Trivial, it isn't. The game that will unleash a Christmas war

Bezzerwizzer is the new board game that Mattel, the US toy giant, hopes will destroy the global domination of established family favourite Trivial Pursuit.

What makes Bezzerwizzer look a winner is that it is the first tactical quiz game. The name is a corrupted spelling of a German word that, roughly translated, means "Know it all".

Mattel has chosen the run-up to Christmas, and the UK market, for the first international roll-out of Bezzerwizzer as the company seeks to establish it as the next generation's most powerful brand for general knowledge games. It will cost £33 and be on sale from next month.

The team behind it is only five-strong, working from a small office behind the Royal Winter Palace in Copenhagen. This is the HQ of the start-up firm that developed the game and launched it in Denmark in 2006. It was successful enough to attract the attention of Mattel.

Clearly the American giant brings huge resources and experience to the table, but the invention and development of the game is down to Jesper Bulow, a 37-year-old finance expert who has always been a bit of a games geek on the side. And there is more than a touch of the fairy tale in the story of how this quietly spoken father of three came up with an idea that is set to start a game war between Mattel and Hasbro, the owner of Trivial Pursuit.

Denmark, a country that perhaps only used to be famous for bacon and Hans Christian Andersen, now comes top in just about every survey – from the happiest place to live, to one of the world's most technologically advanced countries. WH Smith, meanwhile, is about to open five new branches at Copenhagen airport (voted one of the world's best airports, of course).

WH Smith will be one of the main stockists of the game in the UK, but Mattel's distribution strength was only one of the factors that persuaded the inventors to choose the US company when the time came to enter an international partnership and a global licensing agreement.

When Bulow and his team launched the game in Denmark, it was an immediate sell-out and, perhaps more important, a critical success in the gaming community. So they had to move quickly. "The thing about board games is that it's very difficult to protect them legally," says Bulow. "Basically the concept of the game – the gameplay – cannot be protected. The only thing you can protect is the brand.

"We have produced the first tactical general knowledge quiz game and we have to establish our brand as exactly that on an international stage. As quickly as possible," he adds. "But we also wanted to protect the integrity of the idea and continue to be involved in the development of the game.

"The portfolio match with Mattel was perfect. It didn't already have a quiz game, which surprised us. We knew its reputation as brand builder and it doesn't take a short-term view, which was also very important to us."

Mattel's headquarters in Los Angeles receives nearly 1,000 new games ideas a year, and the group, whose existing successes include Scrabble, is notoriously picky about which projects it will take on.

Such instant success, then, is a rarity – and something Bulow had not dared to dream when he gave up a highly successful job in finance three years ago. "It was a real identity challenge for me. Suddenly when people asked me what I did for a living, I had to say I was a game developer. I think my old colleagues in the finance world thought I was a little bit crazy."

Bulow speaks with the genuine, bashful pride of a man who sat down one boring, rainy afternoon on holiday in the Netherlands and, playing around with a Trivial Pursuit set, came up with the original idea.

"In the past I had made up games to play for parties and special birthdays, but it was always just a hobby. That afternoon I used the Trivial Pursuit pieces to try and work on a new idea I had been thinking about. I played it with my wife and it seemed to work."

Bezzerwizzer involves moving around a board answering trivia questions, but the rules allow you to choose tactics that transform what could be a long game into a faster and more nuanced competition.

The key differences between Trivial Pursuit and this game are that you can answer your opponents' questions, you are allowed to change categories and there is an opportunity to bluff. And, crucially, it can be played in less than an hour.

With his wife's support, Bulow took a three-month sabbatical to develop the idea, a £50,000 loan and then a year off in his basement designing and researching the game. There are 5,000 questions and 20 subject categories.

"We knew we wanted to produce the game ourselves, which we did in Denmark. So the money was for the prototypes. Then everything took off much faster than we'd ever imagined."

Bulow's company has retained the rights to the game for the Nordic countries, where he feels it has enough local knowledge and contacts.

"A lot of thought will go into each country that we launch in as it is vital to get the balance of the questions correct for each area. Germany, for example, has more questions about Europe than the Danish edition. We use people with specialised local knowledge and so does Mattel.

"But I think one of the great strengths of the game is that it exploits the feeling you have when someone else gets a question you know the answer to. That's always so frustrating. With this game you get to give the answer.

"It also gives you the chance to assess other people's weak points of knowledge, which is always fun with friends. Oh yes, and you can gang up together against someone who looks like they are going to win."

Bulow says one of the reasons for Bezzerwizzer's success is that it has been developed by enthusiasts. "It's the opposite of what they taught us at business school. It comes from the gut, not from studying a market and finding a gap. It comes from thinking, 'I would like to play this game– maybe other people would as well.' "