I spent a good chunk of 2019 working on Zestrea, a hilarious Romanian board game loosely based on local customs and traditions. Players act as old time nobles, Boyars and Boyaresses, taking care of the villagers who live on their land, setting up weddings and surviving hard time. You can find all about the project and game play - hey, you can even support us on the Kickstarter page - we are live until the 21 of November.
In December 2018, Horațiu Roman and Alex Pațiu invited me to play a round of Zestrea, back then in early prototype stage, and I fell in love with the idea of the game. It was really fun to play, and it had a special Eastern-European twist, the laugh-at-your-sorrows brand of humor used to survive real life hard times. And so, I used traditional motifs (folk costumes from Cluj, rugs from Oltenia, authentic boyar attires) as inspiration, and added a modern geometrical interpretation.
After a lot of play-testing and design challenges, the game is available in both Romanian and English. Laura Bularca of Valiant Games joined the team and with our powers combined we have a ready-to-print-prototype and a Kickstarter campaign!
