by ode.
Written by Thorsten Hanson
The Game Builders
Let me take you on the journey that lead me to become a board game publisher.
How did it all start? With two guys who want to “build” board games! Often, when ode. and I sat around the table and playtested prototypes, such as his La Granja, we joked about starting our own development studio for creating board games.
Then in 2020, Covid not only changed our lives in general; there was also a lot of change for me and ode. personally. We had to make a decision about our futures and found it the right moment to start The Game Builders. Our idea was to realize challenging and exciting board games similar to how we ourselves like board games. Piece of cake? For sure it wasn’t…
In 2021, we had some promising prototypes, but we knew they would need more time to be developed. We decided to start with a game that wasn’t as complex as, say, Cooper Island, so we asked our friend Uwe Rosenberg whether he could help us — and he did!
The Designer
Uwe has been a friend of ours for quite some time now. I remember playtesting designs of his such as Caverna, and he mentored me a lot in my own efforts to create board games. In the autumn of 2021, we visited Uwe in his hometown of Gütersloh and asked for his help. That was the first time we saw Applejack.
This design fits perfectly in his series of tile-laying games that started with Patchwork — it isn’t too complex, but it has much to offer even for an expert gamer. Easy to learn, hard to master!
Notably Applejack is the first of Uwe’s tile-laying games in which the tiles have a hexagonal shape. Uwe had developed Applejack to such a state that very little editorial work remained to be done. Even the name already existed. It was amazing to see. Without hesitation ode. and I decided: Let’s try to release Applejack at SPIEL ’22!
The Theme
Aside from playtesting and making some minor changes to the rules, we had to think about the theme of Applejack. Uwe had already introduced the apples to the game, so it was obvious to go further in this direction. A wide orchard came to mind, one in which you plant apple trees.
Then there were the numbers on the tiles. In Applejack it is your goal to bring apples of the same variety on connected tiles together, while at the same time connecting the numbers when placing a tile. Also, the number on a tile is the “prize” when you are taking it. At this point we had the idea to bring honey into the game. After all, you need bees to pollinate the blossoms to get apples in the end, so why not put the numbers in beehives and make honey the currency in the game? So we did.
By popular request (of the designer), we included some sheep, which you can see on the backside of the tree tiles. It is still an Uwe game, you know…
The Art
We had a theme, but were in desperate need for illustrations! Fortunately, Uwe recommended Lukas Siegmon, an artist who previously already illustrated a couple of games by Uwe: Hallertau and Nova Luna.
We contacted Lukas, and luckily he had the time to do the job — and what a great job he did! We told him our general idea of how Applejack should look, and he fleshed this out and made a lot of great proposals on his own. Sure, he and Uwe had some intense discussions about the shapes of the apples, but that is part of the team effort!
In the end, the art of Applejack fits great with the theme we intended for the game. In my opinion you see this best on the cover, which provides a kind of summer-like atmosphere and makes me feel good every time I look at it. Applejack, who is represented by a die in the game, comes to life on the cover illustration, along with his daughter, of course!
By the way, she hasn’t had a name to this point, so I am naming her Alma. This is the Kazakh word for apple, and there in Kazakhstan humans supposedly cultivated the apple for the first time a few thousand years ago…
Thorsten Hanson, October 2022
Let’s call her Alma…
