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Uwe Rosenberg

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Rosenberg in 2009

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 now renown for developing many highly-acclaimed strategy games, such as Agricola and A Feast for Odin. As of May 2025, six of his games are on BoardGameGeek.com's top 100 board games of all time, the most of any designer.

Works

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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 worker placement games,[3] often with an agricultural or fishing theme. His first such game, Agricola, was released in October 2007 and won a Spiel des Jahres special award for best complex game of the year.[4] It dethroned Puerto Rico as the highest ranked game on BoardGameGeek.com in September 2008 and remained there until March 2010.[4] It has since become a so-called modern classic in the European game scene and retains a respectable following of devoted competitive players. A second game in this series, Le Havre, was published in October 2008, as well as Caverna in 2013.[4][5] Other notable worker placement games he has since designed include Fields of Arle (2014), A Feast for Odin (2016), Nusfjord (2017), Hallertau (2020), Atiwa (2022), and Black Forest (with co-designer Tido Lorenz; 2024), all of which have a BoardGameGeek.com user rating of at least 7.5/10. As of May 2025, A Feast for Odin is his highest ranked game on BoardGameGeek.com at #25 and with an 8.2/10 average rating.[6] As of May 1, 2025 he is credited as designer or co-designer of 269 board game entries (including expansions and reimplementations).[7]

In 2014, he also began designing several less-complex tile placement games, including the popular Patchwork (2014), Spring Meadow (2018), and New York Zoo (2020).[8][9][10]

Many of Rosenberg's designs have also been recognized as being excellent for solitary play.[11]

Notable games

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References

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  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. ^ "Uwe Rosenberg". boardgamegeek.com. Retrieved 1 May 2025.
  8. ^ "Patchwork". boardgamegeek.com. Retrieved 2 May 2025.
  9. ^ "Spring Meadow". boardgamegeek.com. Retrieved 2 May 2025.
  10. ^ "New York Zoo". boardgamegeek.com. Retrieved 2 May 2025.
  11. ^ Zimmerman, Aaron (6 March 2016). "Table for one: How to play board games without a group". Retrieved 23 April 2015.
  12. ^ "Bohnanza". boardgamegeek.com. Retrieved 2 April 2025.
  13. ^ "Agricola". boardgamegeek.com. Retrieved 2 April 2025.
  14. ^ "Le Havre". boardgamegeek.com. Retrieved 2 April 2025.
  15. ^ "Ora et Labora". boardgamegeek.com. Retrieved 2 April 2025.
  16. ^ "Caverna". boardgamegeek.com. Retrieved 2 April 2025.
  17. ^ "Patchwork". boardgamegeek.com. Retrieved 2 April 2025.
  18. ^ "Fields of Arle". boardgamegeek.com. Retrieved 2 April 2025.
  19. ^ "A Feast for Odin". boardgamegeek.com. Retrieved 2 April 2025.
  20. ^ "Nusfjord". boardgamegeek.com. Retrieved 2 April 2025.
  21. ^ "Hallertau". boardgamegeek.com. Retrieved 2 April 2025.
  22. ^ "Black Forest". boardgamegeek.com. Retrieved 2 April 2025.
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