Board Game News

Interview with Rory O'Connor and Anita Murphy About Rory's Story Cubes Expansions, and Extraordinaires Design Studio

Beth Heile of BoardGameGeekTV interviewed Rory O'Connor and Anita Murphy about the expansions to Rory's Story Cubes (Rory's Story Cubes: Enchanted, Rory's Story Cubes: Prehistoria, and Rory's...

Designer Diary: Legacy: The Testament of Duke de Crecy

Born in a BasementIt was in a dank, smelly basement that Legacy: The Testament of Duke de Crecy (formerly known as The Nobles of Paris) was born. The idea, that is. Its parents? BGG and a...

Crowdfunding Round-up: Shadows over the Empire, Battle Merchants, Codinca, King of Clubs & More

• Since at least early September 2013, I've been focusing on games debuting at or being released at Spiel — the annual game convention in Essen, Germany that will feature publishers from more...

New Game Round-up: Palatia Spiele Offers Something, Z-Man Picks Up Tash-Kalar, Tichu & AEG Gets Greedy, Says Bye

• Z-Man Games' new edition of Alan R. Moon's Black Spy is already available in game stores, and the publisher's new edition of Naoki Homma's Parade is hitting stores in September 2013. What's...

New Game Round-up: Blue Orange Rustles Up Longhorn and Battle Sheep & Nestorgames Brings Bees, Blocks and Black Holes

• In June 2013, French publisher Jactalea announced a partnership with U.S. publisher Blue Orange Games and consequently a name change from Jactalea to Blue Orange. After consulting with...

Designer Diary: Exploring Originality with Lewis & Clark

I've been fond of games since I was a child, and I've been designing board games with energy for three years now. As I am mostly sensitive to game mechanisms, I'm trying to create original ones...

New Game Round-up: Daviau Recreates a Legacy in SeaFall, Space Cowboys Recreate Splendor & Oss Revamps Jacks for Modern Gamers

• Designer Rob Daviau and his IronWall Games has teamed with Colby Dauch's Plaid Hat Games for the 2014 release of SeaFall, a design that takes the idea at the heart of Risk Legacy — a game...

Corto Maltese Prepares for a New Adventure

• In March 2013, I mentioned a forthcoming game from designers Laurent Escoffier and Sébastien Pauchon that features Corto Maltese, the creation of comic artist Hugo Pratt. That game — Corto...

Game Preview: Koryŏ

The card game Koryŏ from designer Gun-Hee Kim (a.k.a. Gary Kim) was released in France by Moonster Games in mid-September 2013, but with the U.S. release of the game still impending, I thought...

Structural Integrity: The Blueprints Designer Diary

Blueprints is a quick, simple drafting game in which dice do double-duty as building materials and randomizing elements. Each round, players draft six dice to erect a building. On a turn, each...

New Game Round-up: Grab More Things in the Jungle, Play with More Skulls on the Table & Snatch More Sweets than Anyone Else

• With all the focus on Spiel 2013 — and that's certainly what's occupied most of my time, with 375 listings now on the Spiel 2013 Preview and many more still to come — it's easy to forget...

New Game Round-up: Trains in the Netherlands, Treasures in the Lava & Vikings in Your Face

• The existence of Ticket to Ride Map Collection: Volume 4 - Nederland has been spoiled twice, once by German retailer Milan Spiele and once by Days of Wonders' new Italian partner Asterion...

Crowdfunding Round-up: Like a Boss, Stuff vs. Other Stuff, Golems (the Autonomous Anthropomorphic Kind, Not the "My Precious" Kind) and Sssteeeeelllllaaaaaa!

September came on like a freight train! The kids are back in school, football has kicked off, Gen Con is over and Essen is coming... I was going to write earlier, but I was otherwise occupied...

New Game Round-up: Hack'n'Slash in Super Fantasy, Steal Treasure in Buccaneer Bones & Cause Mass Destruction in Ka-Boom

• Italian publisher Red Glove is publishing its own take on the dungeon crawl genre with Marco Valtriani's Super Fantasy. The Super Fantasy Facebook page features lots of character images and...

Designer Diary: New Haven, or Design from Dirt to Delivery

Here is the story of how a game evolved from Roman City building, to Fashion Show hosting, to a Farmer's Market and finally to settling a colony in New Haven – including its origin in the dirt...

