Kapitein Spel at SPIEL

This year the biggest board game fair in the world drew no fewer than 220,000 visitors from every corner of the globe. We at Kapitein Spel were there to find out what is going on internationally in the world of games right now. And there is a lot going on!

A journey full of danger

After an adventurous journey full of danger (near Arnhem a sinkhole even suddenly opened up in the road!) we arrived at the Messe in Essen, where at first we could still move through the crowds reasonably well. As the afternoon went on, however, especially in the oh-so-popular Hall 3, we noticed that things were slowing down considerably, and more and more often we found ourselves standing shoulder to shoulder with other board game lovers. Photo of a sinkhole for dramatic effect. The sinkhole in Arnhem was not in the middle of the road, but it did cause plenty of traffic jams…

Our (earlier) tips versus the experience

Beforehand, we had already tipped games such as Orloj, Covenant and Feya’s Swamp as potential crowd-pullers. And we turned out to be completely right; Feya’s Swamp, for example, had already sold out on the first day of the fair. Other games that people literally queued up for were Bohemians and Echoes of Time, but titles such as Deckers, Kuldhara and Recall also proved to be absolute hits. And we could go on like this for quite a while, of course, because at SPIEL one surprise follows another.

But there is more than games…

Above all, we had very interesting and fruitful conversations with all sorts of people in our hobby. Take the crew of Fractal Juegos, for example. This is the studio behind Feya’s Swamp, which had completely sold out on day 1 (!), even before we had properly set sail on the choppy seas of the fair floor. What that conversation was about, we are keeping secret for just a little longer…

Our goal for SPIEL was to fine-tune our feelers for the games of the future. We succeeded – and how! The fun and useful conversations with fellow game fanatics, publishers and suppliers have helped enormously in charting our (planned) course for the time ahead. After all, as a fast-growing webshop and Captains of the gaming seas, we always want to make sure that you find exactly the games in our stock that you are so eagerly looking for. Or, if you are not looking for anything in particular, that you can at least find some inspiration.

All in all…

On the one hand our visit to SPIEL was intense, but it was also very much worth it. We were also able to take a number of beautiful review copies on board, and of course we will take a closer look at those later.
When we set off on the journey home at the end of the day, we got stuck in traffic, first in Germany and later near Arnhem again. But that did not spoil the fun, and it only gave us more time to swap our experiences of the fair and our enthusiasm for the board game hobby we share.