In March 2022, we met with the main test group, André and Robert, as well as publisher Uli Blennemann, in Wolfsburg for an intense testing weekend, during which we played almost all the scenarios. As a result, we were collectively satisfied with the state of development, but there were still issues with the Progress scenario. The handling of progress cards, which worked very well online, proved to be very confusing at the table. The space required for the many cards (17 different ones in...
Scenario 7: Plagues and Disasters I was intrigued by developing a scenario fundamentally different from the others, focusing not on additional rewards but rather on repeatedly taking away resources and options from players. As a special element, I wanted to include a cooperative component where players could collectively overcome these disadvantages – but only together, so no player could succeed alone. I initially set the number of negative events (plagues, disasters) to 6, with one plague...
If you are interested in a live teach of EPOS by me and playing the game at GenCon, you may do so on Thursday, Friday & Saturday. I´d love to meet you near booth #130 (Ravensburger) at 3 pm. We´ll move over to Open Gaming in the Lucas Oil Stadium. Thank you!
The Main Work - EPOS: The Development of the Scenarios As it became apparent that the project's scope would be vast and the gaming experience should also be grand, almost epic, I chose EPOS as the working title in homage to great literary works. After all, the game was meant to tell a story or make it experienceable through the campaign. I organized the experiences from the test games for the GENTES expansions and initially selected 8 that I wanted to optimize with the test groups. Some...
The Beginning: GENTES Expansions During the development of GENTES, there were several ideas for rule variants and additional components that I did not pursue or removed to keep the game focused and as smooth as possible. When the game was released by Spielworxx in 2017 and the first edition sold out quite quickly, the interest in expansions seemed apparent. Apart from the expansion "New Cities" published in the advent calendar, nothing more happened initially. Nevertheless, I continued working...