Board Game News

Game Preview: Ankh, or One Egyptian God to Rule Them All!

First, we were mighty Viking clans battling for the most glory at the end of the world in Blood Rage. Then we were clans in feudal Japan negotiating and battling our way to victory in Rising Sun....

COVID-19 at the Gaming Table VII: Game at Home with Cats, Dragons, Pigs and Pencils, Then Visit a Clinic to Fight COVID-19

• Frank West of The City of Games has released a "remote edition" of The Isle of Cats with modifications that allow you to play with others via a camera as long as at least one player owns the...

Guess Numbers with Care, Then Build a 5x5 Zoo with OKAZU Brand

• For the past several years, Hisashi Hayashi of OKAZU Brand has released two new games — always with art by Ryo Nyamo — at each Game Market, and he had planned to do so again at the Tokyo...

Japanese Game Round-up: Explore the Abyssal Depths and Deal in Flighty Artifacts

• Japanese publisher analog lunchbox consists of two people — designer Masaki Suga and illustrator and graphic artist Saori Shibata — and the designs they've released over the past few...

Japanese Game Round-up: Your Secret Mission? Go Right or Left to Avoid Your Taboo Code

Tokyo Game Market (ゲムマ) was scheduled for April 25-26, 2020, but for understandable reasons it's not taking place, with the next event now scheduled for Nov. 14-15, 2020. In honor of the...

Solitaire Sunday: Invasion of the Cow Snatchers, or You've Got to Moove It, Moove It

After starting this "Solitaire Sunday" series with coverage of a couple of movement-based logic puzzles — Lunar Landing and Gecko — I'm back with another such puzzle: Invasion of the Cow...

COVID-19 at the Gaming Table VI: Store Support from Pegasus and Portal, and Worldwide Reports from Czech Games Edition

• Many publishers have responded to the COVID-19 pandemic by releasing special "play at home" products and creating programs to support local game stores that have closed (more on those below)....

Dávid Turczi Encourages You to Excavate Earth and Lead the Inca to Glory!

Sometime in 2019, I started noticing tons of games coming out or being announced with artist Ian O'Toole. I'm a big fan of O'Toole's elegant artwork, so I totally understand why he's continuously...

Rio Grande Games Prepares the Trans-Siberian Railroad for Another Run

With the new version of Gulf, Mobile & Ohio having made its way to the Rio Grande Games warehouse ahead of its release at the end of April 2020, the U.S. publisher has announced the second title...

Bruno Cathala Round-up: Hoard Toilet Paper, Climb Mountains, Avoid Hand Zombies, and Dream About Shadows over Brooklyn

• In January 2020, I posted an item about a forthcoming expansion for 7 Wonders Duel called "AGORA" that Repos Production plans to debut at SPIEL '20. I included co-designer Bruno Cathala's...

Designer Diary: Only a Few Cards, or The Making of an Automa for Patchwork

Like many other players, I ignored Patchwork for a while after its release. It just didn't look appealing to me. The theme didn't grab me. Eventually it was the app that made me realize what a...

Game Overview: Abandon All Artichokes, or Power Your Way to Victory with Veggies

Abandon All Artichokes is a simple deck-building and deck-destruction game from Emma Larkins and Gamewright for 2-4 players who might have no idea what deck-building is.Each player starts the...

Solitaire Sunday: Castle Logix, or The Three Towers

When I worked in a game store in the early 1990s, the Binary Arts puzzle line was one of the top sellers in the puzzle category, matched only by the extensive line of heavy metal untangling...

Links: Charlie Theel Digs into High Society, Tom Felber Burns Bridges, and Hong Kong Suspends Trading in CMON Limited

• ICv2 reports that trading for CMON Limited stock on the Hong Kong Stock Exchange was suspended on April 1, 2020 "after the company warned of audit issues and said it would delay release of...

BGG.CON 2019 Recap

Author's Note: Yep, this write-up is super-duper late as explained at the bottom of the page.BGG.CON 2019 was held November 20-24 at the Hyatt Regency Dallas. This is the first year in this new...

