Dear Mike, Johnny, Steve, Jon, Craig and Jonelle -I read with interest your letter to the editor about our game, 'The Settlers of Zarahemla.' I just wanted to make sure you have your facts straight before you boycott our game.
Klaus Teuber, the author of Catan, a good friend of mine, has licensed this product to our company and fully endorses what we are doing.
In fact, his son, Guido Teuber, is my business partner in Inspiration Games and Uberplay Entertainment. Guido was just in Salt Lake
City with us over conference weekend and is very excited about taking board games into the Latter-day Saint market. He mentioned that the culture in Utah is much like Germany in the way people get together with family and friends to play board games.
Our goal is simply to introduce German-style games, such as Catan, to new markets by taking the most popular games and distributing them through unique distribution channels. Zarahemla is quite a bit different than the original Catan game with an easier and quicker setup, enhanced graphics, a temple building mechanic, not unlike the Longest Road, and new development cards.
We believe our game has merit both inside and outside the LDS community as several large game stores (such as Wizards of the Coast) have purchased several hundred copies to place in their stores. If you would like to meet Klaus and Guido Teuber in person, I'd be more than happy to get a game group together and invite all of you to join us the next time we are in Provo. And you are correct, Catan is the greatest board game known to man.
Regards,
Jeremy Young
InspirationGames.com