Board Game News

New Game Round-up: Build Up the Yangtze in Yínzi, Explore as a Legend Raider, and Prepare for a New Carnival of Monsters

• Don't expect the cover shown at right to survive to the published game as it represents the past and not the future. In Q4 2017, German publisher AMIGO Spiele ran a Kickstarter campaign for...

The BGG Show — How (Not) to Market Games at Conventions, and More

After a few weeks discombobulated by multiple conventions — including our own BGG.CON 2018 in mid-November — Scott Alden, Steph Hodge, Lincoln Damerst and I have returned with a new episode...

PAX Unplugged 2018 III: Previews of Tsuro: Phoenix Rising, Tiny Towns, and Stonehenge and the Sun

Yesterday I covered a few games that appeared at PAX Unplugged with little to no advance notice from publishers, so now let's look at a few that were on my radar thanks to some degree of...

PAX Unplugged 2018 II: Previews of Godsforge, Wavelength, Ubongo! Fun-Size, and Lions and Tigers and Bears, Oh My!

Following BGG.CON 2018, I had thought that I was through with con coverage for the year, but then I asked Scott about attending PAX Unplugged, which took place in Philadelphia from Nov. 30 to...

Game Announcements at PAX Unplugged 2018: Metal Gear Solid, Medium, Clank! Legacy, and TMNT: Change Is Constant and City Fall

• PAX Unplugged took place in Philadelphia from Nov. 30 to Dec. 2, and several publishers quietly announced games at the show or through one or more social media outlets, with IDW Games'...

Game Overview: Paco Ŝako, or Combo Chess

During my youth in the late 1970s, I followed the path that many others had and read Bobby Fischer Teaches Chess. I don't recall being a big fan of chess; rather I loved puzzle books, such as...

Illustrator Diary: Fertility, or Rebuilding Ancient Egypt Block by Block

Dear white sand and palm lovers, please sit back and relax. After Histrio, Oceanos and Yamataï, it is now Fertility's turn to have an illustrator's diary, which will actually look like sort of a...

New Game Round-up: Explore Trudvang Legends, Reminisce About Dragon Ball Z, and Pound People in Street Fighter

• I have a hard time covering most games based on licensed IPs because I spend so much of my time doing game-related activities that I rarely sample things outside of those borders. Thus, when...

New Game Round-up: Keep Building Sagrada, Prepare for Portuguese Arrivals, and Welcome New Factions to Wildlands and Terra Mystica

• U.S. publisher Floodgate Games has announced a series of three expansions for Adrian Adamescu and Daryl Andrews' Sagrada, with those expansions being collectively titled "Sagrada: The Great...

Be Combat Ready for Genius Metal Odysseys at PAX Unplugged, Then Die

I'm still on the hunt for new and upcoming games to check out at PAX Unplugged, which opens at the Philadelphia Convention Center on Nov. 30, 2018 — today! — and here's some of what I expect...

Game Preview: Spiky Dastards, or This Is Gonna Hurt

One of the mainstays of the mainstream game industry is the reaction game: see something, do something. Marsha Falco's SET has been on the market for three decades, and it was one of our standard...

Lions, Trolls, Phoenixes, and More Await at PAX Unplugged 2018

• I hadn't anticipated attending PAX Unplugged, which takes place Nov. 30 to Dec. 2, 2018, but turns out that I'll be on site for a couple of days, so now I'm scrambling to figure out ahead of...

Placing Farmers in Poland: The History of Rolnicy and a Lesson for Designers

With the final twelfth of 2018 starting soon, I'm embarking on the annual challenge of voiding my inbox. Messages pile up in the weeks ahead of a con when I'm trying to push through whatever is...

Opinion: Publishers Are Treating Games Like a Commodity, and It's Going Badly

I work in the board game publishing industry for North Star Games. Until recently, business has been good for publishers, due to years of rapid market growth.Now, everyone's nervous. Sales are...

Game Demo Videos Resume from SPIEL '18

We got off to a good start in mid-November with the posting of individual game demonstration videos from day one of SPIEL '18, then we headed into BGG.CON 2018 and the U.S. Thanksgiving holiday,...