Origins Game Fair Moved to Oct. 7-11, 2020; BGG.Spring 2020 Cancelled

The Game Manufacturers Association (GAMA) has announced that the 46th annual Origins Game Fair scheduled for June 17-21, 2020 will instead be held at the Greater Columbus Convention Center on...

Pax to the Future: New Releases from Ion Game Design & Sierra Madre Games

Great Scott! In early April 2020, Ion Game Design and Sierra Madre Games launched a Kickstarter campaign for the second edition of Pax Renaissance and their latest addition to the Pax series: Pax...

Game Previews from GAMA Expo 2020 VII: Forgotten Waters, OmenQuest, Pyramid Quartet, Under Falling Skies, and Call to Adventure: The Stormlight Archive

All 115 videos from our GAMA Expo 2020 coverage are now live on our BGG Express YouTube channel and more specifically in this playlist. Now it's time to roll back to the remaining game overview...

COVID-19 at the Gaming Table V: Free Games from Asmodee, Osprey, 2Tomatoes, and More

• Designers and publishers continue to release print-and-play versions of games old and new to give people something fun (and new) to do while they're sheltering indoors. BGG user Peter Loop...

Designer Diary: Musical Chairs, or Take a Seat for a New Rio Grande Release!

In order to tell you how I came up with the idea for Musical Chairs, I need to give you a short backstory.It all started at a small prototyping expo in Orlando, Florida in February 2017. I was...

Creating Translations for Imported Games

(In which I mostly talk about what I do to cobble together English language translations for Japanese games when I don't speak, read, or write any Japanese.)This portrait of Yayoi Kusama hangs in...

Solitaire Sunday: Chroma Cube

Time to highlight another logic puzzle for those of you stranded in place and looking for something to keep your mind — and fingers — active: Chroma Cube from Josh Sellers and Project...

Game Previews from GAMA Expo 2020 VI: Pitch Out, Flick Wars, Meeple Mountain, Silver Coin, and WWE Cage Battle

We're nearing the end of our coverage — or rather re-coverage — of GAMA Expo 2020. We now have more than ninety game overview videos in a playlist devoted to that show on our BGG Express...

Game Previews from GAMA Expo 2020 V: Hyperspace, Evil Dead 2, Steamwatchers, Super Fantasy Brawl, and Ascension Tactics: Miniatures Deckbuilding Game

I'm back with another handful of games that BoardGameGeek previewed on its livestream from GAMA Expo 2020. You can find all 70+ games on our BGG Express YouTube channel, with another forty still...

New Expansion Round-Up: Pursue More Happiness, Battle More Tyrants, Scare More Invaders & Explore More of China

Quarantine life has got me analyzing my game shelf more often to explore which games play well with two since I'm home with my significant other and not able to meet with my usual game group....

Game Previews from GAMA Expo 2020 IV: Ride the Rails, Targi: The Expansion, Sea of Legends, Piece of Pie, and Telestrations: Upside Drawn

The game overview videos from GAMA Expo 2020 just keep on coming — until I've published them all, of course, at which point they will stop. Unless you click on one, though, as then it will...

Come Tour the Deutsches Spielearchiv in Nürnberg, Home to 30,000 Games

During the Spielwarenmesse 2020 trade fair in late January and early February, Lincoln Damerst and I spent a few hours away from the Messe to tour the Deutsches Spielearchiv in Nürnberg,...

Game Previews from GAMA Expo 2020 III: Paris, Ruination, Mint Control, Trekking the World, and Dwellings of Eldervale

Let's get back to more game preview videos from GAMA Expo 2020, a convention during which BoardGameGeek recorded more than one hundred overviews of new and upcoming games with their designers and...

Alliance Halts Payments to Vendors; Asmodee to Leave Alliance in July 2020

Geppi Family Enterprises, owner of Alliance Game Distributors, the largest wholesale hobby games distributor in the U.S., notified its vendors on March 31, 2020 that it will not pay those vendors...

Game Overview: Toy Story: Obstacles & Adventures, or You Are a Child's Plaything

Given how well Pixar closed the Toy Story trilogy with the 2010 release of Toy Story 3, I never would have guessed that the characters would return for another movie — but in another way, the...