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Splotter's Old News

Splotter News December 2002

Dear friends,

We have finally made the decision you have all been waiting and writing for: we are going to republish Roads & Boats.

Before you go celebrating, please read the following!

How many games will Splotter make?

The issue with producing Roads & Boats is that our per-box production costs are very, very high due to all of the material involved. Therefore, we will make only a limited number of games. Some of you have suggested a method for estimating demand which we will use: we are going to have a pre-order list. The amount of pre-orders will determine how many copies we are going to produce.

How do you get your game?

Submit an order through the order forms on our website. Taxes, transaction and shipping costs and payment procedures depend on where we have to ship the game. Just follow the link and you will be guided to the order form with the prices and procedures that are applicable in your case.

If all goes well, we will produce the games in April and ship beginning of May or earlier. We will debit your credit card only as soon as the games are ready for shipment. Should we not get the required number of orders, we will let you know. No money will be debited from your account in that case. If you have a German or a Dutch bank account, you may pay by bank transfer and get a discount.

We will accept pre-orders until January 15th, 2003.

You're not sure yet. Can you wait?

Sure. We will produce more copies than are pre-ordered, and we expect big retailers (FunAgain, Boulder, AllGames4You and others) will order a number of copies as well, which will be available to the general public. However, we have no means of telling you upfront how long it will take for the game to sell out.

Will there be any changes to the game?

Yes and no. The game itself will not be changed (although we will clarify some obscurities in the rules). We are, however, considering a major update of the material, as we feel we have advanced a lot in our capabilities in this respect since the first edition was published.

The new edition will contain material for four players. Because many people never play with five, we decided that it makes no sense to force you to waste money on material for five players. It seems better to spend the money on better playing pieces instead.

How about expansion sets?

For those who do like to play Roads & Boats with more than four players, material for a fifth and a sixth(!) player will be included in an expansion set. This will hopefully be available in Essen. We intend to develop some new ideas for this expansion set as well. Current suggestions include: Trade fairs; Managers; Artwork production; and a number of 5-6 player scenario's.

We're also considering a re-release of Planes & Trains, in October 2003 or later.

Will Splotter publish any other games this year?

Probably. Possibly. We cannot yet say.

The Splotter team

Splotter News July 2002

In this edition:

New games: VOC, Cannes and Oraklos

Dear Splotter friends,

At long last, a Splotter newsletter containing notes on: 2002 Splotter games; availability of current program; sales and shops.

Slowly but steadily, we're progressing with the 2002 Essen releases. We're publishing three new games-- well, one is actually a re-release.

The first game is called VOC: Founding the Dutch East Indies Company or, in Dutch: Naar de Oost! Players take the role of merchants striving for a position among the 'Seventeen Lords', the board of directors of the richest company that ever existed... a company whose properties ranged from South Africa to Japan and comprised most of what is now called Indonesia! Founding the VOC is a medium complexity game, somewhat simpler than Bus or Ur, which can be played in one to two hours. The game includes: an investment market where players jointly invest to send out ships; a futures market, where you sell your goods before you have actually bought them, let alone brought them back home; original 16th-century artwork showing a map of the Orient, on which you will have to manouver your ships without being able to determine your exact longtitude; and stringent competition from Ámsterdam', a merchant that is controlled by the game.

The game contains two sets of rules, one suitable for gamers with tough negotiation skills, and one for those who prefer lighter games.

Cannes: stars is about making movies. As everyone knows, there's only three types of them: Girlie movies, featuring stars and a script; Science Fiction movies, which need a script and special effects; and Action movies, which obviously need no script, but survive on stars and special effects alone. As in Roads and Boats, players collect stuff (this time it's people, movie stars, computers and beer) from tiles, building up an infrastructure as they go along. The board is built out of hexagonal tiles and develops as the game goes along, so that each game requires a different strategy. And there's quite a bit to consider: the popularity of movies fluctuates, and to make sure you get some good press, it might be useful to treat the reviewer to some beers... or you could go to the golfclub and make new friends among the old boys (represented by cigars), which will expand your network considerably... or maybe it's better to connect to the party going on to the north of Cannes and meet some really hot filmstars?

