2023: Exoplanet

Author: Klaus-Jürgen Wrede
Developer: Flo de Haan
Illustrator: Piotr Rossa
Publisher: 999 Games

2023: EXOPLANET

Author: Klaus-Jürgen Wrede
Developer: Flo de Haan
Illustrator: Piotr Rossa
Publisher: 999 Games

Klaus-Jürgen Wrede is the well known inventor of Carcassonne. He has developed and tested this game with his friend Udo Schmitz. But they also worked together on “Mesopotamia” which was published by Phalanx Games in 2005.

The idea arose to redevelop Mesopotamia into a new family-plus style game, and bring it to the current day board gaming market, twenty years later. This would not only mean a new theme, but most importantly a more streamlined, intuitive gameplay, and removing the flaws of the original. I worked together with Klaus-Jürgen and Udo to start this redevelopment from the start. First bring it back to the bare minimum and build up from there. All with abstract components and some parts of the original. Just up until we had a new game that we thought would be perfect for the new audience.

The testing process was very intense, as we had dozens of people testing it with their friends. I have created the testable prototypes and led the testing process.

The new storyline: EXOPLANET. Finally after all this time you arrive with four teams on the first habitable planet discovered by man. Next up you compete in exploring the planet, finding locations for housing to reproduce, find food and most importantly: building resources and powerful stones to energize and cooperatively build the central city. Along the way you meet new species, get struck by tornados, power failures and sabotage.
It’s an action point game, with a lot of interaction. Easy to learn, hard to master.

Compared to Mesopotamia the game plays so much easier, faster and there are more ways to win.

We are in the Two Thousand Twenties, so I used Artificial Intelligence in combination with 3D modeling to create the best possible artwork, together with illustrator Piotr Rossa. By having AI adjust compositions made in 3D, these AI-generated images were nothing more than the starting point of the sketching process during the artwork development. This turned out to be the perfect method for generating ideas in a fantasy world. We could easily create hundreds of variations of landscapes and details to build this new world on the exoplanet. After that, Piotr would redraw the composition in his own style and add his own details. The end result is a copyrighted artwork and no longer ‘not copyrightable,’ as strictly AI-generated artwork would be. I believe this is the future of artwork for board games, which should be eligible for copyright protection.

In addition to the storyline and art direction I have invented a new, better hooking system of the tiles originally used in Mesopotamia. These puzzle so much easier and hook in very tightly.

Summary Made by Flo: Project management, development, creation of testable prototype, testing, writing the rulebook, editing the rulebook, theme development, art direction, production briefing.