By Paco Garcia Jaen
Internationale Spieltage SPIEL is at an end tomorrow and this year’s show has been the best so far. Some very notable things, I have to say.
I am ever so glad that I very early made the decision to ignore American companies and large companies too. I was going to see Daniel Yarrington and Game Salute would be my only American company. In the end I wasn’t able to even return to say hello again. We’ve gone from the 25 interviews we had arranged to over 40 without even thinking about it and we’ve left some 15 behind that we didn’t get the time to return to.
The way we’ve organised ourselves this year was to arrange interviews for the morning and leave the afternoons empty to fill them with interviews with companies we crossed paths. It has worked out very well. I’ve got the chance to stop and talk to people rather than go from hall to hall and stand to stand like a pinball and have discovered some terrific new games.
This is where me not paying attention to the USA and the big ones has paid off. I thought there are enough podcasts and bloggers covering the big guys, so I will try to find out the small guys.
Hall 7 at Spiel is where it all happens. A fairly dingy and not very well known hall with a megaton of small tiny companies.
My decision to cover just European or Far East games is one I will probably go with again.
NSKN Games deserves quite a mention – and this has nothing to do with them being friends of mine – for Simurgh and Mistfall. You really should look at both very closely. In fact, if you like the Pathfinder card game, *please* look at Mistfall.
The Polish Publishing League also has come up with some truly stunning games. Heroes, from Lion Games is a personal favourite of mine. I have done the podcast review and the unboxing video. Take a look at it and consider buying it. I am still excited about that game and can’t wait to play it again.
Waste Knights also should get your attention. Those guys are onto something!
And they have a game about Erotica that’s really tasteful! Yes, there is nudity and sex all over the game, but it’s that, erotic, not pornographic. They have looked into body representation, kept a language that is LBGTQ friendly (though the photos are heteronormative) and managed to introduce the game into sex shops, since standar game shops didn’t want to stock the game (somewhat makes sense that…).
Arctic Union again surprises. Black Hat has managed to merge strategy and trick making games masterfully. Timo Multamaki has a very strange mind, but it works… by god it works!
TBD – Taiwan Board Game Design – also had some great titles. I got Burano, Castle Crush and Runes & Ruins and had to leave behind another four games, one of them about kittens (yes… a game about kittens) that looked as cute as it could be expected.
MODIPHIUS releasign the news of the Kung-Fu Panda game came as a very nice blow. A 100% pleasant surprise that made everyone around genuinely happy.
Also a great surprise – one of the good surprises – to see the Cubicle 7 Entertainment crew there with a stand. Although they had reservations about the RPG side of things, they have done really well too, which I suppose means German geeks are very adaptable and play all sorts so don’t mind buying RPGs. And I managed to buy my copy of the second edition of the Dr Who card game so I can shoot the Dice & Slice episode with the game. WHOOHOO!!!
Totally amazing too to find out that Cédrick Chaboussit can speak Spanish, so we interviewed him twice, once in English and once in Spanish about Discoveries: The Journals of Lewis & Clarke. Can’t wait to crack that game open at La Base Secreta Café. Our clients are going to love that one!
Tomorrow a few more interviews but not many. We’ll finish with an interview with Iello, the only sizeable company I will pay attention to this trip. Yes, I said I wouldn’t, but they’ve always been very good to me and I have to say I like Mathieu Bonin a lot. He’s a super guy who knows his games very well and is always courteous, attentive and very, very friendly.
After that… home. And sleep with a proper pillow. Because although Germany does a lot of things very well, they make the worst pillows on the planet.
And next year more!