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OFPG @ BGG.Spring 2026 - Board Game "Conclave" with Christoph Schlewinski (Spiel des Jahres)

Our Family Plays Games May 25, 2026
Transcript 11:12

Hi, OFPG family. We've got another awesome interview right here with us.

Yes. This is a special one. Special one. Yes.

Yes. And I hope I don't mispronounce his name, but his name is Kristoff Schlowinsky.

This was excellent.

Thank you. And he is from Germany. and you're going to tell us a little bit about yourself and what you're doing here at BG.

Okay. Well, um uh I am uh um my my day job is a script writer for German television and uh what I'm doing here at BG SpringCon is I'm part of the game of the year jury from Germany and I'm teaching uh people the nominated games for the game of the year, Connissur game of the year and kids game of the year.

Yes.

Yeah. That's the spirit of yours y'all.

Yeah. SDJs. Yeah.

So, tell me, I love the accent. Tell us a little bit about some of the games that you're teaching.

Um, so we have three categories. So, for the kids games, it's nominated um um well, it's a German name, Faflick Fetal. So, you could say trickery sorcery. So, it's like a um um catch me if you can mechanism. One is a thief, the other one are the the wizards, and they want to try to catch the thief and stuff. And then we have Boo Party where it's an asymmetrical kids game again where one is the seer and tries to memorize stuff and the other people try to trick the sea into guessing wrong. And then we have Isisle of Mookies where it's a twoplayer kids game from four plus where you collect very beautiful cards. I mean it's a French game so of course the design is beautiful. Awesome. And then we have the game of the year which is Jinxo. It's a fabulous fabulous communication game. So fun.

And then we have Morty salty magic shop

which is kind of a logic puzzle but not something that entangles your brain and makes you go.

It's very basic and nice but it's very thrilling.

And then uh the third one we have is cozy sticker wheel. Yeah. Yes.

Which was a bit of a challenge because sticker, hence the name, you can only play it like 20 times because you glue the stickers to the board.

But here at BGG, someone had a genius idea of how to reuse it all the time.

So, it's like a choose your own adventure book and legacy family style game.

Okay, this is great. And then we have the third award. It's the Connoisseur game of the year award. And we have three games there as well. The first one is Rebirth

by a German Dr. Rhinakitia.

He's well known.

The evil bow tie man.

That that's what as you guys know it's not evil. We don't mean that.

No, he's evil. That one game lost cities breaks up families. Yes.

Cities was good.

And and Dr. Kitia, he knows I say that.

Yes, he does.

Dr. pizza when he's when he's nominated for something, he always comes dressed up in the theme of the game. He was once nominated for a kids game that involved a mouse and he had like a hand puppet of a mouse here and she it was is amazing. It is amazing.

I love that man. Love So, Rebirth is a very simple structured game at first because you have a tile, you place it, you score it, then you look and you check if if it's surroundings do something to the tile and then you draw another tile and the next player turn. That's it. But from this placing this one tile, so many things happened that it's like and it's very cutthroat.

So, you can steal stuff away from each other. You can be very mean to each other.

Okay. Yeah, but it didn't break up any relationships yet. As far as I can, you know, we haven't played together.

We haven't played together yet.

We haven't played yet.

Stable. You think you're okay. We're okay. We made

We made to lost. So, we'll do that.

That's good. And then we had nominated boss fighters QR which is kind of a new experience because you are a cooperative hero gang of heroes and you try to fight the boss uh in a boss battle and it works with an app and you have to scan your cards and the app will distribute the damage to the boss and the app will manage the boss attacks to you and every time you beat a boss you unlock the next boss and it will become harder and harder and harder to beat So that's like very And then we have the last one is Moon Colony Blood Bear.

Yes.

We played that one.

We played that one.

So it's like you finally delivered the moon colony and everything is perfect. The view is nice. The food is amazing. Okay. Your neighbor got sucked in by a vent because it had a malfunction. But it's amazing and the work is nice and the activities are okay. Your your your work colleague got sliced up by a kitchen robot. But everything is fine. And I think you saw a crack in the dome, but everything is fine. Everything is fine until it's not. This is Moon Colony Blood Bath. It's satirical. It's bloody.

