SMOOSH JUICE
Ingenioso Hidalgo Invites You to the Battlefields of the Napoleonic Wars | BoardGameGeek News
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Game designer Paolo Mori has had dozens of his creations published since his debut in 2006 with Ur, but he’s now launched his own publishing brand — Ingenioso Hidalgo — to release games from both himself and other designers that, in his words, “are probably not intended for a wide audience, mainly with ‘non-fiction’ themes”.
The publisher name comes from the full title of Miguel de Cervantes’ Don Quixote — El ingenioso hidalgo don Quixote de la Mancha, or The Ingenious Gentleman Don Quixote of La Mancha — which could be taken to mean that Mori is being (self-consciously) self-delusional with this effort…or that his publications will survive for centuries. Time will tell!
Ingenioso Hidalgo will debut at the 2025 Play game festival in Bologna, Italy on April 4-6 with two releases, one of which is Battlefields of the Napoleonic Wars, a two-player game from Mori and Alessandro Zucchini. Here’s a teaser description:
Easy-to-learn rules, fast set-up times, a straightforward but exciting command system, and a quick yet deep combat resolution system are just some of the original elements of this game, created with the idea of attracting both battlefield veterans and players fascinated by the world of historical simulation.
You can download complete rules from the publisher’s website.
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The second title from Ingenioso Hidalgo, which will also be available at Play, is Un altro passo nella neve (“Another Step in the Snow”), an Italian-only solitaire gamebook from Manuele Giuliano that puts you in the boots of an Italian alpine soldier during the dramatic retreat from the Russian front in the Second World War in the winter between 1942 and 1943.
Of this game, Mori writes, “This project, which I had been cultivating for a few years, has been masterfully collected and realised by Manuele Giuliano, who will truly be able to make you relive the difficult and often decisive choices that thousands of people sent to die for a shitty war experienced.”
As for what’s coming from Ingenioso Hidalgo next, two titles are listed on the publisher’s website: “Wooden Ships with Laser Beams”, the working title for a two-player Mori design “of battles between flotillas of spaceships made of laser-cut plywood, to be assembled and colored with markers or watercolors”, and “The original association football solitaire game”, which is also a working title for a solitaire Mori design due out in 2026 in which you attempt to lead a football team in the early days of the sport to the first division victory. Writes Mori, the game features some management, “but the focus is mainly on the resolution of the matches and on its ‘journaling’ aspect”.