by Peer Sylvester

Game design is a mix of experimentation and inspiration. If you condensed a description of Upland & Prairie down to a single sentence, you’d be excused for thinking I’ve simply remade The King is Dead: ‘Place one of three colours of marker on a board, then take one for yourself, and whoever has the most markers of the type that wins on the board, wins the game. Oh, and with four players it’s a partnership game’. Okay, so that was two sentences, but my point stands.

In reality, these parallels are misleading, though not completely coincidental: In 2007, I designed King of Siam, which was later republished by Osprey as The King is Dead. Playing that game seemingly got Cole Wehrle thinking about designing his own games, the first of which to publish was Pax Pamir (2015). When Matilda Simonsson played Pax Pamir’s second edition (2019) she was inspired to create and publish Turncoats(2021). In turn I played Turncoats in 2022, and it inspired me to create ‘Debatable Lands’ (which has since become Upland & Prairie). So, in some sense Upland & Prairie is inspired by a string of games that trace all the way back to King of Siam!

One thing I particularly liked in Turncoats was its way of handling randomness, specifically the drawing of a marker from a bag. I took inspiration from that, but put a spin on it where you draw two markers and place one on the map as well as keeping a marker. The marker you keep is secret and that establishes the important bluffing element — you don’t know what the others are collecting or how many they have. This uncertainty is essential to the design.

The board took quite a few iterations, mainly because this style of game shouldn’t last too long, but it also needs the time to feel like you have developed the game state together. The objective is to link certain spots on the board with a chain of markers of the same colour. In a version where those spots are too far away, it becomes frustrating as players may keep on blocking. If they are too close, there is not much of a game. Building tension is important for the arc of the game and it should be possible to control the timing of the endgame a bit. So, the layout was important. However, the breakthrough idea was to add 3a marker to the bag that, when drawn, raises the capacity of all spaces. This creates structure and enables blocking early on, both of which build player commitments, but then the improving capacity of spaces unlocks the end game and a tense finish. For Osprey it was this improving capacity and absence of direct conflict that drew them towards the rewilding theme of Upland & Prairie.

The game also had some significant advantages over my other prototypes: It was really easy to make changes (because the components were basically just a few hexes with symbols and a bag of cubes) and it was quick to play. I was able to play a lot with my daughters (great for two and three-player tests) to get the exact cube count and distances of the board perfectly right. But the game was not yet quite where I wanted it — the randomness was stronger than the bluffing. The fix? Draw three markers from the bag instead of two: one for the board, one for the personal supply, and one back to the bag. This changed the dynamics of the probabilities once again, but it struck the right balance between tactical approaches and the whims of uncertainty.

With the two and three-player game working well, it was time to think about four. I love partnership games, so it’s no surprise that for the four-player game I once again tried a partnerships mechanic! I just love the way you need to communicate with your partner through play. During the first four-player test game, my friend, Georgios Panagiotidis, mentioned that he had trouble getting information from his partner who kept most of their markers. We agreed that it would be against the spirit if teams just had a shared supply - and it would just play too much like two two-player games - so we came up with the rule: every time the improvement marker was drawn, you would simultaneously (and silently) exchange a marker with your partner. That can of course cause funny moments (especially when you exchange identical markers), but that’s a plus in my book.

I have to admit that I played this a lot before showing it to Osprey, perhaps the most I’ve ever played an unpublished design of mine. It helps that it’s so quick and easy to play, and whilst the description may sound The King is Dead-ish, it doesn’t play anything like it. The King is Dead is cerebral, whereas as in Upland & Prairie I’ve even managed to win by targeting one colour but not placing a single one of that colour on the board (and, because I let the others think I was backing a different colour, they did all the work for me)!

The team at Osprey must have thought something similar, since they were quick to take it and made a very pretty game out of my very abstract prototype.. Big shoutout to Hannah Cohen, who made it all look playful and gorgeous. I really enjoyed getting art updates on this one (and they include more player screens than strictly necessary, so Hannah can showcase her art). The only thing I kind of regret is that I couldn’t keep the original title, which was Debatable Lands. I understand it has a very specific meaning in the UK, so I understand the decision. Still, I like the tone of it and maybe I’ll make another game with that title someday…