Cannes is a game that takes about one hour and can be played with 2 to 4 people. It originally started out as an attempt to make a 'Roads and Boats lite' version. In fact, it still has some elements of Roads and Boats, but we now fondly refer to it as 'Roads & Boats... the movie'!

Oraklos, our third game, is actually a re-release. Originally, this game was sold as 'Tetragons'. We've redone the artwork quite a bit to bring out the theme of this game: divination. Players take on the role of the oracle of Limyra, advising kings and emperors on their worldly fate by interpreting the patterns occurring in wooden blocks thrown by the local high priest. Doing this, however, is a risky business, for predicting an unfortunate future will bring down the wrath of these powerful lords upon you. Therefore, the wisest soothsayers make sure to know what the king wants to hear, which helps them to find the right prediction in their mysterious stones. After all, who is to know?

Oraklos is a fast game, that can be played by 2-5 people in about 15 minutes or so. It's not a strategic game as such: winning depends on quick pattern recognition, which is something that can be learnt and enjoyed by both adults and children.

Availability of current program

Our 2001 releases again sold well. Planes and Trains, our Roads & Boats expansion, was all but sold out in Essen, as was our experimental game Beest.

We have sold more than half of our Ur, 1830 BC games, and a considerable number of Buses. Both games have been well-received. Bus had already been favorably reviewed by Counter Magazine, the Game Cabinet, the Poeppel Revue and Spielerei; although it has not yet been reviewed as much, we're mostly getting the same kind of positive press on Ur. We're proud that these games scored 3rd and 4th place, respectively, in Roman Pelek's authoritative Internet poll (in German) of best new Essen releases in 2001.

People keep asking us to re-release Roads & Boats. As we will have to sell 500-1000 copies to make this venture profitable, we are somewhat reluctant to produce this game again. Therefore, we will consider a third release of the game in 2003, provided that demand stays high as it seems to be now. Of course, we cannot guarantee anything! Planes and Trains will certainly not be reprinted before that time (but it is still available in some internet shops). We are not currently planning any further expansions to the game. We have however added some extra scenario's on our website in December -- if you have not discovered them yet, check them out! Note that the rest of the website will be revised this weekend to include prices of the new games etcetera.

A limited number of D'rafs is still available. We're not planning any re-releases of Kiek, Gossip! or Chameleo Chameleo. Web might or might not see a re-release in 2003.

Sales and shops

Producing games is a business of scale. You need to sell 1000 or more of each game to break-even, and even more to make something resembling a profit. And that is only if people are prepared to pay the high prices we're charging now. We would really like to bring those prices down to more áverage' levels.

Therefore, we're actively trying to increase the number of games we print -- but to do so, we need to reach more gamers, i.e., more shops. If any of you know of shops or internet/mail order companies that would be likely to carry our products, but currently do not yet do so, please let us know!

Of course, we will still provide you with games ourselves if you order them on our website. As always, we will ship these games four times a year, so please mind the dates indicated on the site to see when you should order! The next deadline (the last one before Essen) will be the 31st of August-if you order by then (and we have been able to process your payment before September 10th) we'll send the games in the third week of September. Note that our website will be updated over the weekend, so you cannot order any of the new games before that time!

Hope you are having fun playing our games,

The Splotter team

August 2001

In this edition:

New games nearing completion

Dear Splotter friends,

it looks as if a miracle is about to happen: we seem to be on track on our Splotter planning! In the last week of August, we're going to pack 3500 new Splotter games!

We've already announced the games, but we'll shortlist them once more, and give you an update on our policy regarding mail orders and Essen!

