Blaž Urban Gracar is the creator of fan-favorite works such as LOK and Abdec, ingenious and lovely paper puzzle books that you solve your way through. After the recent release Workworkwork, his next upcoming project is Herd, a solo-boardgame-book which he's showing off in a new preview video.
You can watch Blaž walk us through the first 8 puzzles of Herd below (mild spoiler warning, I suppose, if you're obsessed with going into the new game truly blind! But only the basic premise and rules are explained here):
Much of what's going on here we've come to expect from previous works in Blaž's portfolio. A physical, spiral-bound book filled with charming, hand-illustrated puzzle grids and featuring a race of amorphous little creatures that need our guidance. As usual we'll be asked to intuit and discover some of the rules as we play in a delightful process of creating our own eureka moments.
But there are some big differences too: this one comes in a box! Herd contains plastic miniature pieces that will be important to the functionality of the game, as some of the primary mechanics of the puzzles involve sliding little sheep and shepherd pieces around the board and joining them into stacks.
The preview video is only a few minutes long, but gives us a sense of the foundation the game will build on and what to expect from the rest of the included 65 puzzles. If you're a fan of any of Blaž's previous puzzle design work, I don't have to tell you that we can expect Herd to be challenging, interesting and innovative. His games have never failed to put a smile on my face.
Herd is coming later this year and you'll be able to order the hybrid boardgame-puzzle-book from Blaž's website Letibus Design.
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