Game designer Rita Modl on bringing trivia and origami together in Alter Falter

Rita, it’s great to connect! To kick us off, was a career in game design always on the cards?
It popped up from nowhere… It was crazy! I was at a birthday party for one of my friend’s children and the following day I decided I wanted to design a game.

As simple as that!
Yes! I don’t know why – and at that time I didn’t play board games. I played a lot when I was a child and in my teens, but then I grew up and didn’t play games anymore… So, of course, when I designed my first game, it was awful.

Ha!
I showed it to a publisher, and he came back very quickly to say: ‘Maybe you should look up what a modern board game is, because this game is very old-fashioned and not good.’

Hard to hear but useful feedback I imagine.
Yes, that motivated me. So I started playing again – and loved it! I played games like Codenames… It was a completely new world for me and I learned a lot, so my game development got better and better. And then my first game was published in 2018.

And this was Men at Work?
Yes.

What a game – I love Men at Work. Not a bad debut at all, is it!?
No, I’m very thankful for this game. It opened so many doors for me.

How did the game take shape?
It’s a strange story because at first, it was a totally different game that used those same components. I showed it to a game agency called White Castle in Austra, and they said: “We want to give you a contract, but you have to change these aspects of the game.” I was a bit angry, because I had no idea how to really alter the game in the way they wanted me to. So I dumped all of the components onto the table, and put the meeples on it and suddenly thought: ‘That looks very nice!’ So I made a completely new game out of that initial prototype and White Castle said: “Yes, we’ll have it!” They showed it at Nürnberg and it launched at Essen that year.

Wow!
It was very quick. And the publisher, Pretzel Games, actually said: “We want more material in the box and more rules.” I was like… Okay! And White Castle were amazing because Pretzel is a Canadian publisher, so everything was in English and, as my first game, I was completely overwhelmed. I couldn’t have handled it alone.

And did the success of Men at Work help establish you as a designer publishers wanted to connect with?
Yes, I had people come to me asking: ‘Do you have another dexterity game?’ But Men at Work was my first dexterity game… It was my first game full stop! And my other prototypes were not dexterity games, so I just pitched those instead of trying to come up with a new dexterity game.

Terrific. Let’s talk about your latest game – Alter Falter – published by Denkriesen.
Orl-ter Forl-ter!

Am I pronouncing this wrong!?
It’s called Alter Falter!

So, if I’m sounding this out – I said ‘Alter Faulter’, but I should pronounce it ‘Owl-ter Fal-ter’
Yes! You’ve got to say it in a German accent! But your ‘Orl-ter Forl-ter’ sounds cool!

Ha! So what does Alter Falter mean in German?
It’s German slang that means surprise or shock – but Falten means to fold something. So it’s a play on words because that’s what the game is about. It combines a trivia game with origami. So you get a question, and you have a piece of paper with a grid of letters and colours in all different directions – you have to fold your paper until the correct answer is visible.

I’ll pop a video in here so people can see what this looks like in action.

Was origami the original inspiration?
Yes, and it was actually one of my fastest designs to come together. It took time putting different levels together though, because we have easy levels that progressively get harder.

What made Denkriesen a good home for Alter Falter?
They have a lot of paper sheet games, like Vollverschätzt, and they’re very good at easy family games. They’re also great at marketing – they’re a perfect publisher for it.

What makes someone good at inventor relations – or at being an editor – at a publisher?
Making a game better and not worse! There are quite a few editors in Germany who – before they joined a publisher – were game designers. This is always a good sign because they can imagine where a game could go and what could be done to improve things and that’s always helpful.

And what would you say is your most underrated game? We’ll give it some love here!
I have two! The first is Auf Ein Wort! It’s a competitive word game. You get a word in the middle of table – like ‘party’ – and three letters. You have to write down words that begin with those letters that connect in some way to ‘party’.

So if the letters are ‘F’, ‘B’ and ‘K’, I might write ‘Friends’, ‘Beer’ and ‘Karaoke’.
Yes! And then there’s scoring depending on if the other players have written the same words as you. I loved this so much I considered publishing it myself before licensing it!

Nice! And your second pick?
It’s Kuhfstein. It was published in German and France. It’s a tile-placement game that I like very much, and while it’s not really underrated, it’s not published in English yet, so that’s why I’d pick it here.

The campaign for an English-language version of Kuhfstein starts here.
Auf Ein Wort! is also not in English either… And the funny thing is, another game of mine – King of 12 – was also published in German and French. It was a bestseller in France… French people like my games!

Hopefully an English release is on the cards. Before we wrap up, I know you’re involved in the game designers association, SAZ. For anyone new to SAZ, can you talk us through what you do for designers?
We have nearly 800 members from all over the world, mostly in Germany and Europe. The most important thing we help designers with is contracts, but we also host a lot of workshops and talks. Our members also benefit for free entrance or reduced fees to some important fairs. And we facilitate a lot of networking.

Amazing. We’ll pop a link here so people can check out SAZ: https://www.spieleautorenzunft.de/home.html. Rita, this has been fun – congrats again on Alter Falter! And thanks for helping me with my German pronunciations!

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