Policy regarding mail-orders and reservations for Essen

We take mailorders ONCE before Essen: we'll pack them in the first or second week of September. Any orders secured and paid before September 5th will be sent.

We will make sure to take along enough games to Essen, Germany, to serve everyone as best we can. Due to low stocks, however, we will probably have only about 30 Roads & Boats to take along. We do not think the other games will sell out too fast. In the past, we used a reservation system. However, this did not always work well as about 10-20% of reserved games were never picked up, which forced us to say no to people who should have gotten their games!

However, we do not want to force Splotter fans to use the expensive mail-order. You CAN still reserve games, provided you buy at least three games (for instance, all our new releases) and pay before October 1st. We'll then have your games packed and ready for you on Thursday morning at the Essen fair.

And, in case you haven't seen our website yet, here's a list of the games we've got on order:

Ur, 1830 BC

Ur, 1830 BC is our new large strategy game, set in ancient Mesopotamia. We've made 1500 copies this time to prevent being sold out so fast! Each player controls a dynasty and tries to carve out an empire for himself. Most land, however, is worthless. The trick is to buy the right land AND control the irrigation systems that will water it! which involves some pretty tricky strategic insight! A 3-4 hour game for 3-6 players.

Bus

This is a 1500 copy print run of Bus, a game about setting up a bus network in an ever expanding city. Players control the growth of the city and vie to be the first one to transport passengers from their work to the pub, facing difficult decisions constantly: Buy more buses! Expand the network! Ambush the competition! Drive that bus! A 3-4 hour game for 3-5 players.

Planes & Trains

An Planes & Trains for Road & Boats, featuring plains, dynamite and trains! Only playable if you own Roads & Boats.

Beest

Another new game, (225 copies) which is different from most of our other stuff - more abstract, I guess, and rather odd. We describe it as follows: Freezing cold reigns during the polar expedition. Your spit crackles, frozen, before hitting the ground. Still, chances of survival are higher outside than with your companions. For one of them is BEEST. You don't know who. But he is out to get you. So find out who to trust, before it is too late! Beest is a cardgame of deep thinking and pure guesswork. It freezes 3-5 players for about 45 minutes.

D'raf

We still have a limited number of German language D'rafs in stock from last year. The English version has been sold out, but we will make about 50 extra English copies in August from materials we still have lying around.

Roads & Boats

The German edition has been sold out, and there are only a few English copies left. We've been able to secure material for another 47 copies which we'll make during August. These are selling out quickly as well. We'll take some with us to Essen to be able to serve our customers there, but if you're quick, you may be able to buy one by mailorder before that time.

Current results of the Roads & Boats puzzle contest

The following Roads & Boats puzzle solvers are entitled to a free copy of Planes & Trains, if they are not beaten before Spiel 2001:
  • Bas de Bakker, for making five shares on 21 tiles;
  • Gary Brennan, for a very elegant 300 points' solution for "A River Runs Through It";
  • Hannes Ernst, for 420 points in "Sea for One";
  • Uwe Gemming, for 460 points on 10 tiles in the three shares' puzzle.
For the other puzzles, no solutions have been submitted or nobody has beaten Herman yet.

April 2001

In this edition:

Long time no see

We've not written any Splotter games news for quite a while now -- just been too busy sending games to everyone. Now, we're back in force. The website has just been rejuvenated, adding information on new games and some Roads & Boats puzzles. We'll try to put in pictures as soon as possible to keep you updated on our 2001 projects! Herman has also rewritten the HTML engine so that the site will switch to your preferred language whenever possible.

Splotter has gone through two major "legal" changes in the past year. First, we've become a BV (limited stock company), which feels very professional. Second, we've invited Jeroen Doumen to join Splotter. (Jeroen is a co-author of many of our games, including Roads & Boats and Bus.) Now, there are four official partners. We hope this will enable us to spread the workload a bit more evenly. You can find out more about us on our new website.

