Page 24 - Spielbox Special 2023 – EN

Current. Fall Preview 2023
Continued from page 10.
SH@ll Games (3 Q103)
ome things are plain irritating: taking out the garbage, mowing the lawn, paying taxes. The guys lurking around our neighborhood also fall into this cat- egory: Djinns. They want to access the magic source of our small town, and we apprentices of the Magic Guild are now called upon to capture them.
The solution to this in the extraordi- narily pretty Djinn: packing them, stuff- ing them into a bottle and putting the cork on it! The problem: Corks are expen- sive, and we have to go to the factory to obtain them. Bottles on the market also cost money. Until we have gathered everything, we have to run through the city, jump over Djinn-like loitering fellow players if necessary, and complete one of three possible actions. Unless we have enough money, in which case we stand by another player in exchange for cash. Depending on the adjacent space, we may take a small or a large action.
In this connoisseur game by Benjamin Schwer (see interview this page), you have to prepare a timetable and be more quick than the others, otherwise a Djinn you wanted to bag yourself—as bottled Djinns of matching color earn you tro- phies—will already be sitting in the com- petition’s bottle. There are also six master Djinns roaming the city, which are not so easy to catch. If all of them are bottled up after a good hour and a half, Djinn comes to its final scoring, with collected keys, equipment and magic also earning you something. The game is due out in October. (sd/cs)
DHans im Glück (6 D400)
on’t get fooled by the pretty looks with the cute little ships and the col- orful dice depicting beer mugs: Accord-
ing to its designer Norwegian Torgeir Tjong (see interview next page), Karvi is an “expert game plus” with a playing time of about 30 to 40 minutes, that is, per head (and easily more in the begin- ning).
We are Jarls, or Viking princes, sailing the seas either to trade or plunder. The more often we do this, the more we de- velop our own tableau and skills. The ac- tual gameplay, on the other hand, seems old-fashioned and simple: Whoever is fur- thest back with their dice on the circuit takes their turn. The dice—of which we have two in a game with less than four Jarls—jog three to four rounds around the village square. Provided there is enough beer for the immediate payment on the dice, we execute the action of the space on which the dice have landed.
This allows us, among other things, to bring female warriors on board, who play a relevant part in the scuffles and also in the test of strength with the other players
Four Years of Matured Djinn
Benjamin Schwer (40) and his family live in Leipzig. He is a teacher of ethics and Ger-
man at a secondary school in Saxony-Anhalt. After New Eden and Chaos in Gotham City by Schmidt in early 2023, his first connoisseur game is now being published by H@ll Games.
Looking at the 15 or so games you have published so far, after Living- stone in 2009, they were initially mainly children’s games. Now you are more involved with connoisseur games. What has changed?
Benjamin Schwer: Not a lot, actually. I’ve always been interested in family and connoisseur games, it’s just that my first publications were children’s games. My daughter was still small at the time, and so I had the playtest group with other children more or less at home. By the way, it was Stefan Brück who gave me the tip to submit games to Haba.
Do you also use board games at school?
That’s difficult, because for organiza-
tional reasons I can’t offer a games club and a school lesson only lasts 45 minutes. But I have tried Kyoto from Deep Print Games in class. It’s not that easy for young people who have only ever played online games.
After Crown of Emara and Hadara you took a break from publishing for a few years. Why was that?
It was not so easy for publishers to find playtesters during the pandemic. There were significantly fewer games being demanded, and it took longer to make them. Djinn, for instance, has been with the publishers for more than four years.
In any case, it’s quite unique, both visually and in terms of the game’s theme.
I am very happy that Dennis Lohausen has illustrated one of my games once again. It looks awesome. I had actual- ly set the game in the Roman Empire, and you moved with a knight on your own board to trigger minor and major actions. Now the pawns are moving on a shared board, and we’re catching djinns and collecting them in bottles. What’s on your publication list for the near future?
Another one of my novelties is coming to Essen, which I developed together with my nine-year-old son Jakob. The game is called Showdown, it’s a nice and quick family game published by Haba. Since it’s our first joint publication, I’m extra excited about it. (sd/cs)
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Photo: Schwer