Playniac designed a tabletop version of their Channel 4 game International Racing Squirrels to put mechanics through their paces, explore game dynamics, find what was fun, discard what wasn't and see what the game actually feels like to play; all before writing a single line of code. In an event for the public, we turned the game into paper by stripping it down to first principles and preparing a toolkit, including dice, counters and custom-designed components. The approach can be used to invent new games and to refine existing ones. Fail fast and often to iterate your game to perfection.