Board Game News

Developer Diary: Crown of Emara, or Building a Game from Ship to Shore

Part 1: IdeaThe basic idea for Crown of Emara has its roots in various ideas I had while playing several rounds of World Without End by Michael Rieneck and Stefan Stadler in winter 2016. The game...

SPIEL '18 Preview: Blossoms, or A Kwitnąć By Any Other Name...

I am frequently a person driven by deadlines. A sample copy of Blossoms — in its original Polish form of Kwiatki — arrived at my house in May 2018, yet I didn't play the game until...

New Game Round-up: Ragnar Ends with The Romans, and Tasty Minstrel Digs Up the Past

 • Gary Dicken, Steve Kendall, and Phil Kendall — who have been designing and publishing games for decades as Ragnar Brothers — have announced that The Romans, the third title in their...

Designer Diary: Behind the Scenes of Rebel Nox

A German, a Swede, and a Norwegian walk into a car. "Have you ever played Doppelkopf?" the German asks. This car ride was not the beginning of a joke, but rather the beginning of the journey of...

SPIEL '18 Preview: Brikks, or Taking Tetris to the Tabletop

Here we are just 2.5 weeks prior to SPIEL '18 opening and thousands of games descending on the Messe in Essen to check out all the new games at that show — and this relatively small amount of...

GeekUp Bit Sets: The Challenges and Surprises of Production

Many of you are probably familiar with the various GeekUp Bit Sets that BGG launched in August 2018. They're a simple little thing that adds to the gameplay experience by upgrading the cardboard...

Designer Diary: Dawn of Peacemakers

This diary was first posted on the game's own forum between October 6 and November 16, 2017. This is a condensed version of the original six-part write-up that can be read here.It was clear from...

New Game Round-up: Trajan Returns, As Does Sword & Sorcery and Mystery Date

• U.S. publisher Renegade Game Studios is releasing a new edition of Stefan Feld's Trajan in partnership with German publisher HUCH!, which probably not coincidentally is releasing Feld's Forum...

Designer Diary: Passing Through Petra, or The Making of a Tile-Pushing Game

In early August 2018, the Renegade Game Studios team was preparing to submit the BoardGameGeek entry for Passing Through Petra. BGG has a list of mechanisms that are available to choose from to...

SPIEL '18 Preview: Pandoria, or Stand By Your Man's Region

When you do what I do in the hobby game industry, you meet a lot of designers and publishers, and over time you develop relationships with them, even if they never quite reach the stage of...

Steph's Awesome Pre-SPIEL Rundown 2018

Today I am sharing my most anticipated SPIEL 2018 releases, broken down into Must Haves and Games of Interest! I listed the expansions as well at the end. There are SO MANY games listed on the...

Pfister and Eggertspiele Invite You to Blackout: Hong Kong

In case you haven't finished your SPIEL '18 planning yet, German publisher eggertspiele has another title they'd like you to consider, this one from multi-award-winning designer Alexander...

Designer Diary: The Journey to Pandoria

Pandoria is the new game from Bernd Eisenstein and me, and as with our previous collaborations, the journey truly is the destination. From it's...ahem...colorful beginnings to our many...

SPIEL '18 Preview: Railroad Ink, or Rolling and Writing Leads to Railing and Riding

I've seen plenty of people say that they're running out of steam for roll-and-write games — not to mention being lethargic over legacy games, filled with malaise over miniatures, and zzzzzing...

New Game Round-up: Building in Ragusa, Gambling in Space, and Fighting Zombies in School

• Fabio Lopiano's Ragusa received a recommendation in the 2017 Hippodice game design competition before being picked up by UK publisher Braincrack Games for release in 2019, with U.S. publisher...

Designer Diary: Detective Club, or What Happens If...

It all began during the preparation for a local board game fair. I already had one prototype, but I thought that it would be better to show two games instead of one. I had two weeks before the...

SPIEL '18 Preview: Game of Suspicion, or Nailing Down the Numbers

One of my main regrets about working for BGG is that I lack the time to cover everything that I want to cover. Because I'm in a prominent place in the hobby game industry, I receive many sample...

The BGG Show: Moving to the Clouds, Preparing for Spring, and Playing Some Games

It's time for another episode of The BoardGameGeek Show, and for the first time since we launched in January 2018, I'm not on it — which means that I have no idea what happened except via the...

Designer Diary: Spirits of the Forest, or A Long Walk Through the Woods

It's been a long time since I wrote my last designer's diary, but maybe it's a good idea for a kind of a restart with the story of Spirits of the Forest.At the beginning of that story stands Web...

New Game Round-up: Adventuring in the Iron Valley, Telling Colorful Stories, and Wrangling Quadrominoes

• German publisher Edition Spielwiese is best known for the Uwe Rosenberg tile-laying trilogy, which isn't a surprise since the company launched in 2016 with Cottage Garden, but it's been...

Game Preview: Cryptid, or Looking for Legends in All the Wrong Places

Each time that the deduction game Cryptid — due out Sept. 27, 2018 from designers Ruth Veevers and Hal Duncan and publisher Osprey Games — has been mentioned, I've seen Bruce Allen's Tobago...

Designer Diary: Cryptid, or Decrypting Deduction Details

Cryptid is a logical deduction game in which players compete to be first to work out which of the 108 possible habitats is home to a strange, rarely-sighted creature. Each player knows a...

New Game Round-up: Building Bridges, Making Necklaces, and Assassinating Victims

• I've been adding titles to BGG's SPIEL '18 Preview for months, and much of the time I wonder how many people see the games added there. Not the big games, mind you, because I know that folks...

Game Preview: Reef, or Cracking the Four-Color Coral Theorem

With all the hundreds of game announcements that I've seen so far in 2018, I feel like Emerson Matsuuchi's Reef from Next Move Games is old news. After all, I covered the announcement of the game...

Pretzel Games Invites You to Play with Men At Work

Canadian publisher Pretzel Games has a low-key release strategy: Once a year, publish a huge dexterity game with dozens of wooden bits.This release pattern started in 2015 with Flick 'em Up, and...

Game Preview: Monster Crunch!, or Nostalgia Served Up Right

In general I like my approach to making game overview videos. I play the game several times, ideally with different players and with different player counts, then I think about the game to some...

New Game Round-up: Count Crops in Catan, Connect Animals in Eco-Links, and Do...Something in Scientia

• Catan is the Little Engine That Could in the hobby game world. I rarely hear long-time gamers talk about playing Catan at game night, yet it keeps chugging along in the background, with...

Hans im Glück Prepares to Lift Off at SPIEL '18, While Mississippi Queen Fires Up the Coal Again

• I've already covered two SPIEL '18 releases coming from Hans im Glück — Carcassonne: Safari and Stone Age: Jubiläumsedition — but aside from that spinoff title and the anniversary...

SPIEL '18 Preview: Discovery: The Era of Voyage, or Sailing in Circles

For as much as I feel that I have some idea of what is going on in the Japanese game market, I'm frequently reminded that I know next to nothing, or perhaps more charitably, more than most people...

Azul Wins the 2018 Deutscher Spielepreis

Michael Kiesling's Azul from Next Move Games has won yet another game industry award, this time placing first in the 2018 Deutscher Spielepreis, an award given based on votes by the gaming...