Aldebaran Games: A New Publisher in Chile

January 2007 saw the birth of a new game company in Santiago, Chile—Aldebaran Games. Says Juan José Fernández, project manager and one of the editors, “Tired of seeing in the shelves only classic and bad games (I don’t want to name them, but you all know what I’m talking about) we started to create new Euro-style games. We started selling our games in a few stores last month with great results. Now we have four games for sale and soon there will be five.” Here are short descriptions of the first handful of titles from Aldebaran Games:

• Tyranos: A climbing card game based on President/Bum/Asshole. “The great addition to this game is the inclusion of limitations or special powers to cards and a new distribution of them,” says Fernández. “So you have the Tyrano, the best card of your hand, and you can play it like a joker. The Dragon, the second of the social pyramid, can only be played alone.  The Chamico, the worst card of the game, allows you to discard another card when it’s played. It’s a fun game you all know, but here in Chile it’s not widely known.”
  

• Faunos: A simple set collection game for children, with a prehistorical theme. Says Fernández, “We are working now for a more challenging variant for adults.”

• Linaje: A card game in which you need to discard your hand to win the round. Fernández offers this description: There are different warriors with different forces, and the better the warrior, the more dots on the top of the card. To play a card, you must match one of the characters on the side of the card recently played and beat it. At the end of a round, players who haven’t discarded their cards score negative points equal to their warriors’ strengths, so great warriors give you a ton of negative points.

  The three titles above form the Trilogía del Destino, and taken together this trilogy of games can be used to play a fourth game, the rules of which will be available in Spanish on the Aldebaran website. “It has no name for now,” says Fernández. “I think we are going to do a contest to solve that problem.”

• Chupacabras: A local version of assassin/werewolf in a matchbox-sized case.
  

• Subete al Troncal: A parody of the local transport system in Chile, which Fernández calls “our best shot I think. The Transantiago, our new transport system, is a mess, and the popularity chart of the government fell down for that a lot.”

  In this game for 3-6 players, players hold cards of people who want to travel across the city by bus or subway. Every passenger pays a different amount of money (e.g., kids pay less), but because the service is so bad, almost all of them are very unhappy. Each round, players must chose one of the passenger cards in hand and place them in one of the three transportations available. Once the capacity (11, 13 or 17) is exceeded, the player must take every passenger on board and place them in front of him. Some special passengers, such as thieves, clowns and police, affect the other ones At the end of the game, the player with the most unhappiness is automatically eliminated; the remaining players count up their money, and the richest player wins.

Fernández says that Aldebaran titles are currently carried in only five stores in Chile, but they’ll be available in more locations soon, in addition to an online store. English rules for Subete al Troncal are also on the way, which will allow more people to enjoy some Margaret Keane-styled fun.

---

Comments:

You must register with BGN in order to comment. Registration is free, but if you appreciate the news, previews, reviews and other material posted on Boardgame News, please consider becoming a member to keep the info flowing to your screen!

It’s great to see gaming expand into yet another corner of the world.  Good luck to senor Fernández and the rest of the Aldebaran Games crew! Posted by Larry Levy on Nov 22, 2007 at 12:04 PM | #

JJ, buena suerte en este emprendimiento. No lo conocía. Posted by Mario Aguila on Nov 23, 2007 at 05:14 PM | #

< Back Home