• In other news from SWAF, Hope S. Hwang's Ganymede — which debuted in mid-2018 in France — will be released in North America in Q1 2019 by Lucky Duck Games. I'm not sure whether LDG is distributing the existing edition of this tableau-building game or releasing a version of their own, but that's an issue for the BGG database later as either way the game will be available in a location where it currently is not.
I've yet to play, but at BGG.CON 2018 someone I trust described the game to me as "Splendor, but with more things you can actually do", so I borrowed a copy from the BGG Library to find out more for myself..
• Finally, SWAF is working on a new version of Gary Kim's majorities card game Koryŏ — dubbed "Koryŏ 2.0" for now — that will be set in its Immortal 8 universe and released at SPIEL '19.
• Ludicorn is a new French publisher staffed with people who are not new to the game industry: Cédric and Anne-Cécile Lefebvre from Ludonaute, K.J. Lee from Happy Baobab, and Hicham from Matagot. As Bruno Chevalier, business manager at Ludonaute and the final Ludicorn partner told me, they started seeing several kids games that they wanted to add to the Ludonaute portfolio, but since Ludonaute had never released children's games, creating a new brand for such titles on the French and North American markets seemed to be a better approach. Says Chevalier, "I am probably interested in kids games because I have two daughters, six and nine years old, with whom I would like to play interesting games, not only for them but for me, too. I'm fed up with poo games."
The first two titles from Ludicorn originated from Happy Baobab, and they'll reach the French and North American markets in January 2019. In Manu Palau's Sunny Day, players start with a 5x6 grid of tiles — each of which features four half-images along their edges — and a hand of two tiles. On a turn, a player places one of their tiles so that it creates a matching image with at least one tile in the grid. They remove all the matching tiles (leaving the tile they put down), then arrange these tiles to create a personal grid with matching images. When the tile supply runs out, players score one point per tile they've collected, one point per complete image in their personal grid, and some number of bonus points for completing images of the sun and ice cream.
• Layers from Dave Choi and Yohan Goh debuted from Happy Baobab at SPIEL '18. In the game, each player has a set of five double-sided tiles, with each tile having cutouts and different graphics on the two faces.
At the start of a round, a target card is revealed that uses three, four or five tiles, and all players race to reproduce the image by stacking their tiles in the correct order and orientation. Players score points in the order they finish, and whoever has the most points at the end of six rounds wins.
• Chevalier shared info on two other titles coming from Ludicorn, with Gary Kim's Team Team being a game for, you guessed it, players pairing into teams. More on this Q1 2019 release:
After finishing the drawing, the drawer shows only the transparent paper to others, and the other players have to guess what's missing on the transparent paper. The player who guesses correctly earns 1 point, with the drawer losing 1 point if no one guesses.
To win, being clever is more important than being a good artist. Young drawers can give other players a clue based on what kind of things are on the card.