Board Game News

Designer Diary: Dej, or A Citadel in Persia

A first version of this designer diary was originally posted on my website on August 7, 2018, in both French and English.Citadels was first published in 2000 by a small French publisher that...

New Game Round-up: Quest Again to El Dorado, Return to Trans Europa Anew, and Adjust Those Magical Mazes

• We're just over five weeks out from the opening of SPIEL '18, so rulebooks for games due to debut at that show have been popping up all over the place. The Quest for El Dorado: Heroes & Hexes...

The BGG Show: Aldie Goes Missing, Chaz Steps In, and Clouds Take Charge

For the first time on The BoardGameGeek Show, boss Scott Alden goes missing! Scott was busy overseeing BGG's move to cloud-based servers when we recorded this episode, and for some reason he...

New Game Round-up: Stone Age and Camel Up Get Refreshed, and Key Flow Gets Explained

• At SPIEL '18, German publisher Hans im Glück plans to release a tenth anniversary edition of Bernd Brunnhofer's Stone Age titled Stone Age: Jubiläumsedition, with this edition of the game...

SPIEL '18 Preview: Fruit Friends, or Give Me Juicy Autumnal Fruit, Ripe and Red from the Orchard

Often when I play Japanese game designs, I have the feeling that the designer had some idea for a game mechanism or setting or mode of play and wondered, "Will that work?" Then they set out to...

Designer Diary: Iberian Rails

Iberian Rails is a share-holding train game I spent five years to design, test, and develop. It has some key features which differentiate it from other games in the genre, and the obvious one...

SPIEL '18 Preview: SHIBUYA, or Look Both Ways Before Double-Crossing Your Opponent

I will confess to being an ignorant tourist. Not ignorant in general, I think, but rather someone who goes on trips and isn't much concerned about hitting whatever highlights are generally...

WizKids Brings WWE to the Tabletop; Steamforged Does the Same with Horizon Zero Dawn

• U.S. publisher WizKids has signed a multi-year licensing partnership with WWE to "bring the organization's iconic Superstars to the tabletop with successful gaming platforms HeroClix and Dice...

Will Rome Fall Under Your Watch in Pandemic?

To maintain a tradition that began in 2016 with Pandemic: Iberia and continued in 2017 with Pandemic: Rising Tide, Z-Man Games will celebrate the 2018 Pandemic Survival World Championships in...

Interview with Tom Felber, Outgoing Chairman of the Spiel des Jahres Jury

As of the end of September 2018, Tom Felber is stepping down from his role as chairman of the Spiel des Jahres jury, a position he's held since 2011. A press release on the SdJ website notes that...

New Game Round-up: Infect Humanity, Fight for Treasure, and Stay Off the Lava

• For the past three years, German publisher OSTIA Spiele and husband and wife design team Heike and Stefan Risthaus have released small card games, mostly based on European locations (Visby,...

Game Preview: Orbis, or Lovely Crinkly Edges in a Splendid Universe

While Gen Con remains the convention at which a U.S. publisher will launch a new release, for publishers outside the U.S. Gen Con is often a peek-a-boo show for the games they plan to debut at...

Hop Around the World with DLP Games Thanks to Valparaíso, Manitoba, and Altiplano: The Traveler

• German publisher dlp games has announced three new titles for SPIEL '18, with one of them being the Altiplano: The Traveler expansion already talked about by English-language publishing...

New Game Round-up: Building Castles, Busting Ghosts, and Bringing Back Dark Tower

• Ghosts of the Moor is a game from famed design duo Michael Kiesling and Wolfgang Kramer that publisher Tasty Minstrel Games plans to debut at SPIEL '18 in October. Here's an overview of this...

Prepare for Seven Hundred Years of Bloodshed and Infighting in Vampire: The Masquerade – Heritage

Non-final coverWhite Wolf Publishing released the Vampire: The Masquerade RPG in 1991, then spent years building up an entire world — specifically a World of Darkness — to flesh out that...

New Game Round-up: Being Lara Croft, Returning to Afghanistan, and Expanding All the Games

• Announcements of new games keep flying through my windows and sneaking down the chimney and crawling through the cracks in the door insulation, and it's amazing to see such incredible variety...

Nominees for the 2018 International Gamers Awards

I don't normally post about most of the awards given in the game industry, but given the repeated suggestions by BGG users following the Spiel des Jahres nominations, including those in 2018,...

Starting Down The River to SPIEL '18 with Days of Wonder

During Gen Con 2018, many of the Asmodee brands and companies distributed by Asmodee in North America previewed their SPIEL '18 releases. I've covered Pearl Games' Solenia in this BGG News post,...

New Game Round-up: Return to a World of Hexahedron Combat, and Find Members of the Order of the Phoenix

• In March 2019, U.S. publisher WizKids plans to release Quarriors! Qultimate Quedition, a comprehensive box with a $100 MSRP that contains all of Mike Elliott's and Eric M. Lang's Quarriors!...

Designer Diary: Dragons, or A Game In Which Players Are Dragons

A first version of this designer diary was originally posted on my websiteon June 16, 2018 with a few more pictures and better formatting — or so I think — but it looks like I get more...

New Game Round-up: Mine Like a Master, Escape Like MacGyver, and Trek Through Time in Chrononauts

• German publisher Feuerland Spiele usually debuts one big and beefy title at the SPIEL game convention in October, and for 2018 that title is Magnastorm by Bauldric & Friends, the pen name of...

Designer Diary: Roll to the Top!, or Climbing to Publication

Editor's note: This designer diary was written by Roll to the Top! co-designer Peter Joustra in Dutch, then translated into English by the game's other co-designer, Corné van Moorsel....

The BGG Show: New Shows from Chaz Marler, and Gen Con Games on the Table

Time for another outing of The BoardGameGeek Show with Scott Alden, Lincoln Damerst, Steph Hodge, Rodney Smith, and I chatting about companies being merged, videos being published, games being...

New Game Round-up: Become a Power Ranger, Trade with Caravans, and Develop a Colorful City

• Publishers teased a variety of future releases and crowdfunding projects at Gen Con 2018, with Renegade Game Studios showing off some of the miniatures that could be included in Power...

SPIEL '18 Preview: Forum Trajanum, or Romanum Punctum Acetaria

I am now going to attempt the improbable: Present a coherent overview of Stefan Feld's upcoming game Forum Trajanum based solely upon a reading of the rules.Forum Trajanum will debut at SPIEL '18...

Game Preview for SPIEL '18: Just One, or Everyone Be Unique or Else!

Whenever I think about party games these days, almost everything is judged in terms of Codenames. This isn't necessarily a surprise given how dominant and successful Codenames is in that design...

SPIEL 2018 Previews: Solenia, Lincoln, Wendake: New Allies, and Quartermaster General: The Cold War

The BGG team recorded two hundred or so game overview videos in our booth at Gen Con 2018, but we also snuck out of the booth a few times to eat, use the restroom, buy a game or two, and yes,...

Designer Diary: The Potion, or Finding the Right Formula

There is a whole genre of games in which all players play a card at the same time, then reveal them. Whether you played the right card or not depends entirely on which cards the other players...

BGG@SEA 2018 — Alaska!

The 2018 BGG@SEA cruise to Alaska was so popular that BGG decided to run two back-to-back one-week cruises during the dates June 22-June 29, 2018, and June 29-July 6, 2018. My husband Snoozefest...

Check Out Dozens of Games from Gen Con 2018

With a dedicated director of media — thanks, Lincoln! — we've started posting the game overview videos that we record at conventions relatively soon after the convention ends. Just one week...