New Game Round-up: Color Yourself Ready for Crime and Swarming Animals in the Pacific Northwest

There's turmoil at the reef, with different sea animals forming swarms again and again.

Each turn in Aqualin, the active player selects one of six stones and places it on an empty field. The two players arrange their groups of sea dwellers either by color or animal species, with them having the ability to move a stone before placing a new one to form new swarms. Whoever forms the largest swarms after 36 moves wins!

In the semi-co-operative card game Crime Stories, each player draws cards from different categories such as crime scene, perpetrator, motive, and cause of death, then writes a short crime story based on these keywords.

Next, all other players try to discover what this story is about, asking questions about the keywords, determining the details, and reconstructing the case. If you don't want to write a story yourself, you can present the stories of thriller author Veit Etzold included in the game.

Asteroids blast through the cosmos, each one packed with possibilities. One may be your perfect new home, but it takes a stellar team to build a cosmic colony...

Cosmic Colonies is an orbit-drafting game of building a home in the stars. Players must leverage their workers' unique abilities to gather resources and construct new buildings while cleverly expanding their colonies. Each round brings new opportunities — and new talent. Your old workers will blast off to other players, while their workers orbit around to join your team!