New mail order policy

To prevent the mail-order trauma of last year, we've limited shipment dates to four times a year. Running Splotter is a hobby, but sending out 2-3 games a day and continuously answering emails of anxious customers waiting for their game to come is no fun after three weeks of doing so. Please see the website for the new shipment policies.

Roads & Boats news

We were extremely glad to see that Roads & Boats got good reviews everywhere -- A questionnaire published at KMW's Spielplatz announced it the best new game of this year! This sparked off a long discussion on how we could publish more games at a lower price. We do not know if this is feasible. Most publishers we talked to seem to think it is not possible. We might try to aim for a 3000 print run in 2002, if we keep getting really good reviews and lots of orders from shops in the US, UK and Germany and elsewhere. With the present small print run, we cannot provide a retail price low enough for "normal" shops to buy our games.

We've been playing the Roads & Boats expansion Take Off & Tear Down. We introduced rules for dynamite, which was relatively easy. Aeroplanes were a bit more tricky, and we tried a lot of different rules with our excellent playtesting team. Developing good scenarios for use with this expansion set is a lot of work, as each scenario has to be playtested multiple times. We've currently got two good ones, and we're working on a third that involves railroads as well.

Our revamped website contains some new Roads & Boats puzzles, and a prize contest to boost! We will (promise promise) try to put up some multi-player scenarios in our next website update.

Program for Essen 2001

First, of course, we have to work on the 2001 program. It is always hard to predict which games will be published when. In our experience, games under development tend to have a speed of their own: sometimes things go real fast, at other times a good idea can lie around for years.

As our games seem to sell out in one year, no matter how many we make, we've decided to make two really large print runs. First, we'll make a new print run of Bus, which has had very favourable reviews everywhere. Producing a lot of Buses will make them cheap enough to offer discounts to retailers, so we hope we can finally be in some shops around the globe.

Our second large project, called "Ur, 1830 BC", is also on track. For those who do not know: this is a game based loosely on Francis Tresham's great 18XX series - but it's not about trains, it's about irrigation. There are not too many 1830 rules that are still in, though the feel of the game is distinctly 18XX.

Anyway, Francis Tresham advised us to change the name of the game, which we will probably do, keeping 1830 BC as a subtitle. We've already designed some of the pieces, which we will put on our website soon! By now, we're mainly tweaking some balance issues, playtesting in multiple sessions almost every weekend. We hope to finish the rules by the beginning of May. After that, it'll take some months to do the artwork and produce the game itself.

We're considering new print runs of Tetragons (which will be renamed Nineveh) and Web, which seem to have slowly become in demand over the past two years. Beest, our Lovecraftian game, is finished, although some of the artwork remains to be done. Bianca van Duijl will make the cover drawing. The game is pretty strange, short and abstract; some of our playtesters actually hated it. Lots of others however loved its strange feel, so we decided to make a limited print run and see how it goes.

2002 and beyond

We've also been working on another project that will probably not be finished for Essen 2001: After Bonaparte. Although the core of the game (building railroads; movement; restricted warfare) has been in place for about two years, we are struggling to get a strong diplomacy phase, and to balance the game. This game awaits a "growth spurt". it might be finished overnight, or it might take ages.

There are two other games we've been playing around with. One is about elections using a mixture of district and direct voting (tentatively called Bush vs. Gore); the other is about feudal dynasties and inheritance rules. And yes, we have also debated the feasibility of a Roads & Boats card game.

We still have to convince each other to design another really long and complex game. We reckon that given our current time constraints it will take five years or so to make a game comparable to Roads & Boats.

Hope you're all enjoying our games -- if there should be any trouble, send us an e-mail!

Kind regards,

Joris Wiersinga

September 2000

In this edition:

Spiel 2000, Essen

We are working hard to prepare everything for the Essen games fair in October. We plan to release new editions of Roads and Boats, Bus and D'r af. Two other projects (the Roads & Boats expansion and Beest) are near completion, but will not be finished before Essen.

