As we said at the beginning of the the “Read and Play” section of this number, the rules of gUFO were born from a strange experiment (“gUFO” is a pun between UFO and “gufo” = “owl”; in English it could have been “UFOwl” – translator’s note).
Or better still, to be precise, from the third attempt to re-create a strange experiment: To Create a Game from Nothing. Oooh, panic!
The idea is very good, so good that... it was someone else’s idea! We – and I mean I, the only lucky that has participated at all the editions of “Crea un gioco dal nulla” (“To Create a Game from Nothing”) – took the idea from James Ernest, the brilliant author of all the games of Cheapass Games. There is a rumour that his little masterpiece THE BIG CHEESE was born in this manner, and we (in other words, always I) thought to snat... that is, to diffuse this good initiative.
The recipe is simple. Take a handful of authors and gamers. Add on the table a bucketful of pieces, game cards, white paper, pencils and all kinds of raw materials. Start a chronometer.
After one hour, the authors will have to have created a new game, o to be perished in the attempt (good Lord!).
In the course of the three editions, the cream of the Italian authors have participated in the experiment: Spartaco Albertarelli, Andrea Angiolino, Emiliano Sciarra, Luigi Ferrini, Eligio Cazzato, Domenico Di Giorgio, etc.
The first created game (THE REFEREE DOES NOT MAKE THE MONK) has been published on the magazine Un’Altra Cosa. The second game (CROMOGNOMO) is among the many free games on www.davincigames.com . Which is the history of the third game (gUFO, exactly)?
In the first case (THE REFEREE...) the theme of the game was taken from the setting, a splendid medieval cloister that had been inhabited by monks and now endowed with... a net for volleyball.
For CROMOGNOMO, the theme was born by the materials: coloured cards taken from a box of ULYSSES by Andrea Angiolino, that was there.
For gUFO it was decided in a democratic way: each of the authors has written a word on a card. The three cards drawn by chance gave the theme: “UFOs”, “birds”, “planes”. Unbelievably, the three words had much in common: it is always a matter of flying objects! The brainstorming quickly started: everybody IS a flying object (including flying donkeys)? The players sight objects in the sky? Planes that sight UFOs?
We reached the convergence on one idea: among the players there are some UFOs, that try to get near to the Earth, hiding them between the aircraft and the birds...
So, the base idea was to have hidden roles: some alien players and some terrestrial players. It was soon proposed a good idea: to use a board depicting a radar divided in sectors and gores, as in the science fiction B-movies. The idea was soon pleased but for “technical” reasons (the game should preferably use few materials, to be published on this GiocAreA) the “radarmorph” board was changed by magic in a series of eight cards in a row, with the last one rotated by 90 degrees to serve as the terrestrial base.

