by Erik Anderson Sundén

Magnus and Erik: Hi, and welcome to our story! In this diary, we will tell you all about how the games Where is That?: Europe and Where is That?: South America came into this world thanks to the fabulous people who work at Fractal Juegos!

Erik: I want to dedicate this game to my father, who has patiently tested my designs ever since I was old enough to create them, which was probably around four years old. He also happens to be one of the most knowledgeable people I know when it comes to geography.

So this game is for him.


Erik: Where do we start? Let's start when we first met...

Magnus was the one who introduced me to the game design community of Sweden. (Speldesignrummet på LinCon shoutout!) I brought my first serious (but not great) design to the con around 2015, and Magnus invited me to his neighboring room, where I met several of my now great friends! Since then, we have met regularly to test each other's games.

But it took some time before we agreed to make a game together — namely, this game! I had created a rough draft of a game for my father, a geography game idea that was all about correctly placing cities relative to one another. However, the correction system was poorly executed, and I did not think much about the game once I had shown it to my father...but Magnus had an idea for how to spice it up. This design would be nothing without his great sense of simple, yet engaging gameplay.

The official partnering-up was done on February 10, 2023:



Magnus: The initial idea that Erik showed me was interesting, although it lacked one key aspect: simplicity. The original design had no grid, so all card positions were allowed, and all cards interacted. This made it tedious to compare cards, and working with decimal numbers is not for everyone.

My first thought was to make the placement more strict and order the cards in each dimension. Together with the fact that each card affects only its adjacent cards, this change made it super easy to score — and even if the mechanism is dead simple, you often get the feeling that you are a magician when you flip the cards for the first time to score the game.

Our initial prototype had fixed positions, so when you placed a card, it was stuck there for the rest of the game. This turned the game into a lucky draw contest, with you hoping to get the right card at game's end. Introducing the ability to move cards to fit your current card has solved most of the problems and feels like a good trade-off between rules and fun.

Later on, we have come to the insight that the mechanism is similar to games like Timeline, but with two dimensions and scoring at the end.

Magnus: The sketch that I sent to Erik explaining my thoughts on how to make it easier to score.
Erik: The first prototype was only text on square cards, but it showed promise from the start. The mechanisms worked and made it easy to check for points.

Magnus: Erik's original idea came from the insight about how cities in the world are positioned relative to each other. For example, Washington and Lisbon? East-west is easy, but their north-south situation is much trickier!

Erik: In fact, I still cannot believe that Madrid and New York are on about the same latitude!

Magnus: Early on, we decided to create a prototype with European cities since we are both Swedes and our playtesters are mostly of European origin. We selected all the capitals, then added a few more major cities to fill out the blank spaces on the map.

Much later in the process, we have come to realize that a world variant is tricky. Why? Because the world is round, deciding east-west is not obvious.

Magnus: Images of the first physical prototype, playtested early 2023 with my wife Frida
Magnus: Once we knew that we had a solid game, it was time to put some color and graphics onto the cards.

Erik: Magnus, why pink?

Magnus: Well, it was the only color I found that didn't occur on any European flags.

Magnus: Front and back of an early iteration using colors and maps
Erik: Once we had a fancier prototype, the playtesting could begin!

Magnus: I will probably never experience playtesting like this again. It felt as though everywhere we showed this game, all players had a great time. Even people without an interest in geography had a fun twenty minutes and often learned something.

Erik: Yeah, I agree. This game is so easy to pick up and just play a round of. It seems to appeal to a broad range of people, including friends who would never test my games (or any game, in fact) and 18xx gamers!

Playtesters in a game night at Babettes Café, Linköping, Sweden
Magnus: Erik, how did you get to know the people at Fractal Juegos?

Erik: My history with Fractal Juegos started when I met Juan Pablo Vargas Seguel at Fastaval 2019. We each had a game in the design competition. After Fastaval, I got a copy of his design (which eventually turned into Exoworld Survival), and he got a copy of Whirling Witchcraft. He played that game with Fractal Juegos, and they were interested in signing it, but AEG ended up signing the design.

Even so, Fractal Juegos and I kept in contact over the years.

At SPIEL Essen 23, we pitched the game a lot and had quite some interest, but the most memorable pitch was for Fractal Juegos. I was pitching alone to Simón Weinstein, who works at Fractal Juegos as editor, in one of the cafeterias since the publisher booth was already taken for other meetings. The intention was to pitch a small worker-placement game that I thought had potential, but since I loved Where is That?, and I knew that Fractal Juegos are great at making small, beautiful games, I wanted to show it to Simón.

I explained the base premise, and Simón was quite skeptical about a geography trivia game. I insisted that I could show him the game in less than a minute, and he reluctantly agreed. I pitched it, and Simón looked pleasantly surprised but concluded that this was probably too far away from the other games in the production line of Fractal Juegos.

