Australian inventor of edible board games
Game designer Jenn Sandercock has created 12 edible tabletop games so far, all of which require a trip to the supermarket.
Sandercock has the background of a video game character herself.
An Australian, she studied mechanical engineering, computer science, and applied mathematics.
For years, she worked for the Australian Defence Force on artificial intelligence and experimental aircraft.
“I never thought games were a valid career option,” she told Anne Ewbank on american based site Atlas Obscura.
As a coder and designer, she works on ambitious, solo video game projects in her own time.
She made her first edible board game about five years ago.
“I’ve always liked baking and I’ve always liked games,” she told Ewbank.
Two years ago, after feeling inspired by an independent games festival, she decided to fully explore the edible game concept. The result is The Edible Games Cookbook, a game manual she plans to fund on Kickstarter starting June 2018.
According to the article on Atlas Obscura the cookbook contains instructions for baking and assembling 12 edible tabletop games. The goofy game The Order of the Oven Mitt begins with chocolate cookie pieces each topped with different candies on a gingerbread checkerboard. Players have fondant avatars, or “squires,” and must perform rituals to become knights.
According to her website the game can be cooperative or competitive: Either squires collaborate to make sure everyone gets their preferred candy, or they block opponents from getting their favorites. But the chocolate tablets come with a price: to eat, you must perform a “ritual,” such as pirouetting or neighing like a horse.
Another game is called, appropriately, Veggieland. It features dice and a chutes-and-ladders element, and Sandercock says the only way to win is to eat all your vegetables (in the form of game pieces, of course).
While Veggieland is aimed mostly at children, Sandercock says that swapping out vegetable pieces and playing Cheeseland or Chocolateland makes it “instantly a game for adults.”
