• U.S. publisher Cryptozoic Entertainment plans to release a party game from cartoonist John Kovalic in Q2 2013 titled ROFL! In case you can't guess the gameplay from the title, here's a summary of the game:
ROFL! pits players against each other as they strive to condense messages down to as few characters as possible. To start a turn, players see a phrase card, while the Guesser does not. Players compete with one another to accurately relay the secret message on the phrase card in as few characters as possible. If the Guesser can figure out the original phrase from your clue before time runs out, you both score points! Everybody gets to be a Guesser once per round, and the player with the most points after three rounds wins!
• As he has done several times previously, designer/publisher Ted Alspach is releasing a new edition of Ultimate Werewolf: Ultimate Edition through his own Bézier Games, and just as previous editions have featured the mini-expansions Classic Movie Monsters and Night Terrors, the 2013 edition of Ultimate Werewolf: Ultimate Edition – due out in March – will include a new set of roles for players to incorporate into their games. Here's what players will discover in Ultimate Werewolf: Urban Legends:
Ultimate Werewolf: Urban Legends brings these characters to life within Ultimate Werewolf. If Bloody Mary dies, she starts killing the players who killed her...from the grave. The ferocious Chupacabra loves the taste of werewolf, but if he runs out of them, villagers will do. The Wolf Man hunts with the werewolves, but to the Seer he appears as an innocent villager. The tricky Leprechaun sides with the village, messing with the werewolves by changing their nighttime target. All Sasquatch ever wanted to do was to help the village kill werewolves...but if the village wavers on this, Sasquatch will turn on them. And finally, Nostradamus has to make a name for himself by predicting who will win each game of Ultimate Werewolf – and then helps out his prediction. All or some of these characters can be added to your Ultimate Werewolf games to make them even more compelling than before!