Uwe Rosenberg (born 27 March 1970) is a German game designer and the co-founder of Lookout Games. He initially became known for his card game Bohnanza, which was successful both in Germany and internationally. He is more recently known for developing many highly-acclaimed strategy games, such as Agricola and A Feast for Odin. As of March 2023, his games held six of the entries on BoardGameGeek.com's top-100 board games of all time.

Rosenberg in 2009

Works edit

Born in Aurich, Germany, Rosenberg first began to occupy himself with the development and mechanisms of games at the age of 12.[1] He published a number of play-by-mail games during his school years. While he was still in college, Amigo published his first major success, Bohnanza. Since finishing his statistics studies in Dortmund (the subject of his thesis was "Probability distributions in Memory"), his main occupation is the development of games.

In 2000, he and a few other game designers founded the publishing company Lookout Games. It published a number of expansions to Bohnanza, partly in cooperation with Hanno Girke. Larger projects were at first published at other publishers, such as Amigo and Kosmos.[2]

Since 2005, Rosenberg has concentrated mostly on complex economic strategy games,[3] often with a farming or fishing theme: his first, Agricola, was released in October 2007, went on to win a Spiel des Jahres special award for the best complex game of 2008,[4] and has become a staple in the European game subgenre of worker placement games. It dethroned Puerto Rico as the highest rated game on BoardGameGeek.com in September 2008 and stayed at the top of the rankings until March 2010.[4] A second game in this series, Le Havre, was published in October 2008, as well as Caverna in 2013.[4][5] His highest rated game is currently A Feast for Odin, which is ranked #23 on BoardGameGeek.com as of March 2023.[6]

Since 2014, he has also designed several less-complex tile-laying games, including Patchwork.

Many of Rosenberg's designs have also been recognized as being excellent for solitary play.[7]

He married Susanne Balders on 18 May 2007. He lives in Gütersloh and works at his studio in Dortmund.

Games edit

 
Rosenberg in 2009

References edit

  1. ^ Krause, Daniel (19 October 2016). "45 Minuten mit Uwe Rosenberg". www.brettspiel-news.de (in German). Retrieved 9 November 2016.
  2. ^ "Meine ersten Gehversuche als Spieleerfinder | Uwe Rosenberg". BoardGameGeek.
  3. ^ Baldwin, Matthew (7 December 2015). "The 2015 Good Gift Games". Retrieved 23 April 2015.
  4. ^ a b c Woods, Stuart (2009). Eurogames: The Design, Culture and Play of Modern European Board Games. McFarland. ISBN 978-0786467976.
  5. ^ GmbH, Lookout. "Caverna: The Cave Farmers". www.lookout-spiele.de. Retrieved 24 February 2022.
  6. ^ "A Feast for Odin". BoardGameGeek.
  7. ^ Zimmerman, Aaron (6 March 2016). "Table for one: How to play board games without a group". Retrieved 23 April 2015.
  8. ^ "Bohnanza". boardgamegeek.com. Retrieved 12 December 2016.
  9. ^ "Mamma mia". boardgamegeek.com. Retrieved 8 April 2019.
  10. ^ "Babel". boardgamegeek.com. Retrieved 12 December 2016.
  11. ^ "Bali". uplay.it. Retrieved 27 January 2017.
  12. ^ "Agricola". boardgamegeek.com. Retrieved 12 December 2016.
  13. ^ "Le Havre". boardgamegeek.com. Retrieved 12 December 2016.
  14. ^ "At the Gates of Loyang". boardgamegeek.com. Retrieved 12 December 2016.
  15. ^ "Merkator". boardgamegeek.com. Retrieved 12 December 2016.
  16. ^ "Ora et Labora". boardgamegeek.com. Retrieved 12 December 2016.
  17. ^ "Agricola: All Creatures Big and Small". boardgamegeek.com. Retrieved 12 December 2016.
  18. ^ "Le Havre: The Inland Port". boardgamegeek.com. Retrieved 12 December 2016.
  19. ^ "Caverna". boardgamegeek.com. Retrieved 12 December 2016.
  20. ^ "Glass Road". boardgamegeek.com. Retrieved 12 December 2016.
  21. ^ "Patchwork". boardgamegeek.com. Retrieved 12 December 2016.
  22. ^ "Fields of Arle". boardgamegeek.com. Retrieved 12 December 2016.
  23. ^ "A Feast for Odin". boardgamegeek.com. Retrieved 12 December 2016.
  24. ^ "Cottage Garden". boardgamegeek.com. Retrieved 12 December 2016.
  25. ^ "Caverna: Cave vs Cave". boardgamegeek.com. Retrieved 13 December 2017.
  26. ^ "Indian Summer". boardgamegeek.com. Retrieved 13 December 2017.
  27. ^ "Nusfjord". boardgamegeek.com. Retrieved 13 December 2017.
  28. ^ "Reykholt". boardgamegeek.com. Retrieved 13 December 2017.

External links edit