New Game Round-up: KOSMOS - Teuber Sans Catan, Mensa Winners auf Deutsch & Dorn on His Back

In the adventure game Norderwind, cities are suffering heavily under constant raids from pirates. As freelance trade captains, the players bring food and other goods to the cities, in addition to fighting the pirates whenever they encounter them. Fighting without cannons leads to poor results, however, and cannons are expensive. With each success, though, a player can better equip his three-dimensional ship and strengthen his crew.

In the end, the player who finds the best mix of trading and fighting will prove to be the victorious captain.

Eye Know is a visual trivia betting game. At the start of the game, a number of cards are laid out on the game board. On a turn, you choose one of the cards and identify the image on it. (This isn't the hard part, but rather a precursor of what's to come.) If you correctly identify the image, you can then bid some amount of poker chips to answer a trivia question relating to the object named on the card, or you can auction off the right to answer a trivia question. Questions come in three varieties — true/false, multiple choice, and open ended — and the payouts are higher for the tougher questions: 1:1, 2:1 and 3:1. Answer correctly, and you collect more chips as well as the card; collecting sets of cards gives you bonus points, and the player with the most points wins.

Anomia plays off the fact that our minds are positively brimming with all sorts of random information: things to eat, pop songs, websites, etc... Sure, under normal circumstances, it's easy to give an example of a frozen food or a dog breed, but you'll find that your brain works a little differently under pressure!

To play, draw and reveal a card from the center pile. Does the symbol on your card match one on another player's card? If so, you must quickly face-off with the other player by giving an example of the person, place, or thing on his card before he can do the same for yours. If you blurt out a correct answer first, you win his card and the drawing continues.

Sounds simple, right? Wrong! Wild cards allow unlike symbols to match, increasing the number of things to which you must pay attention. Cascading face-offs can occur when you hand over a lost card, thereby revealing a new top card on your play pile.

Everything, everything is full of slackers! Sloths, hippos, lions, pandas: one is just as lazy as the next, and in Faulpelz they're all waiting to be collected by the players — but not all lazybones are the same as some animals are worth more points than others. Card by card, each player decides which animal he wants to collect, but only fully-exposed cards can be taken so look carefully and don't provide opponents the opportunity to collect the critters you want.

In the end, whoever collects the most valuable sluggards wins!