Following are all games from the game author Friedemann Friese listed, inclusive the titles that were published from other companies besides 2F-Spiele.
“My first self-published game. I misunderstood the rules for “Römer” (Author Rudolf Ross) and did think this was a game mainly about using two sides of cards. So I thought about possible ways to use both sides of the cards. I came up with the idea to build houses with the back of the cards and use the front for all the other stuff. If was invented as a gift for friends of mine.”
(“Wucherer was published in 1992 by 2F-Spiele. The game is out of print. A licensed edition of “Wucherer“ was distributed by Abacus and an English edition titled “Landlords“ was distributed by Rio Grande Games until 2007. Both versions are also out of print.)
“Published in the same year as “Wucherer”. It was the first game idea I had by thinking about the original version of the game “Flagge zeigen”. It is just a small 2-player abstract game, produced in a homemade edition of 200 copies.”
(“Dimension” was published in 1992 by 2F-Spiele. The game is out of print.)
“It was a game for the company of my girlfriend´s mother. I really cannot remember how this was really invented.”
(“Flagge zeigen” was published in 1993 by Märker GmbH. The game is out of print.)
Paparazzo
“After I published “Wucherer”, which was a big success,
I thought about a game where aliens grab all the persons on a G7 meeting
and separating them between each other. I wanted to produce it by myself
in 1993, but the game stuck. I met Wolfgang Panning and he had so many
good ideas for that game that we decided to work together on the project.
So I published only the “Wucherer” expansion in 1993.”
(“Paparazzo” was published in 1994
by Abacus. The game is out of print.)
“In 1994 I just wanted to make a big production with good material in a "real" box. I had this game about counterfeit money, an economical game, where my idea was to make a game with different currencies. So I thought it was a good idea to work with counterfeit money and eliminating more and more money during the game.”
“The game production was a mess. I just wanted to make a game looking like other game companies games without any knowledge how to manage this.”
“We got in a time problem to produce the game for Essen 1994, so I had to decide what to do and I decided that the box will be the last thing to work on it. We had about 15 minutes left to draw the box graphics. And the game made it to the show just in time.”
( “Falsche Fuffziger” was published in 1994 by 2F-Spiele. Very few copies are still left to buy.)
“I was thinking about trick taking games that time (and a lot of other authors did this in the year, too). I was abstracting game structures and got the idea to skip out one player each turn. With this structure I thought the game would be better with more players, because you play it thinking in structure with one person less. One idea only and the game was there. I was really convinced that this will be a great success, because all my game testers loved it, but it was the year of “Sticheln” and “Foppen” is not as good as “Sticheln”.”
(”Foppen” was published in 1995 by 2F-Spiele. The game is out of print.)
“After “Foppen” I was disappointed about not having the success I wanted to have. And I decided to make this game in a smaller edition, because there were so many copies left of “Falsche FuFFziger” and “Foppen”.”
“The idea came up when I drove with my bike through my city and stood in front of a building where my used shortcut originally was. There was the idea of building a city where the connections get worse with each building built.”
(“Frischfisch” was published in 1997 by 2F-Spiele. The game is out of print.)
“t was the time of CCGs and I was not happy about the fact, that all complex card games came up as a CCG. If you want to try this kind of game you have to spend at least 100 DM without knowing if it is your cup of tea. I thought how to get rid of this problem and made a game where up to 4 players can play the game to test it for a low price and then - if they like it - can buy more cards for this game. Of course I wanted to get rich with this, too. And like often theory and reality are different. The players hating CCGs didn´t like the collecting aspect and for the players of CCGs the game had not enough cards and they are not the right customers for economical games, too.”
(“Friesematenten” was published in 1998 by 2F-Spiele. The game is out of print.)
“I heard that Papua had problems with the public because it was a game about cannibalism and I thought "no that is not a game about cannibalism", there must be another solution for that theme. But I did not want to make a fast little filler where you eat up each other. Then there was the idea of crashing with an airplane in a desert with not enough to eat for all the survivors. I instantly saw the fine dilemma in this situation.”
