November 5, 2021 – Publisher Splotter Spellen put up details for their new game, Horseless Carriage an economic game about the dawn of the automobile. Splotter is a small Dutch board game publisher, founded in 1997. They are known for the big hit Food Chain Magnate and clearly know their way around bringing fantastic business simulation to out-of-the-ordinary topics. This one appears to be no different.
The game is available for pre-order now at their website for a price of 84.03 EUR. The game is aiming for a Summer of 2022 release. Shipping goes to most countries and reduced rates are available for USA, Australia, Japan, China, South Korea, Malaysia, the Philippines, Singapore, Taiwan, Thailand and Vietnam while the game is in pre-sale and that is the only game in your order.
ABOUT HORSELESS CARRIAGE
For 3–5 Players | Games Run 180–240 Min | Age Recommend is 14+
“This year, we want the best, or nothing at all. We don’t want tradition. We want to live in the present and the only history that is worth a tinker’s damn is the history we make today.” The famous founder is standing in front of his team giving a motivational speech. “You all know our first customer was a lunatic, and the second had a death wish. So they bought our brakeless bangers.
So there were a few accidents. But the only mistake is the one from which we learn nothing. This year, customers demand safety. Of course, active safety features include rapid acceleration for safe overtaking! I know it will be hard to add the new motorblock section to the factory. But before you say you cannot do something, try it! To every engineer, every planner, every mechanic, and every salesperson in this great company I say: If I can dream it, you can do it!”.
Horseless Carriage is a game about the dawn of the automobile: a time when cars were invented, and no one quite knew yet what this new contraption would look like, and what features would be essential. Early cars sometimes used levers or pedals to steer and a wheel to accelerate.
Brakes were not always seen as essential; but sometimes an outside spot to take along an onboard mechanic was. This early, super innovative period occurs in the development of many new product categories. Players are cast as aspiring industrialists trying to find out what features the public will value when buying these new, expensive, and utterly unfamiliar horseless carriages.

In addition to Food Chain Magnate (2015), the company also has logistico-economic game The Great Zimbabwe (2012) in which players are tribal leaders in Africa trying to please the gods by building monuments and wacky animals / building a manufacturing empire game Roads & Boats (1999). It is a very small operation so bringing this, Horseless Carriage an economic game about the dawn of the automobile, is clearly a labor of love.
Splotter these days consist of two people, Jeroen Doumen and Joris Wiersinga. They both work in other companies during the day, and running Splotter is what they do nights and weekends. They may be a bit slow in responding to your questions and orders, but they try to provide very good customer service and answer all of your questions.
There used to be two more Splotters, Herman Haverkort and Tamara Jannink. They left the company to focus on their jobs and the rest of their lives again. They do have lots of other people collaborating and playtesting, and are very welcoming on their website for you to join them at their sessions, which take place in the Netherlands around Leiden and Eindhoven.
Source: https://www.splottershop.com/