Diables: why an entire people runs into the fire

Dani Garcia always puts something real, something of himself, into the games he designs. In Barcelona, he had recreated his neighborhood — his house was on the map, but then it was cut out because the board was too big.

He is one of the hottest names in European Eurogames, and he got there fast: Arborea and Barcelona in 2023, and from there a race that never stopped. But his signature is not complexity. It's that the theme, in his games, is never just paint.

Diables comes from there. The devil's festival — el Ball de Diables — is Catalan, it's his: he had it on his doorstep. To build the game, he and Salt & Pepper Games — a two-person publisher — consulted a real colla (the group that brings the devils to the streets), the Carranquers de Cervera. The illustrations are by Amelia Sales; graphics and some of the designs by Iván Iserte, from Dossom Studio.

There's something that needs to be said, and I'll say it in his own words. In January 2025, after a long journey, Dani announced that he has ALS. He wrote that he wanted to focus on what brings him the most satisfaction: creating games and spending time with his family. Diables is one of those games.

There's a mechanic in Diables that seems anachronistic but is actually the most honest thing about the game. While you run through the streets with your devils and light firecrackers, the crowd does what anyone would do today: pull out their phones. They photograph you, they film you. And the game keeps track.

On one side of the board, there's a social media wall. Every time one of your devils passes the right people, you can end up in a post — a photo, a video — and place your camera token there. Then the likes come in. In the end, your social media fame doesn't depend on how good you were with the fire: it depends on how many likes are on the posts where you appeared, multiplied by how much your colla has grown.

The point is what all this does to the player. The performance and the recording of the performance become the same action. It's not enough to run well: you have to run well where someone is filming you. It's the anxiety — and the calculation — of anyone today who does something beautiful knowing that it will be recorded.

It's a design choice that says a lot. Dani Garcia took a seven-century-old tradition and looked at it with today's eyes, without betraying it. Which leads to a bigger question: why does this festival still exist?

There is a historical fact that explains why Diables is not a game of setting, but of memory. The devil's festival in Catalonia has been documented for almost nine hundred years. It originated as medieval theater — the struggle between angels and demons in Corpus Christi processions. Then, under Franco, it was forbidden: like the Catalan language, like everything that smelled of Catalan identity.

It returned with democracy. The modern correfoc — the run through the fire — was born in the late 1970s, when the audience stopped watching and started participating. Today in Catalonia there are over 250 colles: neighborhood associations, non-profit, open to anyone, where people stay for decades.

And there's one thing tourists don't expect. Faced with a correfoc, the advice is counterintuitive: the safest place is next to the devils. That's the whole idea. You don't defend yourself from the chaos and fire — you dance in it, to tame it, make it your own, laugh at it. Together.

Culture

A forbidden festival, then revived Forbidden during Franco's regime along with the Catalan language, the devil's festival returned with democracy as an act of identity: reclaiming the streets and the fire. Those who find Diables fascinating are responding, perhaps unknowingly, to a people who do not turn their backs on danger — they run towards it, in groups, with a drum behind them. Source: Ball de Diables / correfoc, Catalan tradition documented since 1150, forbidden under Franco's regime; the modern correfoc originated in 1977–78 (Ajuntament de Barcelona; Turisme de Catalunya).

Diables tries to convey all this to you. It's no coincidence that the author writes that he hopes that, by playing, you will learn to love this tradition "as much as they love it" — and to build it, he consulted a real colla. That's why the game is stronger than its theme.

Some step back from the fire. And some, with others, put a drum behind them and run towards it. Diables is a game about the latter.