Interview in Dutch

 An interview by Hans Lemmens from Spellenwijs

https://www.spellenwijs.nl/interview-frederic-moyersoen/

Saboteur TLM tips preset Youtube

Saboteur World Championship 2016

On 26 November 2016 the first Saboteur World Championship was organized in Budapest (Hungary).

After preselections in different countries, there were 30 people selected to participate.

The youngest participant was Ali Efe Artkin, 11 years, from Turkey. He was accompagnied by his mother, teacher and the Turkish distributor of the game.

First the players played 4 games by switching their positions at the different tables. In this way, the players got the opportunity to show their skills to all other players. At the end, Ritsuto Konno from Japan was leading with 27 points while the last one had gathered only 2 points.

The final table was reserved for the 6 players with the most points. Players had to play a game of 4 rounds. The finale was particularly challenging. The players were discussing and negotiating the whole game in order to detect the 2 saboteurs and selfish dwarf in each round. This brought the game at a new tactical level which I never experienced before. The finale showed the same tension as during a Poker game. Bluffing and guessing the cards of the other players became the new key elements. The suspense was strong and increasing as the game progressed.

 Finally, Steven Chu Chun Hin from Hong Kong won the game and became the first world champion of Saboteur. According to his observations, his social skills helped him to propose interesting deals to the other players which were also at his advantage too.

The second place was for Jaffeth Parinussa from the Netherlands (at left of Steven). The third place was for Ritsuto Konno from Japan (at the right of Steven). Steven is holding his pure gold award in-between his teeth.

Three new games on market

This year, three new games were launched.

• Mushroom Soup (upper left) is a small card game with nice plastic miniatures. It's actually online available in the Russian language and is published by Zvezda.
• Vroom Vroom (right) is a fast-pasing race game with rotating snails for kids of 4 years and up. The publisher is Blue Orange.
• Treasure Lair (down left) is an adventure card game in co-design with Arno Maesen. The publisher is AEG.

How to play Saboteur the Duel?

If you want to see how you must play the Saboteur - the duel version, please click on the image.

Mamicatchmi on shelves

Djeco, a French publisher has recently released Mamicatchmi. It's a nice reaction game with beautiful components. You roll both dice and grab your figure in order to put it in safety or to block your opponent. The first one gets a point from the other one.

Also funny for players above 12 years old.

 

Invasion of Termites

Frederic in front of a Termity mound in Gdansk.

Close-up of a termite attack!

Kesselchaos by Haba

Besides Jolly Roger from Ares and Termity from Rebel.pl, Haba has launched Kesselchaos (German) or Cauldron Chaos (English).
In this small card game, the young witches try to collect as fast as possible the right ingredients for a delicious soup. Gameplay is simultanously and that's the reason why it's rather chaotic. A quick reaction game for all players, young and old.

Witch Yorandel

Termites - designer diary

The new game, Termites, will be released by the Polish publisher Rebel.pl for the Essen Spiel fair in 2015. If you are curious about the “making  of”, read the following lines. Besides, it gives you some info on how I design games.

The idea for the game

In September 2009, I was still looking for a new game concept to present at the Essen Spiel Fair in October. As usually, I’m the most creative when there is some time pressure. The short delay to imagine a brand new game concept is always a real challenge and that gives my inspiration a great boost.

The first step for me is finding a suitable theme. I’ve always been a fan of wargames and I have imagined a few. Unfortunately, the market for this kind of games is rather small and I never managed to put any of these games on the market. Besides, I’m less interested in the historical component of wargames than in a nice game mechanic. So, my games are rather simple and fun than complex and historically accurate. This time, the challenge that I imposed to me was to imagine a “wargame” which doesn’t  look like a “wargame”.

To start, I checked a few possible themes and I came up with a game about ants. A quick look on Board Game Geek learned me that the number of games on these insects is rather few. So, that was a good starting point. After some research, I found out that termites would be a perfect match. The insects are very well organized. They have different classes, each with their own task and special ability. Above this, they build impressive mounds and are constantly on war. So, I found an original theme. Now, I had to find a game mechanic. 

Finding a nice game mechanic

At that time, I knew that the game Batt’l Kha’os, which I designed together with Eric Hanuise, was going to be launched in a few weeks. Although I liked that game a lot, it’s in fact a static tile-placing two-player game. This time, I was planning to make a more dynamic game for two to four-players.

The goal of the new game could be very similar: control some central spots, towers in the case of “Batt’l Kha’os”, termite mounds in the case of Termity. Defining a clear goal for a game is very important. It helps focusing all rules around one central objective.

