It’s the Gigga Paletti, a funkier version of the Villa Paletti, an award winning stacking game that won the Spiel de Jahres in 2002! For those who haven’t seen it before, here’s the BoardGameGeek Link. However, to fully understand it you must play it: the pieces are too colorful and at first glance the game looks like one of those childish wooden toys.

Anyway, I brought the game to work one day and, after some hesitancy, everyone played it and they were thrilled! We started to think of ways to improve the game: It shouldn’t be that tiny! To fully comprehend the greatness of designing a Paletti tower, we should make it huge!

Some sketches were made to provide a good height for the endgame: since the tower grows taller as the game progresses, we couldn’t let it become so tall we’d need stairs to finish the bulding…

So it turned into this:

More images and a quick description of the project after the break!

We left work at our lunch-break and bought the wood for the columns at a not-so-near lumber store, then carried it all the way back. The store already cut them in the correct dimensions, so the columns had little work to be done. The platforms were made with MDF (medium-density fiberboard), that Marquetto bought and took it to his grandfather’s house.

We used a scroll saw to recreate the curved platforms from the game, and after some smoothing with sandpapers, the Gigga Paletti was ready for its first playtest! We labeled the pieces with numbers so we didn’t lose track of them. The game was perfect! Everyone was very excited – and a bit scared too, because the pieces were heavy enough to hurt someone if the building collapsed! We had to stop the game without a true winner because the tower hit the ceiling and we could move on!

After the playtest, the process of painting began. I missed this day, so I can only tell that the painting was great. Each color was faithfully reproduced, and since our 2 and 3 point bricks were the same shape, the most valuable received two white stripes.

Because of scheduling conflicts, we were never able to play the finished game. It took us a month to find a weekend that everyone could be present – Filipe even staged a fake play so that photographs could be taken, but this wasn’t right! Finally, a day was set and everyone (but Renzo :-() went to a park and played our wonderful game. When the night fell, Marquetto used the platforms and columns and quickly designed a table so that everyone could eat, drink, and talk about our great achievement! Now the next step is to play this on a crowded public park! I’ll post more photos here when we do it!

Here’s a quick making of:

I’d like to thank and congratulate everyone involved in the process of making this beautiful child:

Gurbs (me), Filipe and Marcelo Marcati, Ju, Ana, Cris, Marquetto, Renzo and Marquetto’s Grandpa and Grandma!