Sauerbaum (game)
| Sauerbaum | |
|---|---|
| Game data | |
| author | Johannes Tranelis |
| publishing company | Herder |
| Publishing year | 1988 |
| Art | Board game |
| Teammates | 3 to 7 |
| Duration | about 60 minutes |
| Age | from 8 years
|
| Awards | |
|
Game of the year : Special award for the best cooperative game in 1988 |
|
Sauerbaum is a cooperative board game by Johannes Tranelis that was first published in 1987. It received the special prize for the best cooperative game from the jury for the game of the year in 1988 and is considered to be groundbreaking for cooperative games in German-speaking countries.
Structure and course of the game
The game board is made up of a stylized tree made up of 58 square fields. The game material includes sixty blue game pieces. They symbolize the drops of acid rain that threaten the tree. The game is played in a group of three to seven people whose aim is to save the tree from raindrops reaching its roots. All roll four dice in turn. The blue “rain cube” shows how many new raindrops have been added. As soon as all raindrops are on the playing field, they move downwards towards the root with each throw. The three green dice show the steps that the respective pawn can move. If a character is surrounded by raindrops, the rest of the group must free it. Playing figures can hit raindrops, which are then removed from the game. When the raindrops have spread over the roots of the tree, the group has lost. The group wins if they can remove all raindrops. The person who has hit the most raindrops also receives the “Savior of the Tree” award. The level of difficulty can be adjusted by the number of raindrops used.
history
Johannes Tranelis, a trained ceramist , first published the game in 1986. A year later it was published by Herder . In 1997 a new edition was published by Zoch Verlag .
The game did not appear in the GDR . However, like many games, hand-made copies were circulating.
The museums of the city of Nuremberg selected the game Sauerbaum as "Showpiece of the month" for April 2012. The Nuremberg Toy Museum organized at this time special guides about the game and its creator.
Significance for the game industry
Sauerbaum is seen as a turning point in the history of cooperative board games. The jury of the Game of the Year decided that Sauerbaum had made a significant contribution to refuting the prejudice that cooperative games lacked tension and that they are therefore only suitable for small children.
Significance for environmental education
Acid rain and the forest dieback it caused entered public awareness in the 1980s and became a central concern of the environmental movement . Sauerbaum thus fitted in with the current debates of his time. The game got a permanent place in environmental education . In 2006, the nature conservation organization BUND recommended the game Sauerbaum in order to “raise awareness of nature and the environment worth protecting in a playful way”.
Awards
The self-published edition of the game was included in the selection list for Game of the Year in 1987. In 1988 the jury decided unanimously to award a one-time special prize for the best cooperative game. The reason stated: "At SAUERBAUM everything is just right: the excellently structured, coherent and at the same time convincing game idea, the clear rules of the game, the carefully edited graphics - the big hit."
Web links
- Sauerbaum in the games database BoardGameGeek (English)
- Sauerbaum in the Luding games database
- Sauerbaum as “Showpiece of the Month” of the Nuremberg City Museums
Individual evidence
- ^ Sauerbaum in the Luding game database , accessed on August 11, 2016.
- ^ Sauerbaum on the website for the exhibition Imitated. Game copies from the GDR , accessed on August 11, 2016.
- ↑ a b The cooperation game "Sauerbaum" on the website of the museums of the city of Nuremberg , accessed on August 11, 2016.
- ↑ a b Sauerbaum on the website of the Spiel des Jahres eV ; accessed on August 11, 2016.
- ↑ Marcus Jauer: The nature of hysteria. In: Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung . October 18, 2013, accessed August 11, 2016 .
- ^ Tanja Herzig: Public libraries and environmental awareness . In: Library: Research and Practice . Volume 21, No. 2, 1997, p. 201.
- ^ Environmental games as an Easter present , BUND press release of April 5, 2006, accessed on August 11, 2016.