New Game Round-up: El Grande Goes Big, Marco Polo Goes East, Queen Goes for Parfum & Monsters Go Boom

In 1271, 17-year-old Marco Polo started on a journey to China with his father and older brother. After a long and grueling journey that led through Jerusalem and Mesopotamia and over the "Silk Road", they reached the court of Kublai Khan in 1275.

In Auf den Spuren von Marco Polo, players recreate this journey.

Who will be the most successful perfumer? Parfum takes the players to the wonderful world of fragrances. Using ingredients like vanilla, lavender or violets, the players distill precious essences in order to create unique perfumes. Only the player conceding their clientele's preferences will be able to sell their perfume. Each customer favors their specific fragrance that must be contained in a flask to make them buy it.

In Queen's Architect, you're in demand all over the realm! Villages, monasteries and towns need your help to construct important buildings and establishments. Assume the role of an architect and assemble a competent band of craftsmen. Raise buildings and assist the people with small repairs or farm work. The Queen will reward you with her appreciation and with coins. Gain the privilege of constructing the new royal palace, and you will win the game as the land's most successful architect!

The monsters have been let loose in the monster arena! Here they can tease, taunt and tussle with the other monsters using every trick in the book. They push and squeeze and throw elbows and sometimes even poke one another with their sharp fingers.

Players in Push a Monster take turns doing exactly that: pushing a monster, with them trying to push that monster onto an elevated platform while not pushing off any other monsters already there. If a monster does fall on their turn, each other player receives a token for each monster that falls. At the end of the game, everyone lines up all of the tokens they won, and whoever has the longest row wins!

Head chef Alfredo is about to lose his head in despair because he can't recall which soup is boiling in which pot. Can you help him allot the carrots, garlic, beans and tomatoes to the proper pots? What's more, can you make sure that your fellow players have also put their ingredients into the proper pots?

In Chef Alfredo, four pots are each seeded with one of four ingredients. On a turn, the active player rolls a die, then either swaps the positions of two pots on the stove or adds the depicted ingredient to the proper pot. The next player can either trust that you've done the right thing or call you out, dumping out the ingredients of the pot to which you added something with the player who made the right move claiming a helper token.

The player who best spots the pots – even when they change hotplates – will win this cooking game.