What's this German Go/Chess-like Game? "Heureka!"?

Question

I was recently thinking back to a board game I played some 8 years ago. In my mind, I'm convinced the game was called Heureka (not Eureka), but after many days of fruitless searching, I don't think that's it.

So here go the other clues:

• Two-player game
• Played on an included board, segmented into halves, one for each player
• Starting position is: All pieces from each player on their side of the board
• The board was rectangular, not square
• Each player gets about a dozen pieces
• Each piece is more or less a wooden dowel pin, but a bit shorter and fatter than you'd encounter in IKEA furniture
• The pieces for each player differ in the darkness of the wood (though only very slightly)
• One piece per player has gold paint on one end (meaning there are two gold pieces in the game)
• The game was acquired in Germany
• It wasn't played on a checkerboard, neither a board with straight lines like Go

The above I'm 99% sure of. Now follow some guesses regarding the gameplay:

• IIRC the goal is to move the gold piece to the opponent's end of the board, presumably without being captured
• There was some kind of capturing and/or mate mechanism
• The movements of the pieces were diagonal, with a checkers-like jumping mechanism.

That's it sadly. I hope this wasn't a one-off pre-production thing, because I think I had bought it at a toy convention. It didn't look like a prototype though. The appearance of the pieces is the strongest memory I have of it.

Edit: I asked my dad today and he too distinctly remembers the game being called "Heureka!" (lit. "I've got it!"). He had some guesses as to where the copy is, so I'll try to hunt it down when I'm there. He's also baffled as to why there is 0.00 trace on the internet about it.

On the off-chance that one of you does know it, I'll leave this question open. I'll be sure to digitize the board and manual when I do find the physical copy.

Answer 1

Heureka!

(I'm the same user returning after a few years - I found my copy!)

This game is indeed called Heureka and a product of the medieval festival / group Heureka Leipzig. My personal copy is dated to 2001, which according to the archive.org snapshot at the time might be one of the very first copies ever made, in the initial limited run of 1000 copies.

Details about the Game

According to the leaflet and website, the game was created based on an idea by "Kurt Heuser", with illustrations created by "Jürgen B. Wolff". The style of illustration matches the Heuraka website assets today and all the way back to the year 2000.

The game was published in limited runs by Löwenzahn Verlag and was (according to the link above) exclusively available via mail order. Though my copy can be traced back to a purchase at a convention. The publisher's ISBN is 3-9804766-4-2. The game's recommended age range is 6 to 100 years.

The game was allegedly reviewed by Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung, an established German newspaper, though I could not find a copy of this review. The Heureka website quotes the review (emphasis theirs):

SIMPEL UND DOCH VORTREFFLICH... Damit ist aus dem betulichen Halma ein raffiniertes strategisches Problemspiel geworden.

translated:

SIMPLE AND YET EXCELLENT... This has turned the traditional game of Halma into a sophisticated strategic challenge.

Setup

The board is quite simple, consisting of a regular 15 wide, 19 tall grid with straight and diagonal connecting lines and one Heureka field for each player. Each player initially occupies one half, and the center line (10th row) is highlighted (not intentionally I think - this is the fold crease):

Each player gets 24 pieces, which are short wooden dowels. One end of one of the 24 is painted gold, which represents the king piece. The king piece is only relevant for the advanced play variant and is ignored in the default (easy) variant. The king piece can be turned upside down to hide the gold marking so all pieces look the same for easy mode.

Players get to choose one of two formations to start the game with (the location of the king piece is marked with an inner dot):

The left formation is the classic formation, the right one is wedge formation.

Rules

Easy Play (default)

• Players take turns moving one piece
• There are two valid movements: move and jump

A piece can move to any free neighbor dot, in any direction (forwards, backwards, sideways, diagonally).

A piece can jump in any direction onto the free dot behind a neighbor piece. Players can chain jumps indefinitely, in any direction, over their own and opponent pieces. Players are not forced to jump. Any opponent pieces jumped over are removed, any of the player's own pieces jumped over remain in place. Dots can be visited more than once in one jump chain. The player's own Heureka dot can be part of a jump, but must not be occupied by the player's own pieces.

The winner is the player who first occupies the opponent's Heureka dot with one of their own pieces (any).

Advanced Play

A player wins only if their king piece occupies the opponent's Heureka dot. If their king piece is captured, they lose. All other rules are the same as in easy play.