About the Author

Roman Vitaliyovych Vlasenko is the creator of the board game Ashinerland. Born in Kyiv, Ukraine. Currently resides in Montreal, Canada.

Since childhood, games have played a central role in my life — both literally and metaphorically. I’ve always felt a tension between the tangible and the digital worlds. When I was ten years old, I first encountered a video game: the legendary Dune 2. My friend Yura and I spent hours playing it on his computer — a rare treasure at that time.

Not having a computer at home, but having a strong desire to play, I created my very first board game — a simple war strategy game about the conflict between England and France. I played it with my family. Later, my brother Vitaliy and I played a homemade version of Dune with hand-painted wooden tanks moving across a chessboard.

Over time, after I got my first home computer in 2000, I became fully immersed in digital games and left board games behind for a while. But the idea of creating my own never disappeared completely.

In 2012, after marrying my wife Yulia and starting our life together, I decided to return to that childhood dream — to create a game that would combine strategy, fantasy, and depth. At first, it was just for the two of us. The very first version featured two lineages: the Lineage of Rassa and the Lineage of the Dragon. I had all the rules in my head, and we played it for six hours straight. That was the beginning.

With each new version, the game evolved, becoming more structured and more refined. In version “00”, there were already four lineages, the first class figures (Warrior, Mage, Archer, Healer), and the early foundations of a fantasy world inspired not only by esoteric texts but also by the worlds of Tolkien and Herbert. The very first figure — the Thunder Warrior — was inspired by the Slavic god Perun, the god of thunder.

By version 17, I began to move away from esotericism and started building a unique fantasy universe with its own mythology. The lineages began to receive totemic animals. For example, the Lineage of the Great Rassa became the Lineage of the Celestial Leopard (based on the idea that "Rassa" refers to a feline creature), and the Lineage of the Gloomy Wasteland became the Lineage of the Dark Scorpion.

In 2020, I began testing the game with friends. Their feedback helped me improve the mechanics. Around 2021 (the exact date escapes me), my friend Yura called me on my birthday and proposed creating a digital version of the game by the next year. I gladly sent him materials from version 23 (though I may be mistaken about the exact version). Due to a lack of experience in game development, the digital version wasn’t ready in time. But in 2024, we finally played Kincells — a mobile version of the game he built. It was a powerful moment, seeing my creation come to life on a screen.

In 2021, I also had the idea to bring the game to market. I began researching the board game industry, commissioned my first printed components, and by version 26 introduced two more lineages — the Lineage of the Golden Boar and the Lineage of the Star Phoenix — making it playable by up to six players. I also handcrafted a wooden box for the game, and earlier, in version 12, I had made a similar box with four lineages, with all components made of wood.

The war in Ukraine, which began on February 24, 2022, forced me to pause development. But after moving to Canada in 2024, I resumed work on the project. I rebranded the game as Ashinerland for English-speaking players. The name combines four words: Ash, Land, Shiner, Land — representing my internal state upon arriving in a new country: Ash Land signifying a sense of loss and burnout, and Shiner Land — the hope for a new beginning.

In 2025, I completed a fully translated English version of the game, available as a print-ready digital file.

Ashinerland is more than just a strategic board game. It’s a personal story, a family project, a memory from childhood — and at the same time, a hopeful vision of the future.