(“Frischfleisch” was published in 1999 by 2F-Spiele. The game is out of print.)
“In this year I wanted to produce “Finstere Flure” but I was not happy about this in that moment, but the Essen fair was near to open again. So I looked in my big box of old and not yet ready ideas and I found this old game. I tested it again and yes, I wanted to produce this game. It was an old idea of making a quick puzzling game and I decided to make this “Cheapass like” production.”
(Flickwerk was published in 2000 by 2F-Spiele. The game is out of print.
The game was republished titled “Turbo Taxi” in 2005 by Queen Games.)
“Always loving crayon games where you build tracks for railways, I was thinking about a crayon game which was not set in the world of rail building. The idea of using power lines was near. The fact that you have one good (power) that can be produced with different resources was another good idea. Still having a lot of “Foppen” and “Falsche FuFFziger” left, I was not ready to produce this in a big production, so I decided to make this not so well production again, which was still possible for me to produce.”
(Funkenschlag (Version 2001)” was published in 2001 by 2F-Spiele. The game is out of print.)
“In 2001 my multimedia company crashed as so many multimedia companies did. I stood there having almost nothing and wanted to make “Fische Fluppen Frikadellen” again as a small production like “FrischFisch”, just to get my production money back quick. But friends of mine convinced me to make a professional production and to risk it. With my knowledge in producing game by now, it was a better production as “Falsche FuFFziger” was back in 1994. This game was the game that made it possible for me to earn enough money with my game company for living.”
“The idea for “Fische Fluppen Frikadellen” was to make a game to be played on more than one table and to let gamers change between the tables. I had to think about how to make this idea possible, because if you leave a table you must have all personally relevant game material with yourself and still must leave something on the former table for other players when you leave. There were two ideas: 1. To be an adventurer who explores the world. 2.To be a trader.”
“So I found the better game for the second idea and worked on that and lucky me: it was a success.”
(“Fische Fluppen Frikadellen” was published in 2002 by 2F-Spiele.)
“The game “Fundstücke” was in the main part a mechanical idea, where you choose a card and the higher the value of the card is, the more you get, but the lower the value of the card is, the earlier you can pick. So it has to be a game where you have a pool of material of different value and the players have to decide to get a few very good things or a lot not so good things. Then the theme came up where there is trash on the street and you are the fastest person if you only walk to that place but you cannot carry many things. If you organize a car or something else you are slower and get only what is left.
Taking the risk with “Fische Fluppen Frikadellen” there was no money left to produce “Fundstücke” in a big production. Maren Rache asked me to produce this game the way it is produced now with only 130 copies.”
(“Fundstücke” was published in 2002 by 2F-Spiele. The game is out of print.)
Finstere Flure
“The idea of “Finstere Flure” was very old. It was a
gift for a friend of mine (He has the first prototype). It was a game
about being on a dance floor and wanting to reach the bar, but in the
middle of the dance floor a friend is waiting to pogo with everyone he
will see. So you have to avoid him to get to the bar.”
“While working again on this game the idea with the letters around
the board was born and now the game was ready for production.”
(“Finstere Flure was published in 2003 by 2F-Spiele.
An English edition titled “Fearsome Floors” is distributed
by Rio Grande Games)
“There was the idea about working on a game about games just for geeks. I talked about the idea with Andrea Meyer and because she is a geek, too, she wanted to make this game with me. While working on it other geeks joined the project and we worked in some kind of strange combination on it. I never had contact to some of the other authors while inventing the game and never played all of the rules that are in the game. Because it is for geeks we wanted to make a small production and I had to design all the cards, because there were these old not very well used graphics. Maura did these tiny little gaming pieces interacting with each other for a game cafe in Bremen and I was allowed to use them for the game.”
