Page 30 - Spielbox Special 2023 – EN

Current. Fall Preview 2023
Establishing on the International Market
Leon Scheu- ber (35) lives in Cologne and has been wor- king there
as European
representa- tive for Korea Boardgames since
2018. His current tasks include sourcing new games, editing them, and distributing them not only in South Korea, but world- wide.
If you look at the Korea Boardgames portfolio, you will be very impressed by the quantity alone. How would you describe your employer’s market posi- tion in its home country?
Leon Scheuber: We are the clear mar- ket leader in Korea with a share of 60 percent. We publish all kinds of games, from Loopin’ Louie to Gloomhaven, as well as puzzles and “Gravitrax,” the mar- ble run system from Ravensburger. For a good ten years now, we have also been developing games ourselves. One of the best known is surely Coconuts.
What are the goals of your publishing house, particularly in Germany?
We want to establish ourselves firmly on the international market. It’s already well-known that we’re a good partner for the Korean market. But we also want to be successful internationally with our own games. We usually look for distribu- tion partners to achieve this, but we also sometimes release games ourselves. For example, two of our titles will soon be distributed in Germany by Spiel direkt. You now have prominent German de- signer names in your program.
Of course, they are helping us to be- come more widely known. I have written to the designers and also visited them myself. We are publishing a tile-laying game, Tangram City by Uwe Rosen- berg, and another game by Wolfgang Kramer and Michael Kiesling called Terra Pyramides, which will soon be released by Huch. In addition, we have one more game of each of these design- ers in the pipeline.
And there are obviously also games by Korean designers.
That’s right, Coffee Rush by Euijin Han, a colleague at Korea Boardgames. It will be released in 2024 in over 20 countries and in 16 languages, in Eu- rope mainly via Asmodee.
And you manage all of this alone?
No, there are now four of us. Alongside me, there’s an illustrator, a mini-jobber and a full-time colleague who is fluent in Korean. (sd/cs)
end, the more points they score. The White Castle is scheduled for release in October. (sd/cs)
NAanox Games (3 G130)
fter their firstling Cloudage, the Austrian publishers have something new to offer this year: Evenfall is the debut game of Italian designer Stefano di Silvio. He describes how four clans of mages vie for power. They play cards to their personal clan board within three rounds.
After an income phase with mana, herbs, knowledge and potions for your
own supply, all players take turns until they pass or have to pass. Witches, for example, allow you to get new landscape cards and later play them into your own display. On the one hand, these can pro- vide resources, on the other hand, they form the basis for playing out rituals. If you later build catalysts on landscapes, you receive additional victory points.
Character cards can be added to your clan board either as council members or as specialists. They provide points or ac- tions during the game, at the end of the round or at the end of the game. Another option for an action is to use your own witches or elders and place them on cards
or in landscapes. This also has effects in the battle phase, when the deployed personnel compete for the best magic stones in the landscapes by secretly add- ing mana. Any stones won are deposited on landscape cards in a player’s own play area for the final scoring.
For a game, each of the up to four mag- es from the age of 14 needs about half an hour of thinking time. For advanced play- ers, the clan boards feature further game options on the back. Evenfall is expected to be available in October. In Germany, it will be distributed by dlp Games and sold by them at the SPIEL. (sd/cs)
Nice Game Publishing 5L123)
(A
the two-person trick-taking game Jekyll vs. Hyde, the publisher from Bonn now presents Empire’s End, a much larger game from the pen of
American John D. Clair. In this game, we watch our civilization decline for a good hour—and try to stop this process as best we can.
Every player has a personal card dis- play with 11 locations such as streets, villages or farms in front of them. A mark- er advancing on the central game board
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Photo: Scheuber