De Sint Spellen

The Saint Nicholas Games are two small games that I purposely made to be played during the holiday of Saint Nicholas. This is a typical Dutch holiday that is most likely the origin of Christmas.

Of course, you can play these games at any time! But their themeing heavily leans on Saint Nicholas, and the games are designed for families and large groups (with players who might normally never play a board game).

The rules are extremely simple and meant to support large player counts. The simplest game of the two has no necessary text, to also allow the youngest children to play, and even supports simultaneous turns to make sure nobody needs to wait their turn.

These games are, as expected, only available in Dutch. Sorry.

What’s special?

This project started as one game that was a standalone spinoff within my Naivigation series. Those are simple games in which you try to steer the same vehicle … together. From there, it was easy to make the jump to the following thought: “But wait, the steam engine with which Saint Nicholas arrives each year is also a vehicle!”

During development, however, the idea turned out to be two ideas. And so the game split into two unique games. One of them extremely simple, the other one pretty simple, but both built upon the idea of moving a vehicle together to make Saint Nicholas a success.

I’m proud of the fact that I keep learning new ways to make my games even simpler. I don’t even need text or numbers anymore in some cases. When I made Boot op Stoom (the “harder version”), I thought it couldn’t be simplified further. But two days and two iterations later, I suddenly saw the obvious way in which Amerigo’s Dakenpad could be even simpler to teach and play.

Besides Wie is de Trol? (which is based on a popular Dutch TV show), these are my only Dutch board games. Because, well, the holiday of Saint Nicholas—at least in the way we celebrate it—is found nowhere else in the world.

(It’s likely I’ll make a Christmas version of these too, at some point. That will be English and more focused on the lore and familiar elements of that holiday, of course.)