Board Game News

Mergers, Splits, and Distribution Deals: Remembering Francis Tresham and Chad Jensen, and Distributing Games in Canada and Elsewhere

Tresham at SPIEL '05. Image: Richard Breese• Game designer Francis Tresham passed away on October 23, 2019, just as SPIEL '19 was about to open. I had mentioned his passing on air during our...

New Game Round-up: Create Houses for Elves, Build Dice for Super Fights, and Battle in North Africa

• Designer Uwe Rosenberg used to have fairly consistent partners for his work: AMIGO for Bohnanza titles, Lookout for big-box games, and Feuerland for even bigger games.Yet Rosenberg has been...

Tokyo Game Market Round-Up: Fafnir, Remember Our Trip, Distance from Here, and Goat 'n' Goat

Since BGG.CON 2019 is taking place on Nov. 20-24, I won't be trekking across the Pacific to attend the next Tokyo Game Market on Nov. 23-24, 2019. Even so, I can highlight a few titles that will...

New Game Round-up: Covered Boards, Smashed Licenses, and Unmatched Gothic Gameplay

• Restoration Games has unveiled the next title in the Unmatched game series it's been releasing in co-operation with Mondo Games — Unmatched: Cobble & Fog, with this being a two- or...

Alexa Can Now Teach You Ticket to Ride

Game publisher Days of Wonder is working together with mega-giant online retailer Amazon to get more people playing Ticket to Ride and Ticket to Ride: Europe.How? By introducing Alexa skills that...

Butterflies and Butt Battles from Rio Grande Games

• At BGG.CON 2019, Rio Grande Games will have the new releases Butterfly, Queenz, and The Way of the Bear for sale through retail partners, while demoing upcoming titles Nevada City, Monster...

New Game Round-up: Fight as a Two-Headed Giant, Set Fires as a Dragon, Then Discover Your Inner Compass

• Okay, stepping aside from my SPIEL '19 coverage (with lots of notes and pics still to process), let's check out a few 2020 releases that publishers have announced, such as the...

Designer Diary: Cupcake Empire, or Frosting, Fans, and (Find something else that starts with F before you post this)

Cupcake Empire was designed by Al Leduc and Yves Tourigny. Al is currently visiting his mother in the Yukon, so I have been tasked with writing this diary. It was supposed to be a dialogue...

SPIEL '19: Packing It In

For a change of pace this week, I'm presenting a side of the convention experience that happens only after it's over: Getting all of those (potentially) great games home.Okay, yes, you might be...

New Versions of Wiz-War, GOSU, Night Clan, and Hansa Teutonica for 2020

• In the category of "you just can't keep a classic game down", Steve Jackson Games has acquired the rights for Tom Jolly's Wiz-War.In Wiz-War, the player wizards move through a maze, trying to...

SPIEL '19 VII: Overview of the 2020 Line-Up for Matagot, Kolossal and Grail Games

At SPIEL '19, I spoke with Magali Moreno for an overview of titles coming in 2020 from Matagot, Kolossal Games, and Grail Games, the first two of which have the same owner: Arnaud Charpentier,...

In 2020, Studio H Invites You to Trick Samurai, Capture Fish, and Protect a Fallen Land

French publisher Studio H launched its debut titles at SPIEL '19 with (a small number of) Tony Boydell's strategy game Alubari and the card game Oriflamme from Adrien Hesling and Axel Hesling....

SPIEL '19 VI: From Livestream to Videos — The Castles of Burgundy, Zona, Ab durch die Mauer & Noch mal so gut!

At SPIEL '19, the BoardGameGeek team ran a livestream for more than forty hours over five days in which we featured a new game every five to ten minutes courtesy of that game's designer or a...

Convention Previews Are Live for BGG.CON 2019 and PAX Unplugged 2019

With SPIEL '19 in the past — but with plenty of images and notes still to be uploaded and posted — I've now released convention previews for both BGG.CON 2019 (taking place Nov. 20-24 in...