Yes, it is.

It's It's weird.

Very.

And it's it's a strange It's a strange game where you have to let go. It It It tells you you can make this hard to let go.

It It's really hard to let go.

The buildings that you build, you don't want them to go away,

but they got to go away. It will Moon Colony Bath. Nothing will get better. Everything will get worse and get worse and worse and worse. Horrible

until one of you explodes and that's it.

That was me.

I exploded so many times I can't even tell you. Yeah. And these are the nine nominated games this year.

Oh, well, thank you for sharing those with us before.

Now, with the with the one with the the app, is that a first for the awards?

Uh oh. We had we had app games before. Uh we had were words.

Yes. Where were

which had an app and we had one other and I did some research uh before before we nominated it

but I forgot

but there were only two games. I remember there were only two games that worked with an app. Yeah.

Now when when do you actually pick the games that you're going to nominate and then when do you make that decision of who wins? What's that process?

We make the decision uh like a week before.

Okay. Um uh that's why we come like to come to BG Spring because because it's like only a couple of days after we decided what to nominate and recon

and uh the process is that I mean we are Germans so we have we are organized yeah order order and we have like an Excel sheet online and we have a forum where we write stuff. So we constantly like every week, every day, every week of the year, we are constantly sharing informations about how the play test goes with which game. And at the end of each month, each of us has like a list of 15 games

of which he says, I want these games to be in the for in the run and I want you to focus on these games. Please look at these games. Yeah. And the last list, end of April, April, that will be the list we we take all these games on the list we take into our conclave.

Okay.

Where we lock each other into a hotel and we are there for like 3 days

and then we start a discussion.

Oh.

And then the game with the least amount of votes

u someone said, "Okay, this is why I want the game to to be in the run." And you have a little little speech about it. And then we vote and it's a basic dem basic democracy. We are 14 people. As long as the game didn't get eight votes, it's out.

And that is what I always when people why isn't that game on the list? I said because it didn't get any votes.

Yeah.

And that's it. And why? I don't know. I can only tell you why I did vote or didn't vote for it. Although most people do, but I can't tell you for the other colleagues. You have to ask them.

And this is how it works. So the whole year we are play testing, play testing. We are sharing our experiences

and we are very thorough with it because we have to

because nobody can play 571 novelties.

We have to share like some have concentrate on this thing, some on this thing but at the end

in the list there are only like maybe a handful of games where people are like why isn't that on the list?

But it's not like oh but what about these 50 games you know? Never.

No. No. There's a team of you. You're not by yourself?

No, we have 14 people.

14 today. I mean, here at BGP, I'm I'm with from the jury. I'm with myself. I'm I'm alone.

But board game, the board game geek people, they were very nice to to let people of that team help you.

Yeah. Help you to That's too much for you by yourself. There are several tables.

Yeah. But I mean, the movement will do me good, you know. So, it's like, you know, one step at a time, you know. That's very good.

For the jury, how many jury members?

We have 14 jury members for the for the game and connoisseur game of the year. And for the kids game, there are seven.

Just seven

because we have three like jury members and then we have uh um four consulting members which are kindergarteners and school teachers. Oh.

So we get people who play with kids on their job basis.

Okay. And for kids games it's very important because for kids games you have to have like a educational point of view

and we we try to get this.

That's cool.

Um and it's not about personal taste with the kids games. With the kids games it's only about is it good for the kids.

That's good. That's cool.

Well Kristoff I just want to say thank you so much for sharing what you do with the spill de Jarus. Hope I'm saying that right.

That goes me. and thanks so much for visiting with us here in Texas from Germany or from in the US from Germany. We met you last year. Had a blast last year. We're having a blast right now. You're such a fun person. And thanks so much for sharing your stuff with us. And OPG family, this is Kristoff. I am not going to try his last name again, but he is with the Spill Djarus, and we're just so excited to play some of the games that they have on display.

Thank you for watching and recommending and thumbs up and everything. Thank you so much. Thank you.

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