that the cat art had the most iterations because of how much people love them and have an opinion on them.

You can choose from six cats in the base game, with another six promo cats available. The types of cats range wildly for a lot of variety. And like the wisps, they too strike a good balance to fit the tone of the game. Pick your favorite one to play with!


But the cats aren't there just for show; they have abilities tied to their tile. When I first made the prototype, the cat tile was single-sided and not used for much outside of being a reference point for Witch scoring cards.

A big light bulb moment came when the team decided to use the back side of the cat tile. This one change allowed us to make the cat more useful and possess abilities because the cat tile had two states now. We condensed some 16 cubes and 16 tiles that did not match the other tiles in the game into a single tile: the cat tile.

What unlocked this potential was allowing the cat tile to flip and have two different states. The back side of the cat tile shows the cat hiding in a tree stump to show you have used an ability. Not only did the cat play a bigger role in the game now, but seeing your cat hide in a tree stump quickly became a favorite part of the game for players. It was a great example of doing more with less.


For those interested, Wispwood will be available in the U.S. in Q1 2026 in retail and on CGE's online store. I am honored and humbled for having other humans, especially the ones at CGE, apply their talents to this game. Thanks for following along! I hope you follow a wisp in the forest soon!

Reed Ambrose