• Designer Gerhard Junker has released a small expansion for his dexterity game Blocky Mountains: The Rock Slide, which consists of an S-curve block and new route cards. More challenges on the mountains!
• The second issue of Lookout Spiele's printed newsletter Neues vom Ausguck — available only at conventions and if you live in Germany, Austria or Switzerland and order direct from Lookout — includes a postcard expansion for Snowdonia as well as small previews of games due out in 2015, including 1844/54 and Trambahn (both of which were previously mentioned in Lookout's 2014 line-up) as well as Suburbia 5★. What is Suburbia 5★, you might ask? I'll leave you to take a guess because Ted Alspach at Bezier Games likes to be sneaky about such things and for now will say only that he's aiming for Gen Con 2015 for the English release of Suburbia 5★. (And I can't believe that I'm going to have to recall how to type a star whenever this game name comes up. Here's hoping that it's never published or mentioned again in the future!)
• Designer Bruno Faidutti has a list of forthcoming games on his website and with 2014 nearly over, I think we can consider them all potential 2015 releases (and I say "potential" because publisher plans change all the time, as can be seen with the note about Lookout above). Here's the list, some of which I've previously posted about on BGG News and some of which are new to me:
• The Big Movie, Funforge
• Diamant, new edition, with Alan R. Moon, IELLO
• Kheops, with Serge Laget, White Goblin Games
• Mission: Red Planet, new edition, with Bruno Cathala
• Neeed!, with Eric Lang, Lui-Même Éditions
• Piraci, with Bruno Cathala, Bombyx
• Raptor, with Bruno Cathala, Matagot
• Sauve qui Peut!, with Anja Wrede, Grosso Modo Editions
• Space Station Argo, with Serge Laget, Flatlined Games
• Trois Singes – Three Monkeys
• Warehouse 51, with Sergio Halaban and André Zatz
One item not on that list is a new version of Castle, a co-design with Serge Laget that Faidutti had previously mentioned was getting prepped for a new edition. Turns out that Faidutti had disagreements with that publisher, so that new version will likely not take place for now.
• The award for tastiest-looking game pieces of 2014 goes to the abstract strategy game 王さまのマカロン, which translates as The King's Macarons from designer Pesu Nabeno and publisher Nabeno Kikaku: