Trekking Through History

Trekking Through History

You're about to go on a 3-day tour of history, traveling thousands of years in a time machine to experience great moments from our past. Revisit memorable events and meet legendary people as you fill your itinerary with new experiences!

In this sequel to Underdog Games' Trekking the World, players have three rounds to visit a series of historical events. Each round represents a day, and you'll only have so many hours to spend! Along the way, you'll score points for sticking to your itinerary and for visiting events in chronological order.

Project Overview:

While Trekking Through History is part of the same line as Trekking the World and Trekking the National Parks, it is built on a different core design and presented distinct development opportunities compared to our work on Trekking the World.

Our development was focused on ensuring the accessible, quality gameplay that Underdog is known for, as well as looking for ways to innovate on expanding their audience and streamlining game systems. Alongside the core product, we also worked on content for the Time Warp promotional mini-expansion and designed the solo mode. This is the first Underdog Games product to include options for solo play, so it was really important to deliver solo play that felt natural for their line and appealed to the segment of their audience that would use solo rules.

"Brieger Creative brought keen insights and inspiration to the development of Trekking Through History that elevated the game's potential to new heights. They ran exhaustive blind tests to pinpoint areas where the game needed improvement. They also helped to develop and test new game content, including a very cool solo mode!" — Charlie Bink, Underdog Games


Services Provided:

Case Study: Solo Design

When we took on Trekking Through History, we felt it was a good candidate for a solo mode. However, we spent serious development time not just considering how to design the solo play, but making sure that a solo mode really was the right choice for the product. Trekking Through History is the first game from Underdog Games to feature solo play — and we really wanted to make sure we could nail the essence of the play experience without a complex automa or significant rules.

The resulting solo mode, which we call The Historian, is a lightweight but competitive opponent who interacts across all the axes of the game without requiring rules changes for the player. It will be a separate promotional item for the Kickstarter audience who are more likely to use a solo play option, but will not be in the wider release.

Over the course of development, we tried a number of approaches, from giving The Historian different special powers to them selecting their moves based on the oldest card in the departures row. We settled quickly on using itineraries to vary playstyle of the Historian. We wanted it to feel like someone was playing and working against you, not just you tryng to beat your own score.

Prototype Solo itinerary

The Historian collects resources to a modified, longer version of the player itineraries, a suggestion from Trekking Through History designer Charlie Bink. By giving them a single place to collect resources throughout the game, we could pace an arc to The Historian's play. Each of the four itineraries features different challenges and difficulties — not just an increase in points you'll need to beat, but new strategic avenues that the Historian will pursue, like collecting ancestors or aggressively destroying player time crystals.

Driving the solo from a single component that interacts similarly to the player itinerary reduces burden on the player and lets them focus on developing their strategy and interacting, not spending a long time executing AI actions. We're incredibly excited to get Trekking Through History and The Historian Solo Mode into players hands.

See more on the Trekking Through History Kickstarter page.

Praise for Trekking Through History

"A beautifully illustrated walk through history. This gateway game is fun, education, and it features accurate information while respecting cultures." — Meg Grooms, Gameschool Academy

"It's my favorite of the Trekking games." — Ryan Schoon, Man vs Meeple

"This is a superb game." — Zee Garcia, Dice Tower

Winner, "Mensa Select", 2023

Brieger Creative Team

While it wasn't under Brieger Creative, our frequent collaborators at Quillsilver were responsiible for the graphic design and art direction for Trekking Through History. Brieger Creative and Quillsilver are available to book together for development and production packages if you like their work on Trekking Through History (we're certainly fans).