New Game Round-up: Bruce Glassco Delivers Mystery, Alexander Searches for King Chocolate & Riddle and Pinchback Head Back to the Future

• I'm privileged to state that Edward Gorey now has an artist listing in the BGG database thanks to the announcement of Bruce Glassco's Mystery! Motive for Murder from Mayfair Games. Here's an overview from the publisher:

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When a body is discovered in the courtyard of a stately English mansion, the weapon and location are obvious; the only questions the investigators need to answer are who and why. Every guest may have a motive, and every one of them has secrets they're trying to hide!

Your reputation as a detective will be assured if you're the one who makes the final arrest in Mystery! Motive for Murder. One by one, you interview and re-interview suspects to establish the strengths of their relationships with the victim. Which of the guests had the greatest motive to commit murder?

In a BGG thread from before this announcement, Glassco said the following about the game: "[M]ost of my game designs revolve around an attempt to tell a story in game format, and the new one will be no exception. This one will be based on a different literary genre other than horror – I'll have to keep you guessing on which one for now, though. It doesn't share any major mechanics with [Betrayal at House on the Hill] – no more scenarios! – other than the fact that it's also character-driven. Instead of being an adventure-type game where you experience the world vicariously as a character, though, in this game the characters literally become the board which you play upon as you build their world. The game will be a lot more strategic, and it's competitive rather than cooperative."

Mystery! Motive for Murder, due out in mid-October 2015, is for 1-5 players and carries a $35 MSRP. Mayfair Games notes in its press material that the Mystery! name is licensed from WGBH for its television anthology series of the same name, and that series featured Gorey's illustrations in its opening shots:

• Another forthcoming title from Mayfair Games is King Chocolate from Stefan Alexander, due out in November 2015. Here's an overview of the setting and gameplay:

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You know there is money in chocolate, but it doesn't just grow on trees. You need to control the links in the production chain to get your cut of the cash, to make sure the cocao flows through your businesses instead of your competitors'.

Sometimes you need to help your customers and suppliers to help yourself. If you are wily, you can figure out a way for your competitors to do the work for you. Create monopolies, cut off the supply chain, disrupt other players' finely honed plans — do whatever it takes to become King Chocolate.

The fruit of the cacao tree goes through six steps to become chocolate. You can control only a few of these steps, so you must work with your fellow chocolate makers to keep the chocolate flowing through the production chain. It sounds cooperative and friendly — but did we mention that the chocolate maker with the most money wins? Things always get complicated when money is involved.

To ensure your portion of the production process is used the most so that it earns you cash, occasionally you'll help your customers and suppliers. At the same time, you will attempt to crush your competitors, force others to help you, and manipulate the supply chain.

You'll do whatever it takes to become the king of chocolate.

This description of the prototype, then called "Cacao", from the 2013 Protospiel event in Ann Arbor, Michigan sounds reminiscent of Container: "Because of your limited reach as individual players, you must work together to get the cacao through the production line. For example, let's say player A has control of the most roaster spaces and player B has control of the most grinder spaces (which is the next location on the production chain). You only earn points when the cacao is removed from the location they are on. Therefore, player A must move her pieces to player B's spaces in order to earn points and thus the balance of where to move pieces begins."

Lovely cover, by the way...

• Publisher IDW Games has told me that more details will come for the Matt Riddle and Ben Pinchback title Back to the Future: An Adventure Through Time in October 2015, but for now we know that this design is a "role-selection, time travel, hand management kinda thing", which is good enough to get us started. Yay, time travel!