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The first three months of the year entail endless previews of what's coming, with relatively few games being released during this time — well, relatively few compared to other three-quarters of the year, although you will still find more releases than you can possibly play once you look at everything coming out in the U.S., in Germany, in France, in Japan, and everywhere else in the world.
I don't expect you to find everything in this post — or indeed any post — of interest, but I try to survey what's being shown at shows like NY Toy Fair and Spielwarenmesse to give you a taste of what's out there, what the parameters of the game market are. The world of game design is far vaster than this, of course, and as always I'm eager to discover what people are making, wherever they happen to be making it.
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I wrote about Gamewright's 2020 line-up only a few days prior to NY Toy Fair 2020, so I've held off on covering the company's games again until the end of this wrap-up to put a bit more space between posts.
The title I'm most curious to explore is Emma Larkins' Abandon All Artichokes, a 2-4 player card game that I'd describe as deck construction and deconstruction in one, but I don't think you'll ever see Gamewright use those terms since it primarily markets to an audience of casual gamers.
Here's how the game works: Each player starts with a deck of ten artichoke cards from which they draw a hand of five cards. On a turn, you pick up one action card from those on display, play as many cards from your hand as you want — with artichokes doing nothing more than taking up space — then discard the rest of your hand and draw five new cards. If you draw a hand with no artichoke cards in it, you win!
Gamewright's Jason Schneider told me that the development process on this game took forever as they kept trying to find the right mix of challenging and straightforward actions in order to appeal to both gamers and casual players. Larkins has promised to submit a designer diary about the game to BGG News, so look for that in the future. Also, we'll need to keep an eye out for the inevitable sequel games Banish Banana Bunches, Masticate Many Mangoes, and Foresake Fifteen Figs.
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Qwixx Card Game works similar to Qwixx in that you want to cross off lots of spaces on your scorecard, preferably in the same color, in order to gain lots of points. At the start of your turn, you refill your hand to five cards, then all players can cross out a number on their scoresheet that's the same as the number on the deck's topmost card. (The trick is that once you cross out a number in a row, you can never cross out a number to its left in the same row.)
Then the active player can play 1-3 cards of the same color to cross out all of those numbers on their scoresheet — but only if at most one number from the sequence of cards played (e.g., 6-7-9). The player can discard cards without crossing out numbers if they just want to get new cards when they refill their hand.
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Gamewright had the ideal demo table for Dungeon Drop: a standalone cardboard display with a lip high enough to keep the cubes from flying all over the place. The different color cubes represent gold, gems, trunks, keys, pillars, monsters, and more. On a turn, you drop a few more randomly drawn cubes, then you point out three pillars that form a triangle with no pillars inside its area, then you claim all the stuff from that triangle.
Each player has a character created from two unique characteristics that give them special powers, which can be helpful since each player also has a secret goal card for how they score gems.
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MetroX is a new version of Hisashi Hayashi's self-publisher flip-and-write game of the same name in which you're trying to cross out as many subway spaces as possible. This version includes erasable pens and wipeable boards instead of paper player sheets.
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As I suspected, Marshmallow Test is a new version of Reiner Knizia's Voodoo Prince, a trick-taking game in which you can win 3-7 tricks (depending on the player count), with you wanting to take your final trick as late as possible since you then score points based on how many tricks others have already taken. If all but one player has hit this target, then the round ends and the final player scores points only equal to how many tricks they took.
Republishing this game with this name and concept — not to mention the squishy marshmallow point tokens — is brilliant, a way to connect the nature of the gameplay with a psychological concept that will be familiar to many U.S. parents.
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In Hi Lo Flip, you have a deck of cards numbered 1-100, and you're trying to empty your hand of cards, but you must play higher or lower than the current top card based on a token on the table. Ideally you can push others to the point where they can't play as you then collect all the cards in the pot, with those cards being worth points at round's end, but players always have a chance to flip the direction of play from low to high or vice versa.
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The party game Hit List features Outburst-like gameplay, but in a similar box with fewer bits. Shuffle the tokens that are worth 1-3 points face down on the table. One player on the opposite team reads the topic card, then your team has thirty seconds to name as many things in that category as possible. For each one you name, you take a token; name the harder-to-identify answer written in pink, and you take two tokens. When time runs out, the members of the other team have one guess with which to name an unnamed answer and win 1-2 tokens.
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Shifting Stones is the only Gamewright title that was shown in mock-up form as that title is due out in Q3 2020, while all of the other games will be released in Q1 2020. Normally Gamewright releases titles primarily in Q2 (with a few in Q3), but Nora Meiners said they happened to be ready early, which allowed them to show finished goods at NY Toy Fair 2020 and have new games for sale at PAX East, which took place Feb. 27 to Mar. 1. Thus, Gamewright doesn't have to worry about its games not making it out of production facilities in China due to coronavirus-based closures because they've already arrived in the U.S.
As for Shifting Stones, in the game you'll hold a number of target cards, and players take turns swapping stones and flipping them over in order to create patterns on their cards. Ideally someone else does the work on their turn so that you can score immediately, then start working on something else. The chart on the right-hand side of the image shows which colors are paired together, and the more challenging the pattern, the more points it's worth.
