Board Game News

Designer Diary: Article 27: The UN Security Council Game

Inspiration and GameplayEarly in 2011, the United States Congress got itself into a fight over the budget and threatened to shut down government. This happened back in 1995 as well and led to...

Crowdfunding Round-up: Guts of Glory, Mars Needs Mechanics, Battle of Red Cliffs & I'm the Salmon Boss

• Gryphon Games is on the Kickstarter trail once again, this time with Sid Sackson's I'm the Boss!: The Card Game, which as the KS page explains is based on Sackson's original "Piece of the...

Links: Nominees for the 2012 IGA, Why Top Ten Lists Are Terrible & How Salmon Swim in Game Terms

• The nominees for the 2012 International Gamers Awards in the "General Strategy" category have been announced, and in alphabetical order they are:Multi-player nominees-----• Dungeon Petz, by...

Designer Diary: Snowdonia, or Battling the Elements and Taking in the Scenery Along the Way

Dig It, Build It, Climate!(Note: For the uninitiated, you may wish to take a look at this blog post for an overview of Snowdonia before launching into this biography. Or not. As you...

Links: Trading Games, Writing about Games & Ranting about Owning Too Many Games

• Stewart Woods, assistant professor of communication studies at the University of Western Australia and a postdoctoral research fellow at Curtin University, has written a book titled...

News from Italy: Yummell, Magnifico for Tablet, GetGamers App, & Rüdiger Dorn in ILSA

A new round-up of news from Italy! Some news from Italian companies – such as Ares Games (BGGN link) and dV Giochi (BGGN link) – has already been covered in this space, so I'm going for...

New Game Round-up: Emanuele Ornella Self-Publishes Again, Kanai Creates a Love Letter & Kramer/Kiesling Head to Italy for Marble

• After placing designs with a number of other publishers, designer Emanuele Ornella has announced a new release from his Mind the Move titled La Loire, with the game debuting in a limited...

Designer Diary: Völuspá, or How a Native American Sun God Became a Viking Thunder God

As a game designer, I appreciate second chances, a chance to get the rules of my game right, a chance to get my game published by a reputable publisher. Thanks to White Goblin Games, Kachina has...

Game Overviews at Gen Con 2012: Ogre, Level 7 [Escape], Last Night on Earth: Timber Peak & Shadows over Camelot: The Card Game

• Jack Scott Hill from Flying Frog Productions goes in depth talking about Last Night on Earth: Timber Peak, which is both a standalone game and an expansion for the LNoE series. A few copies...

A Quartet of Games from Rebel Publishing for Spiel 2012: The Cave, Slavika, Mercurius & Amber

In the run-up to Spiel 2012 in mid-October, I've been adding more games to the Spiel 2012 Preview following a break for Gen Con in mid-August and the subsequent illness. Polish publisher REBEL.pl...

Game Overviews at Gen Con 2012: Mice and Mystics, Dead Panic, Hot Rod Creeps & Conquest of Planet Earth: Apocalypse

• Jack Scott Hill from Flying Frog Productions shows off the bits in Conquest of Planet Earth: Apocalypse and invites everyone to prepare for doom come the 2012 holiday season. • At Gen Con...

New, Smaller Shadows over Camelot from Cathala, Laget and Days of Wonder in October 2012

French/U.S. publisher Days of Wonder has announced a new release that will debut at Spiel 2012 in October, a twist on one of its existing games that aren't Ticket to Ride, Small World or Memoir...

Links: Numbers from Gen Con 2012, Gamey Cakes & I Talk a *Lot* about Innovation

• Geof Gambill has posted the latest episode of his podcast The Long View, and since I'm the guest being interviewed, I thought it would behoove me to post about it here since it's not every...

Crowdfunding Round-up: Cards, Comics, Commission, Cities & Cows – Exploding Cows, Mind You

• Prime Wars is the debut game from 3DTotal Publishing under its new 3DTotal Games branch/subdivision, and for a company that normally does lots related to digital painting, it may not come as...