Game Industry Happenings: NSKN and Board&Dice Merge, University Acquires, GoKids Is Acquired, and the TAGIEs Step In It

• Polish publisher Board& Dice and Romanian publisher NSKN Games (which has an office in Poland) have merged, with the new company retaining the Board&Dice name. From the press release...

Game Preview: Res Arcana, or Eight-Card Engine-Building

BGG.CON is pretty much the only game convention at which I actually play games. Sure, I might play a few things during Gen Con, SPIEL, or some other show, but for BGG.CON I make no appointments...

New Game Market Round-up: Reliving Your Life, Revisiting Yokohama, and Resisting the Urge to Stack Ducks on a Cat

• I'm missing out on the late 2018 Tokyo Game Market, which takes place November 24-25, but I can still highlight a few of the new titles debuting at that show, such as Last Judgement from...

New Game Round-up: Smearing Presidents, Filling in Boxes, and Raising the Dead

Non-final cover• At SPIEL '18, Matthias Nagy from German publisher Frosted Games gave me a quick overview of a few upcoming releases, and now one of those titles has been announced more widely,...

Weird Things Happen in Greenville 1989, But Sunny Days Lie Ahead

• Among what is surely a long list of games I missed seeing demoed at SPIEL '18 is Greenville 1989, a Florian Fay design due out in Q1 2019 from publisher Sorry We Are French, which remains the...

Designer Diary: Shifting Realms, or Designing with Tools to Improve Your Game

Shifting Realms, our flagship game from Soaring Rhino, is a game of colliding realms. Five realms are included — elf realm, dwarf realm, orc realm, goblin pirate realm, and priest realm —...

Vintage Designs In New Bottles: Big City, Luna, and Ruse & Bruise

• In March 2018, I posted a few details about the "20th Anniversary Jumbo Edition" of Franz-Benno Delonge's Big City that Mercury Games planned to release in Q4 2018. That project was delayed a...

Links: Bad News Edition — Theft at SPIEL '18, Downsizing at Steve Jackson Games, and Disappearing Funds for Super Dungeon: Legends

• As I noted in my SPIEL '18 post-mortem in late October 2018, multiple game publishers suffered thefts during that show, with the leaderboard likely being topped by Japanime Games, which lost...

Time for the SPIEL '18 Re-Broadcast with Game Demo Videos Galore!

For five days at SPIEL '18 in late October, the BGG crew interviewed designers and publishers for more than eight hours a day, with a new game or expansion featured roughly every ten minutes. In...

Designer Diary: The Great City of Rome, or How Long Did You Say Rome Was Gonna Take Again?

by Matthew Dunstan (with italicized interruptions by Brett J. Gilbert)As the saying goes, Rome wasn't built in a day, and neither was the game that went on to become The Great City of Rome.I had...

Game Industry Happenings: Goliath Buys, Buffalo Sells, Dietz Founds, and Kovaleski Sets Up Monster Fight Club

• Monster Fight Club is a new game publisher launched in October 2018 by game designer John Kovaleski following his departure from Gale Force Nine, the company that he founded and ran for...

Lucca Comics & Games 2018 I: Cleopatra Returns, The Dutch Prevail, and Costumes Abound

As in 2017, the annual SPIEL convention in Essen, Germany took place on the final weekend of October and the Lucca Comics & Games fair in Lucca, Italy started only three days after SPIEL ended,...

Previews of IELLO's 2019 Line-Up: Little Town Builders, Legendary Forests, Bunny Kingdom: Cloud Kingdom, and Much More

• While at SPIEL '18, Robin Houpier from IELLO ran me through some of the titles they plan to release in 2019. Note that many of the games shown in this post do not have final graphics, and in...

Steph's Photo Guide to SPIEL '18!

Steph's Awesome SPIEL Photo Guide for 2018!IGA Awards!NeomTribes: Aufbruch Der MenschheitScrabbleCrazy EggzTokyo HighwayOrbisPandemic: Fall of RomeNyctophobiaRising Sun: Kami UnboundGingerbread...

Designer Diary: Marvel Strike Teams, or A Marvel Zombie's Love Story

PrologueMarvel Strike Teams is not a game about zombies, but it was designed by a zombie, specifically a Marvel Zombie, which I've been since the age of 5. For those who don't know, "Marvel...