Board Game News

New Game Round-up: Samurai Spirit Heads to Print, 1914: The World at War Sees Print Through HP & Chosŏn Has Rules for Printing

• Turns out that Antoine Bauza's Samurai Spirit will be published in time for a debut from Funforge at Gen Con 2014 in August — barring, of course, all the things that could go wrong between...

Game Preview: Red, or Riding the Rules Rainbow

Should I post a game preview before the game is even sent to print? No, wait — how about before the game design is even finished?!Sure, why not? As I have stated a number of times, I'm a huge...

New Game Round-up: Vikings in Russia, Traders in India, Publishers in Japan & Zombies Everywhere

• Designer Joseph Fatula has self-published a number of designs through The Lumenaris Group, Inc., with his most recent release in June 2014 being Vikings on the Volga. The English rulebook...

Blue Orange to Feature Angry Dragons, Totem-Happy Tribesmen, Greedy Pirates & Draftable Sushi

• In a June 15, 2014 BGGN post, I mentioned the Bruno Cathala/Ludovic Barbe game Dragon Run, and now I can share details of the game courtesy of publisher Blue Orange (né Jactalea), which...

Crowdfunding Round-up: Dungeon Lords, Party Secretaries, Hungry Ghosts, Spiteful Gamblers & More

• Czech Games Edition has made its first venture onto Kickstarter with Dungeon Lords: Happy Aniversary, a fifth anniversary edition of Vlaada Chvátil's Dungeon Lords that includes the Festival...

New Game Round-up: Race Anew Thanks to a Xeno Invasion & Technology's in the Bag in Hyperborea

• Race for the Galaxy fans had a long wait between expansions, with The Brink of War appearing in 2010 and Alien Artifacts — which falls into a storyline separate from that of TBoW — being...

Geister, Geister, Schatzsuchmeister! Wins Kinderspiel des Jahres 2014

Geister, Geister, Schatzsuchmeister!, one of two family Eurogames released by designer Brian Yu and publisher Mattel at Spiel 2013, has won Kinderspiel des Jahres 2014, as announced on Monday,...

New Game Round-up: Spiel 2014 – Pharaohs of Catan, Hunters in the Stone Age, Discs in Many Colors & Camp in Power Grid

• Time for another dose of games that will be headlining at the Spiel game convention in Essen, Germany in October 2014, even though in some cases these games will be released a bit earlier, as...

Crowdfunding Round-up: Tiny Epic Defenders, Harbour, Ophir, Escape x2, Start Player Express & More

• Designer Scott Almes is King of Kickstarter this week with two designs from two publishers raking in huge amounts of support. Tiny Epic Defenders is a co-operative microgame for 1-4 players...

Origins Game Fair 2014 IV: Quilt Show, Monster Truck Mayhem, Schrödinger's Cats & More

Instead of focusing on a particular company for this round-up of what was present at Origins Game Fair 2014, I'll drop images and notes for a few publishers.Let's start with Quilt Show, the only...

Origins Game Fair 2014 III: AquaSphere Game Preview, or Going Deep in Columbus, Ohio

As is usually the case at the conventions I attend, at Origins Game Fair 2014 I played only a few games during the event and not all of those to completion. Time's a-wastin', after all, with lots...

Days of Wonder Rubs the Lamp to Call Forth Five Tribes

Days of Wonder has already kinda sorta announced Bruno Cathala's Five Tribes, what with Cathala showing up at game conventions the world over to demo the game, writing a five-part designer diary...

Origins Game Fair 2014 II: WizKids Games – Dungeons & Dragons: Attack Wing, Marvel Dice Masters & Justice League Strategy Game

Unlike in 2013, at Origins Game Fair 2014 a number of game publishers, including WizKids Games, Asmodee, and Cryptozoic Entertainment had their stands in Hall D instead of the "regular" exhibit...

Origins Game Fair 2014 I: Upper Deck Entertainment – Legendary: Villains, Firefly Dice Game & Guardians of the Galaxy

The Origins Game Fair took place in mid-June 2014, and while I was able to attend the show only two days due to school conflicts — and expect to repeat such troubles in the future since the...

