What's behind the labels with the year?

In our first game, you may have noticed a label bearing the Roman numeral I and the year. This marks the year of the astronomer's life, but what about the number? We received lots of questions about this, such as: is this the first game in the series? Are you planning a sequel?

Will there be a Galileo II?

As board game players tend to be more intelligent than the average person, we didn't have to explain much and simply confirmed what was expected. Galileo Galilei is indeed the first game in the series. It's a series of historical figures, and the next game in the series is Carl Linnaeus.

We will tell you more about Carl Linnaeus in our next posts, but for now, we would like to tell you more about the ongoing series of historical figures started by Galileo and continued by Linnaeus. Here at Troubadour, we have decided to take a more complicated approach to board game themes. Although we enjoy fantasy, science fiction and fairy tales, we feel that the world of board games lacks realistic themes. Currently, for various reasons, there are lots of games featuring animals, dwarves, fairy-tale creatures or robots. However, there are few games based on real people. We could debate whether this is due to the neutrality of themes and the desire to avoid any possible controversy that could arise from a theme involving real people, but that would be a different discussion. The result is that there simply aren't many games in which you can play as an existing historical figure or real person. 

Here at Troubadour, we have a passion for history and science. Our games reflect that passion. They also reflect our hobbies (yes, we should probably have a game about cats and ukuleles next time). In most cases, the theme of our games is not based on a fictional mechanic; rather, the mechanic and the game itself are based on the chosen theme. While we are certainly not the only ones with this approach, we know that in many games, the theme is invented after the game has been created.

Eurogames tend to use this approach, and even with many good games, you can swap themes without detracting much from the game itself. But we're getting off topic.

What we want to say is that, for us, the theme comes first. Tomáš likes astronomy, which is why we have Galileo. Michal is interested in botany and read a book on taxonomy, which is why we have Linnaeus. We have lots of other ideas for sequels, too. We can't yet reveal how long the series will ultimately be, but we can tell you that two more games are already in the works. Many of our other favourite figures from the worlds of science and culture are also keeping a close eye on us, wondering if we'll devote ourselves to them. We're not saying no! Please just be patient with us. We don't want to overwhelm you with history and school lessons, so we'd like to stick to releasing a new game in this series every two years. Creating a game that is thematic, entertaining and beautiful is a long-term project. Previous experience has taught us that many ideas need time to mature before we can develop them into a prototype and confirm that they are ready for production. We want to make this series perfect, so that in 10 years' time, when we look at the shelf with the Roman numeral labels, we can be proud of what we've achieved. 

These games should serve not only as entertainment, but also as a means of education, even if you are not aware of it yourself. They may even spark your interest in how the first telescope was invented, who wrote Historia Naturalis, who was burned at the stake for heretical views, and who named the fennel moth.

This is the idea behind our series of board games about historical figures, and we hope you will embrace them and enjoy playing them as much as we enjoy seeing you play them.