This past summer Texas game manufacturer Pandasaurus released a board game called Nieuw Amsterdam (New Amsterdam) about the earlier years of the 17th century Dutch colony that was run by the Dutch West Indies Company, which later became New York City.

New Amsterdam was founded by the Dutch West Indies Company in order to encourage the lucrative beaver pelt trade with the local Native American hunters along the Hudson River. To establish a trading post there, they needed a town and a fort, which was built on the tip of Manhattan Island. To encourage European patroons, settlers of means or noble birth to populate the colony, they granted them both land and indentured servants. The patroons became the lords of a new feudal system not unlike in Europe. In New Amsterdam, players are those patroons, and they bid on action lots in order to build businesses, work land for both food and building materials, compete in elections, ship furs to the Old World, and trade with the Lenape Indians – a process that gets more complicated as players claim more land and push the Lenape camps farther up the Hudson River.

It is apparently not yet available in the ‘old country’, but I’m sure it’s just a question of time.

Here’s a review of New Amsterdam:

(Links bright.nl, pandasaurusgames.com, Image: Castello Plan of the tip of Manhattan)