German publisher HUCH! & friends has been publishing versions of Kamisado since 2009, and for 2014 it plans to release both Kamisado Pocket and Kamisado Max. Kamisado Pocket is the original game, but with flat pieces so that the whole thing fits into a thinner space. Kamisado Max, however, expands on the original game, with ten colors of pieces (instead of eight in the original game), a 10x10 game board (instead of 8x8), and new movement rules. What are those rules? Ideally I'll find out at the Nürnberg toy and game fair that opens at the end of January 2014, then I can let you know.
• Turns out that designer Lauge Luchau has two new games due out in 2014: Dimension from Kosmos, previously covered in this BGGN post, and Xalapa from HUCH. As with his first design, Uluru, both games seem to have players placing pieces in certain arrangements based on criteria set by the game system and random elements. Here's all I know about Xalapa, for example:
• What else is coming from HUCH! & friends from now through September 2014? Kinjiro's Zombeasts comes in the same footprint as the quick-playing card games Nox and Voodoo Mania, so I expect something similar there, with players trying to nab valuable animal zombies.
• Voll Schaf is the German version of Francesco Rotta's Battle Sheep (coming from Blue Orange in the U.S. and elsewhere in Europe), and this game is 2-4 player version of Rotta's Splits, a fantastically simple game that gives Kamisado a run for its money in that department. You want to be the last player to place a piece on the game board. With each move, you split one of your stacks of tokens and move part of the stack in a straight line until it hits the edge of the board or an obstacle. Block everyone else, while leaving yourself room to move — that's all you need to know.
• To continue in the animal kingdom, HUCH is releasing a multilingual version of Fox & Chicken, a farmyard take on Werewolf first released by designer Michael Fox's Sprocket Games.
• Terra is a derivation of Friedemann Friese's Fauna, but with players pondering the trivial details of locations rather than animals. Here's an overview of the game:
• Mit Mist und Tücke from designer Helmut Ast (wink wink) will be the latest dung-themed game to appear on retail shelves, but given my son's fascination with joking about anything butt-related, I can understand publishers aiming games at this market of young jokesters. An overview:
Who will be the first to gather all his dung safely home in Mit Mist und Tücke, filling the caves with food?