(“Ludoviel was published in 2003 by BeWitched and the Tagungshaus Drübberholz. The game is out of print.)
“I do not know when but years ago I visited Andrea Meyer with the aim: Today we invent a game together. We discussed what kind of games we like and agreed that we both wanted to make a deduction game. And after a few hours we had a deduction game. We worked a while on that game and sent it to a company. Years later I got back the prototype with a note that they did not want to publish it. I just had forgotten this project and looked at it again. I noticed, that this game was much better when you were not allowed to write down notices and tested it again. Telling this Andrea we were searching for a good theme and we found out this theme that really works well with the game.”
(“Schwarzarbeit” was published in 2003 by BeWitched.)
“The original version of “Funkenschlag” was sold out and a lot of people were interested in a reprint. After “Fische Fluppen Frikadellen” I was completely sure about one fact: I did not want to make these poor productions any more. Then another game company showed interest in that game, but they did not like the crayoning aspect. The problem was that this was the main aspect in inventing the game. But after a short time I decided to think about cutting out the crayons and it worked very well. The game was too long so I had to work on the game length and it worked, too. At this point the contact to Rio Grande Games already existed and it was clear that they wanted to do an US-version. So I decided to produce the game in my company together with Rio Grande Games and it was a good idea.”
(“Funkenschlag (2004)” was published in 2004 by 2F-Spiele.
An English edition titled “Powergrid” is distributed by Rio Grande Games.
A Polish edition titled “Wysokie Napiecie” is distributed by Lacerta.
A Czech/Slovakian version titled „Vysoké Napetí“ is distributed by Albi.
An Italian edition titled „Alta Tensione“ is distributed by Stratelibri.
A Korean edition is distributed by KoreaBoardGames.
A Spanish edition called „Alta Tension“ is distributed by Edge.
A French version titled „Mégawatts“ is distributed by Filosofia.
A Chinese edition is distributed by Swan Panasia.
A Romanian edition called „Reteaua Energetica“ is distributed by Ideal Board Games.
A Dutch edition titled „Hoogspanning“ is distributed by 999 Games.)
A Portuguese edition titled “Alta Tensao” is distributed by RunaDrake
A Japanese edition titled “Power Grid” is distributed by Arclight.)”
“Marcel already told a lot about this game in his geek list at “Boardgamegeek”. Yes we drank a lot of Belgium beer in France and discussed with a Spanish girl about the strange connection between eight and night in different languages. We both agreed to build up a good time traveling game and we drank more beer and found out a very cool theme: the real life.”
“After testing a lot and throwing away the time travel aspect, we put a lot of our own experiences in that game. I will not tell which cards are connected to whom. Yes, it was a lot of fun to invent this game, especially all the cards.”
(“Fiese Freunde Fette Feten” was published in 2005 by 2F-Spiele
An English edition titled “Funny Friends” is distributed by Rio Grande Games.
A Dutch edition titled “Foute Vrienden Vette Feesten” is distributed by PS-Games.)
“There are a lot of customers in France and Italy and I was asked for a special edition of “Funkenschlag” for these two countries, so I worked on these boards. I found out that nuclear power in France was very important and of course Paris had to get an important role in the game. For Italy there was the very important contrast between the north and the south and that they did not have so many resources. After the expansion was already published I found out that Italy was the only country in the world that already closed again all their nuclear power plants (4). Maybe I think about a rule for that one day.”
(“Funkenschlag – Erweiterung Frankreich/Italien” was published in 2005 by 2F-Spiele.
An English edition titled “Powergrid – Expansion France/Italy” is distributed by Rio Grande Games.
A Spanish edition called „Alta Tension – Expansión Francia/Italia“ is distributed by Edge Entertainment.)
