• Each time I see the cover of The Pursuit of Happiness, a design by Adrian Abela, David Chircop and Artipia Games, I'm surprised by it. Not so much by the cover itself, but rather with the idea that this game is from Artipia as I associate that publisher with more graphically intricate and high-impact covers such as those on Archon, Briefcase and Drum Roll.
• I've heard the same quick description of Reiner Knizia's Amphipolis from Desyllas Games from more than one person, that description being "Ra without the auctions". For more detail than that, here's a video overview:
• Christopher Vasiliou's Crazy Bullets from Desyllas Games has you in the Wild West slapping not the holster by your side, but the card pile that grows in front of you — ideally beating other players in the process so that you can fire off your cards and win first.
• Mess Machine from Nikolaos Chondropoulos and Desyllas presents players with a semi-cooperative puzzle that they want to reassemble, but more than mere reassembling you want other players to take the action that you've secretly chosen in order to score points from their efforts, but you also score when placing the right piece in the right location.
• Desyllas' Oath of the Brotherhood from Vangelis Bagiartakis and Tony Cimino is one of the hundred or so games that we recorded a demo of at Spielwarenmesse at the start of 2015, but now we have one of the co-designers on site to talk about the game, so here it is again.
• The card game OMG from George Christofidis and Desyllas challenges you to dump your god cards before anyone else, but you need to match them to do so, in addition to drawing on the gods for their help (and special powers).
• Vangelis Bagiartakis is also the designer of the party game Sing it!, in which you try to call lyrics to mind that feature certain words of phrases in them, and I can tell you right now that anyone looking to crush me in a game has a fine choice with this title unless the cards feature only the words "eat", "sleep", "rave" and "repeat".