In general, one player takes on the role of the hunter, while 2-4 other players are the hunted; the hunted players wear blackout glasses so that they can't see anything in the forest where they're located, which means that they have to feel their way around the game board to determine where they are, where others are, where they can move, and what's around them. (The hunter player guides a player's finger to their piece, then the hunted player explores from there.) Nyctophobia has two hunter roles, with the axe murdered chopping down trees to get to you more quickly, while the mage can rotate the board and change the location of trees to mess with your head.
Turns out that publisher Pandasaurus Games has another version of the game in the works, with Nyctophobia: Vampire Encounter being a Target-exclusive title in the U.S. with a $30 MSRP. Here's what is different in this version of the game:
Nyctophobia: Vampire Encounter differs from Nyctophobia in that the hunter player takes on the role of a vampire who can control the familiar and the player who is leading them out of the forest, leading to tricky situations for those in the dark. The game includes two pre-set maps for players to work through while they're trying to rescue the NPC familiar and return them to the car without anyone dying.
In this game, you need to build a personal arboretum of trees that lets you walk in an orthogonal manner from one species of tree to another such tree along a path of trees in ascending value. It's an odd set of constraints, I admit, and probably not something you'd want to talk about in public should you feel the need to walk in an orthogonal manner from one species of tree to another such tree, but as a game, it's a tense bit of hand management since you're constantly discarding cards that others might use and you never have time to see everything you'd want to see. Cassar explained the origins of the game in a 2015 designer diary, which includes a detailed overview of the gameplay. The Renegade edition, due out Q3 2018, features new illustrations from Beth Sobel, along with changes to some species and symbols to make the game more color-blind friendly.
• The other title coming from Renegade is Danilo Sabia's Wendake, which Placentia Games and Post Scriptum had released at SPIEL '17. This game, which challenges you to lead a Native American tribe in the Great Lakes region of the U.S., will be available for pick-up at Gen Con 2018 if you preorder, with a retail release in Q4 2018.
• As I was working on this post, Fantasy Flight Games announced that it plans to debut the second edition of the Star Wars: X-Wing Miniatures Game at Gen Con 2018, with this item hitting retail outlets on Sept. 13, 2018.
The core game is but one part of this system as FFG is also releasing conversion kits ($50 MSRP each) for the Rebel Alliance, Galactic Empire, and Scum and Villainy factions that enables you to convert your first edition ships to work with the second edition rules; these kits contain ship cards, ship tokens, maneuver dials, and more than one hundred upgrade cards. First Order pilots will no longer be part of the Galactic Empire faction and Resistance pilots no longer part of the Rebel Alliance; instead, these pilots will be broken out into factions of their own, with conversion kits to come in the future. Force-sensitive pilots can use "Force charges" to improve their aim or avoid incoming fire.