Board Game News

Designer Diary: Treelings, or A Series of Fortunate Events and Lots of Playtesting

Preproduction copyIn October 2016, I visited SPIEL for the first time and fell in love with the game Arboretum by Dan Cassar. I was fascinated by what a few rules can make out of cards that...

Game Previews from GAMA Expo 2020 II: Crazy Tower, Color It!, 5er Finden, Aqualin, and Flash 8

I've been posting more game overview videos from GAMA Expo 2020 on our BGG Express YouTube channel, with those videos popping up on their respective BGG game pages as well, but let me highlight a...

Solitaire Sunday: Lunar Landing and Gecko

I don't normally cover logic puzzles in this space — logic puzzles not being games and all that — but with folks spending more time in their residences these days and not able to gather with...

Links: Leacock on Pandemic in Today's World, Tales of Tricks Taken, and Nominees for the 2020 Origins Awards

• To follow up on my post of March 14, 2020, Pandemic was in the news again thanks to an opinion column by designer Matt Leacock in the March 25, 2020 New York Times titled "No Single Player...

Duel Anew in Bohnanza to Celebrate Uwe Rosenberg's Birthday

To celebrate designer Uwe Rosenberg's fiftieth birthday, German publisher AMIGO has released a deluxe edition of Bohnanza: Das Duell. Here's an excerpt from the press release announcing this...

New Game Round-up: Bounce on a Trampoline, Answer Questions About Food, and Command the Gates of Mara

I'm not sure what's going to happen in terms of release dates for announced games — probably no one does is at this point — but I have info on several games on open tabs, so let's write them...

COVID-19 at the Gaming Table IV: Delayed Releases, Free Games, and a Print-and-Play Design Contest

• U.S. publisher Renegade Game Studios has announced that it "will be suspending shipments of website and wholesale orders" as of March 24, 2020. More from the announcement:Quote:Renegade's...

Battling Overlords and Exploring Coral Reefs at GAMA Expo 2020

While I love me some heavy games that I can get lost in for several hours, I also love games that I can play in under an hour. At the game nights during GAMA Expo 2020, I kept stumbling upon...

COVID-19 at the Gaming Table III: Asmodee and Alliance Stop Shipments; Tokyo Game Market Cancels Its Spring Show

• Alliance Game Distributors is closing its active warehouses in Fort Wayne, Indiana and Austin, Texas at the end of the workday on Tuesday, March 24, 2020 "in the interest of employee safety...

COVID-19 at the Gaming Table II: More Delays, Cancellations, and Publisher Support for Brick-and-Mortar Stores

• U.S. publisher WizKids is preemptively cancelling its appearances at both Origins Game Fair 2020 and UK Games Expo 2020, noting that it is "currently discussing options for the status for our...

Game Previews from GAMA Expo 2020 I: Maglev Metro, Ducks in Tow, Big Easy Busking, Downforce: Wild Ride, and Teotihuacan: Shadow of Xitle

Less than two weeks after we conducted 20+ hours of interviews with game designers and publishers at GAMA Expo 2020, we've started posting the edited versions of those overviews on our BGG...

New Game Round-up: Sell Goods and Goats on the Dark Road to Hogwarts

• At GAMA Expo 2020, Brent Dickman of Elf Creek Games shared a few words with me about Merchants of the Dark Road, a design by Brian Suhre for 1-4 players that plays in 60-120 minutes and...

New Game Round-up: Card-Based Gears of War, Keyper Crabs, and Matt Leacock's To-Do List

• At the Gears 5 Esports Mexico City Major event that took place March 6-8, 2020, in Mexico City — an event for online players of the Gears of War series, UK publisher Steamforged Games...

Links: Catan Converts, Oath Makers, and Victory Considerations

• Issue #72 of Creative Nonfiction, which was released at the end of 2019, features essays and stories related to games. You can find a table of contents and an introductory essay from issue...

Do You Want to Build a Snowman in Donald X. Vaccarino's Winter Kingdom?