“In 2004 we had the idea for a game authors contest with pieces found in the Hobby Lobby in Columbus/Ohio at the Gathering of Friends. Ok, I had the pieces and went to a cafe thinking about what to do. I remembered an old idea of working with if/then aspects in a game and wanted to make a game with very few information creating a high complex situation and if/then combination will help. So I had an abstract game with flowerpots, milk bottles, jars and other fine hobby lobby stuff. In 2005 I was the runner up at the contest and decided to publish this game.”
“But there was no theme. Back in Germany again I discussed about the theme with my girlfriend and she came up with the idea of trading glass stones with natives as a joke and there was the theme.”
(“Fiji” was published in 2006 by 2F-Spiele.
An English edition is distributed by Rio Grande Games
A Dutch edition is distributed by PS Games.)
“In 2005, when “Fiese Freunde Fette Feten” was just published and “Fiji” already there, I played a fantasy game where you have to kill monsters. And these monsters came up as often in a random mechanism. So there were very powerful monsters in the beginning, when you were not able to fight them and later the lower monsters came up and were far to easy to fight. And you have to start a lot of stupid fights to get the values to kill the boss.”
“The idea now was to create a dungeon crawler where the monsters begin low and get bigger as the players getting better. It was a lot of work to have the monsters not to grow too fast and on the other side not having too much monsters too low. It is a high complex system where the board influences this small window where you can fight the monsters and also get the spells which help to do it.”
“For me it was very interesting to get a game where you start with not so important decisions and where the choices get harder as you play the game up to the end. There you have to find out if your plans worked well and you have enough spells and power chips left and enough wisdom to win the game.”
(“Fürchterliche Feinde” was published in 2006 by 2F-Spiele.
An English edition titled “Formidable Foes” is distributed by Rio Grande Games)
“In 2005 I worked on this little card game. I wanted to have a game with the dilemma, that you can push your cards by giving some away and not having many left for a good scoring. I wanted to have this game as a timing game. You have to find the right time where to push your group, not having it in the wrong time as #1, because at #1 you can only fall and music business is a good theme for that.”
“In looking back on this game and formidable foes I found out that they both seems similar to me. You start with not so important moves, looking for the right moment to push your things forward and in the end all is getting more and more important and the choices are getting harder.”
”After playing both games a lot, the moment where you think the choices are getting harder is coming up more early in the game.”
(“Megastar” was published in 2006 by Amigo.
An English edition is distributed by Mayfair.)
“Andrea Meyer, Marcel-André Casasola Merkle and I were in Nuremberg at the fair and met in a small cafe. Andrea and Marcel wanted to invent a game and I was sitting there as an innocent bystander. But as the discussion went on I was integrated and later on we had the game. I was very surprised how this really works. When I tell people about the game, they are not really convinced, but after playing it they normally love it.”
(“Monstermaler” was published in 2006 in cooperation by 2F-Spiele, BeWitched and Casasola.)
A Canadian edition titled „Split Personality“ is distributed by Kikigagne?.
A Québec edition titled „Monstre-Moi un dessin“ is distributed by Kikigangne?.)
Funkenschlag –
Erweiterung Benelux/Zentraleuropa
“Again a “Funkenschlag”
expansion. “Lacerta” wanted to make an own version of “Funkenschlag”
and additionally the game did well in Benelux, Czech Republic and Austria.
For “Lacerta” I needed a map with Poland, so I decided to
make another expansion. I found out that Poland was full of coal and they
did not have any nuclear power plants. In Austria especially Vienna was
burning a lot of garbage and they did not have nuclear power plants either.”
“Benelux had a lot of gas and not so much coal. So I had to change
a lot more than in the first expansion.”
“As I made the board for Benelux I found out that this map had very
cheap connection costs, because they did not have any high mountains there,
so I had to change the speed of the power plant market.”
(“Funkenschlag – Erweiterung Benelux/Zentraleuropa”
was published in 2006
by 2F-Spiele.
An English edition titled “Powergrid – Expansion Benelux/Central
Europe” is distributed by Rio Grande Games
A Polish edition titled “Wysokie Napiecie -Europa Centralna i Beneluks”
is distributed by Lacerta.
