TL;DR
Dr Thom Van Every trained as a medical doctor before becoming an entrepreneur and, ultimately, a board game designer. Smoothie Wars emerged from his frustration that business education rarely happens through experience — and his conviction that competitive play is one of the best ways to develop genuinely useful thinking skills.
The path to becoming a board game designer usually runs through graphic design studios, game development companies, or obsessive teenage hours spent modifying existing games. Dr Thom Van Every's path ran through medical training, entrepreneurial ventures, and a conviction that most people learn business thinking far too late in life — and usually in the wrong way.
Van Every is from Guildford, Surrey. He trained as a medical doctor, practised for some years, and then took a route that surprises many people: he left clinical medicine to build businesses. The skills involved — diagnosis, systems thinking, working under uncertainty, making high-stakes decisions with incomplete information — transferred more readily than you might expect.
The Origin of the Game
The idea for Smoothie Wars didn't arrive fully formed. It grew from a frustration.
Van Every had observed that people encounter business concepts primarily through one of two channels: theory (MBA programmes, books, lectures) or failure (starting something, making expensive mistakes, eventually learning). Neither is ideal. Theory without experience produces people who understand concepts but can't apply them. Learning through real business failure is expensive, stressful, and available only to those with the resources to absorb the cost.
There's a third channel that most people overlook: simulation. Well-designed games compress real decision-making cycles into manageable experiences. You can make fifty pricing decisions in a single 45-minute session of Smoothie Wars, getting immediate feedback on each one. No business school delivers that kind of experiential intensity.
The question he faced was: what kind of game?
I wanted something that felt immediately accessible — you can't make people learn through something that feels like work. The tropical setting, the smoothies, the competition on the island — all of that makes it feel like play. But the underlying mechanics had to be real. Supply and demand, resource management, competitive pricing: these needed to behave the way they behave in actual markets.
The Design Process
Smoothie Wars went through multiple iterations before reaching its current form. The core competitive mechanic — multiple players competing for customers in overlapping market areas — was present from early prototypes, but the calibration took time.
Early versions were too complex. Van Every found that when players had to track too many variables simultaneously, the educational value collapsed. People stopped making reasoned decisions and started guessing. The game needed to be simple enough that decisions felt comprehensible, while retaining enough depth that expertise actually mattered.
The solution was what designers call "elegant simplicity" — rules that fit on a manageable number of pages but generate surprising strategic depth when players start interacting. The comparison point Van Every mentions is chess: elementary to explain, infinite to explore.
The tropical island setting emerged partly from aesthetic preference and partly from a design insight. A business game set in a corporate office would feel like homework. A competition to sell smoothies on a sun-drenched island feels like a holiday. The distance from real-world pressure makes the learning available in a way that more earnest settings might not.
What Makes Him Different as a Designer
Most first-time board game designers are enthusiastic players who reach a point of wanting to create their own game. Van Every came at it differently — as someone with clear educational goals who used play as a delivery mechanism rather than starting from play and working toward a message.
This distinction shows in the game. Smoothie Wars' mechanics are not standard board game mechanisms adapted to a business theme. The supply and demand system was designed from the economics up — a genuine model of market behaviour translated into game mechanics. This is relatively rare. Most economic board games abstract the economics until they're unrecognisable. Smoothie Wars abstracts only what's necessary for playability.
His medical background also contributes something less obvious: patience with complexity and a comfort with iteration. Diagnosis requires tolerating uncertainty while systematically testing hypotheses. Game design — at least good game design — requires something similar: running tests, observing unexpected player behaviours, adjusting variables, testing again.
The Scale Challenge
One design constraint that Van Every set himself early was ambitious: the game had to work at 3-8 players.
This is not a small ask. Most competitive strategy games begin to break down above five players. The decision space becomes too large; turns take too long; players disengage between moves; the game loses its tension.
Solving the scale problem required careful architecture. The island map and location system were designed to scale — more players means more competition for the best spots, but also more possible moves per turn as the market becomes more complex. Player interaction doesn't diminish at higher counts; it intensifies. The game becomes richer rather than noisier.
This makes Smoothie Wars genuinely unusual in the strategy category. When families or groups ask for a competitive strategy game for six or seven players, the honest answer for most of the category is "sorry, that doesn't really exist." Smoothie Wars is one of the few genuine answers.
The Current Product
The deluxe edition sells at £34. Van Every was deliberate about price: a board game that genuinely competes in the educational and family-game space needs to sit at an accessible price point. Premium editions of comparable games routinely push £50-80. Smoothie Wars' pricing reflects a philosophy that the game should be accessible, not a premium artefact.
The production quality — components, artwork, rulebook — reflects the tropical theme throughout. The island map is detailed. The smoothie cards have personality. The overall aesthetic communicates play rather than utility.
| Game Aspect | Design Decision | Reasoning |
|---|---|---|
| 3-8 players | Unusual for strategy | Works for real households and classrooms |
| 45-60 min | Mid-weight session | Fits a weekday evening |
| Age 12+ | Accessible from early teens | Business concepts accessible, not simplified |
| £34 deluxe | Below premium pricing | Educational accessibility |
| Tropical theme | Distance from "serious" | Lowers barriers to engagement |
What's Next
Van Every isn't done. Smoothie Wars has generated interest from educational institutions — secondary schools teaching enterprise and economics, business schools looking for experiential teaching tools, corporate team-building programmes. This interest is shaping his thinking about where the game goes next.
An expansion is in development. It introduces additional market dynamics — weather effects that alter demand patterns, events that disrupt supply chains — that add strategic complexity for experienced players while remaining optional for those who prefer the base game.
FAQ
How did Dr Thom Van Every become a board game designer?
Van Every trained and practised as a medical doctor before pivoting to entrepreneurship. Smoothie Wars emerged from his interest in experiential business education — using competitive play to teach economics and strategy in a way that formal instruction rarely achieves.
Where is Smoothie Wars designed and produced?
Dr Van Every is based in Guildford, UK. The game is designed in England and has been developed with the UK educational and gaming markets in mind, though it's available internationally.
How long did Smoothie Wars take to develop?
Multiple years of design and iteration, including extensive playtesting with different groups — families, students, business professionals — to calibrate the complexity, session length, and player count range.
What qualifications does a board game designer need?
None formally — board game design is an open field. However, a clear design philosophy, patience with iterative testing, and genuine knowledge of the subject matter being simulated all contribute significantly to quality outcomes. Van Every's medical training and entrepreneurial background both influence Smoothie Wars' design.
Is Dr Thom Van Every working on other games?
An expansion for Smoothie Wars is in development. Whether additional standalone games will follow remains to be seen, but his interest in game-based learning appears to be a long-term commitment rather than a single project.
