Wednesday is scheduled to lead off with a game announcement from Portal Games, but Portal has already spilled word on Charles-Amir Perret's Crazy Karts in advance, offering this description:
In more detail, one player controls the brakes and turns, while the other player speeds up and fires the cannon. Teams must outmaneuver their opponents, dodge obstacles, grab power-ups, and avoid smashing into the walls, all planning their actions in secret without talking! Need to turn left? Better hope your partner didn't accelerate! Race to the finish line in this wacky game of mayhem and shenanigans. Do you have what it takes to be a champion kart racer?
As with many other titles from Portal Games, Crazy Karts includes four unique factions for the teams, each with their unique power. If you are play with an odd number of players, a Lone Wolf faction allows a single player to compete with a unique set of skills and disadvantages.
• Portal Games also notes that it has expansions in the works for Neuroshima Hex!, Rattle, Battle, Grab the Loot, and Imperial Settlers, with this latter title being revealed as Imperial Settlers: 3 Is a Magic Number. A short description:
This expansion includes new cards for the common deck as well as new cards for each of the five factions and two cards for use in the solitaire game.
• IDW Games and Pandasaurus Games has announced a giant release from Jonathan Gilmour, Ben Pinchback, and Matt Riddle titled Wasteland Express Delivery Service, which merges a Fury Road aesthetic with a long interactive story. Here's the overview:
To survive in this deranged universe, drivers must deliver food, water and guns between the handful of settlements pockmarked through the Wasteland. You must battle through insane raiders who occupy the void between cities, taking on missions from the three factions that have divided up the last of civilization to gain favor with them: the fascist New Republic Army which is hellbent on bringing the world to heel for its own good; the heretical Oracles of Ceres who have turned their attention to the worship of the land; and the technologically obsessed Archivists who cling to the old ways and the hope of restoring our lost civilization.
But what do you care? You're here to get paid and live another day free. Outfit your truck, hire some insane riders to help fend off raiders, add some storage, and just keep truckin'.
Wasteland Express Delivery Service includes an emergent narrative story that takes place interactively over the course of ten games. Each scenario begins with a beautifully illustrated comic book introduction that sets up the storyline and the constantly escalating stakes and challenges in front of players. Alternatively, players can dive in with a randomly generated scenario that will play out over the course of a single story-driven game session for infinite replay possibilities.
• A co-publisher pull-out at the last minute scuttled plans by Tony Boydell and Surprised Stare Games to release Guilds of London at Spiel 2015, but now the game is scheduled to debut at UK Games Expo in June 2016, and Tasty Minstrel Games will be the new SSG partner for the game's release. I don't know more than that, but TMG will be on camera in the BGG booth on Wednesday (along with many other publishers), so perhaps we'll find out more then.