JESS: Made In Spain Games (III)

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JESS: Made In Spain Games (III)

Some worldwide well known European, Asian and American boardgames are published in Spain, by different companies, in Spanish editions – and if not, hard core gamers can buy all kinds of games directly from other countries on the Internet.

But here we also have a couple of… Made In Spain Games (Part III)

Let’s take a look over the more important Spanish games of the day. You never know, you might find a game you’ll fall in love with…

Part I: Made In Spain Games (I)
Part II: Made In Spain Games (II)

There are more Spanish games – and many authors waiting for their opportunities, but I think for now the most commercially important are here. Don’t be doubtful, if you like one of them, get it. There is some good fun to be had with them. When new games are published here, you will find out about them from these Spanish Gaming Tales.

- Table - Moto GP , published by Games for Table Races S.L. (2005).
Nowadays, motorcycling as a sport has become very popular in Spain (although, it’s not quite my thing) – over the last few years, many Spanish drivers have been world champions in different categories. Everything associated with motorbikes is therefore selling well. So, with a publicity campaign (and expensive signed-by-moto-driver games on e-bay), this game hit the toy-shops just before last X-mas. It was on sale in large important stores in every city of Spain.
It has a big and very heavy box, mainly because it has six different boards with six different circuits on thick cardboard. It also has cards, dice, scoring blocks, painted miniatures of motobikes (to play with) and places for cheering crowds, a control tower and boxes (just for decoration).
The game is a race game (surprise!). Dice and cards are used to run and carry out the requirements of the space where your motorbikes reaches. The scoring system, the painted miniature teams, and everything in the game tries to recreate a Moto-GP Grand Prix . Each player controls a team of riders, and you must advance with all of them (you can be eliminated from the game if your last rider is lapped). There are cards for fuel, engine break-downs, pitstops… Each race consists of a total of 3 laps and depending on the number of players - from 2 to 11 -, the game lasts between one and two hours. Running, and running, until the checkered flag comes down.
There are many good racing games (I love Wolfgang Kramer’s Formel 1 – another game close to my heart from my own personal gaming history), and I think this game only has a place where most of these games are unknown – or if you really want specifically a motorcycling game. It is a game for general consumers. And I would like to know how well (or not) it sold last X-mas. I wonder…
I don’t know the real name of the author (he is not accredited on the game), but I know he exists because he wrote about his game a couple of times on some Spanish game discussion pages (tablemotogp is his pseudonym in the BSK). In the real world, he is the co-owner of a little 125 cc motorcycle team - he’s a real motorcycling sport fanatic!. He also promised more advanced rules in the future.

The game is “the official game of the Moto GP Championship�, and it really isn’t cheap (I must say here that part of the money, around 2%, goes to the Riders for Health non-governmental organization). Spain has been the first country in which the game has been released, but it is supposed to be being distributed in many countries around the world – The author said thousands of games have already been sold in the USA, Italy and the UK on the Internet. You can visit the official website, with an English version of the rules.

- Ã?gora Barcelona, by Jep Ferret & Oriol Comas, published by Bravander and Ayuntamiento de Barcelona.
I have already written about this game, as it had a Special Mention at the JdA 2006 Game of the Year in Spain. It’s one of the most German-style games in this list, surely because its authors were looking to do exactly that. The same authors are also responsible of Las Baldosas de Gaudí (CASA Consultors i Arquitectes, 2002), a very interesting abstract game using the genial Gaudi’s hexagonal tile design (as you can see in some streets of Barcelona or Córdoba). Playing Las Baldosas de Gaudí, you try to complete figures of your animal goal or your colour goal. In each hexagonal tile there is a third part of the three animals (a medusa, a starfish and a seashell), in different colour combinations (blue, green, orange). When you put a tile on the table, it must fit in with tiles already played. Every time you complete an animal in your turn, you win one point if it is one of your goals, putting a colour marker on top.

�gora Barcelona is for 3 to 5 players, and Las Baldosas de Gaudí for 2 to 6 players. The first is an introductory majority game, good for the right audience. The second is a good abstract tile-laying game, and I enjoyed it (I like Gaudi, and this helps)
These two games were published mainly for tourists in Barcelona - but the results are real games in both cases. How many horrible “games� have I seen published by different institutions in similar situations!
Both games are completely language independent, and they come with multi-language rules.