New Game Round-up: Dice Games at Spiel 2013 – Dice Run, Karnickel, DubbelYatzy & Fun Farm

• For Spiel 2013, designer Spartaco Albertarelli is releasing a new edition of Dice Run – first published in 2002 from Kidultgame – through his own KaleidosGames. Here's a rundown of this...

Lamonts Hit the Snow Once Again with Mush! Mush!

• The game announcement from Gordon and Fraser Lamont, who publish under the brand Fragor Games, is widely anticipated each year, partly because the print run is reserved quickly and if you...

New Game Round-up: Power Grid Moves to India and Australia, Friese Returns to Landlording & Rats May (or May Not) Be Inside Your Walls

• As he has done the past couple of years, designer Henning Poehl is releasing a dice game through his Sphinx Spieleverlag in time for sales at Spiel. Die Ratten im Gemäuer puts players in the...

New Game Round-up: March on Fields of Glory, Roam with Fancy Witches, Tell Fanciful and Wandering Stories & Get Your Medical License Revoked

  • Designer/publisher Martin Wallace of Treefrog Games has announced two titles due out before the end of 2013, the first being a 2,000-copy collector's edition of The Witches: A...

New Game Round-up: Matagot Presents Creatures and Cappuccino, dV Giochi Offers Smooth Talk and Galactic Destruction & Abacus Brings a Hard Look to Hanabi

• In addition to Origin and Expedition: Northwest Passage, French publisher Matagot has two other titles due out in time for Spiel 2013. I blurbed one of them – C3K: Creatures Crossover...

New Game Round-up: Carcassonne Heads South, Yu-Gi-Oh! Welcomes Dice Masters & Quined Offers Warlocks and American Rails

• Dutch publisher Quined Games has announced two releases that will be available at Spiel 2013 in October, titles #10 and 11 in its Master Print Series. The first title is Tim Harrison's...

Crowdfunding Round-up: Smash Monster Rampage, Sangoku, Stalingrad, The Offensive Band Name Generator & More

• Bauza and Maublanc's Rampage is not the only city-smashing monster game in the offing for release in the near future, but Mike Swindall's Smash Monster Rampage! – first released as a...

Designer Diary: Infamy

As a meandering, tangential thinker, it's hard for me to pinpoint where this project really began. Some could look back into the fugue of time and memory and say it started when I was in...

New Game Round-up: Lots of Laska, Limited Lectio, Laukat Looks Forward & Concept Emerges

• Emanuel Lasker's abstract strategy game Laska has had two new editions released within two days in late August 2013, with one (pictured at upper right) coming from The Game Crafter by way of...

Crowdfunding Round-up: Belle of the Ball, The Cards of Cthulhu, Septikon, Rasputin, Give It To The King! & More

• U.S. publisher Dice Hate Me Games seems to have this Kickstarter dealie down cold with its KS project for Daniel Solis' Belle of the Ball off to a roaring start. (KS link) Of course it...

New Game Round-up: Halloween Time for the King of Tokyo, Amundsen vs Scott Again & Blue Moon and Roads & Boats Return to Print

• At Gen Con 2013, IELLO announced Richard Garfield's King of Tokyo: Halloween, an expansion for his extremely popular King of Tokyo dice game, and I now have more details about this release,...

New Game Round-up: Gigantoskop Introduces Primate Fear, Pixels and Asante Come to the U.S. & L5R Love Letter

• For its tenth anniversary, Swedish publisher Gigantoskop is returning to memories of games past with Primate Fear, which is set in the same world as its 2003 release Spank the Monkey and is...

Gen Con 2013 – Game Demos from the Convention Floor, Kickstarter Edition: Glamazons, Fantasy Frontier, Monolith, Paradise Fallen, Quicksilver & Ninja Dice

 • Time for more game demos from the floor of Gen Con 2013 before that convention fades completely into the past, and we'll kick off this set of videos with designer/publisher Matt Loter...

Are You Sending Me Games? Are You Sending Them to the Right Place??

I apologize in advance for this self-indulgent and odd post on BGG News, but I'm not sure how to reach all of the possible guilty parties, so I'm taking the unusual step of posting this...

Links: Faidutti on the Culture of Game Design, Solis on Idea Stealing & Wired on Sites You Should Follow (Hint, Hint)

• In an August 2013 blog post, designer Bruno Faidutti explains how game design lies between two cultures:Quote:I have two jobs – designing games and teaching economics and sociology. These...