A Spanish edition called „Alta Tension – Expansión
Benelux/Europa Central“ is distributed by Edge Entertainment.)
“We are organizing a meeting for game designers each year in March in Weilburg, Hessen (“Deutsche Spieleautorentage”). I was doing a workshop about game mechanisms. In the evening we started a spontaneous workshop on a special mechanism: "auctions". In our discussion the question came up, if it has to be known what is to be auctioned or not or if the information about the auctioned goods can change in the auction.”
“I came up with the mechanism, which is in the center of Filou and as I told the other my thoughts, I realized that this should be a good game doing this.”
“I went home and built up my first prototype and it was totally clear that this will be a good game.”
“While trying out some changes, I felt that this game is like buying a used car or a cat in a sack (very well known phrase in Germany – Pig in a Poke in the USA), so it happens that we are buying cats in sacks.”
(“Filou – Die Katze im Sack” was published in 2007 by 2F-Spiele
An English edition titled “Felix –Cat in the Sack” is distributed by Rio Grande Games
A Dutch edition titled “Minoes – Kat in de zak” is distributed by 999 Games
A French edition titled “Filou – Le chat dans le sac” is distributed by Filosofia
An Italian edition titled „Felix: Il Gatto nel Sacco!“ is distributed by Stratelibri
A Spanish edition titled „Félix: El Gato Encerrado“ is distributed by Edge Entertainment
A Portuguese edition titled „Felix: Um Saco de Gatos“ is distributed by Runadrake
A Greek edition titled „ ΦΗΛΙΞ “ is distributed by Kaissa
A Czech/Slovak edition titled „Felix: Kocka v pytli“ is distributed by Blackfire
A Chinese edition is distributed by Swan panasia)
Funkenschlag – Die neuen Kraftwerkskarten
“I was thinking what else can be changed in Funkenschlag
and I focused on the cards, because they are more important than the board.
As playing the game very often, I always know which plant I will buy for
what price. If I can get the 25 or 26 early in the game it is good. So
I wanted to make a deck of cards where these decisions are not that clear
any more.”
“I was calculating a lot and wanted to make the coal plants worse
and the others better, because coal is cheap in the game and the power
plant are cheap, too.
So I decided to push garbage forward and I really like the new twist on
that.”
“I played the new cards a lot and found out that now other players
are winning the game (not me any more) and decided that this a good sign,
because you need a new strategy now. Some of the players playing Power
Grid a lot were disappointed about that fact, but I was happy.”
“Later on the idea came up to start with number 1, because if the
number of each plant is 2 less, than more power plants will go out of
the game by actions of the gamers, that you can use it.”
“If the 1 and 2 is not bought in the first round the game now will
speed up because in the first round 2 power plants will go away, so you
will have a complete different game, but if somebody buys the 1 and slows
the game a bit and will make the coal very fast expensive, this will lead
to another game.”
“Now the power plants look much more efficient because of the lower
price, but the price is not that important, more important is when the
power plants are coming in the game and only the first power plant a lowered.
Normally I'll buy only two of these low plants, so it is for the whole
came 4 bucks cheaper, which is not much.”
“I really like the mixing up both decks variant, because you have
to change your strategy to the new deck, every time you play, so you have
to be flexible and I always like games, where the strategy is not clear
to be seen.”
(„Funkenschlag – Die neuen Kraftwerkskarten“ was published
in 2007 by 2F-Spiele.
An English edition titled “Power Grid – The new Power Plant
Cards” is distributed by Rio Grande Games.
A Polish edition titled “Wysokie Napiecie – Nowe Karty Elektrowni”
is distributed by Lacerta.
A Spanish edition called „Alta Tension – Nuevas Tarjetas De
Centrales Electricas“ is distributed by Edge Entertainment.)
