Go Buy Shadows in the Forest by ThinkFun!

Friends! You must go buy two (2) copies of this award-winning game SHADOWS IN THE FOREST! Get one for your family and one for a friend. Here are three (3) reasons why...

First, my family helped bring it to the United States!

Second, our game designer friend Josh’s company, ThinkFun, makes it. (They also make Rush Hour, Roller Coaster Challenge, Gravity Maze, Laser Chess, and many other super fun puzzle games that make you think.)

Third, it’s the most fun board game you can play in the dark.

You can find Shadows in the Forest at Target in the game section, Barnes & Noble, on ThinkFun’s website, and in Colorado at Jax Outdoor Goods, Into the Wind, and in other game stores and gift shops. And online, obviously.

At this time, you might have some questions. Let’s start at the beginning…

Maybe five years ago, I was looking for a cooperative board game to give to our family for Christmas. We had just discovered our first cooperative game, Hoot, Owl, Hoot! and thought it was fun. So I was scouring the internet looking for a new game when I stumbled across a game that had little trees and a candle that you played with in the dark. It was called Waldschattenspiel, which loosely translates from German to “Shadows in the Forest”. The idea was that you placed trees around a board, turned out all the lights, lit a candle, and placed these little gnomey/elfy guys in the shadows behind the trees. The candle was a hunter whose “lantern” would freeze the elves like deer in the headlights as he walked around the forest. The gnomes could only travel through the shadows to escape the hunter. I thought that was a cool idea and potentially a great game to play after sunset while car camping or backpacking. Problem was, the original game was created in the ‘70s and was only distributed minimally to the U.S. I tried a couple times to buy it from online used game stores and kept having my orders cancelled.

I decided to make it. I went to Hobby Lobby, bought some fabric, some paint, balsa wood, spray paint, some air-dry clay, and some tea light candles. I found a photo of the original Waldschattenspiel game board and recreated the shapes on my fabric playing board. Hours and weeks later, I had a working game that looked kinda cool (and which also rolled up and weighed about a quarter pound for backpacking). In the photo on this post, you can see our handmade version on the left and ThinkFun’s professional version on the right.

Late on Christmas Day 2016, I would venture to say Erin was charmed and the boys were delighted to play a candlelight game in the dark. It was a hit!

A few months later, it was time for our Annual Ski Trip with college friends. One of the original Ski Trippers is our friend Julie, whose husband Josh is a game designer for ThinkFun. Over the years, it’s become a tradition for Josh to bring prototype games from work to the Ski Trip to test out on us and get our feedback. So naturally, I brought along our homemade Shadows in the Forest to show Josh. (Quick aside: This is not the only game the Ski Trip has created. Some of you may have painful memories of “MegaBowl”.)

At first, I would say most people were less excited about the game than we were because the strategies of the game take a little time to reveal themselves. But after a few rounds, Josh changed from quiet (a state he is rarely in!) to inquisitive; the questions started flowing like this: “Sooo… have you played it with more elves?” Yes, yes we had. “And what if the hunter places the lantern first?” Yeah, we tried that, too. You could see his gears whirring. He started taking pictures.

A few months later Josh told us that ThinkFun tracked down the original inventor of the game in Germany. Games are copyrighted just like books, so in order to bring the game to the U.S., Josh had to travel to Germany to meet the inventor Walter Kraul (and his family) in his little cottage where he is still making games by hand.

Long story over: This fall, ThinkFun has brought Shadows in the Forest back from obscurity for you and your family and friends to enjoy this holiday season and perhaps while you are car camping.

When you play the game, think of us... and look us up in the rule book!