Designers Lisa Besse, Jens-Peter Schliemann, Tina Schuster and Karolina Schmelle discuss Freiluftwelten – a game that gets you playing in nature

Guys, it’s great to catch up. We’re here to discuss your exciting new game, Freiluftwelten, but first – how did you come to design together?
Jens-Peter Schliemann: I gave a workshop at the Cologne Game Lab – which is a place that teaches both digital game design and board game design. This was back in 2017. It was a general workshop, but we only had three participants… And this team here were the three participants!

Ah! So you clicked there?
Jens-Peter: Yes, we realised we had something and we must go on collaborating. It marked the start of the journey that became Freiluftwelten.

Karolina Schmelle: And I was about to skip this workshop! The university called me at the lunch break and asked me if I’m coming, because everyone was waiting for me. Otherwise, the workshop wouldn’t be a thing!

It’s a good job you turned up!
Karolina: Yes, it was good fortune, I guess.

So you had the workshop, it went well, and you thought: We might have a great design team here!
Jens-Peter: Yes, we decided to become a game design team – and one important aspect is that we are all different ages, so we come at things from different points of view. Lisa studied game design in Cologne and comes from the video game space. We have different perspectives around games and how to play, which was integral to how this game came about.

And for anyone that hasn’t seen Freiluftwelten in action, how would you pitch it?
Tina Schuster: It’s a game you play out in nature, using things like leaves, twigs and stones to create an island. Each player gets different tasks – involving building things with different natural materials – and these also function as stories about how you live on the island. And nobody else knows what your task is, so it’s a bit of a semi-cooperative game. It’s all about fuelling creativity.

Jens-Peter: The booklet in the game allows players to go through the story, building up an island and you cultivating it with natural materials. After five rounds you have a complete island and each part has a story behind it. So you build an adventure from a combination of out of the box materials and the natural materials you collect from outside. It’s a very different game depending on when and where you play it – it will look different played on the beach to in the garden, for example.

It’s a very different type of game – did that make it a tough sell?
Jens-Peter: The difficulty is that when you present this game, it doesn’t fit into the pre-existing ranges they have. So we really had to argue its case, and talk about the need in our society for more discussions about sustainability. We felt this game could bring people back to nature and discussed that in our pitches.

So what made Denkriesen a good home for Freiluftwelten?
Jens-Peter: In Germany they are extremely powerful concerning distribution. And when we showed them, they were fascinated.

Karolina: Yes, they are very open minded and they believe in doing things differently. They had the courage to embrace the challenge.

What’s next for you guys?
Jens-Peter: Now that we’ve opened the jar of games focused on natural materials, we hope to work on more projects like this – we’re now experts on them!

Tina: And we certainly don’t have a lack of ideas!

Last question! What fuels your creativity?
Karolina: For me, it’s going outside and having nice discussions with the team.

Tina: It has a lot to do with getting out and seeing people, listening to people… A bit of a calm time as well!

Lisa Besse: Brainstorming as a group has been really great, and also going into nature, hiking or mushroom hunting.

Jens-Peter: For me, two aspects are often important. One is the material aspect: Is it possible that the material itself in its functionality can have a playful aspect which I can explore in a board game? The second aspect is to look at mostly preschool children, and what they are doing self-motivated. I like to be a scientist concerning self-motivation in children and to realise: ‘Okay, that’s something there that I can make it work.’

Terrific. Guys, a huge congrats on Freiluftwelten. Thanks again.

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