Dorfromantik: The Board Game wins the 2023 Spiel des Jahres award

This doesn’t happen every year — in fact, it’s never happened before. This year’s Spiel des Jahres, a prestigious German award for the best board game of the year, has gone to a video game adaptation: The Board Game Dorfromantik.

Tabletop video games are not uncommon, although many are good. The Spiel des Jahres is a prize that belongs to the core of the industry. The award has focused since its founding in 1978 on accessible family board games as opposed to complex tabletop games like war games or collectible card game. Classics such as Carcassonne The following are some examples of how to get started: The Ticket To RideIt is an important award for a videogame adaptation.

But when you consider the game in question, perhaps it’s not so unexpected. Dorfromantik This minimalist game is about creating beautiful landscapes, including towns, villages, rivers, forest, farms and railway tracks. Though it’s quite tightly designed, there are no competitive elements to it, and no resources or populations to worry about. It’s very much like CatanOr, in particularCarcassonneReimagined to be a chillout single player game that encourages meditation. And it’s absolutely wonderful.

Dorfromantik The Board Game Michael Palm and Lukas Z. adapts the video game’s design while opening it up to as many as six players, although it remains a purely cooperative, non-competitive experience. The Spiel des Jahres jury chairman Harald Schrapers praised the game’s relaxed approach: “This cooperative, feelgood game has new, exciting goals from game to game, but you can never lose,” Schrapers said (via Google Translate).

The time of this writing is: The Board Game Dorfromantik Cardhaus Games has a few copies of the game that are currently out-of-stock at Amazon.