aufRUHR!

In the strategy game aufRUHR!, the players represent mayors who compete with one another while also needing to cooperate to improve the general state of a unified Ruhrstadt and to realize the most valuable projects. The overall goal of the game: Becoming the new Paramount Mayor of a unified Ruhrstadt, and bringing together the 53 towns of the Ruhr region.

The game board is unusual in that it's an irregularly shaped jigsaw. Each player can place developments on adjacent spaces and stand for election by all the players to become temporary paramount mayor. (You cannot vote for yourself.) The successful candidate gets a paper hat to wear and can reward different sorts of developments – which might affect the election next term. Players can use bribes (which score victory points for the recipients) or the threat of scandal to induce other mayors to collaborate with them. Money takes the form of coal – as the Ruhr region contains a significant coal field.

aufRUHR! was developed as a project by architecture students at the Berlin University of Art as part of the Ruhr being the European capital of Culture 2010 and was published in a limited edition in time for Spiel 2010. (Essen is one of the cities of the Ruhr.)