Futhark is the name of the Viking rune alphabet. Futhark is also the name of my latest game. Furthark is a 54 card game where 2-4 players compete to form words in a tableau of runes. The game is currently in playtesting. The print-and-play playtest edition is free for personal use. Find it here.
Vikings as a theme
I’ve published two micro games this year so far (Petroglyph and Draw Stranger) and I wanted to add a third micro game. Futhark ended up needing a full set of 54 cards so it doesn’t fit the requirement perfectly. But the game works, it has a sales hook, and is within reach for self publication in a small print run.
The sales hook of Futhark is the runes. People will buy a game they have never played and know nothing about if they can find the right excuse. In this case it’s a game that will teach you to recognise and form words with the most common of the Viking runes.
Vikings are popular and have been for a long time. Perhaps the market for Viking themed board games is over saturated. But there will be people 100 years from now who will study the inscriptions on the rune stones dating back 1000 years.
I have studied Viking Age Scandinavia since I was a teenager. I no longer have any romanticised views of my ancestors. Pillaging murder hobos who kidnapped youngsters to trade for silver. But the runes are the runes, symbols for expressing words and meaning across time. Most of the every day small words I speak in Danish and Swedish (and English) were first written with runes. And from a game design perspective, the simplified 16-rune Younger Futhark has some fascinating properties that make for a good game.
Game design thoughts
Futhark is like Scrabble but with runes. But because there are only 16 runes, each rune covers more than one modern day letter or phonetic sound. Still, most 2, 3 and 4 letter words do not use the same rune twice. Also, Rune masters weren’t too particular when it came to spelling and runes can be written both left-to-right and right-to-left. Finally, 16 runes fit nicely in a four-by-four grid. When you form an array and slide runes around to form words, you cannot avoid also helping other players to form their words. Which is exactly the sort of tension you want in a game.
It took me a while to get the dynamics of the game right. At first I wanted to keep the entire game at 18 cards or under. But I also wanted the game to be language independent. Players don’t need to know a Nordic language to play the game. So I ended up adding cards with the words to be formed. Which also makes for a neat way to keep track of scoring. Plus I can sneak in names from Norse Mythology as a treat to those who recognise them.
Then I wanted the moves that alter the rune tableau to be just right. Simple to teach, potent to achieve the desired changes in few moves yet without causing too much chaos from players working toward different goals.
A challenge that I’m currently playtesting to address is the cognitive load. Most people today are not familiar with the runes. While they might easily play a game using Arabic numerals and Latin letters, just swapping out the symbols to use an unfamiliar alphabet adds a mental overhead. Which is part of what the game is about, practicing to recognising the runes. But the balance needs to be right.
Finally, the Younger Futhark has one rune that is rarely used, the last letter ᛦ. Eventually it fell out of use. To create a better game I decided to replace it with a wildcard, a rune card that can be used as any other rune when forming words.
Further playtesting will help me decide if the game is good enough to publish commercially.
Thank you and final notes
I’ve discussed the idea of a Futhark micro game with a number of people over the last weeks. Some have even play tested early versions as I explored the design space. Thank you to Mats, Anton, Kacper, Douglas, Egil, and Rasmus for input so far.
I took inspiration from the game Cirkus Topito, a favourite of my youngest. Cirkus Topito is a dexterity game where you take turns placing blocks of circus artists on top of each other to match cards on your hand. Funny enough, while Futhark is not a dexterity game, the information economy in the two games are similar. Pro game design tip: Don’t be afraid to take shortcuts by leaning on other games that you know work.
Finally, the runes date back to a least 2nd century AD. And people in Scandinavia have raided the shores of their neighbours since way before some English monks happened to write about their Annus Horribilis of 793. And the creators of the first runes clearly took inspiration from the Latin alphabet. That again took inspiration from earlier alphabets. Cool by the way to be able to type Futhark runes seamlessly on the computer today.