In contrary to “Batt’l Kha’os”, I wouldn’t use tiles to form a board, but a classic game-board with hexes. Using hexes is very common in wargames and visually more appealing than squares, which is too much chess-like in my opinion. The board of the prototype was originally rectangular, but the publisher proposed to use a hexagonal form which avoids that players could play in their corner. A nice improvement.

To make the board tactically interesting, it was necessary to add some different terrain types. Keeping in mind the target player group which I’ve chosen, I wanted to keep it simple. Therefore, I limited the terrain to 3 special types: boulders, lakes and trees.

From the game “Go”, probably the best strategy game ever imagined, I used the brilliant (and simple) mechanism of adding each turn one piece on the board. Instead of adding identical pieces, I chose to create much variety among the pieces: the infantry would be represented by workers, the elite troops by warriors, the cavalry by alates and the archers by Nasutes.

Each termite type would get one special ability, which would reflect their strength and use in combat. Limiting it to one ability per type, makes it easy to remember for players and keeps the rules simple.

After placing a piece, the idea was to allow one movement. Although most of the wargames allow multiple moves, the problem is always to remember which units have already moved and which not. Besides, as I was designing a multiple-player game, it’s very important that a game turn remains short and fast.

In the same idea, I would limit combat to one single attack. All these restrictions force players to think twice which piece to move and which attack to make. To avoid using dice and to make the game more tactical, combat would be resolved by determining majorities. To win, the attacker would simply need more points than the defender. Finally, to make the combat less lethal, a success attack would result in a retreat. Only, when the retreat is blocked, a termite piece would be eliminated.

Each piece would have a certain value, which should be very visible on each counter. Therefore, I opted for the simplest solution to give each individual small termite one point. Warriors which are a little bigger, would get 2 points each.

For the individual mounds, I had to use another system. Printing the value on the counter appeared to be the most convenient solution. Quickly, I noticed that using flat game pieces and flat mound pieces would give a visually rather flat game. Therefore, I skipped the mound counters and replaced them by pyramidal shaped mounds.

Like you can notice, the core rules were imagined by making a choice among a vast number of options to solve problems which emerged during the design process. In fact, this is where game design is about: making choices and hoping to make the right ones.

Playtesting the game

The next and most important step in designing a game is the playtesting phase. This is a little bit the moment of truth. Your game can look fantastic in your head and on paper, but if players don’t like it, you have to start it all over. During the years, I’ve developed a simple feedback system which works very well for me: I take notes during each playtest on a pre-printed feedback form. This allows me to compare different rule changes and its effect on the game experience. More important, I keep a written record of each playtest which is very useful when I want to improve an old concept after several years.

Playtesting proceeds a little bit in a trial-and error way. I change a few rules and check it’s effect. Then, I make a few other changes and test it again. In the meantime, I try to gather as many suggestions as possible and check if they improve the game or not. This process can continue very long, but mostly after some time the number of improvements and suggestions start to decrease. At that moment, you know as a designer that your game is finished and ready to present to publishers.

In the case of Termity, I’ve performed a lot of playtests in a very short time. The bulk of improvements were ready for Essen, as planned, and I could show it to the publishers.

Finding a publisher

For each game you need to find the right publisher and this quest can be long and frustrating. There are some many new concepts which are conceived by other designers, amateurs as well as professionals, that you need some luck before reaching your goal.

Regarding my own success ratio, I’ve figured out that from 5 new game concepts I manage to sell only one. So, my expectations are always a little tempered when imagining a new game concept.

In the case of Termites, I had to be patient for several years (4 years to be precise).

By chance, I get into contact with the Polish publisher Rebel.pl on the Essen Fair of 2013. In fact, we were both waiting for an appointment in front of another publisher and I got the opportunity to present myself, exchange business cards and to fix a meeting for the next day. The publisher was interested in several new concepts, but Termites in particular caught their attention. After playtesting it in Poland, they informed me in January 2014 that they would like to get the license to publish the game.

Nevertheless, it took nearly two extra years before the project could be planned in the publication schedule of Rebel.pl. A funny anecdote is that the publisher first wanted to change the theme to caveman wars, then to WW II and finally decided to keep the original Termite theme as it offered the best match with the game mechanic.

Finding the way to the customer

This is the final step for a new game. Unfortunately, my task is nearly finished and now, it will mainly depend from you, as a customer, if you like the game or not. The more people who like the game, the easier the game will become a success. 

Thanks for reading these notes.

