• Dutch publisher Keep Exploring Games has announced its intended SPIEL '18 release: Nestor Tyr's Tour Operator. Here's an overview of this 2-4 player game:
Thankfully, you can hire employees to calm down impatient guests and help your company out. Whoever manages to make their clients the happiest travelers wins Tour Operator!
• In a BGG blog post, Alexandre Correia details a number of prototypes that will be available for testing at LeiriaCon, the annual Portuguese game convention that will take place in 2018 on March 1-4. What might you find there? Multiple games from Nuno Sentieiro and Paulo Soledade (Humanitas from Quined Games, Arraial from MEBO Games, and Brasil from What's Your Game?); multiple games from Spielworxx (the second edition of Ground Floor from David Short, Captains of the Gulf from Jason Dinger, Throne of Allegoria from Robin Lees and Steve Mackenzie, and Yangtzee from newcomers Rôla and Costa, who also have Primus from WYG; and multiple titles from Frosted Games (Reykholt from Uwe Rosenberg, Gebietsmanager from Stefan Feld game, WonderBuilder from Sophia Wagner, Cooper Island from Andreas Odendahl, and In Via Nota from newcomer Carsten Lauber. Mac Gerdts is also supposed to have Concordia: Venus, according to the convention organizers. Wish I could have hung out in Europe for another week, but dang, that's a lot of time away from home...
• In 2018, USAopoly will release a new edition of Reinhard Staupe's party game Privacy, which first appeared on the market in 2004. In the game, players are asked risqué questions and they secretly answer by dropping YES or NO tokens in a voting box. Score points by correctly guessing what the final tally will be, or at least having a closer guess than anyone else.
• Eclipse: Second Dawn for the Galaxy will be Kickstarted in May 2018, with Kolossal Games running the campaign for publisher Lautapelit.fi, and a German version of this second edition of the game will be released by Pegasus Spiele in October 2018, although Lautapelit's Toni Niittymaki notes that the price listed on the Pegasus website is incorrect.
• One item (out of an unknown quantity) that I missed seeing at NY Toy Fair 2018 was The Elf on the Shelf: Countdown to Christmas Family Advent Game from Buffalo Games, although taking a closer look at the package seems to reveal a box of activity-laden nightmare fuel rather than a game.