without the board game elements. Once one player locates the princesses, they must take them to the center of the board to win. During the journey, the opposing player or computer may intervene and steal the princesses by succeeding in a competitive minigame. Development and release After spending several years as a contractor for Legend Entertainment, designer Steve Meretzky started the company Boffo Games with two of his friends in 1994. Discussions about this venture had begun in 1993, but the final decision was made after Media Vision, an American electronics manufacturer, offered the group a lucrative multi-game contract in January 1994. As a result, the developer was founded in February. Hodj 'n' Podj became Boffo's first project under Media Vision, which acted as its publisher. It was the highest-budget production of Meretzky's career at that time (later surpassed by The Space Bar), and was the first project on which he acted only as a designer, rather than as a designer and programmer. According to Boffo co-founder Mike Dornbrook, the Hodj 'n' Podj concept was chosen in order to meet a difficult deadline proposed by Media Vision, which wanted Boffo's first title finished by August 1994. The simplicity of Hodj 'n' Podj made it viable in this timeframe, in part because its segmented structure allowed numerous programmers to develop different sections of the game simultaneously. Its completion date was ultimately set for September 30. Following the closure of his employer Infocom, Meretzky had conceived Hodj 'n' Podj in summer 1989, five or more years before the project began. His initial goal was to revive "all those fun, simple games which had pretty much disappeared" at the time. To increase its value, he believed it needed a structure that tied together its minigames; and this inspired its storyline and board game motif. Its story was written in the style of Fractured Fairy Tales, from The Rocky and Bullwinkle Show. Meretzky later noted that other companies beat him to reviving these games in the years between Hodj 'n' Podjs conception and release, and saw success without using any overarching structures. However, he still felt "very happy creatively" with the final design of his project. As production of Hodj 'n' Podj progressed, the team "began to suspect that it was going to appeal to a very different gaming audience", according to Meretzky. They discovered that an unexpected number of female players, families and