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SPIEL 2016 XI: The Oracle of Delphi, Istanbul: Letters & Seals, HOP!, Argo, and SHOOT Card Game

SPIEL 2016 XI: The Oracle of Delphi, Istanbul: Letters & Seals, HOP!, Argo, and SHOOT Card Game
Board Game: The Oracle of Delphi
• Stefan Feld blanketed the game market with four titles from four publishers in 2013, followed by a light 2014 with only two releases before taking off 2015 altogether. Well, that's how it seems from the outside, but Feld and developer Ralph Bruhn from Hall Games were working on The Oracle of Delphi throughout 2015, with the game debuting from Pegasus Spiele at SPIEL 2016 (and due out in the U.S. from Tasty Minstrel Games in November 2016).

Unlike most Feld designs, The Oracle of Delphi is effectively a race game, with players competing to be the first to complete the twelve tasks of Zeus.





Board Game: Istanbul: Letters & Seals
• Istanbul: Letters & Seals is the second expansion for Rüdiger Dorn's Istanbul from Pegasus Spiele, with AEG releasing the game in the U.S. in November 2016. This expansion, which can also be combined with the first one, allows you to pick up sealed letters, then upgrade those seals by visiting a particular location. You can then use the seals to take a second turn or earn a gem from one of the existing locations.





Board Game: HOP!
• The most visually delightful booth presentation at SPIEL 2016 had to be for Funforge's HOP! from Marie Cardouat and Ludovic Maublanc, a family game in which players try to complete dares to ascend the clouds and score points. I've included a pic of the booth that I took during set-up day, which unfortunately doesn't include the game presenters as they wore rainbow socks and unicorn horns to complete the festive look of the booth. As for the gameplay, well, that's what the video is for...

From gallery of W Eric Martin





Board Game: Argo
• Argo has been in the works from Bruno Faidutti and Serge Laget for at least a decade, with the game having been promised from Fantasy Flight Games back in the mid-2000s before being released to find another publisher. Flatlined Games took on the project in 2013, and now the game — one in which you're trying to survive an alien attack in space and make it to the shuttles before everyone else, but with more points than the aliens so that you can win — finally exists in a manufactured form.





From gallery of W Eric Martin
• One good and bad thing about broadcasting game demonstrations at SPIEL 2016 is that we make a complete schedule starting roughly one month prior to the show. We contact publishers listed on the SPIEL Preview that I create, then fill out five days of presentations, with a new game being presented roughly every ten minutes for the forty or so hours that we plan to broadcast. Creating that schedule helps me realize who I need to track down for coverage in the preview, and that preview keeps me chasing those publishers and designers who we know people want to see.

The drawback to that full schedule is that we have a hard time fitting in anyone else that we might run across at SPIEL, and hoo boy, do we have a lot of people approach us who want to be on camera! Sometimes, though, we actually get ahead of schedule for ten minutes, and when that rare event happens we grab someone near us who seems interesting and shove them in front of the camera — which is how Erik Atzen of Game Absorber came to present SHOOT, a first-person shooter card game that can be played in any environment, in the BGG booth.

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