Let’s build fincas in Mallorca: FINCA, the new game of Hans im Glück
Finca Game
Finca is a new game published by Hans im Glück. This is an odd little game of fruit growing on the island of Mallorca (though the English translation claimed it was Majorca). The game has a kind of roundel: players move their farmer pieces around the windmill sails in one corner of the board. The sail they land on lets them pick up a specific fruit, the number depending on the number of pieces on the space. Crossing the median line of the sails gets the player a donkey cart as well. Using a cart allows a player to deliver some fruit (you can’t get that many in a donkey cart) to the districts of the island. Each district is looking for a certain combination of fruit, as shown by the top tile in the district. Delivering the right fruit gets the player the tile and a bonus tile if it’s the last in the district. Players also have a set of special actions, allowing them to bend the rules in specific ways, but these are worth victory points if not used. With the money that you earn you have to build “Posessions”, the typicall ancient vuildings of the Island.
The game designed by Ralf zur Linde has reached some international impact, and even the US newspaper “The Daily Herald” has selected it as one of the best proposals for this Christmas because its “mixture between simplcity, beauty and unpredicatability.”
The “Spiel des Jahres”, a kind of “Oscar” awards since 1978, nominated the game as finalist for 2009, which could raise the sales from 3.000 to 10.000 units.