Game Overview: Azul: Summer Pavilion, or Wrangling Rhombuses

In September 2017, I previewed Michael Kiesling's Azul ahead of its release, and in October 2018 I previewed Azul: Stained Glass of Sintra mere hours before its general release at SPIEL '18, so...

Designer Diary: Merlin's Beast Hunt

Merlin's Beast Hunt is a card-and-dice game that presents a novel mechanism: the dice-card combo.My name is Ian Bach, and I am the designer of this game. In this diary, I want to share how the...

SPIEL '19 V: More Cases for Detective, More Sheets for Imperial Settlers: Roll & Write

At SPIEL '19, Polish publisher Portal Games announced a follow-up title to its highly successful Detective: A Modern Crime Board Game — Detective: Season One.This standalone game for 1-5...

Links: Wingspan Sells, and Magic: The Gathering Computes

• In March 2019, software engineer and game designer Alex Churchill, Stella Biderman of the Georgia Institute of Technology, and Austin Herrick of the University of Pennsylvania published a...

SPIEL '19 IV: More Pics from the Convention Floor

I took a few hundred photos at SPIEL '19, which is what I do at almost every convention I attend, and far too often those images stay on my phone, primarily because I stay busy at a show all day...

Small World of Warcraft Coming in 2020

At BlizzCon 2019, an annual convention run by video game publisher Blizzard, the following board game announcement was spotted and posted on Facebook by one Joe Wood:

SPIEL '19 III: IELLO in 2020 — Claim Land, Break Codes, Defuse Bombs, and Launch Goblins

During SPIEL '19, I met with several publishers and took many notes and photos. Let's see how many I can highlight in the next couple of weeks before even newer announcements overwhelm me.Today...

SPIEL '19 II: Dark Outlook for King of Tokyo in 2020

Richard Garfield's King of Tokyo has had a few different looks since its debut from French publisher IELLO in 2011, and for 2020 it will be reborn again as King of Tokyo: Dark Edition.Here's a...

SPIEL '19 I: GeekBuzz, Fairplay, Attendance, and a Few Game Announcements

SPIEL '19 is over, and (fingers crossed) all attendees have returned home or have purposefully gone elsewhere and aren't merely stranded at airports. Con crud is underway in some percentage of...

Designer Diary: New Salem, or Drafting Lessons Learned

When Clayton Skancke and I designed New Salem in 2014, we were extremely excited to make a drafting game. The thing we loved the most about the drafting mechanism was that it facilitates...

Eight Releases over Two Years: Spielworxx Plans for 2020 and 2021

At SPIEL '19, Spielworxx's owner and game developer Uli Blennemann released "Yearbook 2019", a pamphlet detailing the history of the company, its four releases of 2019 — Yinzi, Auf der Walz,...

Game Preview: Penguin Tasso, or Genetic Stick-Laying

Editions from OPEN'N PLAYTasso is a ridiculously simple game from designer Philippe Proux that has been released in a few editions since the first version from his own Ludarden publishing brand...

SPIEL '19: Day 0, or First Glances at a Few Releases

SPIEL '19 opens in one hour from when I'm writing this, so let me limit myself to a few notes about some of the pics that I took on set-up day, Wed. Oct. 23, all taken in the media presentation...

Hachette Livre Buys Blackrock Games; Asmodee Picks Up Lui-même

Ahead of SPIEL '19 opening on Thursday, October 24, news of two acquisitions has emerged:• First, French book publisher Hachette Livre — which purchased Gigamic in early 2019 and founded...

Prepare to Go Back to the Future Again, While Mrs. Maisel Brings the Past to the Present

I'm going to keep things brief today as I want to ensure I'm fresh for SPIEL '19 preparations and presentations:• Funko Games has teased a future Funkoverse Strategy Game release:• Aaaaand...

SPIEL '19: Day -1, or Setting Up Shop

SPIEL '19 opens on Thursday, October 24, but plenty of people were at work in the Messe Essen on Tuesday, including the BGG team since we start livestreaming on Wednesday in order to get in a...