The UK has hedgerows that are hundreds of years old. As natural landscapes have been cultivated over time, the patchwork of fields and woodland we know today has emerged, dissected by long, branching hedgerows. There are thousands of miles of them, they form a crucial corridor network for wildlife and many are protected. They connect woodland, they cross farmland, and they create 'edge' habitats: vital hunting grounds for owls, birds of prey, foxes and badgers.

From the beginning, it was always going to be a tile-drawing and placement game. The landscape would build up over time, shaped by the players. Hexes made the most sense as they allow for natural growth, structure, and branching shapes.
Animals would be placed onto a shared board, not individual player areas. They’d score based on where they were placed and what was around them, both in terms of terrain and other animals. The scoring was always meant to happen at the end, so all mechanics had to avoid any kind of mid game calculations.

In Meadowvale, an early design principle followed a similar train of thought. Start with no rules, and then add one at a time and see if it was necessary. At every decision point, ask the question, was that necessary? does it help onboarding? does it break the flow? and so on.

Next diary entry is all about how the board is built. Here it all sounds quite easy, but it did take quite a while to work out how this was going to work. From the outset, I wanted the board to feel organic, something that would grow, not just fill space. Hex tiles were the obvious choice. Once I had the terrain types defined, the next challenge was deciding how many of each to include. This changed quite a bit but after some trial and error, I settled on a rough ecological logic:

The Wintering is an elegant two-player abstract strategy game set in an ancient woodland. The idea for this game has been with me for quite a while, not so much the theme, but the board and the mechanics. I revisited it while working on Meadowvale, looking for a companion title. The original rules, just four of them, had been in place for some time and worked fine. But it still lacked that one ‘game moment’ where layered strategy suddenly reveals itself.