The original prototype

Saboteur sales update

If you are wondering how the game Saboteur is actually selling, here is a new graph showing the sales repartition among the 4 versions of the game.
The top seller is still the basic version (blue). Saboteur 2, the expansion, is sometimes available in a small box (red) and sometimes in a big box, including the basic version (green).
The lastest version, Saboteur duel (orange), is already selling well although it's only available in 7 countries for the moment. Other countries should follow.

We can also notice on the graph that the sales numbers started to boost once the first expansion was released on the market in 2011.

The total sales have now reached nearly 1 200 000 copies.

Jolly Roger soon available

A new nice card game for 4 to 10 players is in production for september. It will be released by the Italian publisher Ares.
On the website of Ares, you can read an interview and get extra info.

Animal Trip by Beleduc

I'm very proud to announce the new game: Animal Trip.

The game is published by Beleduc, a German publisher known for high-end educational games. This game fits perfectly with their collection "One world" and that's probably the reason why they were interested in my concept.

Kids fly in a plane from continent to continent and want to bring back the animals on the right continents. They might be delayed by roundabouts and heavy weather.
The rules include 2 versions: a specific version for kids of 3 and above and the standard rules of 4 and above.

The game box and components are nicely illustrated and I hope that the kids and their parents will enjoy it.

The game box and it's components.

Each kid gets his own wooden plane.

Saboteur : le duel

Une très belle boîte metallique pour l'édition française de Gigamic.

A nice tin box for the French edition by Gigamic.

Saboteur : the duel

The Dutch version of Saboteur: the duel is released by 999 Games. This game has been designed for 1 and 2 players. The other language versions are in preparation and will be released in 2015.

 

 

Which game could I recommend you?

• Saboteur, the basic game, was designed for 3 to 10 players. It's really very fun and balanced with 6 to 10 players. The rules are simple and straightforward, which makes it an ideal game for casual players.
• Saboteur 2, the expansion, was designed for 2 to 12 players. Due to the increased complexity (extra roles and extra action cards), it's more suited for experienced players. The game play is also a little bit longer. Therefore, I prefer it for 3 to 6 players.
• Saboteur 3, the duel, was primarly designed as a solitaire game with a 2-player variant. For commercial reasons, it has been packaged as a 2-player game with a solitaire variant. Alone, you try to reach the most gold and with two, you try to get more gold points than your opponent.

Best of the year 2014

The game Knockout has been rewarded with the prize Best of the year 2014 by ToysBulletin.com.

Their comment was "A boxing game that we could not stop playing."

 

Here you can read the full review.

Essen Fair

The Spiel Fair in Essen is finished and as usual, I had a lot of appointments to present my new game concepts. The meetings were exhausting, but by occasion, there were some nice encounters too.

 

 

Here I'm posing with the charming ladies Wen Chi Lee (left) and her colleague, Wen Chien Wu (right) from Swanpanasia. Their company distributes the game Saboteur in Taiwan and China. According to the ladies, "the game" (which is named so because most local people can't read the title "Saboteur") is very popular there.

 

Here, I'm promoting the new game Robin on the booth of Flatlined Games. I got nearly a cramp in my wrist from the multiple signings ;-).

 

 

Robin release in Essen

My next new game, named Robin, will be released during the Spiel fair in Essen. The game box and components are from an outstanding quality. Above this, the quality of the artwork is at the highest level and fits perfectly with this excellent little game, which you will surely love.

Flatlined Games, is the name of the publisher and Eric Hanuise, the boss, is a personal friend. We designed Batt'l Kha'os together several years ago.

Playing in the mines

 

If you like a special experience, try playing the game Saboteur in a real mine like this playing group. It was a little cold, 9° C (48 F), but apparently the players had a lot of fun.

 

This picture was taken by Spielelagune Saar in an old coalmine of Germany.

Board Game Arena puts Saboteur 2 online

From now on, you can play Saboteur 2 online. Besides, it's totally free.

 

 

Board Game Arena (BGA), a community for online gamers, has already put the basic game Saboteur online in 2012. Thanks to its huge success, the developers were also interested in programming the expansion, Saboteur 2.

This expansion adds new characters and action cards, making the game a little bit more complex, but that's exactly what the players on BGA are looking for.

If you want to try the expansion before buying a boxed version or if you just want to play it for free, follow this link to BGA.

http://en.boardgamearena.com/#!welcome

 

 

Bedpans & broomsticks release

The long expected game (at least by myself) Bedpans & Broomsticks is finally released in the US by Mayfair Games. It's my fourth game in their collection.

It's all about elderly people trying to escape from their residence. Unfortunately, they have a small problem. They have forgotten where the exit is located. So, you have to search the different rooms and floors of the residence and avoid being caught by the nurses and the doctor.

It's designed as a funny escape game.