Seize the New Carpe Diem, and Deliver the Beatdown in Naruto: Ninja Arena

• During SPIEL.digital 2020, Ravensburger announced that its alea brand will now be led by André Maack following Stefan Brück's decision to leave the company in mid-2020. Maack has been with Ravensburger since 2008, and he previously led development on its family games line, overseeing titles such as Asara, The Quest for El Dorado, and The Rise of Queensdale (which was, in fact, an alea release).

In January 2021, alea will release an overhauled version of Stefan Feld's Carpe Diem, with no changes to the game design (as far as I can tell), but with completely new graphics. Beyond that, Maack is working with several designers on new titles, and the plan is to release two titles annually under the alea label starting in 2022.

• As for its family line, in March 2021 Ravensburger will release the flip-and-write game Explorers in which players explore a mysterious landscape, marking things as they go on erasable game boards. (Image above taken from a press presentation.) That same month, Ravensburger will release Kevin Russ' Calico in German, with a German-language edition of Marvel Villainous to follow in mid-2021.

• During SPIEL.digital 2020, BGG recorded an overview of Naruto: Ninja Arena, a simultaneous play dice-based combat game from Antoine Bauza, Corentin Lebrat, Ludovic Maublanc, and Théo Rivière that will be released by French publisher Don't Panic Games by the end of 2020.

In the game, everyone plays one of the Naruto characters — Sakura, Sasuke, Shikamaru, and the main character — and they roll their dice simultaneously, keeping any dice they wish while rolling others again. Each character has a pair of dice combos, and as soon as you have a combo, you deal damage to one of your opponents, then start rolling again.

Additionally, if you do a five-dice combo, you slap the uzumaki symbol in the center of the table, then everyone else must do the same; whoever slaps lasts takes additional damage, then everyone who has enough damage to take a wound does so, with each character having different wound levels. Take enough wounds, and you're knocked out; you can possibly come back into play, but your goal in the game is to be the last one standing, so you won't have a lot of time since your KO means everyone else has fewer targets upon which to pour damage.

Japanime Games has announced that it will release Naruto: Ninja Arena in North America in Q1 2021, but the Japanime version will combine the Don't Panic base game and the Genin Pack Expansion into a single box. This expansion contains character cards for Rock Lee, Tenten, Hinata, Kiba, Temari, and Gaara and dice for up to six players to compete at once.