First up is Tutti Frutti from the Theora Design studio founded in 1965 by Theo and Ora Coster. More than four decades later, this studio is still creating toys and games for youngsters with Guess Who? being the best known of their works and still in print after more than three decades and dozens of versions. I doubt Tutti Frutti will have that longevity, but honestly neither will 99% of the other games I write about on BGGN.
• One risk of showing games at conventions is that sometimes things change between first publicity and final production, as is the case with Alexandre Droit's Gloobz, which was being shown at the time under the name "Globz". Apparently something else kind of game-ish exists or existed under that name, so Gigamic plopped another eye in the title to make everything pass legal muster — albeit now with the box not matching the cyclopean nature of its inhabitants. Alas.
• Olivier Finet's Fatal Rendez Vous comes from the Werewolf branch of the party game tree, with most players being part of a group while one or more of those players are secretly trying to kill those in the group. Unlike Werewolf, though, the interaction between everyone seems more playful, more French, than the arguments that normally ensue in such a game. Plus, handcuffs!
• Designer Christophe Boelinger published Différences? through his own publishing house Ludically in 2009, and now Gigamic is bringing the game back as Difference with all-new artwork and larger images to possible allow people to spot the differences more easily — or possibly give those differences more places to hide. When we're not showing off the game, I'm exploring future career options...
• One title for which we didn't record a preview at Spielwarenmesse was Animal Suspect from Bruno Faidutti and Nathalie Grandperrin, which I presume Gigamic's Mathilde Spriet didn't show off to me as the game is available only in French. Zut alors! Je sais un peu de français. I even proved it to Mathilde in 2013 with a bilingual joke, but apparently she forgot about that. (Q: Why did the Frenchman eat only one egg? A: Because one egg is an oeuf.) In any case, here's a short description of that game:
To set up Animal Suspect, lay out six animal cards and six expression cards on the game board next to the die faces numbered 1-6. On a turn, one player rolls two dice in secret, looks at the cards matching the numbers rolled, then imitates this particular combination as best she can. Will she be a shy mosquito? An attentive walrus? An amorous octopus? Whoever guesses the proper combination first wins a card, along with the imitator, and whoever collects the most cards wins.