Board Game News

Designer Diary: Spring on a String, or Big Journey of a Small Game

At SPIEL '19, you might encounter the new game Spring on a String from Czech Board Games and Dino — and because its journey from the first idea to the released game was such an adventure for...

Minecraft: Builders & Biomes Challenges Players to Build on Tabletops, Too

Months after teasing a Minecraft board game at Spielwarenmesse 2019, German publisher Ravensburger has now released details of the game and its release schedule.Minecraft: Builders & Biomes — a...

New Game Round-up: Sailing and Coloring the Seas and Skies

• Traders of the Air is a new version of Michael Schacht's Hansa that Compass Games is Kickstarting (link) through early October 2019 ahead of a Q2 2020 release.In Traders of the Air, 2-4...

Mergers, Splits, and Industry Movers: Studio H Prepares Tea for SPIEL '19, and Surfin' Meeple Hoists Grail

• So many announcements have fallen under the cabinet in my inbox, such as the July 2019 announcement by French book publisher Hachette Livre of the founding of Studio H, a new game publisher...

Designer Diary: Shiny Happy People in Cities: Skylines – The Board Game

City-building games have a long history, both in board games and computer games. One key difference between most board games and most computer games in this genre is that board games are...

Links: Gaming in Iran, Creating Licensed Games, and Discovering Strange Stars

• In July 2019, designer Bruno Faidutti visited Tehran, Iran for a week on invitation from Houpaa, which had released a Persian version of his game Citadels in 2018. He wrote about the...

Game on Trend with The Grand Carnival and Dice & Ink: A Roll & Write Anthology

• Ladies and gentlemen, for those who haven't yet reached peak polyomino, let me draw your attention to The Grand Carnival, a design by Rob Cramer that Uproarious Games plans to Kickstart in...

Designer Diary: From Push Push to Minesweeper to Mine Deeper

[Editor's note: This is a translated designer diary from Jonathan Lee, the author of Mine Deeper, who is not active on BGG, with KBG editor Leon Scheuber handling the translation and publication....

New Game Round-up: Guide Cats, Brush Your Hair, and Battle in Ancient China

• Aside from all of the other Tom Lehmann titles that have been covered recently — Dice Realms, New Frontiers: Starry Rift, Res Arcana: Lux et Tenebrae — Australian publisher Grail Games...

Game Preview: Spring on a String, or So, A Gamer Pulling Thread

Each year at SPIEL, Czech Board Games brings one or two titles from Czech designers to both highlight the ludic creations from that country and attempt to license those games to non-Czech...

Designer Diary: Kauchuk

Kauchuk is both the first game that I developed together with my friend Oren Shainin and my first published game. The gist of the game is simple: Use rubber bands to enclose areas on a game board...

Links: On Deciphering the Rules of Ancient Games and Not Terraforming Mars

• Not to burst anyone's bubble, but in this PBS Space Time video, host Matt O'Dowd explains why Terraforming Mars should be moved from the "science fiction" category on BGG to "fantasy".Okay,...

Designer Diary: Nemo Rising: Robur the Conqueror, or Journey to the Center of a Game

IntroductionIn January 2016, I received an introductory email from C. Courtney Joyner, a novelist and screenwriter who was interested in hiring our game design studio, Quixotic Games, to create a...

New Game Round-up: Beware False Parents in Coraline, and Book Animals in Stampede

• If someone had Coraline in the "which media property will next be licensed for a board game" pool, you can now collect as WizKids has announced a December 2019 release date for Coraline:...

Designer Diary: Expanding Underwater Cities and Launching Monster Baby Rescue

After the publication of Underwater Cities, I was gratified by the players' positive reaction to the game, which was the first product of our new little game company, Delicious Games.Seeing the...

Winners Announced for Deutscher SpielePreis and The American Tabletop Awards

• On Monday, Sept. 16, SPIEL organizer Friedhelm Merz Verlag announced the results of the 2019 Deutscher SpielePreis, an annual award in which gamers vote on the titles they've most liked over...

New Game Round-up: Sail to New Islands in Concordia, Then Attempt to Return Tiles in No Return

• I'm sure that you've been eager to hear more about what I'm looking forward to at SPIEL '19, and if that is indeed the case, here's an overview of the second title on my "must have" list:...

Game Preview: Wayfinders, or Connect the Island Dots

My SPIEL '19 previews continue, this time with a look at Wayfinders, a 2-4 player from Thomas Dagenais-Lespérance and Pandasaurus Games.Wayfinders will likely remind you of pick-up-and-deliver...

Designer Diary: Three-Dragon Ante: Legendary Edition

Games from Other WorldsThe first time I encountered a playable game from another world, it was the game of Jetan, the Barsoomian version of chess at the center of The Chessmen of Mars, the fifth...

New Game Round-up: Rebuild Rome, Revisit Boomtown, and Ready Yourself for The 7th Citadel

• At Gen Con 2019, designer Dávid Turczi spent hours at the event tables teaching people how to play Rome & Roll, a co-design with Nick Shaw that UK publisher PSC Games plans to Kickstart in...

New (Old) Game Round-up: Terraforming Dice, Joining the Mob, and Starting a Mutiny

Despite my efforts to survey everything I can about upcoming game releases, I know that I miss lots of game announcements. Here are a few such titles that I didn't notice when they first came to...

Designer Diary: Game ON! Travel Coins, or How to Make a Game Accessory the Hardest Way Possible

I blame this whole long, somewhat dreary tale on Power Grid, one of my gaming group's favorite games, but a design with one of the worst coin/money sets of any game. We complained about it...

New Game Round-up: Climb Blocks and Mountains, and Avoid Falling Through Space

• Yes, I'm still catching up on games announced during Gen Con 2019. Publishers, please share info with me in advance and slap an embargo date on that press release! Then I can prepare posts in...

The Business of Board Games: The Superstar Effect

(This article by Nathan McNair, co-owner of Pandasaurus Games, first appeared on the company's blog on Sept. 4, 2019 in a somewhat different form. —WEM)I want to talk about an issue called "The...

New Game Round-up: Digging Up More Root, and Expanding The Big Book of Madness

• In its April 2019 Kickstarter campaign for Root: The Underworld Expansion (KS link), which adds two new factions to the Root base game, publisher Leder Games offered an add-on item titled...

Ticket to Ride Heads to Japan and Italy in New Map Collection

For the fifteenth anniversary of Alan R. Moon's Ticket to Ride, publisher Days of Wonder has already released Ticket to Ride: 15th Anniversary Special Edition (a new edition of the base game with...

Designer Diary: Terramara

In the late 2000s after the success of our first game, Leonardo Da Vinci, the four of us who make up the design group Acchittocca — Flaminia Brasini, Virginio Gigli, Stefano Luperto, and...

Game Preview: Dim Sum Jam, or Fast Food

SPIEL has always been my favorite game convention because of the vast range of titles available. Convention organizer Friedhelm Merz Verlag notes that SPIEL '19 will have more than 1,200...

New Game Round-up: Stock Goods in Adventure Mart, and Explore a Qwixx Remix

• BGG's SPIEL '19 Preview is nearing nine hundred titles, and we still have six more weeks of announcements ahead of us. Many of these new games are spinoffs of existing titles or game lines,...

New (Old) Game Round-up: Explore Reefs in Malaysia, Cruise in the Mediterranean, and Ditch Work in Argentina

• At the start of each year, I bring my inbox to zero — well, zero-ish — but as the year progresses and the needs of convention preparation and coverage overtake everything else, my inbox...