Board Game News

Designer Diary: Wonder Book

Once Upon a TimeOnce upon a time, in a small town in central Italy, there were a couple of kids who liked to make custom Yu-Gi-Oh cards with paper. As they grew up, they developed more and more...

Game Preview: The Siege of Runedar, or Building a Better Hand

In the co-operative game The Siege of Runedar, you and your fellow dwarves — or you alone as the case might be — attempt to defend a fortress from attacking orcs, goblins, and trolls, but...

SPIEL '21 Preview Nears 500 Titles

I'm still updating BGG's SPIEL '21 Preview, which might be of interest even if you're not heading to Essen, Germany for the show given the wide variety of games listed, with the latest being the...

Can You Control the Right Areas in Europe, the Middle East, and...the World of SHASN?

• Osprey Games has announced Crescent Moon, an upcoming 2022 release from designer Steve Mathers that's described as "an ambitious asymmetric area control game of tense negotiations", to which...

Designer Diary: Dinosaur World, or Life, Uh, Finds a Way

Hold on to Your ButtsAfter a night of playing Fleet: The Dice Game, I got inspired to design a roll-and-write game. I was never enamored with roll-and-writes until I got to experience the engine...

Game Overview: TEN, or Flip All the Digits in Your Favor

TEN is a quick-playing game from designers Molly Johnson, Robert Melvin, and Shawn Stankewich (a.k.a. Flatout Games) and publisher AEG that encourages you to take risks — while carefully...

Candice's Gen Con 2021 Round-Up/Discoveries: Part 2

Aside from all the board game action, one of the things I loved about my first Gen Con experience was randomly bumping into different people I only "knew" from Twitter. I'm really glad I crossed...

Gen Con 2021 IV: Devious Weasel Games, Floodgate Games, Atlas Games, and Flying Leap Games

Non-final coverAt Gen Con 2021, Candice Harris and I usually met publishers independently, but sometimes we joined forces — and during those times we often ending up playing the game being...

Gen Con 2021 III: AMIGO Games, Hobby World, and Previews of Upcoming Releases

• In August 2021, I noted that AMIGO Games, the U.S. branch of German publisher AMIGO Spiel, had regained the rights to Uwe Rosenberg's trading card game Bohnanza and that it plans to release a...

Gen Con 2021 II: Gamewright, Games by Bicycle, Greenbrier Games, and Pops & Bejou Games

• I've already covered several late 2021 releases from Gamewright in two posts: a June 2021 preview of Phil Walker-Harding's roll-and-write game Super Mega Lucky Box, and a July 2021 round-up...

Game Preview: Bag of Chips, or You Can't Play Just One

Mixlore, a Canadian-based studio in the Asmodee Group, seems to specialize in unusually packaged games for a mainstream audience, such as Black Mirror: NOSEDIVE, Skulk, and Don't Sweat It!On...

Gen Con 2021 I: Hachette Boardgames, and 25th Century Games

I've already posted a broad overview of Gen Con 2021 that tries to give a perspective on the show as a whole and some of what we can expect from the game industry in the coming year. Now it's...

Collect Shells for Castles, Dump Sweets for Points, and Wait to Collect Just the Right Cards

• German publisher Zoch Verlag has announced three titles for release in October 2021, with Strand Unter qualifying as its big-box game with a physical element to gameplay.This 45-minute game...

Candice's Gen Con 2021 Round-Up/Discoveries: Part 1

Gen Con 2021 was an awesome experience for me, although I'm sure my feet would disagree after clocking in 14,000+ steps on day one alone. It was wonderful to reconnect, hang, and play games with...

Gen Con 2021: A Post Mortem of Sorts

I last attended a game convention in March 2020, all of us on the BGG team and practically everyone we encountered at GAMA Expo uncertain why they were present and uncomfortable with what we...

Build Bus Routes, Houses, and Hands of Cards, While Escaping Two Rooms

• For a short while, BGG sold copies of Let's Make a Bus Route from designer Saashi of publisher Saashi & Saashi through the BGG Store — then the supply dried up and it became clear (although...

More Cards for Dominion, More Palaces for Carrara, and More Animals to Stack Upon Animals

• While many of us were busy with Gen Con 2021, U.S. publisher Rio Grande Games announced Dominion: Allies, the 14th expansion in the Dominion game line from Donald X. Vaccarino.Here's an...

Game Preview: Doodle Dash, or Faster, Pussycat! Draw! Draw!

Doodle Dash, one of the debut games from Norwegian publisher Chilifox Games, isn't a flashy design that delivers a BRAND NEW GAMING EXPERIENCE the way that most titles are marketed. Instead this...

Gen Con 2021 Check-In

My apologies for the lack of posts yesterday and today, but I'm at Gen Con 2021 with a few other members of the BGG team, and I'm trying to ensure that I get enough sleep each night so that my...

Game Preview: Azul: Queen's Garden, or Planting Groups of Greens

On the Tuesday prior to Gen Con 2021, publisher Next Move Games gave a tiny bit of info about a new entry in the Azul game line from designer Michael Kiesling, namely that a fourth title would be...

Game Preview: 7 Wonders: Architects, or Building Wonders Anew

As large and active as BoardGameGeek is, I think many people forget that the universe of game players dwarfs the BGG userbase, and in general that larger universe has a more casual relationship...

Fantasy Flight Announces Expansions for Star Wars: Outer Rim and Descent: Legends of the Dark

Keeping up with tradition, Fantasy Flight Games hosted an In-Flight Report on the eve of Gen Con 2021, with the largest announcement being the Unfinished Business expansion for Star Wars: Outer...

Translator Diary: Munchkin Russia, or From Russia with Linguistics

Remember when you were a kid and mom came to your bed to wish you good night? She probably didn't want you getting up in the middle of the night, but did she ever threaten you with a wolf attack?...

Pandasaurus Games Suffers Break-In

In the category of "Things you don't want to have happen to you in the best of times, but especially not when preparing for a convention", I present this Kickstarter update from Pandasaurus...

Business Interrupted: KeyForge Breaks, and Ravensburger Stops Taking Orders in the U.S.

• On September 10, 2021, U.S. publisher Fantasy Flight Games announced that "due to both the pandemic and another unforeseen complication (which we will go into in a moment), we have been...

Game Overview: The Crew: Mission Deep Sea, or Life's Full of Tough Choices, Isn't It?

I have written a lot about The Crew: The Quest for Planet Nine, starting in November 2019 and continuing in December 2019, and the only reason that co-operative trick-taking game from designer...

Interview: Fabio Lopiano, designer of Merv, Calimala and Ragusa, on Innovation in Game Design

[Editors note: This interview was first published on Diagonal Move in August 2021. —WEM]Fabio Lopiano — designer of Merv, Calimala, and Ragusa — joins Neil of Diagonal Move to discuss...

Take Part of History in Antoine Bauza's 7 Wonders: Architects

When Belgian publisher Repos Production introduced something titled "7 Wonders Mystery" in April 2021, everyone was hoping for a new expansion for Antoine Bauza's classic card-drafting game 7...

Brave New Adventures with Your Stone Age Tribe, Welcome Trees & Creatures to Your Bonfire, and Vary Your Set-up for War of the Ring

• In October 2021, German publisher Hans im Glück will release Paleo: Ein neuer Anfang (A New Beginning), a large expansion for Peter Rustemeyer's Kennerspiel des Jahres-winning Paleo that...

Links: More Production Woes, Flying Buffalo Returns, and CMON's NFTs

• CMON Limited has announced a partnership with Monsoon Digital for "a brand new series of digital products and promotional material using Monsoon's soon-to-launch NFT (non-fungible token)...