You will be able to find us at the SPIEL fair between October 26th and 29th in hall 9, stand 9-94. Note that we are in a different location than last year. Moreover, we will not be sharing the stand this year with Cwali (Corne van Moorsel), as we decided that we are now big enough to warrant two separate stands.

Roads & Boats

There has been considerable delay in our production of Roads & Boats; the enormous amount of counters and other playing material leads to very high production costs, and most printers are reluctant to take on such an order in small quantities.

The different counter sets have been printed last week - they are being mounted on cardboard as you read this. Meanwhile, another cardboard factory is producing the boxes, which will measure a whooping 50x30 cm to fit all the stuff in! We hope to start assembling in the second weekend of October, so as to finish everything before Essen.

There have been quite a few enthusiastic reviews of Roads & Boats in German and English magazines and web sites. We found that most players outside of our group think the conflict rules are a bit complex, so we thought hard about a simpler version. We found a system that does not significantly alter the game, and introduced it into the new rules.

We will provide both English and German rules to the next edition. Michael Stubenrauch has enthusiastically translated our rules into German. Birgit Hugk and Torsten Hintz are now editing the last version, so as to ensure a perfect set of rules. Thanks!

This edition of Roads & Boats consists of 500 copies. We have reserved about 200 copies for those who expressed their interest in the game by signing up on our "interested party" list. If you are on our list, you will get another message today about how we are going to handle the reservations. If you do not get the second message but do want to secure a copy of Roads & Boats and/or Bus, please mail us.

It is still possible to sign up on our interested party list, or to order more copies. In any case, we will bring a minimum of 100 games to the Essen fair to be sold freely. We will not sell ANY games before the fair officially opens. In all fairness, 500 copies is a lot, and we do not expect to sell out the entire edition in one go. After all, the game will still cost DM 125,-

We are working on a small expansion set for Roads and Boats, called Take Off & Tear Down. This set will contain some of the rules that were scrapped to simplify the game: aeroplanes, which can carry stuff over unlimited distances, and dynamite, which can be used to blow up existing factories. However, this set will not be available at Spiel 2000 yet.

Bus

We'll also be publishing a new edition of D'raf! and Bus. Both games received very favorable comments from some critics (e.g. Steven O'Sullivan on his website http://www.io.com/ sos on D'raf!; Matthias Hardel in the Poeppel Revue and Ben Baldanza in Counter on Bus). Our limited production capacity however forces us to publish these games in a limited edition of 150 each.

D'raf!, a racing game in which the object is to drive off the table as fast as possible, will be restyled a little bit; it will no longer be packed in videoboxes; we have designed a real box into which all the pieces will actually fit! We've smoothened some of the rules a bit, but on the whole, the game remains unchanged.

Bus will look the same as the previous edition, except for the fact that Tamara has redesigned the action board and Herman has designed houses, offices and pubs; we've also added an optional five-player rule as some critics thought the game was too slow when playing with five (thanks Matthias, Alan and Bas!).

Beest

Beest is a game loosely based on a horror-setting. In practice, however, it is a rather abstract card-game with a very strange twist. It's a game people either love or hate, as it involves quite some planning and puzzling, a large random effect, but hardly any luck? that may sound strange, and it is! Beest will not be finished in Essen, though. We want to test it more thoroughly.

We'll save everything we have to tell on new projects for the next Splotter newsletter.

E-mail handling

To streamline the handling of e-mails a bit, we divided the tasks and introduced some new e-mail addresses to support this:
  • info@splotter.com for correspondence in English, French or Spanish.
  • info@splotter.de for correspondence in German;
  • info@splotter.nl for correspondence in Dutch;
Using the address corresponding to your language will help us to process your e-mails, orders and reservations efficiently. Please write your own language if it is listed!

Hope to see you all in Essen!

