New Game Round-up: Fashion Combat, Really Can't Stop & Eklund Offers Brain Mapping

• Prêt-à-Porter, a 2010 release from designer Ignacy Trzewiczek and Portal Publishing and a nominee for Poland's Game of the Year award, will be Portal's Spiel 2011 release. This English edition will include unspecified "improvements" according to the Portal website, but given Trzewiczek's habit of blogging about game development, I imagine we'll hear about those improvements in time.

For those who wonder why the designer of Stronghold and 51st State would dip into the world of fashion, the game's theme might not be as much of a stretch as you might think. An edited game description from the Portal website: "Prêt-à-Porter is about counting money and dirty fighting. There is a hot model on the box and there is lots of blood inside the box."

• In the category of "everything old is new again", German publisher Franjos Spieleverlag once again has the license to Sid Sackson's Can't Stop and plans to have it available for Spiel 2011. Following Ravensburger's return to its stop sign of old from roughly 2007 to 2010, Franjos is returning to its mountain-climbing theme with a new look for the box, which is still in progress. Franjos has also posted an overview of how the game has looked in Germany since its debut. (HT: Spielbox)

• Mayfair Games now lists an August 2011 release date for Steam: Map Expansion #1.

• Phil Eklund's Bios Megafauna is headed to print and is available for preorder through the Sierra Madre Games website with an expected delivery date of October 2011. Here's a short game description form Eklund:

Quote:

This game is a prequel to Origins, and includes rules for adapting dinosaurian and mammalian creatures to evolve manual dexterity, social skills, natural history knowledge, and language. These instincts are then used to flow the game into an Origins game. The Megafauna game outcome also sets the player's choice of brain maps, encephalization, and starting greenhouse. Eventually the Bios series of games will encompass the entire history of the Earth. (Several prequels to Bios Megafauna are in development.)

Cue a Keanu-ian "whoa" at this point...

• New games of possible interest in the BGG database include:

-----* Dungeon Fighter, a dungeon crawl with dexterity elements from Italian publisher Cranio Creations that will be at Spiel 2011.

-----* D-Day Dice:Heroes, an expansion due out in 2012 for Emmanuel Aquin's forthcoming D-Day Dice from Valley Games.

-----* Rapa Nui, yet another Easter Island-themed game, this time from Klaus-Jürgen Wrede and Kosmos.

-----* White Elephant, a self-published card game from Brian Kelley that's nearly met its financial goal on Kickstarter with only a few days remaining.

-----* Die Siedler von Catan: Aufbruch der Händler, a European-themed Trails to Rails from Klaus Teuber and Kosmos.

-----* Helvetia from designer Matthias Cramer with the players in control of villages in the Swiss Alps. Can you marry the residents to those in nearby villages? Matchmaker, matchmaker, make me a match...

-----* Casse-toi Pov'con!, which actually has been in the database since May 2011 but is new to me. Casse-toi Pov'con! is an incredibly French game from the incredibly French publisher Cocktail Games – publisher of the bizarre Comme des Sardines..., for example – in which players are politicians who try to "shake hands" only with those who agree with them or those who won't cause them stress. The problem, as any politician will tell you, is that you can't always know who's on your side!