Firstly, tell us a bit about yourself.
I grew up in the North-East of England. I lived in Darlington and studied maths at Durham University. At the end of the academic year, it was normal for there to be quite a lot of dead time waiting for exam results to come out, in addition to the usual summer holiday lull. So, there was often lots of time to do something creative. I wrote a few puzzle books which were published by a company called Robinson Publishing (now 'Constable Robinson') who were able to use my Crystal Maze credits as part of the blurb. After university, I lived a double life for a while. By day, I was a management consultant. By night, I was still writing puzzles for various books and magazines. After three years, I was earning enough to work in games and puzzles full-time, and have been working as a freelance TV producer, games consultant and question writer/editor ever since.
When did you first become interested in designing games/puzzles?
I'd always been interested in games and puzzles. In the late '70s and early '80s, it was something of a golden era for puzzles. I loved puzzle books written by people such as Gyles Brandreth and Clive Doig. There were also great puzzle-based game shows on television, such as The Adventure Game, Ask the Family and Puzzle Trail. There was all manner of adventure games on early home computer systems like the Commodore Pet, BBC Micro and Spectrum. And of course, there were puzzle fads such as the Rubik's Cube or the Masquerade book.
How did you get involved with The Crystal Maze?
After watching the very first episode, I just felt the cogs in my brain start to turn. After a few days, I'd written up something like 20 ideas, using some isometric paper for illustrations and a very old PC word processor for the descriptions. I think I found the address for Chatsworth in the Writers and Artists Handbook, and I sent them off to the post. I received a letter of acknowledgment from the producer, Malcolm Heyworth, about a week later, saying that they would be in touch. Out of the morass of 20 ideas, the director David G. Croft wrote back saying that they would use one of the games on the children's Christmas special. (There's a funny personal connection here: the oldest contestant on that kids' show, Michael Underwood, who would later become a TV presenter in his own right, is a fellow parent at my daughter's school!) However, there was a catch - they were offering £100 OR an on-screen credit. (I think this was more Malcolm's way of operating than David's.) I took the credit that time but on future series, I got both.
Unusually for a game built for the kids' shows, it was also used a few times in the adult series too. Each year, I would submit a bundle of designs, and they would use between 4 and 6 of the best ones towards their series target of 50. I occasionally see David G. Croft, who now lectures at the National Film and Television School, and I'm still very much working with Justin Scroggie who was the games producer for series 5 and 6.
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| The Sword in the Stone - Medieval Series 4 |
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| Time Travel - Futuristic Series 4 |
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| The basis for the robot operation game from Series 6 |
We have to ask this question - Which was your favourite zone, and why?
I always liked the Industrial Zone. I think the "atmos" track that constantly ran in the background (WHUMP-whump) was particularly good, and it really felt like a living, breathing place where the games could have been made. The overhead gangways and that weird prism sculpture of pipework gave it massive scale too.
Was there a particular zone that you preferred designing games for?
The majority of my games were Mental ones that involved colours, lights, letters and numbers, so they naturally tended to go into Futuristic. I think in series 4 there were several of my games in that zone, such as the 'time travel bike' that always gave a close finish.
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| I don't think she's got time to beat this |
Do you have a favourite game - Either of your own design or someone else’s?
The game I was most pleased to come up with was the portcullis game with the 'booby-trapped' crystal, which turned the whole "solve puzzle, get crystal" narrative on its head. It was a bit unconventional, but as a surprise tactic I think it worked well. That game was heavily used in that series. In terms of which game I would have liked to have come up with myself, I always liked the Futuristic 3D maze game with the timers that counted down towards zero while they were unplugged. It had a really neat risk/reward mechanic that almost could've been a game show in itself.
Did you ever get to visit the original set?
Sadly I did not, because filming always happened in December while I was doing end-of-term university exams. By the time I left uni, the show was no longer being made.
Were you approached to do games for this new series? Were you invited onto the new set at all, for a sneak peek?
I was initially invited in to speak with Fizz, but it didn't work out in terms of contributing games. However, they kindly invited me to the set for a day. Because the new set was largely based on the plans of the old one, it meant that it hardly mattered that I never visited the old show! However, it was a weird experience for people like David Croft, because to them it was if they were standing in the same place but 25 years later.
What do you think of the new series?
It's a bit unfair to compare apples with oranges because the old show was made with four times more recording time (1 show in 2 days vs. 2 shows in 1 day). So the fact that they've managed to use improvements in camera technology to speed up the recording is an incredible achievement. The change from six strangers to five people that know each other (either as mates or on the celebrity circuit) has had some interesting repercussions. I think it's an open secret that, in the old series, games were pretty much aimed at people who were either smart or strong. Without those specialisms being available, the performances on the games have naturally varied much more widely, because you don't know if an Olympic athlete or a huffy reality star is going to do them. So it must make the game's calibration much more challenging.
Are there any ‘tweaks’ you would like to see on the new series?
I was pleased they've invested in a new zone, and I hope that could continue if they have further series. The idea of the old show was always supposed to be that the zones evolved from series to series, and every new zone helps both the game possibilities and adds to the whole mythology of the place. I would like to see games with more 'awkwardness' built into the design. If you watch the old shows back, you can see how hard the producers worked to put in plot points or red herrings to every single game so that, even if you couldn't play the games yourself, you could still shout at the screen when you realised they were rolling the crystal to the wrong exit or whatever.
Can you tell us more on what other shows you’ve worked on in the past & which shows you’re working on now?
Since Crystal Maze, I've been pleased to work on a number of popular shows including Krypton Factor, Only Connect, Treasure Hunt, Fifteen to One and Armchair Detectives. As for recent productions, most of my past year has been taken up with a factual entertainment format called 'The Family Brain Games', which was well received and I hope we can make another series. I've also recently filmed a new 'ultimate quizzer' show called 'Quizmaster' which comes out on ITV later this year, and I still chip in questions to 'Only Connect'. I'm also working on a large number of different TV formats of my own devising - some of which are headed towards 'proper telly', and others have been broadcast on Tom Scott's YouTube channel as part of a deliberately 'low-fi' series called "Game Garage".
David, thank you for talking with us.
David can be found on Twitter @DavidJBodycombe
Phil can be found on Twitter @PhilNew98167545
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