So I started to pitch the other game...but was interrupted by a group of gamers that were sitting at a neighboring table in the cafeteria and had overheard my pitch of Where is That? "Can we try it?" I looked up, somewhat surprised, "My game? Yeah, sure." They picked it up and started playing in a few minutes as I continued to pitch the other game. The neighboring table interrupted once to get a rule clarification, then they started laughing and playing the game several times in a row during my other pitch with statements like "This is brilliant!" and "We should make a Lord of the Rings version of this game!"

Once my pitch meeting was over, Simón had a new spark in his eyes — and he asked me for a copy of Where is That?

Simón: Everything Erik says is true. Where is That? was a game that immediately caught my attention, especially because of the clever number system that allows you to quickly see whether a city is well located or not. My initial fears about how different it would be to publish a geographical trivia game quickly subsided when I thought about how incredible and innovative it would be to have such a unique game in our catalog.

Magnus: We had a lot of interest in Where is That? and we left Essen with a great feeling. That feeling became even better a month later when Simón told us that they would love to publish Where is That?

Simón and his colleague Manuel truly expressed their love for the game, and we felt that it had found a home. To keep good relations with other publishers, we gave everyone a couple of weeks to give their answers, but I think it would have been hard to top our impression of Fractal Juegos.

The good news!
Erik: Once the game was signed, the development began. During the development, Fractal Juegos came up with an alternative ruleset using the same cards.

Simón: One of the first diagnoses when we began editing this project was that it was possible to develop variants. We immediately thought that a variant with more interaction would be entertaining, a variant in which players play on a common map and where they place their cards can influence the moves of everyone else. We also liked the idea that more dangerous moves could give you a greater reward if they are successful. That's how "Continental Shake Up" was born.

Magnus: There have been long discussions as to whether "Cartographer's Corner" is better than "Continental Shake Up", but all playtests have been divided, and we feel that both rulesets work really well. There are some differences in the target audience for the rule sets, so it has broadened the target groups of the game. The original rule set, "Cartographer's Corner", works best with the non-gamers as you play against yourself. "Continental Shake Up" introduced some interaction, but also some mind-bending that will tickle the more advanced gamers who like to count points and are more competitive.

Erik: So we ended up with both versions in the box!

Magnus: We have tested many variants for how to acquire the tiles, but the final drafting variant — placing one card per player on display, then drafting in player order — has always been my favorite. With a shifting first player, it gives more options to pick a card, but even when you "just" get the last card, there is still a decision of where to put it on your map.

Magnus: Here's Martin, in Sicily to checkthe coordinates of our cardsMagnus: One of my colleagues at work is a geography nerd. He has taken this game to his heart and created extra versions. I have helped out by printing them, and it is fun to see all the different possibilities.

I find some parts of the world easier than others, but I guess that is one of the great things about the game. The European version is much easier when you are from Europe; the South American one...well, it is much tougher!

Erik: As we played the game, we tried out various versions in which the sets of cities differed. We wanted to include the capitals, but we also considered adding cities of great historical meaning. Perhaps other geographical sites besides cities, too?

This last one stuck with us! We realized that by including monuments, we could get more graphical variation into our game. Hence, the monument tiles were created. I love how they add more graphics to the game, and I would love to explore whether we can make a non-city version of the game in the future. How about a version of the game that has only roller coasters?

Magnus: Fractal's graphic designer Paulina Vasconcelo did a superb job of turning the game into something beautiful and easy to play.


Paulina: Figuring out how to visually represent this game was an interesting challenge.

First, I needed a map that was simplified but not too abstract because the idea was to maintain some geographic understanding of the game. Then, I defined the borders by separating countries with simple lines and distinguishing the coastlines with thicker, dark blue lines. To indicate each specific location, I designed icons: a pin for cities, a star for capitals, and a sort of historic building for monuments.


The next challenge was to unify all the location frames, managing the different scales of certain places compared to others, and capturing distances in a way that showed the country without revealing too much of other locations as that could give away clues to the players. At one point, a grid was proposed to help with proportions, but it was discarded because it added more noise than clarity. It was sufficient to interpret the thickness of the lines to understand the proximity of places, as well as their relative sizes.

For the longitude and latitude numbers shown on the cards, I made the "lower" numbers slightly smaller to help players remember the scoring rule more easily. The rest of the process involved applying these decisions consistently across all the cards. Lastly, creating the illustrations of the monuments on the back of the cards was very interesting and the most fun. That was also a challenge because it involved both edifices and natural elements, but I really enjoyed designing them.


Erik: Based on all our playtests, people really like the simplicity, and geography is something approachable for everyone. Yes, you will benefit from geography skills, but you can still have a good time trying to learn and improve.

Magnus: We hope that we, the Where is That? team, can bring the design to many different parts of the world and create new versions that allow you to learn new things. Let us know in the comments if you want a version from your region!

Erik and Magnus: Finally, we want to thank everyone who has made this possible: Simón, Manuel, Paulina, and the rest of the team at Fractal Juegos, all our playtesters, our families for support, and the community for being such a great place to hang out.

Magnus Karlsson and Erik Andersson Sundén

Magnus and Erik at SPIEL Essen 23