Fan-favorite game designer and publisher Friedemann Friese will team up with Rio Grande Games to distribute two new titles, scheduled to premiere at the Spiele fair in Essen, Germany next month.  Power Grid: The First Sparks, a new version of the popular game will be joined by the solitaire deck-building game Friday.

 

Power Grid: The First Sparks will be the English language version of Die Ersten Funken (shown here).  Using the core mechanics of Power Grid, this game is set in the Stone Age and is designed to play more quickly than the original game.  Players will need to balance food production for their clans with the development of new technologies to expand their territories.

 

Friday is a solo card game that puts the player in the shoes of Robinson Crusoe’s loyal companion.  The player must try to help Robinson survive, eventually facing pirates that land on the island. As a deck-building game, the player completes challenges to add good cards to Robinson’s deck, and remove bad cards.

 

Both new games will be presented by 2F-Spiele—the German publisher—at Spiel, and are expected to be released world wide shortly after the fair. Rio Grande Games will be the publisher of the English language version.