A kingdom is not a kingdom for only some months of the year. Possibly this is the reasoning behind Winter Kingdom, a standalone game from Donald X. Vaccarino and Queen Games that plays similarly...

COVID-19 at the Gaming Table: Delays, Cancellations, Retailer Support, and Free RPGs

After talking to multiple people at all levels of the game industry at GAMA Expo 2020, I had intended on writing an article on the effects of the COVID-19 virus on the game industry, but I'm not...

Origins Game Fair Still On for June 2020

The Game Manufacturers Association (GAMA) has announced that as of March 18, 2020, Origins Game Fair 2020 will still take place on June 17-21 as originally planned. Here's the complete text of...

Game Previews from FIJ 2020 IV: Mysterium Park, Monumental, Cowboy Bebop: Space Serenade, and The Belgian Beers Race

Let's run through another set of game preview videos from the FIJ 2020 game fair in Cannes, France, with yet more videos being published soon on our BGG Express YouTube channel and with videos...

Game Announcements from GAMA Expo 2020: Control a Cube, Rub Out a Robot, and Craft a Million Dollar Script

BoardGameGeek recorded roughly one hundred game overview videos at GAMA Expo 2020 in mid-March, with many of those titles being new to the BGG database. Let's look at a few of these titles, with...

Game Previews from FIJ 2020 III: Dragomino, Oriflamme, Poule Poule, What's Missing, and Welcome to New Las Vegas

To highlight our coverage of the FIJ 2020 game fair in Cannes, France in late February, I've been posting game overview videos semi-regularly on our BGG Express YouTube channel. We have more than...

Forts, Food Fights, and Ferraris at GAMA Expo 2020

My first GAMA Expo experience was a success, in spite of everything going on in the world with the coronavirus. I met and elbow-bumped some awesome people, hosted on BGG's livestream for the...

Designer Diary: The One Hundred Torii, or an Abstract Game Finds Its True Calling in a Japanese Garden

In October 2012, I went to the SPIEL game fair in Essen, Germany to promote the release of my game Völuspá and also to pitch four new prototypes to European publishers. My design career was...

Game Overview: Man muss auch gönnen können, or Play Nice with the Dice

After much travel to different conventions, it's time for me to lock the doors, play games at home, and get back to posting game overview videos on a regular schedule, starting with a long take...

Pandemic in the News, and Leacock on Emotion in Game Design

• The word "pandemic" is all over the news for reasons that will hopefully not surprise you, but what you might find surprising is how often the word "Pandemic" shows up, as in a discussion of...

Jason Voorhees Returns from the Dead Again in Friday the 13th: Horror at Camp Crystal Lake

With Friday the 13th upon us, U.S. publisher The Op (formerly known as "USAopoly") has decided to capitalize on the misfortune associated with that day by announcing Friday the 13th: Horror at...

Game Overview: Stick 'Em, or Points for Pricks

Since its founding in 2015 with a new edition of Stefan Risthaus' Arkwright, U.S. publisher Capstone Games has tended to specialize in fairly involved games. The publisher has a "Simply Complex"...

Game Previews from FIJ 2020 II: Bruno Faidutti Special — Vintage, Poisons, Gold River, and Vabanque

For my second round-up of game overview videos from FIJ 2020 — the annual game convention in Cannes, France, where the BGG interviewed designers and publishers for four days — I have an easy...

"New" Game Round-up: GMT Sequels for Twilight Struggle, Dominant Species, and Triumph & Tragedy

Fan-made coverContinuing from my previous post about upcoming sequels and second editions, I'd like to hone in on a few GMT Games sequels on the horizon. While we don't have official release...

Game Previews from FIJ 2020 I: The 7th Citadel, Robespierre, Magnum Opus, and It's a Wonderful World: Ascension

Today, March 10, BGG will start a livestream from GAMA Expo 2020, and you can see the current line-up of who's presenting what here, but before we get started with that, let's highlight a few of...

Updates to BGG's GAMA Expo 2020 Livestream Schedule

Given the situation with COVID-19 in multiple locations around the world, you will probably not be surprised to learn that many businesses that were scheduled to appear at the GAMA Expo 2020...