~ In its infancy ~

It was 1998, I had a newly acquired Mac on which I played numerous games, among them: Spaceward Ho! I loved the fact that in the game you had to terraform planets before you could inhabit them. I thought that was a great mechanism. My brother Anselm soon started designing a board game with this mechanism at its core. We were also major fans of Settlers of Catan and played the game a lot, so we thought to use the idea of a modular board in the game we were designing.

After many playtests with family and friends, we decided to present the game at the International Game Inventors Fair in Munich. We met the people at Hans im Glück who playtested it for a while and then decided not to publish it. This rejection made us abandon the game altogether for many years until I started redesigning it in 2002.

~ What did the game look like before it became Terra Mystica? ~

At first, the game was called Gorod. There were five different landscapes and five unique fantasy races, each with their own specialties, inhabiting the different areas. Players had to terraform adjacent regions into their landscape before they were able to build on it. There were three types of buildings that you could construct, each provided players with a specific advantage (worker, money or action cards). In light of the rejection from Hans im Glück, we realized that the action cards were adding too much of a “luck” aspect to the game and decided to scrap that idea.

After more playtests with a new testing group, Gorod was still a hit. I added two more landscapes and two new races, experimented with a modular board, and played with the number of buildings you could eventually build. We playtested it for another two years, and then I put the game back in my drawer.

In 2009, the game came out of the drawer again, and I was set on completing it. This time, I focused on the civilization aspect of the game. I wanted to give players different abilities to improve their buildings and to gain additional advantages. I decided to bring the number of races up to fourteen. This sounded like the best number yet. It is also in 2009 that I met Andreas and Bernadette from Cliquenabend. I soon became a regular member of their gaming group and decided to show them Gorod. They all loved it!

In 2010, Cliquenabend organized its first Mallorca-gathering event that brought together designers and publishers for a ten-day prototype-testing show. That’s where I met Uwe Rosenberg. He really enjoyed the game and promised me it would be published, but also said that it still needed tons of work. We had a few gaming weekends together where I also met Jens Drögemüller, who after a few more gaming sessions became my co-designer, and Frank Heeren, who became the publisher with Feuerland Spiele.

~ The birth of Terra Mystica! ~

For a long time the game had only the working title "Gorod" which is Russian for town/city. In early versions of the game, the founding of towns was the essential aim of the game. Even though the game had evolved a lot over the years, the working title stayed the same. The title "Terra Mystica" was created in the title searching process. It includes the mysteries and the magic of many of the factions present in the game, as well as the importance of TERRAforming.

In 2012, we had finally devised all fourteen races with select abilities, and were now perfectly balanced. The game had a great new name and we were ready to show the world. Terra Mystica was released at Spiel 2012, which was very exciting for all involved!