I (Frederica Scott Vollrath aka Freddie) joined the world of board game design in 2012, after rediscovering a game that I had designed with friends at uni (Falmouth University to be exact). This rediscovery took me all the way to the 2013 ChiTag conference in Chicago (now called POP), where I licensed the game to Martinex. It hit the shelves as Jungoeira in 2014, and from that point on I was hooked!

I joined Oxford Games Ltd, and my mum Leslie Scott, its founder and a board games designer herself, in 2014. I took over the general day-to-day running of the company. This included republishing some of our most popular games from the back catalogue, games like; Flummoxed, Bookworm, and the permanently popular Ex Libris.

After a couple of years at OGL, I started designing games specifically to license outside of the company. And this is when I designed Slappy Camper (published by Mindware, 2020) and Crystallized (Games by Bicycle, 2021).

My Danish husband and I moved to live in Denmark in 2020, and as a consequence, I established my own design company - the imaginatively named FSV Design ApS! 

Since then I have licensed a number of games that will be coming out over the next couple of years, including The Mermaid’s Jewels by Winning Moves Games (USA), Snorkmaiden’s Jewellery Workshop by Martinex (Niiskuneidin Korupaja in Finish!), and The Great British Baking Show Game by Ravensburger US.

Design Style:

Frankly, I design games where the theme or the gameplay appeal to me personally or capture my imagination. This tends to mean I create more children’s games (it must be all the bright colours!) though I also love designing more lightweight family/adult games and even single-player puzzle games (though these seem to involve a lot of colours too). 

I have a particular soft spot for ‘easy to learn, hard to master’ games and quick reaction games.

Despite my game design lineage (thanks mum!), I never expected to have a career in this fabulous industry full of wonderful, and wonderfully odd, people but I am truly thankful for the series of fortunate events that got me here.