Board Game News

BGG.CONline Goes Live Today, May 20, 2020; Check Out the Guest List

Gen Con and SPIEL have cancelled their events for 2020, with both organizations promising to hold online conventions during the days when their shows would have taken place. BGG is doing...

Gen Con 2020 Cancelled

One day after the cancellation of SPIEL '20, Gen Con has announced that it, too, will not take place in 2020.Convention co-owner Peter Adkison writes about the decision on the Gen Con blog and...

Game Overview: Nova Luna, or Taking Tasks to Tiles

Normally I present a written overview of a game along with my video overview in order to talk about that design from another perspective or to craft my thoughts in a more organized manner than...

Spiel des Jahres Nominations for 2020: My City, Nova Luna, and Pictures; Cartographers, The Crew, and The King's Dilemma Are Kennerspiel Nominees

The nominees for the 2020 Spiel des Jahres — Germany's "game of the year" award — have been announced, along with nominees for two accompanying awards: the Kinderspiel des Jahres (KidJ) for...

SPIEL '20 Cancelled

The news that many people had been anticipating has now been made official: Convention organizer Friedhelm Merz Verlag has cancelled SPIEL '20, which was scheduled to take place October 22-25,...

Seven Fruits + Seven7s = Quatorze from Eagle-Gryphon Games

• U.S. publisher Eagle-Gryphon Games has announced a September 3, 2020 Kickstarter launch date for Mercado de Lisboa from Vital Lacerda and Julián Pombo, a title that Candice Harris previewed...

Friedemann Friese Wants You to Fight Monsters at Home

In May 2020, designer Friedemann Friese of 2F-Spiele started a new blog on BoardGameGeek: "Game Designer Lockdown". As he notes in his first post, "To be a game designer without the regular game...

New Game Round-up: Go Deep for Red Raven Games, and Whet Your Pen for New Cartographers

• Ryan Laukat has dropped a teaser video for Deep Vents, the next release from Red Raven Games, which is co-designed by Laukat and T. Alex Davis — but the full rules for this 2-4 player game...

New Game Round-up: Cats Control the Weather, Reverse Scoring, and Explore Dungeons

• Time for another round-up of game creations from Japan, starting with Major Arcana: The Tarot Game, which appears to be a straightforward memory game from Kenichi Tanabe of COLON ARC.The game...

Dominate Azeroth in Small World of Warcraft

In November 2019, I posted pics from BlizzCon 2019 that showcased an upcoming crossover between video game publisher Blizzard Entertainment and board game publisher Days of Wonder.Now that...

New Train Game Round-up: Mini Express, Colt Super Express, Station Master, & 18xx on the Moon

There seems to be some kind of link between trains and board games, but I've never really understood the connection. Eric has already mentioned a full cargo of 2020 train-themed releases in...

New Game Round-up: Escape Volcanoes, Relive World War II, and Look at Penguins

• Designer Citie Lo of The Wood Games has released info about the company's SPIEL '20 release — and should that event not take place, well, Lo plans to run a Kickstarter campaign for the...

Game Overview: Musical Chairs, or Ride the Beat to the Best Seat

In April 2020, designer Kelly North Adams presented an origin story for the game Musical Chairs and how it came to exist in its final form courtesy of Rio Grande Games. Today I'll present an...

Solitaire Sunday: You Got Chocolate Fix in My Minecraft Travel Magnetic Puzzle

This week's "Solitaire Sunday" is a twofer, mostly because the logic puzzles I'm covering — Chocolate Fix and Minecraft Travel Magnetic Puzzle — use the same engine underneath their hoods.The...

A Report on the Games Scheduled to be Sold at Osaka Game Market 2020

[Editor's note: Game Market was scheduled to take place in Osaka on March 8, 2020, but wasn't held. Even so, Saigo — who translates game rules between Japanese and English and who tweets about...

Build Prague in Medieval Times with Vladimír Suchý in Praga Caput Regni

Czech publisher Delicious Games, which debuted in 2018 with Vladimír Suchý's Underwater Cities, will release a new title from the designer, one in which "its weight index will be higher than it...

Ticket to Ride Heads Back in Time to 17th Century Amsterdam

The Ticket to Ride train continues to roll on — although in the case of the newly announced Ticket to Ride: Amsterdam, players will be using transportation of a different sort as the game is...

Mercado de Lisboa: A Thinky Filler from Vital Lacerda?!

The year 2020 continues to surprise me. Like most people, when I hear Vital Lacerda's name, I instantly think of heavy, thematic, brain-burn-inducing yet elegant games such as The Gallerist,...

Blue Skies Ahead for Joe Huber and Rio Grande Games

In 2019, U.S., publisher Rio Grande Games released the delightfully old-school game Caravan from designer Joe Huber (read my overview here), and now Huber and Rio Grande are partnering again for...

Force Your Way to the Center of the Universe in Talisman: Star Wars

May the 4th is almost over for 2020 (at least here on the U.S. East coast), but before we start posting about Star Wars slightly less for the next twelve months than we usually post about Star...

Game Overview: Hues and Cues, or Interpret the Rainbow

Covering a party game might seem strange at this time given the stay-at-home orders that are keeping many people from gathering to play, but Hues and Cues from Scott Brady and The Op is a party...

Solitaire Sunday: IQ Twist, or Packing the Plastic Suitcase

In a way, this write-up and video covers one title in the IQ line of logic puzzles from Belgian publisher Smart Toys and Games — specifically IQ Twist from in-house designer Raf Peeters — and...

COVID-19 at the Gaming Table IX: Expansions for Carcassonne, Hadara, and Deep Blue; UK Games Expo 2020 Is Off

• Not all of the material covered in posts like these was made specifically in response to the COVID-19 virus, but since many people are not able to meet with their regular game groups, this...

New Game Round-up: Revolt Against Caesar, Roll for Railroads, and Rip Through Opponents Like a Bullet♥︎

• French publisher ASYNCRON games has a partnership with GMT Games to release several titles from its catalog, particularly the COIN series of games, and its next release will be Falling Sky:...

"New" Game Round-up: Sequels and Second Editions for Sidereal Confluence, Reef, Marco Polo, The King is Dead, and Sheriff of Nottingham

Sequels and second editions continue to be a trend in the world of board gaming. Fortunately, they are generally favored and considered improvements more often than not — you know, more...

New Game Round-up: Defeat the Batman Who Laughs, and Look for Restocks of Great Western Terra Mystica

• In a March 2020 post on NY Toy Fair 2020, I mentioned several licensed IPs that I saw at numerous booths throughout the show, with one of those licenses being "The Batman Who Laughs" from DC...

Game Preview: My City, or A Tile-Laying, City-Building Game That Gives You Fits

My City is a city-building legacy game from Reiner Knizia and KOSMOS, and despite my love for Knizia's work — as expressed in this overview of L.A.M.A., for example — Knizia and the legacy...

Solitaire Sunday: Blokus Puzzle, or Cornering Solutions

Bernard Tavitian's Blokus is a brilliantly simple design that has been on the market continuously for two decades, with the core concept of the game being transferred into other designs (such as...

COVID-19 at the Gaming Table VIII: Play at Home Thanks to Czech Games, Helvetiq, Big Potato, and Space Cowboys

• Should you be looking for another party game to play via camera, albeit with one person giving all the clues, UK publisher Big Potato would like to present you with Goat on a Boat, a rhyming-...

New Game Round-up: Organize Books, Escape a Castle, and Set Up Trading Offices in Novgorod

• U.S. publisher Renegade Game Studios has announced a new design from French group L'Atelier, which has previously designed One Key and Obscurio for Libellud.Here's an overview of Atheneum:...