New Game Round-up: Bacchanals in Essen, ASL on an eReader, Five Titles from R&R & Why Target Has Star Trek: Catan

• Publisher R&R Games will release in the U.S. two titles that originated from eggertspiele, both of which are designed by Reiner Knizia. The games in question – Spectaculum and Qin – are...

Game Overviews at Gen Con 2012: Memoir '44: Equipment Pack, The Resistance: Avalon, Z-Man Games & King of Tokyo: Power Up!

• At Gen Con 2012, designer Richard Borg talked about Memoir '44: Equipment Pack and a number of his other designs, including Samurai Battles, Cowtown and BattleLore. I offered a handful of...

Designer Diary: Unexploded Cow

Unexploded Cow is coming back in a full-color updated edition from Cheapass Games, and I figured it was a good time to write a designer's diary about the project to let people know about the new...

New Game Round-up: Details on Andor, Three New Titles from SJG & Up Front Up for a New Edition?

 • Canadian publisher Valley Games has announced a new edition of the long out-of-print Up Front. The note from VG's Rik Falch:Quote:Valley Games is very excited to announce that we have...

Game Overviews at Gen Con 2012: Gauntlet of Fools, 3012, City of Horror & 7 Wonders: Cities

• Jeremiah Lee from Indie Boards and Cards talks about Donald X. Vaccarino's Gauntlet of Fools, while seeming incredibly blasé about dying. He also proudly bears his Golden Geek award for the...

Designer Diary: Call To Glory

With ninja wisdom included throughout...A few months ago, I saw a documentary about ninjas that included an interview with the last living real ninjutsu teacher. The movie offered a lot of...

Game Overviews at Gen Con 2012: Core Worlds: Galactic Orders, DC Comics DBG, SolForge & Zombiepocalypse: NYC

Here are the first of many, many videos that Scott Reed (a.k.a., Skelebone) and I recorded at Gen Con 2012. I'm not sure of the exact count, but I'm guessing the total is between forty and fifty;...

Crowdfunding Round-up: Steel Stars, Dragon's Bard, Gauntlet of Fools, Avalon & The Keep

• As some users pointed out in the last c.f. round-up, U.S. publisher Indie Boards and Cards has launched a Kickstarter project for Don Eskridge's The Resistance: Avalon, a sequel/standalone...

Gen Con 2012 Reboot: Gangnam Style

As often happens at conventions, I caught something at Gen Con 2012 that came fully to fruition in the 13-hour car ride home, with me drowsing in and out of conversations and feeling like crud...

Designer Diary: Expedition: Congo River 1884

Expedition: Congo River 1884 is the first of my games to be published, so I think it deserves a little diary of "how it was done". The idea of the game began to spin around my mind the first week...

News from Gen Con 2012: A Short Non-Report

• I'm at Gen Con 2012 to cover the event for BGG News, but rather than repost what I've already reported on while at the show, I point you to the Boardgame News Twitter feed or BGN Facebook...

Designer Diary: Rattus Cartus

In September 2010, we received an email from White Goblin Games, the publisher of our game Rattus. One of its employees, Bart Nijssen, had been thinking about various ideas for Rattus expansions...

New Game Round-up: Ghosts Prepare to Smash Up, Fight Dragons with Dice & Shoguns, Pirates and Ogres Return

• Designer Jason Stone has released his St. George's Gauntlet through the newly founded Jason Stone Games. English rules are linked to on the BGG game page, and a short description of the game...

Links: Active vs. Passive Media, Games in Mainstream Media & Game Night with Catchphrase

• Board Game Muse has a short interview with designer Régis Bonnessée about his game Seasons – debuting at Gen Con 2012 – and his other interests.• Daniel Tack at Forbes.com writes...

Game Preview: City of Horror

Nicolas Normandon's City of Horror, published by Repos Production and distributed by Asmodee, will be available in a limited quantity at Gen Con – the largest convention in the U.S. focused on...

Designer Diary: Milestones

The idea for the game Milestones came to me during a stay on the Mediterranean island of Mallorca, where the entire network of roads bears tightly-packed, white-yellow mile markers typical of the...