Board Game News

Spiel 2012: Highlights and Lowlights

Spiel 2012 is over, and I'm finally back at home. Before getting back to the normal swing of things – you know, actual game news – let's have an overview of highlights and lowlights from the...

Spiel 2013 Preview – Lost Legends

Despite what I said in my last post, I'm going to look into the future (at least) one more time to give an overview of Mike Elliott's Lost Legends, which Queen Games will release in 2013.In the...

Spiel 2013 Preview – Time Stories

What's that, you say? We're previewing Spiel 2013 already? Aren't we still a handful of hours away from Spiel 2012 opening to the public?Well, sure – but it's never too early to get a jump on...

Spiel 2012 Android App Update

As he did in 2011, Peter Feigl has once again created an Android app for use at the Spiel game convention in Essen, Germany that makes use of the information on BGG's Spiel 2012 Preview. You can...

Game Preview: Mercurius

In advance of his game Mercurius appearing at Spiel 2012 from publisher REBEL.pl, designer Łukasz Woźniak has posted a video preview of the game. For those who prefer an overview in text,...

Designer Diary: Finding the Way to Terra Mystica

It started in 1998. I had just bought my first Mac (G3) and soon played some games on it, amongst them Spaceward Ho!, an old 4X computer game. What I really liked about the game was that you had...

Designer Diary: Revolver: Ambush on Gunshot Trail & Hunt the Man Down, or Choosin' a way to die? What's the difference? Choosin' a way to live - that's the hard part...

Greetings to ya, once again. Two expansions for Revolver have rode into view over the rugged boardgaming prairie. Pull up a pew, grab a glass of Firewater, and listen to the ramblings of an old...

Artist Diary: (Not Really) Reshaping the City in Suburbia

I should probably start with a quote from Suburbia designer Ted Alspach: "I'm a huge fan of SimCity." Guess what: Me too! I first played the game on the C64 and later on my brother's DOS PC, so I...

Designer Diary: Have Painting, Will Design Taschkent

The ChallengeIn 2011 Spielmaterial.de, a retailer of boardgame tokens (or better THE retailer of boardgame tokens), launched its second boardgame design competition. The goal was to design a game...

Designer Diary: Ruthenia

Ruthenia is a strategy board game based on a historical theme of Eastern Europe in VII-X centuries, specifically the conflict of four states – Byzantine Empire, Bulgarian Khanate, Khazars and...

Game Preview: Samurai Sword

As part of the celebration for the tenth anniversary of the card game Bang!, designer Emiliano Sciarra and publisher dV Giochi will bring to Spiel 2012 the first non-Bang! game from the famous...

Designer Diary: Clocks – A Game Designed Against Time

This designer diary tries to "shortly" describe the ideas, thoughts and evolution of the game design and mechanisms behind Clocks. Of course there is a lot more to the production of a game for a...

New Game Round-up: Taluva Returns, Wall Street Panics, Ascension and Crusoe Visit New Lands & Hegemonic Finds a Publisher

• French publisher Ferti is releasing a new edition of Marcel-André Casasola Merkle's Taluva, and while the box cover has changed, the components (from the promotional image Ferti sent me)...

Designer Diary: Noblemen

My name is Dwight Sullivan, and Noblemen is my first published game. Its story spans several years; over the years, there were some weeks when it would get daily attention, as well as several...

Links: Trajan Wins the 2012 IGA, Looney Labs Sells a Lot of Fluxx & How Not to Run a Small Game Business

• I'm a bit behind the news curve due to my focus on the Spiel 2012 Preview and the attendant addition of games to the BGG database and rewriting of game descriptions, so you might have heard...

Designer Diary: 1969

January 2011I am in our Dungeon with my two partners, Lorenzo Tucci Sorrentino and Aureliano Buonfino, busy as always, when one day my phone rings. On the other side, an unknown guy who asks me:...

Designer Diary: Alcatraz: Maximum Security, or How to Make a Good Expansion

Introduction: The escape was worth itAwesome game.Forbidden Island for bastards.A wonderfully evil game.Our escape from the famous prison of Alcatraz exceeded our expectations. All copies of...

New Game Round-up: New Lands for Targi, Buildable Hobbits, Love Letter History & Inbreeding in the Middle Ages

• Z-Man Games and Filosofia will release English and French versions, respectively, of Andreas Steiger's Targi. Targi, first released in March 2012 by German publisher Kosmos, was nominated for...

Designer Diary: La Loire

The royal messenger Luis approaches a fellow on the road and says: "How is travel to Ussè today?""It's all okay," answers Marco, an Italian merchant. "There's no danger on a sunny spring morning...

Crowdfunding Round-up: Gemblo in the U.S., Democracy as a Game & Modern Witch Hunts in Salem

• Justin Oh's Gemblo has been on the market for years, but the game has not yet had a presence in the U.S. Perhaps that will change with the founding of Wisemen Games and a Kickstarter project...

Designer Diary: Exodus: Proxima Centauri

Ever since I started playing board games – and that's quite a long time ago – I dreamed of making "the perfect game". For a long time I didn't even know what that meant; I just had this image...

New Game Round-up: Moongha Invaders Return, Pumpkins Ride Trains & Spiel 2012 Updates

• Crash! That's the sound of the price for the first edition of Moongha Invaders: Mad Scientists and Atomic Monsters Attack the Earth falling to the floor as designer Martin Wallace has...

Designer Diary: Saqqara

I've been designing games since 2008, and while I've released a couple on my own, Saqqara is the first one to be picked up by another publisher – White Goblin Games, in this case.Saqqara first...

Designer Diary: CLASH: Jihad vs. McWorld

The predecessor of CLASH is RRR, so this text has been sponsored by the letter R.Re-themingWhen we acquired the international license for RRR, we started thinking about a good storyline as a...

Crowdfunding Round-up: 12 Days of Gaming, Lost Valley Found & Jungle Donkey Kong

• Japanime Games has launched a fundraising project for Tanto Cuore: Romantic Vacation, but unlike its parent company's early projects along these lines, this project is on IndieGoGo instead of...

Designer Diary: The Long Way to Karnag

The story began in 2004. I had been playing board games for some years already and got the urge to design one. (Well, at least one.) I read on a website that few games used the abscissa/ordinate...

Game Preview: Spooky Spells

Let's continue the preview videos for titles that will be present at Spiel 2012, which opens just three weeks from today. Ack! Still so much to do! Speaking of which, have you checked out the...

Links: Spiel 2012 Previews, Game Design for Korea & Hidden Costs for Game Store Owners

• In the run-up to Spiel 2012, which opens October 18 in Essen, Germany, designers and publishers have been talking about their upcoming games a fair amount, such as this interview on...

New Game Round-up: Details and Pics of Legendary, Classic Card Games Return & Another Take on City Building

• Designer Alban Viard, who normally self-publishes his designs, will see his Card City debut from new French publisher Ludibay at Spiel 2012 in October. Here's a short description of the game,...

Designer Diary: Top-A-Top Plus – Blue Level!

After seeing numerous games of Top-A-Top – both at Spiel 2011 and at numerous conventions in Poland – and player reactions to the game, the time came to create an expansion. During the first...