Tamara, Joris and Herman

April 2000

In this edition:

The Splotter team

When success comes, it never comes at the right time. Just as we've all exchanged our relaxed students' life to be full-time stressed-out yuppies, we start to really sell games... we’ve sold out every single game, except for a few Gossips. The bad news is that we do not have the time to produce more... the good news is that we do have the financial means to try some larger print runs, which is exactly what we will do. This year in Essen, we will probably have no new games, or perhaps one, but we will sell a large run of Roads and Boats and Bus.

Roads & Boats

We've not been very active in promoting Roads & Boats to "real" publishers, as we worry that a publisher will simplify the game considerably. We are now looking for ways to publish the game over the coming summer in an edition of about 500 copies.

One of our players, Michael Stubenrauch, kindly offered to make a German translation of the rules, which we are now editing. We've also found ways to replace the most cumbersome elements of the old game and put everything in one box. The glass plate will probably be changed into a sheet of rollable plastic, because the plates were hard to pack and easy to break.

We cannot promise anything as to the timing of the Roads & Boats production, but we hope the entire set will be finished by the end of our summer holidays. We will of course announce the news as soon as this happens. Anyone who is on our list will get first priority in ordering their copies. We will keep at least a hundred copies or so to sell at the Essen fair. Demand is quite high, especially after the very nice review we got in the Poeppel Revue.

For those of you who actually own a copy of the game already, the record for the two one-player scenarios has been improved: A River Runs Through It should yield 300 points, and Sea For One 330. Please mail us if you have a better solution!

Bus

Producing Bus is much easier than producing Roads and Boats, so we will not have any trouble getting 100 new buses riding this summer. The only thing we're still looking for is a cheap three-dimensional bus model to mark the starting player. As soon as we have this, we will start producing. The game will look quite similar to our previous edition, but Tamara will do some new artwork to improve the action board.

Counter magazine will write a review on Bus in one of the upcoming issues - we look forward to hearing their opinion of the game.

Other projects

Trying to publish both Bus and Roads and Boats ourselves is taking up most of our free time - all three of us have full-time jobs now... so we will probably not publish any other games in Essen.

Stuff we're working on includes:

  • After Bonaparte, a railroad war game
  • Beest, a simple card game based on a Lovecraftian theme
  • Dynasty, ("we're talking kings and successions")
  • An irrigation game, called, tentatively, "1830 BC", which will use some of the 1830 railroad game mechanisms; although we have some nice ideas for this game, we will have to find out about copyright rules before we really start to work on it.

The only one of these that might be available in Essen is Beest. As we told you in an earlier mail, we will also publish an expansion set for Roads & Boats, if all goes well. We will however be in Goettingen at the Spieleautorentreffen on June 17th-18th.

Bye for now,

Joris, Herman, Tamara

November 1999

Dear gamester,

First, let us apologize to our Dutch and German speaking subscribers. When we started Splotter Spellen, we decided to do everything in three languages: Dutch, English and German. Since then, Splotter activity increased and we got full-time "normal" jobs as well. Much to our regret we must conclude that we do not have the time to translate everything twice anymore. We will still keep trying to respect our customers' language preferences as well as we can, especially for the game rules. However, we hope that you will allow us to provide news letters and other rapidly changing information in English only.

Of course you can still correspond with us in Dutch, English, French, German and Spanish. Using other languages than those just mentioned might cause some delay, depending on the linguistic distance to the languages mentioned above...

Essen fair

We were more than succesful at the Essen fair; our Roads & Boats games were all sold out at 10 a.m. the first day; Bus, and most of our other games, were sold out as well by Friday morning. Of course, we had only 30 copies of most of these games... We were glad to see that all of those who tried Roads & Boats really liked it. Bus was also much admired, even by those who did not play it: they really liked the graphic design. Check out Mike Svellov's homepage for pictures of us and our games in Essen! Also, we had publishers coming to our stand instead of the other way around!

