Vite! Cachons-nous! or Hide the Kids!

Le jeu Vite! Cachons-nous! est sorti chez Libellud. Il s'agit d'un remake parfait de Cache Moutons. Ce jeu était paru en 2009, mais n'était plus disponible depuis quelques années.

Comme le jeu a reçu quelques prix prestigieux, dont l'As d'or pour le meilleur jeu d'enfant à Cannes, je pense que le jeu méritait bien un nouvel lancement.

Les enfants et les adultes se marrent comme des fous à jouer cache-cache autour de la table.

There is also a US version of this game. Curiously, now the game is not only for kids, but for the whole family! If you start doubting, I can confirm that it's absolutely the same game.

The Longest Trench demo on Crisis Antwerp

If you are planning to attend the TSA Crisis Game fair in Antwerp on Saturday November 2nd, I would be happy to welcome you.

You will be able to play a demo game of the new game "The Longest Trench", an exciting 2-player game on WW1. This game has been imagined by the smart designer Arno Maesen and further developped by myself.

The publisher is UGG which has launched a P500 programm for it. The goal is a release in 2014 in order to commemorate the 100 years of the start of the Great war.

Special limited offer: The first 3 players who write a full review or play session and post it on Board Game Geek get a free sample. More info at the fair.

Epic variant

If you like some variation for Saboteur, David Cheng has given me the following idea which gives an extra twist to your favourite game. It's playable for Saboteur as for Saboteur 2 as well.

• When you reach the princess, you get immediately 2 gold points.
• When you reach the dragon, the round is immediately halted and won by the saboteurs.

These 2 cards come in addition to the 3 Gold destination cards.

For the moment, it's still in a play-testing phase. If you want to try it, you can download the files & rules, print them out and give your comments on Board Game Geek.

Ukranian Saboteur version

The game Saboteur is expanded by a Ukranian version. This version includes also Russian rules and consists of the basic game and the expansion, solded separately.

As a coïncidence, the Facebook application for Saboteur has been developed by a Ukranian team.

Saboteur on Facebook and Android

A Ukranian team has developped an application to play you favourite game Saboteur on facebook and on Android devices (tablet or smartphone) :

http://apps.facebook.com/saboteur_online/

 

Link to Android app 

 

You can invite your friends via facebook to play the game.

When you create a new game, you have 2 options: the standard game or the greedy gnome game. The last one is a variant in which one gnome is playing alone against all others. He wants to place the last card to establish the link to the gold.

Finally, you are free to chose how many rounds are played.

Asking your suggestions for Saboteur

The publisher of Saboteur has asked me to imagine a concept for a Promo card.

If you want to have a peak what I have in mind, if you want to playtest it or if you want to give me any suggestion, please follow the link below, which leads you towards a forum thread on Board Game Geek.

Promo Card suggestion

Besides, the publisher is planning to celebrate the 10th Anniversary of the game in 2014.

If you want to vote for one or another suggestion or if you haveyour own suggestion, follow the link below, which leads you towards another forum thread on Board Game Geek.

10th Anniversary

Saboteur is still a hit

My most successful game is still selling very well. In fact, as you can see on the graph, it sells even better and better. For a game, which is on the market since 9 years already, I think that this is an excellent result.
In 2012 almost 170000 copies of both game versions were sold, which is more than the total sales of the first 4 years.
The total amount of sold boxes is about of 660 000 samples.

Saboteur is the basic game. Saboteur 2 is either the pure expansion or the big box containing the basic game and the expansion. Both versions sell very well as you can see. The release of Saboteur 2 has clearly boosted the world-wide sales numbers.

Let's hope that the German publisher Amigo Spiele will now be convinced to release the expansion on the German market.

For newbie game designers, who might start dreaming, I want to inform them that these figures are really exceptional. The average sales numbers for games are between 3000 and 5000 copies. Mostly, the first print-run is also the last one.

Above this, sales numbers doesn't tell anything about how good your game is.  Good games doesn't sell necessarily well, while bad games doesn't sell necessarily bad. Good sales numbers just mean that people like to buy your game for one or another reason. Do not interprete this comment as if I don't like my own game. I just want to avoid that you, as a designer, get frustrated that your brilliant game concept is a commercial disaster. Success depends sometimes more from luck than pure talent.