Words by Matt Jarvis
For Alexander Pfister, the story’s the thing. Whether it’s Great Western Trail’s dusty cattle-herding odyssey or the steady ascension of rulers from chieftans to kings in Isle of Skye, the Austrian designer has been celebrated for crafting Eurogames with a firm skeleton of strategic complexity that are nevertheless muscled with an atmospheric sense of time and place. They’re games that tell stories and provide stories to tell. It’s a renown that led Pfister to receive the prestigious Kennerspiel des Jahres award alongside his Isle of Skye and Broom Service codesigner Andreas Pelikan in consecutive years.