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Meet the game makers of Darwin’s Choice

6.11.2019

Translation: Eva Francis

The most successful Swiss kick starter game «Darwin’s Choice» is entering the second round with an expansion. I’ve talked to the inventors of the tabletop game and got an interesting insight into their start-up company.

In the middle of the industrial district of Steinhausen in the canton of Zug, Marc Dür welcomes me in front of an inconspicuous office building. He’s one of the three minds behind the tabletop game «Darwin’s Choice» and responsible for strategy, organisation and design in their start-up «Treecer». «This building will be demolished at some point. Until then, local start-ups and artists are using it,» Marc tells me. He and his friends have had their office and a small warehouse here for eight months. «It was about time we stopped using my parents' living room to meet our business customers,» Marc adds. We arrive at their modest office and I meet the rest of the team. Like Marc, Samuel Luterbacher (Communication and Quality Management) works full-time for Darwin's Choice. Elio Reinschmidt is the third team member and adds his knowledge in research, development and web design. Elio is studying and supports them in every spare minute.

Marc, Samuel and Elio with their mascot.

The three have been close friends for several years. «We always knew we were going to start a company together one day. What we didn't know at the time was that it would be a board game,» Marc explains. He had the idea for Darwin's Choice in autumn 2017. It took about eight months to develop the product. During this time, Marc read up about crowdfunding: «I read all kinds of books about it, analysed and evaluated several successful and failed campaigns.» In May 2018, the trio launched its Kickstarter campaign for Darwin's Choice.

To their surprise, the campaign went better than expected. In less than 24 hours, they reached their target number of 20,000 francs. A little later, Kickstarter declared their game a team favourite, which attracted even more backers. Their campaign ran for 28 days. «I checked our progress on Kickstarter every hour. It was almost obsessive,» Elio admits. Once the campaign ended, 3,284 backers had invested over 190,000 francs in the project, making Darwin's Choice by far the most successful Kickstarter game from Switzerland.

«I checked our progress on Kickstarter every hour. It was almost obsessive.»

Darwin's Choice is a journey of evolution. The aim of the game is to create animals from different body parts and adjust and extend them in the course of the game. Your animals have to adapt to certain biomes to save them from extinction. On top of this, event cards cause unpredictable changes in the game: the Ice Age may break out or a meteorite impact might darken the sky and cause food shortages. The stronger and better adapted your animals are, the more Darwin points you collect during the game. The winner is the one who scores the most points after having played four ages.

Card games

Treeceratops Darwin's Choice

German

A decent salary? Not yet.

Although the game was successfully funded on Kickstarter and has been available in stores since the summer of 2019, Marc, Samuel and Elio cannot rest on their laurels. «At the moment, we can't pay ourselves a salary but only pocket money,» Marc says. They're in a situation many self-employed people know: they can't live on their start-up company, but it’s too time-consuming to do it just as a hobby.

«Our next Kickstarter campaign will be decisive for the future of our start-up. If it fails, we'll all have to look for a new job.»

It would have been less risky to have Darwin's Choice published by a large game publisher, but they never considered this: «We have very high standards when it comes to producing Darwin's Choice. If our game was made by a publisher, we wouldn't be able to influence the quality.» Their standards include, among other things, that the game is manufactured in Germany, is FSC certified and contains little plastic. «Of course, producing the game in China would be cheaper. But that would be against our principles,» Marc states. Their next step will also be of great importance: «Our next Kickstarter campaign will be decisive for the future of our start-up. If it fails, we'll all have to look for a new job.»

Before and After

Their new Kickstarter campaign with the expansion to Darwin's Choice is running until 5 December 2019. It's called «Before and After». «Many of our backers were missing the dinosaurs in the basic game,» Samuel tells me. «The expansion makes this wish come true.» In addition, several pledges are available on Kickstarter: if you're willing to pay more, you'll get attractive accessories in return. One of these pledges, for example, is an encyclopedia of all animals in the game – excluding the newly added dinosaurs.

Prototypes of the expansion and the encyclopedia.

The dinosaurs cover the «Before», while humans are the new «After». Humans take over more and more habitat from your animals in the game and add intensively farming, which leads to monocultures and less food. With new events such as climate change, mass tourism, war or destruction of rainforests, it becomes increasingly difficult for you to save your animals from extinction.

«Before and After» strikes a chord, as man-made climate change and the resulting problems in flora and fauna are more present than ever. The expansion of Darwin's Choice is a playful way to show the current situation of nature and what will happen if we do not act in the foreseeable future. According to Samuel, however, this will remain the only extension of Darwin's Choice: «Before and After will be the last extension. It completes Darwin's Choice.»

However, the three want to stay active in the games business. They've talked to other game designers and artists, which could lead to possible cooperations and are also considering passing on their expertise on how to create Kickstarter campaigns in coachings. We're sure to see more from Marc, Samuel and Elio.

By the way: I am backer No. 618! :)

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Ramon Schneider

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Ramon.Schneider@digitecgalaxus.ch

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