It was when we were visiting Manufactum that I discovered Waldschattenspiel. It is a game you play in the dark with a little candle. The goal is to hide your pawns in the shadows of the trees.

For a gift, I decided to make a version of this game myself. I had some old veneer lying around, this seemed like the perfect opportunity to see what was possible with that material and a laser cutter. After some tests, I was able to create a mosaic for the playing field. The main difficulty here was that the veneer was warped. I tried some different techniques to flatten it out, but in the end I had to settle with a little bit of deformation in the circles that were cut.

Instead of making a board and a case, I made a case with the board on the back, you’ve probably seen this before with chess boards. I’ve lined the inside with felt to give it a nice finish. There are even magnets to keep the board close, but this didn’t work out as well as I hoped.

The gift was received with a lot of enthusiasm, but it turned out I forgot to mention something in the game rules…