Användbart Litet Företag

Användbart Litet Företag ("useful small company") or ALF is a board game publishing trademark owned by Swedish games, toys and childrens products company Wonderful Times Group AB, located in Huskvarna, nr. Jönköping, Sweden.

ALF was founded as Användbart Litet Företag AB, a registered limited company in Malmö in about 1990, by Joel Sevelin and a group of people around him. Their first premises was situated at Fersens väg in central Malmö, later they would move to neighbouring street Holmgatan. They always welcomed people just passing by and who were interested in games - something which was communicated even in the games they sold.

In 2010 ALF was aquired by Value Tree AB, a now dormant company in the Wonderful Times Group, with Joel Sevelin staying on as CEO. After a few years however Sevelin left ALF AB and it was renamed Wonderful Times & Toys in Malmö AB. Användbart Litet Företag and the word ALF thus, for all practical purposes, became just a trademark name for games. As of 2017 ALF has no employees, and Wonderful Times Group only 3. Joel Sevelin later migrated from Sweden.

In the beginning ALF had some high quality games in their catalogue, like El Grande (1995), Yucata' (1996) and big seller quiz game Insikt (1991) to mention a few. (Insikt sold so well because it was used by Swedish employers as a gift, Christmas and otherwise, to staff and customers etc. ALF also would deliver new sets of questions once a year during the 1990's.) The games were often made by Alga, a division of BRIO, and their sub-contractor Offason. In fact, a few games in the 1990's were delivered with a yellow corner sticker, indicating that the game might have been produced for someone else (than ALF) but converted for ALF use.

Other quality games from the early years worth mentioning is Fasadklättrarna (1999) and Galenpanna (2000), games that both had Dan Glimne among the designers. ALF also published a second edition of Glimne's popular game Svea Rike, a game that ALF - together with Galenpanna - had inherited from now defunct Casper. Dinosauriernas hemliga dal (2001) also should be mentioned among quality games. Eventually party games and team games would be the more important line of ALF production, with Hon slukades av vargen (2001; later known as Med andra ord ("in other words")) being particulary successful. (Med andra ord is now (2017) in its fourth edition.) Today (2017) easy-going party and family games constitutes the bulk of ALF production.

In the realm of childrens games the Fantasifararen (2003) deserves some well-earned attention. It was highly commended in Swedish media and even contained a proper high quality childrens litterary book. Also the "Små Kloka Barn-series" ("Small wise children") were successful and at least two games in the series is still in print. Originally named Små kloka ("small wise") - barn ("children") being implicated only - the first three games were published in 2000 and has been followed by at least three more. The aim of the games of the series is a combination of fun gaming and learning.

The logotype of the company was up until 2005 a somewhat naive drawn smiling mouth but was changed to the present logo with a more streamlined smiling mouth with the name of ALF incorporated in the picture. For collectors, a rule of thumb could perhaps be to only collect ALF games with the early logo.