Board Game News

News from BGG.CON 2011: Escape from Queen Games, Article 27 from Stronghold & a Merchant of Venus Update

Have I played any games at BGG.CON 2011, which runs to Sunday, November 20? Yes, I have – Taluva twice with friend and old gaming buddy Evil Bob.But you probably want to hear about new stuff,...

Designer Diary: D-Day Dice – Winning the War, One Die at a Time

Dice have always hated me. As early as I can remember, those little cubes have mocked my futile attempts at getting lucky. From my early Monopoly games to Dungeons & Dragons, from CATAN to Last...

Prepping for BGG.CON 2011?

If you want to find out what publishers and some of your fellow gamers will have on the tables at BGG.CON 2011 – which starts Wdnesday, Nov. 16 – head to this Geeklist from yours truly,...

Designer Diary: Mutant Meeples – Inspired By, But Quite Different From Ricochet Robots

Let me get this out of the way first: Mutant Meeples has, at its core, a similar mechanism to Alex Randolph's Ricochet Robots. Players try to move a meeple (or robot) to a location on a maze-like...

Publisher Diary: Flatlined Games – Debut at Spiel 2011

Hi, everybody! I'm Eric Hanuise, founder and "the guy" at Flatlined Games, publisher of Dragon Rage and Rumble in the House. Flatlined Games is a one-man business, which I run aside my "real" day...

New Game Round-up: Asmodee's North American Releases, Racing Elephants & More Kickstarter Madness

• Asmodee's Stefan Brunelle has sent me an updated release schedule for North America for titles that Asmodee is either publishing itself or distributing. Here's what you can expect to see from...

Designer Diary: Sanitarium, or How I Learned to Live with My Hallucinations

My grandma used to say that she introduced me to my love of games while I was a little kid with Scrabble. We played tons of Scrabble at her farm in Bunker Hill, Illinois. She was amazed by how...

Links: NaGa DeMon Awaits Your Summoning, Undermining Takes Home the Bacon & Amazing Dice Sculptures

• Game designer and podcaster Nathan Russell has taken a spur from NaNoWriMo – National Novel Writing Month, in case you didn't know, which is semi-organized each November – and proposed...

Designer Diary: The Manhattan Project

How did I get here?I had my first exposure to the world of hobby board games in 2005. The discovery of this "underground" medium (beyond Monopoly, beyond Scrabble, beyond Risk) completely changed...

Designer Diary: Core Worlds

InspirationThe story of Core Worlds begins at DexCon, a popular game convention in New Jersey during the summer of 2009. My friend Geoff Engelstein (co-designer of The Ares Project) had picked up...

New Game Round-up: More Games Coming in 2012, Monkey Replacement & Kickstarted Games Galore

• Mayfair Games has announced a February 16, 2012 street date in North America for Fréderic Moyersoen's White Water ($35), which is being released under the company's Funfair brand for...

Fantasy Flight Games' Line-up for January 2012 – and Beyond, Possibly All the Way to Venus

U.S. publisher Fantasy Flight Games sent out its January 2012 release schedule on Oct. 17, two days before the opening of Spiel 2011, and I'm only now unpacking that list and updating the BGG...

Links: More Evil, China on Mars, 7 Wonders Bags Another Award & DIY Bit Production

•In keeping with its Halloween tradition, Flying Frog Productions has released a new item for A Touch of Evil on its website, specifically the villain "The Shadow Witch". Head to the A Touch of...

Co-Developer Diary: Outpost – Twenty Years Old and New Once More

I'm honored to be involved in the 20th anniversary reprint and "refresh" of Outpost by Stronghold Games."It was Twenty Years Ago Today..."Twenty years ago in 1991, I was preparing my first game,...

Interview with Konstantinos Kokkinis, co-designer of Drum Roll

Piotr Siłka: First, please introduce yourself: what you do for life, and how your adventure with board games started?Konstantinos Kokkinis: My name is Konstantinos Kokkinis. I am a 3D...

Designer Diary: World Conquerors

World Conquerors began in 2003 or so as a response to my complicated love-hate relationship with historical games. I love history, but I don't always remember it right and certainly not as the...

New Game Round-up: Games Coming in 2012, Games Out Now & Games Featured at Spiel 2011

With the Spiel 2011 juggernaut receding in the distance, its footprints still clear in our mushy noggins, it's time to look at games that will be released before the end of 2011 or sometime in...

We Now Pause For Station Identification

Apologies for the silence of the past few days, but I've been felled by the quad-headed fog hydra of:• Jet lag• A profound lack of sleep both prior to and during Spiel 2011• Illness (which...

Spiel 2011: Mid-Friday Update

A few notes from the middle of Friday:• Reiner Stockhausen from dlp games says that U.S. distribution is in the works for Siberia, which keeps bobbing near the top of the GeekBuzz and Fairplay...

Spiel 2011: The Games Have Arrived – Well, Some of Them Anyway

The first day of Spiel 2011 is over, and many publishers were delighted to discover that they actually had games for sale when the doors opened. Krok Dil Nouil's Vanuata arrived ten minutes...

Spiel 2011: Press Day and a Weird Aunt

Press day at Spiel 2011 was more frantic than in years past, mostly because many publishers are still waiting for their games – whether they're coming from the printer or from trucks on German...

Game Preview: Master Merchant

Each year at Spiel, Japon Brand features a number of €10-ish card games that serve as POP pick-ups for the curious. You hmm and haw and think that maybe the game sounds interesting yet you're...

Spiel 2011: Report from the Road

I'm in mid-journey to Essen, Germany for a few days at Spiel 2011 and will possibly spend a little time with games, publishers and designers in between trips to the banana-nutella crêpe stands...

Interview: Matthias Cramer

Piotr Siłka: Thanks to the user records on BGG, I see that you have quite a large collection of games. When did you become interested in modern games? Do you play a lot? And, be honest, how many...

Designer Diary: Tricky Bid, or the Game that Needed a Name

InventingThe story behind Tricky Bid is somewhat unexciting – it all happened so fast – so I have decided to write about the publication history as well. This is my first game to be published...

Links: Portal Gives Gifts, More Award Announcements & Magic's Tom LaPille Says That You Are Uninformed

Once again, this page is a mix of new and somewhat old-ish material as the Spiel 2011 info wave crests and I begin to see the calm waters ahead.• Polish publisher Portal is celebrating its...

Designer/Publisher Diary: Let's Take a Hike

I am extrememly fortunate to be making trip number twelve to Spiel in Essen in 2011 – even more fortunate in the friends I have made along the way.On each trip there has been at least one new...

Game Preview: Aquileia – Winner of the 2010 Archimede Prize Coming to Spiel 2011

Some days ago, I was lucky enough to be contacted by "Cielo d'Oro", an Italian design group, asking me to playtest the new game they are going to propose to publishers at Spiel 2011. I was so...

Designer Diary: Hawaii

Where to begin?I spent a lot of time wondering how to open this diary. In the end I put my trust in the King of Hearts, who imparted this sage advice to the White Rabbit in Alice and Wonderland:...

New Game Round-up: Panic Station Almost Sold Out, Spiel 2011 Production Updates & Three Titles from Eggertspiele

• Nearly the entire print run of David Ausloos' Panic Station is sold out by both White Goblin Games and Stronghold Games, according to a press release from WGG, with those copies being claimed...