Here's an overview of Atheneum: Mystic Library, a game for 2-5 players due out in September 2020:
In Atheneum: Mystic Library, you must study for the exam while cleaning up the library! During the game, you can score points for objectives by placing books on your shelves in specific configurations. At the end of the game, you score points for full shelf compartments, decorative candles, and shelved books of your favorite subject. Whoever collects the most points wins!
• Since 2015, designer Stefan Risthaus of OSTIA Spiele has been working his way through locations on the Baltic Sea or in the Baltic states with a series of small games: Visby, Tallinn, Riga, Riga: Lubeca, and Vilnius.
For 2020, he's moving a bit more inland with Novgorod, a 2-4 player game set in this city located south of Saint Petersburg and east of Estonia. The game is being crowdfunded on Spieleschmiede (link), and while the game will include rules in English and German, full rules are available right now only in German (PDF). For now, here's a brief overview:
Balancing between building enough (but not too many) kontors, improving your ship, and figuring out the idea ratio between earning money and collecting victory points is crucial.
• A far larger crowdfunding campaign is nearing its end for Archon Studio's Wolfenstein: The Board Game, a design based on a video game series that is not as I originally expected about lycanthropic Frankenstein monsters, but about efforts to escape the German stronghold of Castle Wolfenstein in an alternate reality World War II — so I was about 7% correct.
Here's an overview of this 1-4 player game that's due out in Q3 2021:
Playing as BJ Blazkowicz, Anya Oliwa, Set Roth, Max Hass, and Bombate, players have to infiltrate the castle, then contend with Nazi antagonists controlled by the game's AI mechanisms. Depending on the chosen game, players will encounter Nazi zombies, mechanized Nazis, or a mixture of both. The set also contains an iconic unit known from the legendary Wolfenstein 3D — Mecha-Hitler!
Controlled by players, BJ and his companions — in the form of 32 mm plastic figurines — must fight through the hordes of Nazis, explore Castle Wolfenstein, and perform dangerous missions, all to defeat the sinister plans of Adolf Hitler and his two cruel subordinates. Additional known characters will be available in future add-ons and expansions.