2026/05 - Not recommended

There are three types of game that are not recommended for publication. 1) Seasonal games, such as my Christmas game. 2) Games with a religious theme, such as my game set in a convent. 3) Games with a sports theme. The only one missing from my list was a sports-themed game. I decided to fill this gap. Because I think that in the world of board games, where thousands of new games are published every year, there is a risk of publishing too many games set, for example, in ancient Greece. I thought of a game about athletics. Like many of you, I get really into the Olympics every four years. Then, for the next four years, I ignore all sports. Apart from football. The last Olympics are long gone and the next ones are still a long way off. It’s the worst possible time, even from a marketing perspective. But I like the fact that the setting fits with the gameplay experience. And when I play, I feel like I’m ‘training’ when I draw cards, and ‘struggling’ when I discard them. So I thought of athletics. The decathlon, to be precise, because I have to plan my training around the different disciplines. King Gustav V described the winner of the first decathlon at the 1912 Olympics as “the greatest athlete in the world”. Tell me if a card game where players try to be “the greatest athlete in the world” isn’t appealing. But international distributors advised me against publishing a sports-themed game. What did I tell you? I tried to convince them by talking about the Olympic spirit. I quoted Gustav V. I mentioned in passing that the sports theme could still be tied in with ancient Greece. Silence. If the game is set in ancient Greece, then it’s fine. So. Please. If you mention it, leave out unnecessary details about athletics, the Olympics and the decathlon, and just say that the third game in the upcoming MINI CARD GAME trilogy will be a game about ancient Greece.

 

2026/04 - Things of Another World

 “Play is an action, or a voluntary activity, carried out within certain defined limits of time and space, according to a voluntarily accepted rule, and which nevertheless engages one completely, having an end in itself; accompanied by a sense of tension and joy, and by the awareness of ‘being different’ from ‘ordinary life’. It seemed to us that we could regard this category of ‘play’ as one of the most fundamental spiritual elements of life.”
Johan Huizinga, HOMO LUDENS, 1939

A few years ago, I visited a convent. As a visitor, not a resident. It was a deeply moving experience nonetheless. And it was even more moving to visit it as a game designer. As soon as I crossed the threshold, I thought: ‘Here, the rules of the game are different’. Now, read Huizinga’s quote again and tell me if the definition of play doesn’t also seem like the perfect description of a convent. The convent’s cloister is like a huge, life-size game board, complete with 3D pop-ups. Reading the sacred texts reminded me of hours spent reading the rules. Time stands still. It seems to never pass. Like waiting for your turn in a game after a serial thinker. And then silence. A sigh. A feeling of ideal peace that doesn’t exist in the library in my town where we’ve gathered to play, because our tables are close to the children’s play area. And that’s when I started thinking. In our world, the winner is the one who wins; I wanted a game where the loser wins. A game in which, instead of the arrogance of overtaking, the courtesy of letting others pass prevails. A race in which you try to finish last. A challenge of kindness. That is the premise. The result, however, is the least kind of all the games I have published. Never mind. The theme of the second of the next three games in the MINI CARD GAME series will be a convent. Amen.

 

2026/03 - The Beauty of Ugliness

As a child, I used to play board games; now I invent them. Do you know those heart-warming stories about people who’ve made their dreams come true? Rubbish. As a child, I loved VIDEO games. And being of a certain age, the video games of our time were what they were. Even the ugly ones. Let’s be honest. But no new, beautiful video game will ever replace the old, ugly ones in our hearts. Which we thought were beautiful. Which, to us, were beautiful. Just like our classmates. The most beautiful in the world. Because our world was our classroom. Not like today, when the world has become as big as the world itself. It’s not what’s beautiful that’s beautiful, but what you like that’s beautiful – that’s what we were taught as children. The beautiful ugliness of yesteryear taught us, however, that beautiful things are those that leave beautiful memories. That no one can take them away from you. Our times. When video games were played in company. In an arcade. Or at a friend’s house. Those were the real ‘party games’. Times when a friend was ‘the sort of thing where the more, the merrier’. But those were different times, our times. Times when the whole of humanity was united. To defend our planet together. From invasions of pixels. The first of the next three new MINI CARD GAMES will be themed around old vintage video games. Vintage, just like me.

 

2026/02 - Flowers in winter

I spent a weekend in the middle of nowhere. Out in the countryside. Surrounded by nature. Right next to a motorway junction. One of the many places in the world in the middle of nowhere, but which, for convenience’s sake, I’ll call ‘Parma’. On a sort of spiritual retreat. Like a hermit. But with 664 other people. Who’d all had the same idea as me at the same time. To shut ourselves away in the middle of nowhere. Not just because it was winter. To test prototypes of board games. Prototypes. Games not yet finished. Which might not work. Even if that sounds a bit harsh. I did it to choose the
next three new games to be published in the MINI CARD GAME series. But everyone present had their own valid reasons for being there. To play. Day and night. In every room. Corridor. Hall. Although it’s a bit hard to believe that in ‘Parma’ there’s a ‘Hall’. Let’s call it a foyer. Here are the official figures: 368 designers, 170 playtesters, 25 press/bloggers, 22 publishers, 80 operators. No, I don’t know who the “operators” are. But they were there, according to the event’s official statement. 665 people who, for days and nights on end, stare at, grasp and move scraps of paper and pieces of cardboard as if they were sacred relics. With the same look of wonder as children gazing at their paper and cardboard creations. Thousands of prototypes, games, ideas. Games that are more or less beautiful. Mostly less. But which one day might become so. Beautiful. Fabulous. Like Andersen’s fairy tales. Not all of them have a happy ending. But in ‘Parma’, right next to a motorway junction, wonders can blossom. That is why Italian game designers head to “Parma” once a year with their prototypes. For the same reason people go to Lourdes. And in this wintery, fairy-tale setting, straight out of an Andersen story, we have chosen the next three games that will continue the MINI CARD GAME series.

 

2026/01 - The Difficulty of Getting Started

When the great Spanish cellist and conductor Pablo Casals turned 95, a young journalist asked him, “Mr Casals, you are 95 years old and the greatest cellist who ever lived. Why do you continue to practise for six hours a day?” Pablo Casals replied, “Because I think I’m making progress.”

They say the hardest part is getting started. But what about keeping going? To start with, you can kick things off with a masterpiece, but any old rubbish will do just fine. But to keep going, the rubbish has to be at least better than the last bit of rubbish. It’s not easy choosing the three new games that will continue the MINI CARD GAME series. It’s not easy trying to keep getting better and better. And the fact that GiocaGiullari have ranked one of our games in the TOP TEN of the best games released last year doesn’t exactly help to lower expectations. Sometimes I miss the carefree spirit of the early days. When something doesn’t exist yet, it’s always a potential masterpiece. One day, a classmate asked the teacher if anyone had got top marks in the test. ‘Yes,’ replied the teacher. She smiled happily. ‘Maybe it’s me,’ she said. In reality, she got a 2.5. But she was in a class where someone had got top marks, so, potentially, it could have been her. Choosing the first games to publish was that kind of joy. Two years and 10 games later, however, we worry more. Over 5,000 new board games are published every year, according to a random internet search. I don’t remember the source, so let’s just stick to ‘hearsay’. So it’s fair to ask whether the world of games needs yet another new game. And if we’ve already made games in our lives, whether we’re capable of doing ‘better’. But perhaps I’m worrying all this because I belong to a generation that grew up listening to songs like ‘Si può dare di più’ (We can do better).

Naivina, Switzerland.