At Spellenspektakel Utrecht 2025, I had the pleasure of meeting Ruud Nederpelt, founder of Wulfhorn Games. It’s no surprise that the name caught my attention because of the wolf in the logo. When I took a closer look at the stand, I immediately noticed that this publisher is also fully committed to sustainability and ecology. They proudly presented their diverse range of games, including Bable, a game conceived by Bart De Jong and illustrated by Renée Zonneveld.

Intro

Build the mythical Tower of Babel together with your companions!

Rating

Overall	8
Story	9
Game system	9
Design & art	8
Replayability	7.5

Bable is a challenging cooperative card game for 2 to 5 players aged 10 and up. Bable has a playing time of approximately 20–45 minutes.

The story

You join forces and try to build the Tower of Babel. But be careful, as you progress, you start using different words for the various tasks. Will the confusion become complete? Will the tower collapse? Or will you succeed in building the tower despite the Babylonian confusion of tongues?

The goal is to build the tower consisting of four layers (starting with the bottom 4 cards, 3 cards, 2 cards, 1 card) before the draw piles next to it are exhausted.

Game rules

Important! During Bable, communication is limited. You may not share the information you have; you may only exchange information by choosing the action “reveal a card” or when someone gives you a command to reveal a card.

A turn consists of two actions. You then end your turn by drawing a card. You may perform the same action twice or choose two different actions in your turn.

Action options:

• give a command to another player;
• reveal 1 card to your fellow players.

Giving a command

With this option, you choose one of your fellow players. You then say the word that you think is on one of that player’s word cards. Please note: Each player always has 1 word card for each command. Your starting set is almost identical, but these words change throughout the game.

• If the fellow player has a word card with the requested word, this player places the card face up in front of them and carries out the corresponding command. After carrying out the command, the player takes the relevant word card back into their hand.

If you have two cards in your hand with the same word but different commands, you choose which card to reveal.

• If the chosen player does not have a word card with the relevant word, they shake their head and do not carry out a command.

The different commands

• Building the tower
• Draw resource cards
• Give cards to another player
• Reveal cards

Building the tower: Once you have gathered the resources to pay for your building card, discard the resources and place your building card in the bottom, unfinished layer of the tower.

Drawing resources: This command allows you to draw 2 resource cards. Once you have drawn them, place the resources face up in front of you in your personal stock.

Please note: you may only have 7 resources in your stock at any given time. If you have more, choose cards and discard them until you have only 7 resources in your stock.

When the resource draw pile is empty, shuffle the discarded resources and create a new face-down draw pile.

Giving cards to another player: When you receive this command, you may give up to 3 cards from your stock of resources and building cards to other players. You may choose to give 3 cards to 1 player, but you may also choose to distribute the 3 cards.

Revealing cards: During this command, you may reveal up to two cards from your hand to all players. Then take the cards back into your hand.

Revealing a card to your fellow players

Choose 1 word card from your hand and show it to your fellow players. Then take this card back into your hand.

End your turn by drawing a card

You do this by drawing a card from the bottom of the word and building card pile of the layer you are building. Please note: if this is the last card and the layer is not yet complete, you lose the game.

If you draw a word card: replace it with a card from your hand with the same command symbol. Place the old word card face down on the discard pile (Important: you always keep one card of each of your command symbols in your hand).

If you draw a building card, place it face up in your stock. The resource costs to use this building card are shown at the bottom of the card.

It is now the next player’s turn.

End of the game

You win when a player places the last building card in the top layer of the tower.

You have failed and therefore lose the game when:

The last card from a draw pile of word and building cards is drawn while the layer of the tower next to it is not yet complete.

Or

When the last card from the last draw pile is drawn and the tower is not yet completely finished.

Content and design

The illustrations are by Renée Zonneveld. The drawings are beautifully finished and printed on the cards in good quality.

The rulebook is very clear and user-friendly. The different steps are very accessible, with plenty of examples. The reference cards that you lay out next to you while playing are clear and of good quality, as are the playing cards.
The rulebook also includes an “advanced” mode and an “expert” mode.

The box is compact and easy to carry.

Wulfhorn Games publishes under the eco-friendly games label. In all aspects of production, careful consideration is given to the most ecological way to design the game.

Box content

• 2x rulebook (ENG/NL)
• 20x starting word cards
• 24x word cards
• 16x building cards
• 36x  resource cards (stone, tools, cement, wood)
• 9x confusion cards
• 5x reference cards

Conclusion

The game concept is very clever. This makes Bable a very fast-paced game with fun dynamics. The basic rules are simple at heart, but fortunately the game itself is not. The game requires good cooperation and tactical choices within your capabilities.

Bable falls into the category of family games and co-op games. The handy little box makes it ideal to take with you when you’re out and about.

The two extra modes, ‘advanced’ and ‘expert’, which are explained in the rule book, also add great value. This allows you to increase the difficulty level once you have mastered the basic rules.

The nice thing is that the creator has managed to incorporate the story of the Tower of Babel into this game. It is a story that most people are familiar with and can therefore immediately relate to. The various difficulties in the story are well thought out in the different game concepts.

I like the limited communication in the game, as it is cooperative but still presents a challenge. This also prevents one player from taking complete control of the game.

I am delighted to see that this publisher also supports the eco-friendly and plastic-free aspect and that sustainability is a high priority. For me, this always adds significant value.

Text and photography: Esmeralda Wolf