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Shuffle the cards in Splurt!, then flip the top card of the deck so that you now have a topic visible as well as a word constraint. Whoever first yells out a word that fits both constraint and topic wins the card, then you flip over another card and continue until all the cards have been claimed. Whoever collects the most cards wins.
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In a Pickle is not new, but this sixteen-year-old million-copy-selling party game will now come packaged in a plastic pickle, making it a fine compliment for The Pickle Rick Game in your collection.
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Gamewright also publishes a brainteaser line of logic puzzles under the brand "Brainwright", and the newest entry in that line is Kitty Kitty, which includes a bunch of conjoined cat head pieces and puzzle cards that depict a fishscale-like pattern. Fill that pattern with the appropriately colored cat heads, and you'll receive looks of amazement and astonishment from onlookers.
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Breaking Games has released a "Mammoth Edition" of Rise of Tribes that includes nearly one hundred wooden components to give the game more table presence, as evidenced by the saber tooth tiger getting set to chomp a human in the right of the top pic.
In addition to that, Breaking Games is pitching brick-and-mortar stores on the idea of running an in-store league, with players competing for a snazzy Rise of Tribes "Champion" bag. If you're interested, keep watch on Breaking Games' social media for details.
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Shenanigames is a relatively new game publisher that focuses on party games, although at this point I feel like I've seen most of these designs in some form, as with 3 Things in which a judge reads a situation, then all other players need to claim three items, then claim how they're perfect for this situation, with the judge deciding who did the best job.
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Mistaken Identity has you attempting to guess who you are, with incorrect guesses saddling you with conditions that might cause you embarrassment to perform.
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In Wordtini, you roll out letter dice from a plastic shaker, then race to yell out words of at least four letters in order to claim those cubes and score points. Special condition cards give you a way to score bonus points, but in my sample round at NY Toy Fair 2020, it made more sense for me to yell out a stream of four-letter words (you know what I mean!) in order to snatch the dice before the other player could say anything.
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Keep It Clean is akin to Dirty Minds, with players being presented with a concept that sounds risqué, but for which they must present a plausible-sounding "clean" explanation, with the active player judging who did best. When I worked a game store in the early 1990s, we sold a ton of Dirty Minds, so I guess it makes sense to release something along these lines.
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SpeeDomino and 4 To Win are both from Families Play Forever, with the latter title having previously been marketed as Zategy. Both are straightforward designs — place all your domino-style tiles quickly, and take turns placing tiles to get four of your color in a row, using your limited white tiles to block everyone — that are aimed at the mainstream buyers who comprise the bulk of NY Toy Fair visitors.
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Professor Puzzle Ltd. was similar to Shenanigames in that it featured a number of party games that seemed to be built around a marketing hook rather than a game design hook. In I Moustache You A Question, you win mustache pieces to attach to your fake mustache, with the longest mustache winning the game. I don't get the appeal of fake mustache humor, but I'm only one person on a vast market, and I'm not the one making buying decisions for a retailer.
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In Social Bingo, a.k.a. #socialbingo, you reveal a category card, then race to be first to show evidence on your phone of whatever the category is about.
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In Trash Talk, you get to be mean to your fellow players, with everyone mocking one loser at game's end.
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Sketch Off seems like the one standout in this party game line-up, with two teams facing off to guess what the drawer on each team is drawing, with three random cards determining the subject matter of the round. In case you can't see it, the who, where, and what in the image above is a cowboy on a train building a snowman.
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In Tyle, you attempt to be the first to move from one diagonal corner of the grid to another, rotating and swapping tiles to ease you path and block others.
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That's it for the games, but I'll throw a few more pics your way before I leave the Javits Center for good in 2020.
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My son loves Naruto — both manga and anime — but I'm never going to spend the bucks on fancy figures like these, so a picture will have to suffice.
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Although maybe he'll end up with any one of hundreds of other Naruto-related items that were being pitched at NY Toy Fair 2020. The tricky thing is that many manufacturers show mock-ups of items that will never be produced if the orders don't materialize for them, so this stuff may or may not exist in the future.
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I spent lots of time in the 4000 aisles of the show ogling displays like these and appreciating the talent that goes into making them.
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Ravensburger had an incredible Gravitrax display in the entryway of Javits, but (1) no balls were running through the tracks, so it looked humdrum, and (2) how much would someone have to spend to create a display like this in their home?! The display is impressive, but at a different level it makes me swear off ever getting into Gravitrax as I'll never have a set-up as cool as this one.
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The same sentiment holds true for this Golden Gate Bridge constructed from K'NEX pieces. Fantastic to look at, but unattainable for anyone who isn't an employee making something for display at a trade show.
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Tire Baby, on the other hand, is much closer to my price range. This booth sold many gag items.
Check out the hula hoop outfit on the lady in the center of this pic. I can imagine someone wearing it in the background of The Fifth Element.
This scene, by the way, is what greeted visitors upon their entrance to the fair on Sunday morning. Here's a brief video to give you a better taste of what you missed:
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Snacks at Laguardia Airport that I couldn't eat without my stomach exploding on the airplane. I avoided them, though, so I made it home safely. Another convention trip in the bag. Now on to Reno and GAMA Expo 2020!
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