New Game Round-up: Blasts from the Pasts with Star Wars: Empire vs. Rebellion and The Battle at Kemble's Cascade

• U.S. publisher Fantasy Flight Games already has a number of Star Wars-based games in its catalog, and it plans to add one more in Q3 2014 with the two-player game Star Wars: Empire vs....

New Game Round-up: Sol Rising, Salt Mining, Rivals Fighting & Explorers Lying

• U.S. publisher Victory Point Games has picked up the Grant Rodiek title Sol Rising for release in 2015. Rodiek has detailed his interaction with VPG on his blog, from the initial contact...

New Game Round-up: Relive All of Civilization in Historia, Prep for New Pax from Sierra Madre & Goggle at All the Games from Cool Mini

• Italian publisher Giochix.it doesn't shy away from making big games, such as CO₂, Romolo o Remo?, Upon a Salty Ocean and De Vulgari Eloquentia, and for Spiel 2014 in October it plans to...

New Game Round-up: Command Polish Forces in First to Fight, Move More Goods with Alban Viard & Run Around Like a Maniac in Soqquadro

• Time for more releases that players can expect to find at spiel 2014 in October — and possibly even sooner, as with Fabryka Gier Historycznych's First to Fight, from designers Adam...

Heading to Origins Game Fair 2014...Eventually

I'm on my way to Columbus, Ohio to cover the 2014 Origins Game Fair for BoardGameGeek, with me planning to record a few game previews, get updates from designers and publishers as to what they're...

Designer Diary: Dice Masters (No catchy title, just a basic title that describes what's being talked about)

Dice Masters started as a bet with Eric M. Lang that we could make a game that would be so popular — but only right before the launch — that demand would be underestimated and we would get to...

Crowdfunding Round-up: Publishing Newspapers, Reliving Spiel, Building a Beehive, Polluting the Earth & More

• Two games about the Spiel game fair in Essen, Germany are on Kickstarter right now, and strangely both of them are titled "Essen" instead of "Spiel". Seems like a odd choice given that the...

New Game Round-up: Gen Con 2014 — Japanese Arcatypes, French Barbarians, U.S. High Command & Alien Invaders

• Gen Con has become a far more international convention over the past few years, with many European publishers now previewing or debuting games at that con instead of waiting to show them off...

Crowdfunding Round-up: Chicago Express, Copper Country, Luchador & Twilight Struggle

Kickstarter — bringing you projects that otherwise would have had no chance at success! You know, like a top 200 game or a digital port of the #1 game on BGG...Origins is almost here!!! I love...

New Game Round-up: Titans Threaten Mankind, Boomers Settle Oklahoma & Cartoons Animate Fluxx

• In March 2014, U.S. publisher Looney Labs announced that it had signed a licensing deal with Cartoon Network to create themed versions of its existing games, with Regular Show Fluxx being the...

New Game Round-up: Car Wars and Tile Chess Return, Revolution Adds Anarchy & China Awaits Unifying in ZhanGuo

• Steve Jackson Games continues to advance toward a full reboot of its Car Wars combat game of vehicular mayhem with the announced October 2014 release of the Car Wars base set, which SJG...

Designer Diary: Subdivision, or Designing From The Bits Up

The IdeaI was driving home from work and designed the basics of two new games in my head.I had just mentally put away a game that I had been working on actively for the better part of a year,...

Crowdfunding Round-up: Evolutionary Progress, Multiples of 49, Sketchy Battles & Much More

• Designers Agnieszka Kopera and Andrei Novac from NSKN Games offer a new take on the civilization genre with Progress: Evolution of Technology, which is due out in October 2014 for both...

Matt Leacock Becomes the Brains Behind Thunderbirds in 2015

At UK Games Expo 2014, which opened at the end of May 2014, Modiphius Entertainment announced that it was working with designer Matt Leacock to release a co-operative board game in Q4 2015 based...

New Game Round-up: Polis Returns, Weimar Revisited, Ukraine Re-revolutionized & Medina Re-reborn

• Stephen Buonocore, owner of U.S. publisher Stronghold Games, has set a somewhat insane production schedule for himself in 2014, with the North American release of Among the Stars and the...

Designer Diary: Cherry Picking

I always enjoy reading designer diaries on BGG, so as my first game — Cherry Picking — was published in early 2014, I decided to write up the story of how this game came to be, especially...