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• When you look over the display cases of U.S. publisher Renegade Game Studios, you might think it's become a division of Hasbro at this point thanks to titles like My Little Pony: Adventures in Equestria Deck-Building Game, a co-operative game due out in June 2022; Transformers Deck-Building Game: A Rising Darkness, a standalone expansion also due out in June 2022; Transformers Deck-Building Game: Infiltration Protocol, an expansion due out in July 2022; G.I. JOE Mission Critical, a co-operative miniatures board game due out in 2022; and at least a half-dozen new items for Power Rangers: Heroes of the Grid, which debuted in 2019.
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Why doesn't Hasbro release such games on its own? Retailer and buyer expectations. Almost any game coming from Hasbro needs to sell for $20 or less, and it must be supported by huge amounts of marketing in order for retailers to want to carry it. I say "almost" because Hasbro sold a new edition of HeroQuest directly to buyers for $100 each through its Pulse pre-order system, but that's a case of nostalgia driving sales and Hasbro risking nothing since the game already existed. For these new games, Renegade takes the risk and Hasbro earns a license fee, which is essentially found money.
Renegade has non-Hasbro titles coming as well, such as Birdwatcher, designed by Zakir Jafry and co-published with Oni Games. This 1-5 player game is due out in December 2022 and bears this short description:
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Birdwatcher is a fast, competitive game in which players are rival wildlife photographers on a hunt to snap photos of the elusive and illustrious birds of paradise.
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Each player has three actions on their turn, with which they can call birds to their tree from the central clearing and jungle, snap photos of birds in their tree, or run into the jungle to flush new birds to the clearing. Players can also use their actions to set up a zoom lens to capture a bird from another player's tree, or to publish a paper. Photos and publications are assembled from left to right in a player's photo journal where they will score points at game's end.
• In May 2022, HABA will release Nils Nilsson's King of the Dice: The Board Game, which debuted in Germany in October 2021. This game uses the same dice mechanism as 2017's King of the Dice, which I previewed here, but with players now competing to win cards with dice rolls to thereby claim and steal territory on a shared game board. At game's end, you score based on the land and gems you hold, with a bonus for whoever holds the most dragonfire.Each player has three actions on their turn, with which they can call birds to their tree from the central clearing and jungle, snap photos of birds in their tree, or run into the jungle to flush new birds to the clearing. Players can also use their actions to set up a zoom lens to capture a bird from another player's tree, or to publish a paper. Photos and publications are assembled from left to right in a player's photo journal where they will score points at game's end.
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HABA has released three titles in The Key series of deduction games from Thomas Sing — you can check out my overview of The Key: Murder at the Oakdale Club here — and HABA national sales manager Phil Wrzesinski tells me that you'll see more of The Key in 2023, including games at the highest level of difficulty. (The first three titles have two "starter" level games and one of "medium" difficulty.)
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Speaking of Fluxx, on March 3, 2022 Looney Labs released Fluxx Remixx with this version of the Andy Looney design keeping all the Keepers from the current edition of Fluxx, but changing all of the Goals so that the Keeper combinations you might be familiar with are no longer winning combinations. The game also includes new rules, actions, and surprises, many of them music-themed to tie into the "Remixx" name.
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Aside from those standalone games, on July 7, 2022, Looney Labs will release More Surprises, More Actions, and More Rules, with these expansion packs being suitable for use with any Fluxx game.
• Asmodee North America has picked up the card game Canvas from Jeff Chin, Andrew Nerger, and Road To Infamy Games for distribution in the U.S., with the game expected to be available by the end of Q2 2022.
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• After many delays, three titles from Belgian publisher Game Brewer — Hippocrates, Stroganov, and Rulebenders — are now available in U.S. stores. Game Brewer had flown in small quantities of these titles to SPIEL '21 in October to seed the market and build buzz, but then shipping complications, which every publisher has stories about these days, delayed the general release of the games.
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