In my last column, The Games of Stefan Feld, Part 1, I talked about the originality underlying Stefan Feld's designs, highlighting four of his publications from 2005-2007. This time around I'm going to look at his more recent fare, from 2008-2010, and again discuss what I think makes them really stand out as innovative and original designs.
In this article, I'm going to be covering Stefan's four most prominent designs from the period. If you'd like to talk about a game that I left out from 2008-2010, I invite you to make use of the comments, below.
New Feld: 2008-2010
The Name of the Rose (2008). Because of Feld's amazing record with alea, every time I play one of his games from another publisher, I wonder, "Was this originally intended for alea?" This one certainly has the right depth, and there aren't any alea games like it, so who knows. In any case, in The Name of The Rose, you're trying to catch a murderer. Actions you take over the course of the game increase or decrease the evidence against one of the monks. The trick is, you're secretly one of the monks. At the end of the game, everyone tries to guess who everyone is. Correct guesses increase evidence and then the the secret player of the monk with the least evidence against them wins.
It's a little convoluted, so let me say, whew! Read more »