“This game was made for my girlfriend. She is very interested in animals especially from Madagascar. I found an animal book and was thinking to give it as a present for her birthday. In this book every animal was noted with origin, weight, length and tail-length. That inspired me to make this game.“
“Because of the horrible number of different pictures to be used in the game, I decided not to make the game in my own company and searched for a publisher. I am happy about finding Huch & Friends for that, because they did an awesome job with the artwork for this game.”
“It was a lover's gift, the love is gone, the gift (game) is here.”
(“Fauna” was published in 2008 by Huch & Friends)
“The Korea Board Games Company was in for another foreign language edition and we decided to make a Korean board.“
“With me having a remote perspective on that country, I made an exclusive South Korean board, but the Koreans wanted to have the complete Korea for the board. Then the idea came up to make two different resource markets and I was very positively surprised how well this change was working with the game. I really love this map and sadly I'm not winning the game when playing with Korea.”
“So the second map had to be done for the expansion and because China is next to Korea, I decided to make China.”
“When thinking of China the planned economy came into my mind, because we had something similar in Eastern Germany. I worked on that and found out that this is a complete different twist for the game. I really like that board because it plays very well with 2 players.”
(“Funkenschlag – Erweiterung Korea/China” was published in 2008 by 2F-Spiele.
An English edition titled “Power Grid – Expansion Korea/China” is distributed by Rio Grande Games.
A Spanish edition called „Alta Tension – Expansión China/Corea“ is distributed by Edge Entertainment.)
“I had the idea of making a race game with totally different boards and a simple mechanic. I wanted to build different boards with different strategies, so the game will be different whatever boards you use.”
“To have a very easy game mechanic, I wanted to have something easy like roll-and-move, but I did not really want to roll-and-move, so I was inspired by Ave Caesar (a game I love), to take cards for movement.”
“I tried this and found out that the boards are too empty for two players. I just added a second pawn for each player. So I needed to have two sets of cards for the two pawns. The really great idea was to shuffle the two sets of cards together and I really love the effect resulting out of that.”
“Because of loving this mechanic I decided to have an equal number of pawns for all player numbers, so now you use 3 pawns when playing with 2 and 3 players.”
“It was a lot of fun to design all of the 12 different boards and built in different strategies in each of the boards.”
(“Flussfieber” was published in 2008 by 2F-Spiele
An English edition titled “...” is distributed by Rio Grande Games
A French edition titled “Rivière d'Enfer“ is distributed by Filosofia)
“The Lamont Brothers and I were playing together at a game meeting late in the night with some fine single malt whisky.”
“We played a very interesting prototype of them, which was designed for playing in a pub. A lot of gamers passed by our table and looked very strange at us because we did strange things and of course they did not know any rules.”
“The idea came up to design a game where the gamers themselves are in that strange feeling of not really knowing what to do. The feeling is similar to looking on people doing some religious jobs without knowing anything about their religion.”
“We immediately built up a prototype and tested it one hour later and had a lot of fun. Now the gamers passing by looked strange because of not knowing the rules while seeing people looking strange because of not knowing the rules. A very strange but awesome situation.”
“The Lamonts left for Scotland and I traveled back to Bremen. We then designed about 100 different cards for that game and had a very funny time playing this game with our friends, because no one of us had ever played a game alike.”
“We were very happy to find Andrea Meyer (Bewitched Spiele) for publishing this game, because both the Lamonts and I were working on different card driven race games with different boards (how strange is that!).”
“Andrea did a very good job in working on the game and adding important rules to make the game not only a fun party game. Now it is more deductive, without losing the amazing silly fun of the original prototype.”
(“Die 3 Gebote” was published in 2008 by BeWitched Spiele
An English edition titled “The Three Commandments” is distributed by Rio Grande Games)
Having more and more foreign partners for Funkenschlag, I decided to add Spain & Portugal to the official maps. Brazil has very much new gamers and it fits well on the other side of the board.
