FERNANDO PESSOA (13 June 1888 – 30 November 1935) was a Portuguese poet, writer, literary critic, translator, publisher and philosopher, described as one of the most significant literary figures of the 20th century and one of the greatest poets of all times. Pessoa was a prolific writer, and not only under his own name, because he created approximately seventy-five others. He did not call them all pseudonyms because he felt that some did not capture their true independent intellectual life and instead called them heteronyms.

In this game, players will be one of Pessoa’s most famous heteronyms (Alberto Caeiro, Ricard Reis, Álvaro de Campos and Bernardo Soares), moving between the metaphysical space of Pessoa’s head and the physical spaces of Lisbon, gaining inspiration from the iconic cafes, visiting bookshops to expand their libraries, their knowledge and seeking inspiration to write poems and, like that, score victory points. The player with most victory points at the end of the game is the winner.

PESSOA is a worker placement game with special rules where players can place their heteronyms, since each player is a different heteronym, but all players are also the same physical person (Fernando Pessoa).

The game comes with 2 modules that can be switched on and off as the players wish. If you play just with the base game, Pessoa fares well as an advanced family game: straight forward rules, but interesting decisions and a more tactical nature. With the modules, Pessoa becomes a more crunchy game, where extra layers of strategy combine to offer you a rich experience that tries to shine light in the complex figure that Fernando Pessoa was.

Along the game's rulebook several historical notes were added, so that we could explain how theme and mechanisms are interconnected providing you, at the same time, with an accurate historical background about this extraordinary Poet and his metaphysical creations that had their own personality and writing style: his heteronyms. We hope that in the end of your first game, we have spiked your interest to find more about Fernando Pessoa and his Poetry.