As you might know, Frédéric Henry is responsible for the overall design of Conan: Hyborian Quests, but the game will consist of multiple scenarios and to help bring different points of view to those scenarios Henry and Monolith have recruited a who's who of the French gaming world: Croc, Bruno Cathala, Antoine Bauza and Ludovic Maublanc, and Laurent Pouchain and Pascal Bernard. For details on the game system used and an overview of one scenario, you can check out this 22-minute demonstration video that I shot during Spiel 2014.
In addition to artwork from Adrian Smith, the game will feature art from Brom (two pieces), Naiade, Xavier Colette, Paolo Parente, and Ketai Kotaki (featuring Conan during his mercenary General era).
• Tasty Minstrel Games expects that the Village Port expansion for Inka and Markus Brand's Village will be available in North America in January 2015. Daniel Hadlock from TMG notes that the company isn't running a Kickstarter campaign for this title as it's already on a ship and headed to U.S. shores.
• Fireside Games has announced the Q2 2015 release of Castle Panic: The Dark Titan, the second expansion for its co-operative tower defense game. Here's what you'll find inside:
The Dark Titan, an expansion for Castle Panic, adds more powerful enemies to the game, as well as new reinforcements and weapons with which the players can defend the castle. The Dark Titan Agranok is a new 8-point monster seeking vengeance, and his support includes the Dark Sorceress, elite monsters, and a boom troll. To defend against these new threats, players will have a Cavalier that fights for them on the board as well as boiling oil and support tokens.
The Dark Titan is compatible with The Wizard's Tower, the first expansion for Castle Panic, for even more of a challenge.
• While not a game per se, this news seems like it should have a home in this post: FRED Distribution, owner of both Eagle Games and Gryphon Games, has merged the two game lines into a single entity: Eagle-Gryphon Games, with the merged logo visible at right. Accordingly, I've merged the two publisher listings in the BGG database since the two publishing lines are now one and the same thing, with new printings of older titles to bear the Eagle-Gryphon Games logo in the future. Searches for either "Eagle" or "Gryphon" will get you to that one publisher page.
As for why FRED made this change, VP of marketing and public relations Ralph Anderson passed along this note: "This change will consolidate our brand for gamers, distributors, store owners, game reviewers and many more! We are proud of our lines of both great family and great strategy games, and we hope this change will help consumers find and enjoy our games more easily." I, for one, am happy that I no longer have to remember which head of the FRED family published which game.
• Hey, let's tie word of this merger into the announcement of a forthcoming title from Eagle-Gryphon Games, that title being Wombat Rescue from newcomer Matt Wolfe. If you recognize that name, it might be because Matt maintains the ongoing "Kickstarter Boardgame Projects" GeekLists, which are a mountain of work.
Me, I recognize the name because he lives nearby and has come to my house a number of times to play games. (Hi, Matt!) I haven't played Wombat Rescue yet, so I know as much about the game as you will in roughly 90 seconds, but I'm enamored of the cover art that Eagle-Gryphon acquired for his game. Great work, Mateusz Szulik, who also did the snazzy cover for Waggle Dance. As for the game, here's an overview:
In Wombat Rescue, you play the eldest or lead wombat of a group of wombats (called a wisdom). A dastardly dingo has stormed your burrow and scared away four of your baby wombats. To save them, you must create new smell areas that will lead them home. You will create smell areas by eating and digesting food so that you can poop out another cube and expand your smell area. The first wombat to rescue all of its babies wins!