As usual I looked at the way energy works in these countries. Spain started late but heavy with nuclear power plants, so this aspect is in the game. But they are also very big in ecological power plants. The map for Spain & Portugal was some kind of simple. Portugal has approximately a fifth of the population of Spain. So we have one region for Portugal to five regions for Spain. The cities in Spain & Portugal are spread very well all over the map, so this map is very balanced regarding the connections.
On the other side there is Brazil: Many cities in the coastal region and the big areas of Sao Paulo and Rio. Long distances in the middle of the country, similar to China.
Brazil is very interesting regarding the usage of resources. They have a lot of oil and less coal, but very much biogas from sugar. So I decided to add this and make the game some kind of brutal, because in the power plant deck there are all these coal plants, but there is not enough coal to use them all. Playing with this map you have to bid high on the interesting power plants.
I like this expansion a lot. It is not as special as the last expansion was, but it is a new challenge.
(“Funkenschlag – Erweiterung Brasilien/Spanien & Portugal” was published in 2009 by 2F-Spiele.
An English edition titled “Power Grid – Expansion Brazil/Spain & Portugal” is distributed by Rio Grande Games.
A Spanish edition titled “Alta Tensión – Expansión Brasil/Espana y Portugal” is distributed by Edge Entertainment.)
The company handling the contact for the ENBW version of Funkenschlag asked me, if there was a possibility for a game about factories.
I started to think about it and found out, that there are different things you can place into factories: normal stuff like machines and robots, but also controls and optimizers.
So I worked on a factory organizing game. It was totally clear that it should be a game, where you have to invest in better technology to get more money to invest it again in new technology and so on.
I made a prototype and it was like the theme: very dry. I took the game with me to the Gathering of Friends 2009, still not really happy because it was just a mediocre game. At the Gathering I got the idea of creating the market in one phase and buying from the market in the other phase and I loved it, because the person last in turn order will put the pieces in the market the first player will buy and the first player puts in what the last will buy. This can be used in a friendly cooperative way or plain evil, depending on how the players like it.
I focused my work on this game in respect to this unique mechanism. As I started to add the workers as action points for buying and all other things I started to really love this game.
The turn order was too good for the first player, so I added the discounts, but not so high that it is too balanced. I wanted to still have the advantage for the first player, so that auctions are still important.
Then replayability became an issue, because in all games you have the same tiles. The energy cost growth was not different enough and should not be, because bigger changes will be unfair. The discounts on the shuffled turn order tiles give every game a different feel, but only after adding the three random tiles for the start, each game got a real different feel. Depending on these three tiles in addition to the different discounts, your possibilities totally change of what you can try (or do) in the first round. The first round being always different means, that the other rounds are also different.
For me the game has a lot in common with Funkenschlag (turn order, auctions, industrial growth, money, calculation in the last round), so I decided to brand it. Of course it is marketing, too.
The most important part for this game is to find out, that if a tile is more expensive than another tile (of the same type) it is better in a way that I always try to buy all expensive stuff, but this means I always want to be first. But if I bid too many workers I cannot buy everything I like. For me the first four rounds are just making decisions on bidding and tiles (not really calculating) and in the last round I have to calculate.
(“Funkenschlag – Fabrikmanager” was published in 2009 by 2F-Spiele.
An English edition titled “Power Grid – Factory Manager” is distributed by Rio Grande Games.
A French edition titled “Mégawatts – Elektro Manager” is distributed by Filosofia.
A Spanish edition titled “Alta Tensión – Director de Fábrica” is distributed by Edge Entertainment.
An Italian edition titled “Alta Tensione – Fabrikmanager” is distributed by StrateLibri.
A Polish edition titled “Wysokie Napiecie – Zostan Menadzerem” is distributed by Lacerta.
A Dutch edition titled “Fabrieksmanager” is distributed by 999 Games.
A Czech/Slovakian edition titled “Továrník” is distributed by Albi.)