SamenSpel 1987

The Dutch word samenspel has the meaning of: working together towards a common goal. A bit odd, considering that samen means together, but spel means game, not work.

The game was published in 1987 and given to employees of the AZU (Het Academisch Ziekenhuis Utrecht or the Academic Hospital in Utrecht, the Netherlands) as a Christmas / New Years gift.

In 1989 the AZU, part of the Universiteit van Utrecht (University of Utrecht) moved to a new building. The construction of that building started in 1981 and in 1986 the first preparation were made towards the movement, which required all patients to be moved in only two days.

This game was published in 1987 and given as a Christmas / New Years gift to the employees. The name of the game (SamenSpel, working together) is a reference to the effort of the individual employees to make the moving a success.

SamenSpel is a game about collecting pieces of illustrations related to the hospital and the moving to a new building. This is done by moving a pawn on a board one step in any one direction (somewhat like a rook in chess) and taking the piece (one quarter of the full image) from the board.

The game has one pawn, one gameboard and 12 complete images (each to be divided into four segments) but no dice. The pieces are shuffled and randomly distributed over the board, putting two pieces on each area of the board, the board has 25 spaces (the center space has no image). Whoever collects the compete images first, wins the game. When moving the pawn back to the center space, a player can "claim" a segment of an image of another player, provided he/she already owns at least one segment himself/herself.