In any case, I have been following announcements and posts from afar. Here's a round-up of some of the forthcoming games being shown at this event, whether in early release or in prototype form:
• To start with what might be the most anticipated item, Sweet November debuted Les Poilus: Aux Ordres!, an expansion for The Grizzled from Fabien Riffaud and Juan Rodriguez that introduces solitaire rules, new rules for two players, and mission cards that allow for game scaling based on player experience. Mission cards come in easy, normal and hard difficulty levels, and based on the experience of the players, you set up a deck of missions. Each round, the mission leader draws two of these cards, then decides which one to attempt. These missions might affect the number of starting cards in a round or allow players not to lose a round due to a specific condition, such as night or rain.
I haven't seen word of an English-language edition of this expansion, but BGG will be livestreaming game demos from the GAMA Trade Show in mid-March 2016, similar to what we do at Gen Con and Spiel, and we have an appointment with Cool Mini Or Not to show off five titles yet to be named, so we'll see. (Update, Feb. 29: Yes, it will! See this comment.)
• Volumique debuted in late 2015 with World of Yo-Ho, a game in which players must use their smartphone to represent a ship on a map, making game choices on the screen that then carry over into the shared experience on the board.
At Cannes 2016, Volumique showed off another game that merges the digital and real world playing spaces: Fearz, by Anja Wrede and Bruno Faidutti. In this simultaneous play design — which can be played solely with cards, solely on a tablet, or with a combination of both — players try to recognize the fears expressed by others based on the conditions depicted on their hidden cards.
• Super Meeple showed off its new version of Reiner Knizia's Amun-Re, which will be released in France in mid-March 2016. Tasty Minstrel Games will release this version in English.
And here's a first look at the new version of Wolfgang Kramer and Michael Kiesling's Tikal, which Super Meeple also plans to release in 2016. (This version will not have an English-language edition as Rio Grande Games still holds those rights to Tikal.)
• In 2014, I recorded an enthusiastic overview video of Colors of Kasane from Japanese designer/publisher Hinata Origuchi. Now Superlude Éditions has brought on artist Naïade to work on a new version titled Les Kimonos de l'Empereur.
• Superlude Éditions also plans to produce French-language versions of James Ernest's Pairs (under the title Jour de Chance) and Thorsten Reichwein's Five Seals of Magic (under the name Archimage).
• In Q2 2016, Sit Down! plans to release Goths Save the Queen from Vincent Bonnard, which plays as follows:
To give an order, the player chooses a card and flips it onto the table to reveal two orders on its back, with no clue about which one is the right one. The second player checks the battlefield, then tries to choose the right order with a card in hand while the order-giver selects a card of their own. When both teams have chosen their cards, all of them are revealed, and if both cards match on a team, then the order is carried out. Some examples of orders: loading the artillery, firing with the artillery, progressing toward the Queen, looking at hidden cards in the middle to find the Queen, and avoiding traps...
Of course, within a team it is absolutely prohibited to make any sign or say anything to help the partner to guess the card that has been played.
When playing 1-vs-1 or 1-vs-2, the game is a bit different: The single player team cannot play the same order twice, one turn after another. If you have multiple boxes, you can compete in a 3-vs-3 or 4-vs-4 format.