Exit Middle-earth, Build Treetops, and Puzzle Out How to Build CATAN

Let's follow up my post of late 2021 game releases from German publisher KOSMOS with a few more titles on its schedule, including one that's akin to the announcement of Ticket to Ride: Track Switcher in early June 2021.

Catan: Logik Rätsel is a set of forty logic puzzles in four levels of difficulty that challenge you to build trade routes, avoid robbers, and use knights to protect merchants, although based on the cover it appears that you're employing ten-year-olds to figure everything out.

This item is co-published with Asmodee studio Mixlore (as is Ticket to Ride: Track Switcher), bears a €30 pricetag, and is due out in September 2021. As with that earlier title, this item won't have a listing in the BGG database since it's a single-player logic puzzle and not a game. Anyone interested in re-hashing the arguments for why it should be included is invited to read all my responses in that earlier post.

• In terms of game-related CATAN material, in October 2021 KOSMOS will release CATAN: Zusatzmaterial für Das Duell – Bonus Box, which includes material to expand CATAN: Das Duell, both in terms of gameplay and functionality: 15 special cards that offer additional strategic possibilities, a dice tower, a point tracker so that you don't have to count icons repeatedly, auxiliary markers, and a tournament mode.

• KOSMOS will add another title to its two-player line with Baumkronen (Treetops), about which I have little information at the moment other than this:

Quote:

Over the course of three seasons, the two players create a wonderful place where fascinating trees, plants, and animals live. You have to decide again and again what your strategy should look like. In this card game, tactics, a willingness to take risks, and a little luck are required!

• EXIT: Das Spiel – Die Rückkehr in die verlassene Hütte is a sequel to 2016's Exit: The Game – The Abandoned Cabin, one of the first three titles in the "escape room" game line from Inka Brand, Markus Brand, and KOSMOS, whereas EXIT: Das Spiel – Schatten über Mittelerde combines a familiar IP to the now established Exit formula:

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Hurry up, hobbits, because a threat grows in the land of Mordor where the shadows loom. Frodo and his companions have set out to save Middle-earth, and the fate of the free world is now in their hands — and in the hands of the players because the companions need help!

In EXIT: Das Spiel – Schatten über Mittelerde, the mighty wizard Gandalf has sent the players on a crucial mission, so they must embark on an adventure and fulfill his assignments for otherwise all hope dies. Together players visit the locations from J.R.R. Tolkien's "The Lord of the Rings", solve tricky magic puzzles, and support the companions against Nazgul, orcs, and other dark figures.

• Aside from the solitaire adventure StoryQuest for Legends of Andor covered in the previous post, KOSMOS will release Die Legenden von Andor: Magische Helden, which adds four magic-based heroes to the game world: Aæh, the guardian of the mythical fire takuri; Baz, the desert nomad; Iril, the rune master; and Ijsdur, the ice demon.