Q WHAT KIND OF COMPANY IS ZERONINEZ?

We are a design studio designing and producing content related to the arts and culture. We use digital media to develop services, user experience and user interface (UX, UI) designs, and branding. We like to engage in new challenging and valuable activities.

Q HOW DID YOU MIX THE FABLE ABOUT JEJU’S ORIGIN AND YUNNORI?

The representative fable on the origin of Jeju is the “Seolmundae Grandma Fable.” Based on this fable, we added stories of other grandmas, set the color direction based on Korea’s five colors principle, and gave the grandmas different roles. We applied the five colors showing the identity of the product to the map and Yunnori game board and added illustrations symbolizing the grandma fables on the four corners of the map to help customers indirectly understand the direction and grandma fables.

Q WHAT WAS A HELPFUL PIECE OF ADVICE YOU RECEIVED FROM THE JUDGES?

I thought much about whether to focus more on its function as a tourist souvenir or board game, because this determines the direction of the target setting and marketing. Some good advice I got was to provide a booklet on Jeju culture and fables with the product or focus on its function as a souvenir with more elegant packaging. I plan to adopt these and accordingly upgrade the product.

Q WHAT DID YOU PAY THE MOST ATTENTION TO WHILE PRODUCING THE PRODUCT?

It took quite a long time to meticulously set the details so that the players could uniformly experience “Jeju fables” in all the factors inside the game, such as the shape and color of the Yunnori pawns, how to mark the geographical names on the map, and the rules. It was also difficult to naturally tell the stories of the region while maintaining the game’s framework when merging Jeju’s geographical names, fables, and Yunnori. We developed the game by adding mission cards with the region’s stories without destroying the basic rules.

Q WHAT ARE YOUR FUTURE PLANS?

We plan to produce a series of Nunnori Jeju games so that the folk and regional stories at risk of extinction are recreated into a new gaming culture. We plan to develop and design souvenirs that are worth steadily keeping, and we are also looking into using digital methods like augmented reality (AR) and the metaverse.