Roads & Boats assembly and distribution problems

As we assembled the Roads & Boats boxes much too late and very hectically, we made some (well, quite a lot) of mistakes. If there's anyone out there who has bought the game but is still missing pieces, please inform us so we can send them to you. We sent all registered missing pieces by mail last weekend so they should arrive shortly.

All Roads & Boats that were mail-ordered and paid for have now been re-checked (which took us quite a while, sorry!). Unfortunately another unexpected problem occurred: we cannot find boxes big enough to fit the plexiglass plates... Next weekend we will take cardboard, knife and tape and work out something, somehow, so the games will be delivered at the post office next Monday.

Roads & Boats and Bus: the future

We've made a list of about 60 Roads & Boats orders. We are trying to make the game available to you as soon as possible in a decent print run. This will be quite hard and a bit risky, however. As we have had some interest for both Roads & Boats and Bus from publishers who are currently reviewing the games, we decided to await their decision before rushing into the publishing business ourselves. If we do not get an offer within a reasonable time-span, we will publish Roads & Boats, and maybe Bus, ourselves. Waiting for publishers, however, does mean that we won't have the next run in February/March. It will be finished considerably later, if we decide to do it ourselves. We hope you will bear with us!

Spöl

We've made a very simple card game for the city of Enschede. The game, which is in Dutch, will be published around Christmas. It will be distributed amongst all citizens of Enschede. This is our largest print ever (60.000 copies) and we are glad to say that the cards are looking fabulously, thanks to the graphic design of Caroline de Lint and the photography of Aninna Romita. As the game should appeal to all citizens of Enschede, not just to gamers, it is quite simple, but still nice. Anyway, we are very proud we finally made some money producing games!

Current research

In view of the fact that all three of us now have full-time (or worse) jobs we will tune down the amount of different games we will produce each year. Instead of making 30 copies each of many different games we will try to make about 500 copies of one game each year, hoping we can sell those as well... This, alas, forces us to choose between different ideas which we all like.

The project we've worked most on lately is a game called Àfter Bonaparte'. This game will take about three-four hours (we hope - right now it takes about seven...) and is being developed by Ragnar Krempel and Joris Wiersinga. It is basically a railroad game, but in this one, the railroads function to move armies and military resources all over Europe. So, there is a strong military aspect as well. The twist is that the wars are forced upon you by the diplomats - that is, you sometimes have to fight against countries you'd rather be allied with, and vice versa. We will keep you posted as this project develops.

Another game that is already finished (as far as developing the rules is concerned) is Beest, a short (15 minutes) very tactical card-game set in a Lovecraftian scenery. Whilst being on an expedition to the South pole, the players encounter a horrible beast (beest in Dutch). One of them is taken out by this horrible creature and starts devouring the others. The trouble is that it is impossible to see which players are still human, and which are being controlled by the Beest. At the end of the game, you score points for being a human survivor, or, if you did not survive, for all those you helped killing... quite a morbid game, I should say. We must confess that we had mixed reactions to this one. Some of our playtesters loved it, others hated it, mostly because you have to think very, very hard about what you're doing. Beest was developed by Jeroen Doumen, Herman Haverkort, Corné van Moorsel, Joris Wiersinga and an empty pack of orange juice; you can play without most of the authors, except the last one...

Finally, some crazy person suggested expansion sets for Roads & Boats. We'll certainly make some extra scenario's during the year. There's also some ideas as to making an expansion set 'Demolition Teams'. (They used to be in the original game but were thrown out as we found they were too dangerous in most scenario's). The other possibility is including Áirports'. On the other hand, the game is complex enough as it is. We'll keep you posted.

Bye for now,

Joris, Herman, Tamara

September 1999

Website Update

Obviously, we added this news page. We also added some pictures to our website so that you can all see how nice our games look! We will add pictures of Web and Roads and Boats too (and maybe a better one of Tetragons), as soon as we get round to doing so.

