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Anja Wrede is a Berlin redhead who has been designing children's games for more than twenty years. She first worked at HABA before going independent and collaborating with several other German game designers — and, by the way, no, she's not Klaus-Jürgen Wrede's wife. Anja publishes some of her lighter games through her own one-person company, Edition Siebenschläfer, which is named after a German mouse that hibernates during seven months every year; before checking this, I even didn't know that mice could hibernate.
Anja has another talent, which I'm terribly jealous of because it is completely foreign to me, indeed almost impenetrable: She draws remarkably well, and she has illustrated most of her own games with various cute animals.
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Since I'm much older than Anja's usual target audience, I've not played all of Edition Siebenschläfer's games. Among the ones which are as interesting with adults and children, I especially recommend Moo's Code, a fun card game about cooking in which players have to hit the table with a wooden spoon. It's not published in the U.S., but the Chinese edition from Jolly Thinkers (shown above) has English rules.
Anja is a regular at my Ludopathic Gathering, a yearly meeting in Etourvy, France that I organize with gamers, designers, and publishers I really like. We also sometimes meet in Paris or Berlin, and despite our styles having so far been very different, we had to try to design something together some day.
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Anja and I playing Knock Knock! in 2003; she has more hair now, while I have much less
One of the first ideas Anja and I developed when we started designing games together was a touch recognition game called "Grabbit". Since we still have hope of seeing it published some day, I won't go into details, but it's still one of my favorites. Then we made Fearz, a fun memory and reaction card game that can also be played with a tablet, and Junggle, a set of card games inspired by the "animal circle" of Chinese Animal Chess — two cute kid-friendly card games that unfortunately went largely unnoticed.
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We were still toying with the idea of touch recognition and tried to use the "Grabbit" idea in a different and more thematic way. We imagined a lighter game with fewer (and cheaper) components about a shepherd looking for his lost sheep. Anja drew about thirty different sheep with slightly different shapes, and the shepherd had to find, by feeling with only one hand in a cloth bag, the sheep that was represented on a card. The set-up was cute, and the theme fit well, but it didn't appeal to the publishers who saw our prototype. A few were even concerned that this could be mistaken for a religious game — the lost sheep, the lord is my shepherd, and all that stuff. They liked the game system, though.
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I could not find a picture of Anja and me playing our prototype, so here's one taken in Etourvy where she is playing an old game we both really like, Klondike, with our publisher, Benoît; I think we playtested Lost in the Woods just before this, but I didn't take a picture
By chance, at my yearly Ludopathic Gathering in Etourvy, Benoît Forget of Purple Brain Creations, after playing a game with us, suggested a new setting that could make the game fit in his Fairy Tales family game series, specifically the "Little Thumb" story; this story is not that popular in the English speaking world, but it's known by everyone in France and Germany.
We were skeptical at first since the game didn't use the story's main drive — the pebbles, then the breadcrumbs that Little Thumb lets fall behind him to find his way back home. Anyway, Benoît managed to convince us, and Anja made a new prototype in which the sheep had become trees in the dark forest where Little Thumb and his brothers were trying to find the way back to their parents' cottage. (We still have those light wood sheep, all different, so maybe we'll make another game with them one of these days.)
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I really like the idea and the look of the Tales & Games series, and I wanted for a long time to get one of my designs in this line. Unfortunately, when I had told Benoît that I might have an idea for a "Hare and Tortoise" game, Gary Kim's The Hare & the Tortoise was already in the pipe. It's been published since and is among my favorite ones. Anyway, I'm glad I finally made such a game with Anja and with Little Thumb lost in the woods.
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First sketch, final cover illustration, and board art by Frédéric Pillot
The art for Lost in the Woods was made by the French popular children's book illustrator Frédéric Pillot, mostly known for the illustrated series Lulu Vroumette and Edmond le Chien. The board and cover were hand-painted, which gives them a charming old-fashioned style that fits the game perfectly.
Anja has already published dozens of children's games; I have not, mostly because I can't work on game designs that I don't have fun playing. Memory, which I often use as a minor element in my designs, is one of the few skills in which adults are not better than children. Touch recognition is another one, and this allows older and younger gamers to play together without having the adults "cheat to lose". That's why Lost in the Woods, like all the games in the Tales & Games series, is not only a kids game but really a game for all and everyone.
Bruno Faidutti
First copies of the game at SPIEL '18
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