Imitate Animals, Tell Stories about Colors, and Frame Uwe Rosenberg

• Uwe Rosenberg's Framework, due out in March 2022 from Edition Spielwiese and Pegasus Spiele, features many similarities to 2019's Spiel des Jahres-nominated Nova Luna, which was co-credited to Corné van Moorsel, and appears to be a streamlined version of that earlier game.

The game consists of 60 "simple" and 60 "complex" tiles, with each players starting with 22 tokens. On a turn, the lead player draws and reveals a balanced assortment of simple and complex tiles, with one more tile than the number of players. Each player in turn selects a tile, with the lead player being forced to take the final tile.

When you take a tile, place it adjacent to at least one other tile in your display, then see whether you complete any tasks on your tiles; each time you do, cover that task with a token. Tiles contain 0-3 frames and 0-3 tasks, with each of these coming in four colors. A task might be, for example, a green 3, and to complete the task, the tile bearing this task must be adjacent to three tiles that have green frames, whether directly or via an orthogonal chain of connection with tiles that have green frames.

Tasks might be two colors, e.g., red and brown, which means that both frame colors can be used to satisfy the task. Alternatively, a task might be 4 yellow or 4 brown. Also, conditional tasks exist in which you must first complete one task before you can complete the second one.

Whoever first places all of their tokens wins. Framework also includes a solo game in which you attempt to place all of your tokens in an area of tiles that is as close to a 5x5 grid as possible.

• Animotion is a 3-8 player game from Nathalie Grandperrin and Bruno Faidutti that Gigamic originally released in 2014 as Animal Suspect.

To set up, lay out six animal cards and six expression cards (from the fifty cards in each deck) next to the die faces numbered 1-6. On a turn, one player rolls two dice in secret, looks at the cards matching the numbers rolled, then imitates this particular combination as best they can. Will they be a shy mosquito? An attentive walrus? An amorous octopus? Whoever guesses the proper combination first wins a card, along with the imitator. Replace the claimed cards with new ones, and keep taking turns until everyone has been active player twice. Whoever collects the most cards wins.

• Animotion is due out in March 2022 and the start of a small game line from Edition Spielwiese, with the second title in the line being reMEmber, a new edition of Apolline Jove's Farben, which Edition Spielwiese first released in 2018 with a far less eye-catching cover. Gameplay is roughly the same as in that original game, but the design is now played co-operatively (which seems like a better fit) and the game contains more words than before.

As for how to play, players start with a set of twelve color cards. In each round, they assign a word to a color card and tell the group a story as to why they chose that color. After 8-10 words, depending on the player count, all players together try to recall everyone's colors and stories. For each color or story that's incorrect or not told — with you being unable to talk about your own contributions — the team gets one minus point.

• And we'll close this overview of Edition Spielwiese's non-MicroMacro offerings with another placement game, this one being the 2-5 player game FYFE from first-time designer Kosch that seems very much in the Edition Spielwiese wheelhouse.

FYFE is due out in Q1 2022 in German and in Q2 2022 in English. Ideally the back cover illustration makes clear everything that takes a fair number of words to describe:

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The cover of FYFE shows a dreamy South Seas location with a blue sea, beach, and palm trees — but what will you find as you dig in the sand, and can you arrange your discoveries in ideal scoring combinations?

Each player has their own 5x5 grid, 7 lucky charm tiles, and 15 scoring boards. The game includes 125 tokens, with each token showing one of five colors, one of five symbols, and one of five numbers (1-5). The scoring boards show conditions that you must meet in order to earn the points listed on that board, e.g., the numbers 1-5 in sequence, tokens of the same color, tokens with different symbols, three tokens of one color and two tokens of another color, etc.

To start the game, draw two tokens from the bag and place them at the bottom of your playing board. Place one of these tokens in an empty space of your grid, then choose a scoring board and place it in the row, column, or (if appropriate) diagonal line in which that token was placed. On each subsequent turn, draw one token, place it on your game board, then choose one of your two tokens to place. If this newly placed token doesn't have a scoring board pointing at it, choose one of your unplaced scoring boards and place it in the row, column, or diagonal.

As soon as a line is filled with five tokens, if you have met the conditions on the scoring board for this line, flip it over to the side that shows points; if you are the first and only player to complete this scoring board this round, take the associated 3-point bonus tile. If you complete and score multiple lines on the same turn, take 5-20 bonus points depending on whether you scored two, three, or even four lines at once.

If someone drew a lucky charm token at the start of the round, they draw a replacement token, then all players can choose to use and discard one of their lucky charm tiles. These tiles allow you to exchange the tokens in your reserve, place a token on the board as a joker, swap an already fulfilled scoring board for another one, and so on. Each unused lucky charm tile is worth points at game's end. After 25 rounds, players tally their points for scoring boards, first tiles, lucky charm tiles, and bonuses to see who has the highest score.