If at the base there is, exactly, the base... at the top of the row there must be some invader. So three threatening cards (three kings) are placed above the seventh card.
How to make them go down? Perhaps it was the case to change all in a game for two players: an alien and a radar operator. Better still: the alien pilots three cards, an UFO, a bird and a plane. He and only he knows which of the kings corresponds to what. How can he decide it? At once the idea: he takes one of the three aces and puts it aside. Its suit will correspond to the UFO!
Wow, the game writes it by itself... or not? As a matter of fact, we arrive now at the snag: we kept going round the problem, there is a rag of theme and some ideas for the setup, but... which is the mechanic of the game?
Here begin the doleful notes: the fact that we disposed the cards in a row means that, essentially, there is a board of eight spaces that the alien player has to cover, and that this player has only three “pawns” (that is the three kings). What can it be done with such a low quantity of materials?
To find quickly a good idea we begun to enumerate well-known games trying to find a base mechanic. The alien could have advanced one pawn at a time, like in VIVA IL RE!, or he could have bluffed like in Randolph’s XE QUEO!, or he could have played cards to advance like in CARTAGENA...
In the meantime, with the help of the subdivision of the roles between the alien and the radar operator, even the authors divided in two different (but connected) subgroups: some of them were reasoning on the alien descent, some on the defence means of the terrestrial.
The setting, in particular, suggested that the terrestrial could fire at the possible UFO. The risk to hit an eventual bird or a plane, though, made the action ethically improper, so we shifted on a more cordial trying to reject toward the sky the descending objects.
And here sudden comes another good idea: if the alien is descending using the suits of spades, clubs and diamonds, the terrestrial has one suit left.
Immediately the row of eight cards representing the sky over the base is replaced with eight heart cards taken by chance, face down. Three of the remaining cards are taken by chance by the terrestrial, the other two are discarded. As each card represents a different “altitude” with respect to the base (that is at “level one”), we decided together to number the cards in the row with a number corresponding to this altitude.
E.g. to chase away an UFO at level four it will be absolutely necessary to play a card with the number four. But the four of hearts is only one: and if it is between the face up cards?
The question was continuing to complicate, and there was a moment of discouragement, with half of the time already passed, and it seemed that some author was loosing his creative energies (I am talking for myself, at least!).
But then a very interesting proposal came out: the alien moves one after the other the three “unidentified objects” (always the three kings), trying to create particular configurations (three cards in diagonal, one card preceded, two spaces before, by the other two...) that give him some bonuses. Many authors idled away some minutes with this proposal, trying to find a manner to make it functioning. Probably it does exist but, as we were in a hurry, we soon tried a mechanic simpler to ream.
After a quick desperate proposal to upset all and to begin again with a simpler trick tacking game, the tutelary deity Sid Sackson peeped in through the clouds and whispered “remember CAN’T STOP!”.
Intermezzo: if someone does not kwon it, CAN’T STOP is a marvellous game with dice. To make it simpler than it is, at your turn you can continue to throw dice endlessly and to advance on a path, but every time you throw dice the following throw becomes more and more risky, and if you fail a throw the whole turn is upset without moving anything.
The union between the mechanic “push your luck” of CAN’T STOP and the hidden pawns, the cards in hand and all the various proposals gathered was beginning to seem very interesting. The essence of the game, at this point, seemed this one: an alien player at his turn risks more and more to make one of his three objects advance towards the ground. If he reaches the ground with the UFO he wins, otherwise he looses. The radar operator, instead, plays her turn trying to slow down the descent of the alien. All seasoned with a lot of bluff by the alien (do I try to go down the UFO at once, all the three together, o do I simulate to treat with care what will be revealed to be a harmless bird?).
But... how to re-create the “push your luck” using cards instead of dice? Here too many different attempts were tried in quick succession:

- a suit of a king is chosen and it advances if you pick that suit (one possibility on three: too difficult!);

- a suit of a king is chosen and it advances if you don’t pick that suit (two on three: too easy?);

- a suit is chosen and three cards are picked all together: if at least one is of that suit, the king advances (too many cards to reveal?).

It took some time to reach the “cantstoppistic” solution that was used: the kind advances if each time the revealed card is always higher than the previous one. In each moment you can stop to do not risk too much. What do you risk in continuing? You loose all the used cards: more you advance, more it is risky. It does function!
Yes but, in the meanwhile, what does the radar operator do? Even here various possibilities have been examined:

- she spends one card to fire at the altitude having the same number of the card (but the cards over the eight have little sense);

- as above, but she hits even the space above and the space under the chosen one;

- she can fire if she guesses (or recalls) the value of the face down card.

- Etc...

Even here the final solution (she can fire or exchange cards) is the compromise of different ideas, and the introduction of clouds as “benchmarks”, where it is convenient for the alien to arrive, makes his choices more strategic.
But... how does the game end? From the beginning it was decided that the radar operator can point at one of the three kings: if it is the alien, she has immediately won. It is true, it is a one on three probability to win by pure chance, but it is a risk that few ones will want to run...
And the alien? If reaches the ground by error (it is possible for a bad result of a bluff or because his move is unavoidable) he has lost, but also a sort of timer is needed.
The deck from which he discards is the perfect timer: if it runs out (how many times? One? Two? Two seemed the optimum...), for the alien it is too late...
Many other reasoning has been done, and many improvements more could be done, but the hour at our disposal had flied by and at some point it was necessary to freeze the game in the status it was (apart from minimal final touches when writing down the rules). Is it a fine game? It is hard to say it. But certainly it is a game, so the experiment is successful once again!

NOTE
For fairness, or more simply because of the scarce memory of the redactor of this article, it has been preferred to do not associate the proposals to the names of the authors. Somebody participated more and somebody less, somebody with a few words and someone else with many ones, somebody with more or less conviction, but at the end the game is by all the participants that were seated at that table (listed in the rules of the game). Thanks!