Ready for the island? Then play Freiluftwelten

Not only the French natural philosopher Jean-Jacques Rousseau would have taken pleasure in “Freiluftwelten.” This family board game embodies the motto “Back to nature” like few others. Rousseau used the state of nature as a hypothetical thought experiment to decipher the core of humanity. Freiluftwelten goes much further. It is not a hypothetical concept but a tangible board game to unpack and play both indoors and outdoors with the whole family. At the center of the game is an island — whether it eventually becomes one with two mountains depends entirely on the gaming group. As always, when people play together, their inner selves are quickly revealed, and, as Friedrich Schiller said, one is truly human only when one plays.

Playing outdoors with self-collected game materials

Nomen est omen: with Freiluftwelten you should head out into nature. “This game idea, which hasn’t existed in this form before, can best be realized out there,” says co-creator Jens-Peter Schliemann. The specialist magazine spielbox, where author Udo Bartsch devoted a full page to the newcomer, also notes: “Freiluftwelten breaks with board-game habits.” So the included playing mat — blue like the sea — is spread out, and what happens next cannot be foretold. In any case, the players themselves collect their game materials: leaves, sand, twigs, bird-egg shells, berries, ears of grain, nuts... Sand and pebbles become a mountain. Each player receives their playing piece in their chosen color.

Solving challenges in a highly creative way

Now, according to the rules, it’s time to be creative and solve tasks: “How do I reach the island? (options include a boat, surfboard, canoe …).” Everyday problems must be overcome (satisfying hunger, healing injuries, defeating pests). To do this, you have to act as a team and shape or build concrete and abstract terms — using found natural materials — so that they can be guessed, for players aged 7 and up. Whoever guesses correctly, and whoever represents a term in such a way that others can guess it, scores points. Because on this island it’s about more than just pride. The islet can, by the way — not only on rainy days — also be set up in the living room, because in every home you can find items that can be used to create materials for the guessing terms.

Impressions from the playtest team

“This is a game that takes us back to the child’s sandbox” — that’s how our test team experienced it. We asked three young women, Sophia, Jacqueline and Lana, to test Freiluftwelten. Jackie’s daughter Sonea (7) was also part of the test team. All are experienced board gamers, and they immediately notice what’s special: “You constantly feel like you’re helping each other, because points are only awarded when someone else deciphers your term constructions,” explains Lana. Also present were the two youngest, the roughly one-year-olds Souly and Emilio. “They can’t fully take part in the game yet, of course,” admits Sophia, “but we could involve them in collecting and searching for game materials and they had a lot of fun.” Schoolchild Sonea also thinks it’s “great that you’re outside and can move around and don’t have to sit the whole time.”

The minds behind Freiluftwelten

Who comes up with something like this? Lisa Besse, Jens-Peter Schliemann, Karolina Schnelle and Tina Schuster all live around Cologne in the Rhineland. For years, game designer Jens-Peter Schliemann has been running workshops at the Cologne Game Lab. The four met there in spring 2017 (!) at a seminar on board-game development. They approached the topic from very different backgrounds: Lisa and Karolina more from design, Tina as a developer of games for seniors, Jens-Peter with his background in children’s and family games. From this came the idea for a cooperative board game that is played outdoors using natural materials.

Good things take time

Anyone who now claims that such brainstorming is pointless because nothing ever comes of it has underestimated the persistence of board-game enthusiasts. Good things take time: about six years, many hard-working weekends and meetings later, the prototype was finished. “What’s particularly exciting,” says Karolina, “is that we come from very different professions, age groups and life situations, and our joint result was allowed to grow slowly.” She knows what she’s talking about: during these years the young woman completed a master’s degree, got married and had two children — more change is hard to imagine. Different ideas and approaches flowed into the game: “it was real teamwork; the task shaped this team,” says Tina Schuster. “The project had the power to bring very different people together and keep them together. When the result reached publishable quality, the contacts of ‘Kinderspiel des Jahres’ winner Jens-Peter Schliemann paid off: ‘The normal board-game industry is too nerdy for such an idea. So we approached Denkriesen in Nuremberg at Spielwarenmesse 2024. They were crazy enough for the island,’ says Schliemann with a laugh.

The publisher: Denkriesen from Quickborn

Denkriesen are a young publishing house that specializes in low-threshold games. Low-threshold means: a short explanation and then you can start quickly and have fun. According to the founding couple, school friends Denis Görz and Ricardo Barreto, it began with “a schnapsidee called klattschen® in 2012.” The biggest sales success so far is a revision and further development of a classic, which at Denkriesen in Quickborn became “Stadt Land Vollpfosten®.” It sounds cute but is a real success story: the publisher grew rapidly within a few years, posts millions in sales and today employs around 70 people.

Denkriesen focuses on family games

With Freiluftwelten, Denkriesen remains true to publishing games with unusual approaches while also making a move into classic author-driven games. Founder Ricardo Barreto emphasizes that the eye for the surprising has remained: “Freiluftwelten is meant to inspire players to develop their own ideas, to try new things together and to experience every game session in its own unique way. The best ideas often arise when you simply give them space.”

For Nikolai Nickel, the decision to include Freiluftwelten in the publishing program was “a logical step toward family games, something we had been thinking about for some time.” The quality and originality convinced the Head of Game Development at Denkriesen. His strategy: “Freiluftwelten has what it takes to win one of the major game awards.”

About the author

Peter Budig studied Protestant theology, history and political science. He worked as a freelance journalist, but also led the editorial team of a large classified paper in Nuremberg for more than ten years and was an editor at the Nürnberger Abendzeitung. Since 2014 he has been working again as a freelance journalist, book author, copywriter and funeral orator. Storytelling is his preferred form in all his work.