Lost Ruins of Arnak takes home prestigious German-language board game award
Beating out Micromacro: Crime City.
Lost Ruins of Arnak, a deckbuilding board game that was released last year, has been named the winner of a prestigious German-language board game award.
The prize in question is called the Deutsche Spielepreis - Or German Game Prize - and is organised by the company behind the upcoming Essen Spiel 2021 convention taking place next month, which is the largest tabletop gaming event in the world. Winners are chosen via the public and “selected journalists”, with the ballots deciding which German-language titles will receive gold, with the runners-up being given silver and bronze awards respectively.
This year’s winner, Lost Ruins of Arnak, took the gold ahead of nine other board games that had been released in German-language versions over the last year, including the likes of Spiel des Jahres 2021 winner MicroMacro: Crime City, a co-op board game containing an enormous map which took home the silver Deutsche Spielepreis award.
Also featured on the list of the top ten games chosen for the Deutsche Spielepreis are The Adventures of Robin Hood - which was awarded the bronze award - Paleo, deckbuilding game Aeon’s End, Everdell, video game board game Anno 1800 and Gloomhaven: Jaws of the Lion.
Previous winners of the Deutsche Spielepreis include The Crew - a co-op card game which also won the Kennerspiel des Jahres 2020 - Elizabeth Hargrave’s Wingspan, Azul, the space-themed board game Terraforming Mars and Terra Mystica, a game about taking command of different fantasy species in order to acquire resources and land.
Lost Ruins of Arnak is a deckbuilding board game for one to four players - designed by Elwen and Mín, with this being their debut tabletop design - that takes place on a mysterious island filled with secrets and ancient artifacts. As archaeologists and adventurers, players are looking to make discoveries by exploring the island and recording their findings. Players can acquire victory points in a number of different ways such as venturing to the island’s different digsites in search of artifacts or through conducting research into the island’s secrets.
As a worker-placement board game, Lost Ruins of Arnak also has players choosing how to use their meeples during each round. With a limited number of meeples available, players have to think carefully about where to place their meeples and if it’s going to be the most efficient move for that turn. Whichever player manages to gather the most victory points by the end of the game is named the winner.
The winner of the Deutscher Kinderspielepreis 2021 - an award given to board games designed for children - was also announced alongside the Deutscher Spielepreis, with Dodo, a board game for kids that sees players working together to roll an egg safely down a mountain and into the lifeboat at the bottom, taking the top spot.