(Mary) JM, congratulations on winning 2 Toy of the Year Awards in the Netherlands! Can you tell us a little about the games?

Thank you! The team is extremely happy and proud on winning these prestigious awards.

The first game is called Medical Mysteries. It’s a choose your own, story driven, adventure game. The players are all doctors, a patient with mysterious symptoms is brought in at midnight and the players must make sure the patient survives the night.

It’s medically accurate but you need no medical background whatsoever to play. One of the coolest things about the game is you really have to make choices on what to do, there are so many story lines and so many outcomes. You’re basically participating in an episode of House or Grey’s Anatomy.

Identity Games developed this game with Nicolas and Rebecca from Blue Matters, it might just be the coolest game we’ve ever made!

And the second game?

The second game is called Battle Royal. This game was developed internally. We were triggered by the Last one standing trend that’s been around for quit some time with video games and shows such as Fortnite, Squid Game and Call of Duty. We started brainstorming on how we could put the Fortnite experience in a board game. We really wanted the game to start with 100 figurines and have explosions make the board smaller and smaller. When we figured it out and saw kids play with it, we knew we had something special!

We saw that the game has different names in different countries, why is that?

There can be different reasons for this. Sometimes the name or the pun is lost in translation. I know for instance Who’s the Dude has a different name in just about every single country. We once had a Who’s the Dude convention (yes, you heard me right) where we invited all our partners to share their marketing plans for the game. I remember all the companies translating their name and explain why it was funny in their country.

In the case of Battle Royale it was due to copyright. The name Battle Royale could not be registered in the US, so Buffalo Games chose Hold Your Ground, a Battle Royale game.

The artwork is also different.

Correct, for Battle Royale we actually have 3 different artworks. In Germany, for instance, they start playing strategic games at an earlier age then the Netherlands. So, their artwork must appeal to a younger audience. The US went a different way altogether with a sports theme that spoke more to their audience.

I always love seeing what our different partners from around the world do to make the game their own. I have a display in my office with the wildest ones.

What would be the wildest one?

Definitely the Japanese Boom Boom Balloon!