Dameo owes its existence to:

1. Croda, invented by the Croatian mathematics professor and Draughts master, the late Ljuban Dedić.
2. An ambition to introduce 'linear movement' in a draughts environment that had been dormant for about almost two decades.

Linear movement means that not only a man, but an entire line of men may move one square forward. It is the very soul of Bushka, and it was in the process of inventing that game, in the early eighties, that I had considered it as a vehicle for movement in a draughts game.
For the sake of argument, in International Draughts, differences in pace derive from one source only, namely captures. So bringing in a bit of flexibility wouldn't hurt. Apart from that it's not hard to see that it would open up a new range of tactics.
The reason I didn't do it at the time is that Draughts is drawish, and introducing linear movement doesn't have any effect on that. Besides it's rather crammed in the opening and I could see forces grinding into interlocking positions, because the direction of movement and capture are the same.
In the year 2000 I encountered Croda, where a man moves straight or diagonally forward, while all capture is straight only. That makes a big difference in terms of linear movement, because it counteracts, even eliminates, the tendency for gridlock. That's how Dameo happened, quite unintentionally. Once the dormant ambition had superimposed itself on Croda, it's rules fell into place in two minutes.

I consider Dameo to be the most modern and best 'sport weapon' of all draughts variants. Additional reasons are given in Draughts Dissected and On the Evolution of Draughts Variants.

Dameo © MindSports