You ever get sick of the same old cryptids? Bigfoot this, Mothman that, chupacabra MEH! Now there’s a board game where you can break away from the ordinary mysteries and check out some of the weirdest creatures Europe has to offer. Or at least there will be!
Cryptic Nature is a new strategy game by German publisher iDventure, in which you are a cryptozoologist searching for the most hidden animals, so that you may resettle and preserve them (on a magnetic board!), currently funding on Kickstarter. Evan Bernstein of the Which Game First and Skeptics’ Guide to the Universe podcasts asked designer Alex Krys, product manager Tatsiana Hofer, and playtester Christian Schmitz all about it. This is an edited transcript of their interview.
Evan Bernstein: Alex Krys, I would like to start with you, as you are one of the main authors of Cryptic Nature. Could you introduce yourself?
Alex Krys: We are a board [game] and puzzles company in Germany, and I’m also running this company and also a creator or co-creator of different games. For this particular game, we have three core creators. It’s Georgi Shugol, who is actually the super fascinated about cryptids person. He came with an idea to make a game actually exploring cryptids around the globe, and we just started with Europe, as we were Euro-located.
We have Oleg Meleshin, who created the base mechanic for this. This is the beginning of the mechanics, and I participated in all these elements together. And at the very early stages of the game creation, we worked together around, I would say, half a year, creating a base mechanic for this game.
EB: Tatsiana, you’re the product manager for Cryptic Nature?
Tatsiana Hofer: Product manager for iDventure, and I would just say my role is to get on everybody’s nerves to make things perfect, so probably that’s why I’m also responsible for the Kickstarter page and how it all works together. I’m giving tasks to the designers and artists to have a whole picture of the product, where everything makes sense, and everything is logical.
And that everything sends the right message to the customer, because there is something more behind just being a game about cryptids, because here we put emphasis on saving the cryptids as if they really were part of the big ecosystem of nature, and how we can just all coexist and wonder, and be amazed by the beauty of these creatures. You know every creature which might seem hazardous at first sight is also part of our big family.
EB: And Cryptic Nature itself is based on a Europe map. And therefore the cryptids that the players will experience are Europe-based cryptids, is that correct?
AK: Yes, that’s correct. So we started with Europe, and when we started to have a deep dive into the scene, first of all, I was fascinated how many books exist on the topic. I don’t know, there’s not a dozen, I would say 100 books, and people and researchers who are following this topic. We wanted to go to Europe first because, first of all, that’s where we live. And these are actually creatures or tales which are around us or or being recorded around us. And yes, we definitely plan to try to go to the U.S. as well, if people like what we have done now.
An important point was really to get people familiar with these cryptids, with the stories, and at least understand what kind of creature it is and what is behind it.
TH: We were really particular about placing the cryptids on the map where they really are said to live. So if the cryptids come from some Slavic countries, then it will be there on the map. We were pretty strict and consistent in following the folklore, and not just inventing things where they shouldn’t be.
EB: As you were creating Cryptic Nature, did you discover anything new and unexpected along the way?
AK: We discovered many more cryptids in general, different types, like mixes of animals and plants, and different locations, in locations we’ve never heard of. Again, when we started investigating, I was amazed how many books are there, and how many people are dealing with this and different reports, even in the last 20-30 years, that people have seen or experienced meeting these creatures, and it’s still happening.
TH: What’s struck us also a lot during the campaign is how deeply the cryptids culture is rooted in the folklore and the local culture, because as soon as people recognize some — like, we have the city Aachen in Germany, it’s not far away from Dusseldorf, maybe one and a half hours from where we are located. This is a city with a very old history, and there are a lot of universities and historical buildings, etc. And there is also a local cryptid called Bahkauv, and as soon as people see this cryptid, you [see] the light in their eyes. It’s like feeling you are home, or something related to your home.
Christian Schmitz: I also realized how much cryptids and stuff like this is still all over the world, or just a normal thing for so many people, and we don’t even notice it. I knew a lot of these creatures from stories, from games, from books. And I thought, yeah, okay, that’s where people discuss them, that’s where people read about them.
But then, also doing research and other stuff, you start to find pictures of them in signs, or anything, when you go to the countries where they’re coming from. Like in Iceland, for example, there’s this bear with a horn; Bjarndýrakóngur is his name, and it’s everywhere. I didn’t think that you can just look at pictures of normal streets, and you sometimes find this bear. It’s still there.
EB: And Alex, you were saying about how you were discovering this overwhelming amount; how many of these creatures are out there in the books and in the resources? It sounds like you maybe had to narrow it down to 60 or 70 creatures from a much larger group.
AK: Here is where game balancing comes into play, because our creatures are split into different categories. First of all, we have creatures which are flying, which are in the water, and so on. Because we need to have a balance on the map, so that people can travel over the map during the game.
That’s how we started to get cryptids onto the map. Of course, we tried to have some known cryptids that people get familiar with what we’re talking about, like Nessie, and we got into very uncommon cryptids, which are — there is very limited information about them, but we still wanted to expose them to the people.
EB: The artwork in Cryptic Nature, I looked at it, and it’s tremendous. And obviously, artwork is such a huge part of a game like this. Who were your artists and what lengths did they go through to make sure that the creatures came out as beautifully as they did?
AK: Our illustrator is Evgeniy Shvenk. We are working on illustration one year already, and it is still a work in progress. We still have some part to complete. The important part was for us to show on the picture not only the cryptid itself, but also to try to tell a small story, reflecting what this cryptid is about. It’s not always we can do the full story, but we try to position them in a location where they live — if it’s in the mountains, in the sea, and so on — to show that it’s going to reflect the reality.
Everything, each and every picture, was discussed. We did a short description what this cryptid is about, what is his specialties or how he is built, out of which creatures it’s combined, and so on. There was a deep dive on each cryptid and how we want to represent it.
TH: It’s important to mention the style of Shvenk, which is really naturalistic. It gives a very natural look, and this is also part of the messaging of the game, like the cryptids being a part of the ecosystem. It’s not drawn in a fantasy-like way, and it’s not sci-fi or something. It’s just nature as it is, and I think Evgeny did a really great job.
EB: Christian, as the lead playtester, how was your journey through the development of Cryptic Nature?
CS: It evolved at multiple stages at the time, even when we were already giving it out to larger groups of players who could play it. We were gathering people in larger groups, like multiple play sessions next to each other. And even then we still found things that we could evolve, that we could change. We got really nice feedback. We changed the turn orders, then we changed them back. So we really wanted to make the game fluid, make sure that everybody has something to do, no sitting around. And yeah, everybody gets to catch a lot of those pretty cryptids.
It was really nice to see, especially when the art was added, that was the first “wow” for me. I felt the rules getting better and everything functioning more smoothly, but then at some point, we also had the first art pieces in there just so we could see how it looks together. And I was like, “Oh, wow, that’s going to be a really, really good game. That’s really nice.”
Cryptic Nature is fully funded on Kickstarter, but you can still reserve your copy (and maybe help unlock some more stretch goals!) until February 21. You can hear Evan Bernstein’s full interview with the Cryptic Nature team on the Which Game First website.
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