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So I had stopped inventing games. This very essay was intended to wrap it up: I did it then and then, and so and so. I was at a safe distance. Safe enough to tentavely get involed in the international abstract games community once again. So come April 2009 I found myself translating the rules of the games at Arty Sandler's games site iGGC to Dutch, to make it more accessible to Dutch players. Some eighty games. It was hard to not think about games.
On the night of April the 6th, while translating the rules of an ancient Mongolian game called Jeson Mor, something happened. Jeson Mor has a curious theme: be the first to reach the middle square with one of your nine 'horses' (chess knights) and leave it. To leave it one must avoid being captured on that very square, that's what it's all about.
It's the kind of game a computer program would play perfectly, but it survived because it's obviously fun for the young ones. What struck me was a certain futility in the theme. Why not put something on the middle square to grab and bring 'home', I thought. A 'grab-the-money-and-run' theme.