Oriol Comas i Coma is a relevant figure on the Spanish gaming scene, working with and around gaming for many years. He has talked about games on the radio, in newspapers, with regional government…

He also is the man behind another important game: Terra, by Bruno Faidutti (Days of Wonder, Forum de Barcelona & UNESCO, 2003) – I like this one a lot, and iIt’s another game which was an institutional order in the beginning.
In 2004, the International Forum of Cultures was organized in Barcelona. Oriol was working in charge of Sports and Games, and he wanted a game, a real boardgame, to be the official game of the Forum. The game needed to fulfil the requirements that the Forum wanted (peace, culture, integration, diversity…). So, Oriol thought of the international game author most famous for his peaceful, non-chaotic and politically-correct games, that is, Bruno Faidutti… or isn’t it?
Oriol tried to convince Bruno of this idea (peaceful game?), but it was difficult (peaceful game, sure?). He decided to do it in person, going to Paris and finding monsieur Faidutti there. When Oriol talked to Bruno about this, Bruno didn’t want to do it – He didn’t like orders, and he didn’t like peaceful games. Oriol could be insistent (a game for the UNESCO is a good objective, even if it is a peaceful one), and finally Bruno designed the Terra card game. Days of Wonder published this official Forum 2004 game (As a DoW game, it is well known and I am not going to write about it… But I must say it is, in fact, a peaceful game, with a touch of funny discussion). Well done!

And Oriol must be really insistent, because over the last few years he has became a regular participant of the Rencontres Ludopathiques - you can find him on pictures and recognize him because of his shiny bald head and loud shirts.
Because of his connexions with the French gaming world, maybe Oriol’s new games will be published there, not by Spanish companies. This could mean an international launching for Oriol. You can read about him and his games activities on his personal web (The full version is only in Catalan language).

Note for Spanish readers!: Don’t miss “El mundo en juegos�, a book by Oriol (RBA, 2005), in Spanish and also in a Catalan edition (maybe there will be a future review about it - Do you know another book on sale in bookshops which tells you about Catan, Villa Paletti, or Puerto Rico?)

- ¿Quién tiene mi corona?, based on Rapidcroco, by Roberto Fraga, published by Educa.
(I am not going usually to writte about traditional-kind-of children games, but this is a special case)
Rapidcroco (Cocktail Games, 2004) is a funny game with funny artwork, and in a beautiful little tin box (Cocktail Games has produced a funny series of games in that tin boxes).. In Rapidcroco, the cards are placed in rows on the table. On each card there is a hippopotamus or a crocodile pointing to another card with his/her finger. I say his/her because you can see male and female crocs, with hats or without, green or blue, with glasses or not. These are the attributes. Then, some attribute cards are turned up. You must search for the only croc on the cards which has these attributes, and follow his or her finger, from croc to croc until you reach outside the table or reach a hippo. Depending on what happens and what the hippo says, the objective croc card will be found. The first person who solves this puzzle, wins one point. It’s a game about pattern-recognition and speed. It is fun to play, as you can imagine for a game coming from Roberto Fraga – a favourite game author to always be on your radar.

Educa is a traditional Spanish game company. Some years ago, they came across Rapidcroco at the International Fair of Games and Toys in Cannes (a city with festival after festival). They wanted the game, but… only for children. The game was re-modelled and simplified, and the result is ¿Quién tiene mi corona?.
The cards have disappeared (now there is a modular board), there are dice, there are little aid-boards for each player, some rules have been broken, and actually we have a childrens game – and this time I mean only for children, really. The components of the game are good and it could be a great children’s game, but the presentation is awful: the rules are poor, the box is too big and it is empty, there isn’t anywhere to store the game components. Not the best way to protect (and not lose) game components.
Even worse, as usual in traditional companies, the name of the game author or the re-designers is not on the front of the box, and you can only find a small-font-written reference on the back of the box: based on a design by Roberto Fraga. It’s a pity, but they haven’t yet discovered that games are changing.

To be continued… (surely)

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