Soon, we will be adding an out of stock page as some games will go (permanently) out of stock.

New Games at the Essen Fair '99

At Spiel in Essen we will present three new games: Roads & Boats, Kiek and Bus. We will also sell some of our older games. Our stand no. will be 1041. Visit us there!

Our new games will no longer be sold in videoboxes... sadly, we had to conclude that this very practical and non-too-expensive way of publishing games led to confusion amongst the public: some thought we sold computer games, others believed that games in bigger boxes were probably better than ours... So, we will pack our new games in very nice, big cardboard boxes. The good news is that now, the gaming pieces might actually fit into the box. Except, perhaps, those of Roads & Boats...

Roads & Boats

A number of game-sites recently linked to our Roads & Boats website, which led to a flood of emails and orders... we decided to make some more Roads & Boats sets, but as this takes a lot of time we are not sure when we will be able to finish them. As I am writing, we can still take some reservations, but not many - we still want to have at least some Roads & Boats at the Essen games fair!

All the pieces of the game have been cut, and we are now working on a booklet with scenario's. We are hoping to include at least 10 scenario's. Each game takes about 4 hours, so it takes lots of time to test all these scenario's thoroughly. Not a bad way to spend your time, though...

Herman just finished the cover of Roads & Boats (using Tamara's drawings); the boxes will arrive in two to three weeks time, so that our first (30-piece) edition will (hopefully) be ready by the end of the month. The official date, of course, is still October 21st.

More information about Roads & Boats is on the Roads & Boats.

Kiek

Kiek (pronounce: keek) is a Dutch colloquialism for photos - which will be about the only playing material in this new game. Yes, we will give this game a webpage as soon as it is finished - Joris still has to shoot some more pictures.

While Roads & Boats and Bus are very complex games that take hours to play, Kiek is very easy to learn and quick to play. The object is to be as predictable as possible - which is hard, as the rules force you to be original. Sounds mysterious, doesn't it? Basically, Kiek is a guessing game with a few twists in the rules that makes it more interesting to gamers - well, at least to those in my gaming circle... Kiek is a game to be played in large groups (5-8 players would be ideal).

It will be available in October, or earlier if Joris finds the patience to spend a weekend (or more) in a darkroom to print all the pictures.

Bus

Bus is our newest game. It has been developed over the past year-and-a-half by Jeroen Doumen and the Splotter team. Bus is about developing a bus system in an ever expanding city. Three kinds of buildings are being built in this city: houses, offices and bars. The citizens spend their time travelling from their home to their work to the bar and back home again. Sounds like a boring life? Perhaps. But the game is great!

You, as a player, don't have to bother about travelling yourself. The object is to build a bus system that earns you a lot of money. You can do this by buying more buses, expanding your lines, or making sure your bus rides before any other busses do - that will allow you to take away other people's passengers. But you can also decide to build new houses, offices and bars at strategic locations - or to attract more people to the city so that you can earn more. If other players do not lure them away... And then, there is a crazy twist: this is our first game to contain a mad scientist. He has discovered a machine that can stop the time - which really hurts most bus companies, but perhaps not all...

Bus is played on a large map which will be a great delight for experienced gamers (you'll see why!). Each turn, players decide which actions to take by using two or more of their action tokens - of which they have 20 to spend as they please during the game. Timing is all-important, so the game is all about interaction - guessing, or, if you're clever, foreseeing what the other companies are going to do. There is no luck involved. The game takes about 2.5-3 hours. It can be played with 3-5 players. I like it best with 3 players, but some playtesters preferred 5, so that seems to be a matter of taste.

As soon as the map and the cover drawing (by Tamara) are finished we will put this game on its own page.

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As from now, we will be mailing the latest Splotter news to everyone who is interested at least four times a year. If you want to subscribe to our mailing list, please submit the form below.
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