Board Game News

Interview with Zyun Kusaba, Founder of Tokyo Game Market & Co-Founder of Japon Brand

We're ready to start rolling out the videos from our coverage of day 2 of Tokyo Game Market in May 2018, but I wanted to highlight this video before any others — an interview with Zyun Kusaba...

Artist Diary: High Society, or Nouveau Never Gets Old

Hi there! I'm Medusa Dollmaker, the Spanish artist who illustrated Osprey Games' 2018 edition of High Society.When Osprey Games first contacted me to create the art for this game, I was in awe....

Game Overview: Die Quacksalber von Quedlinburg, or What's Cookin', Doc?

Designer Wolfgang Warsch hit for the cycle in 2018, with four games being released on the German market in the first half of the year and with three of them being nominated for the most...

New Game Round-up: Rediscover City of Chaos, and Celebrate 42 Years of Cosmic Encounter

• Italian publisher Ares Games plans to release an updated edition of Martyn Oliver and Colin Thornton's City of Chaos, which was first released in 1996 by Monocle Games. This design is a...

Take Another Walk with Uwe Rosenberg in Spring Meadow

German publisher Edition Spielwiese debuted at SPIEL '16 with Cottage Garden, a tile-laying game reminiscent of designer Uwe Rosenberg's earlier two-player game Patchwork, but one with unique...

Latin American New Game Round-up: Beautiful Gardens and Primary Colors — and Butter Lids

Welcome to a new edition of my Latin American news. As always, it is hard to predict how many people will really care, but I am convinced that in the future, Latin American games will be...

New Game Round-up: Jetpack Joyride Heads to the Table, and WizKids Teases Another Dungeons & Dragons Board Game

• Sometimes game publishers must solicit orders from distributors while keeping them in the dark as to what they're actually ordering! The most recent example of this is the generically named...

Game Previews from the May 2018 Tokyo Game Market III: From Batavia, Cinderella Magic, BABEL, HIKTORUNE, Bravado, and BOOK MAKERS

Time for the final batch of overview videos that BGG recorded during day one of Tokyo Game Market in May 2018, starting with BABEL from designer Masakazu Takizawa and publisher Koguma Koubou.This...

Tokyo Game Market 2018 Spring: Report from Table Games in the World

Editor's note: Game Market took place in Tokyo on May 5-6, 2018, and Saigo — who translates game rules between Japanese and English and who tweets about new JP games — has translated his...

Game Previews from the May 2018 Tokyo Game Market II: Let's Make a Bus Route, Mini Wild, Bug Hunting, Mayfly, and Salmon Run

• Saashi is the designer of several stylish games from Japanese publisher Saashi & Saashi, including the well-received solo game Coffee Roaster, so when we found out that S&S would have a new...

More Lost Cities to Discover With Rivals

• At the start of 2018, German publisher KOSMOS re-launched Reiner Knizia's classic two-player card game Lost Cities with new art and graphic design, while also releasing Lost Cities: The Board...

Game Previews from the May 2018 Tokyo Game Market I: Passtally, Coffee House, Savannah Smile, Moneybags, Zogen, and Desktop HEBOCON Battle Kit

• I attended Tokyo Game Market for the fifth time in May 2018, and for this outing we stepped up our coverage to record dozens of gameplay overview videos during the two days of the event, so...

New Game Round-up: Deity Dice Battles, A Remade Mad City, and All Creatures Big and Small and Back on the Table

• Passport Game Studios normally imports and distributes titles from European publishers (thus the name "Passport"), but in Q3 2018 it plans to release the original game Fleecing Olympus, a 3-6...

Spiel des Jahres 2018 Follow-up: Why Some Games Weren't Chosen

The nominees for the Spiel des Jahres — Germany's game of the year award — were announced on Monday, May 14, 2018, and an article by SdJ jury chair Tom Felber that accompanied that...

Game Overview: Ganz schön clever, or Roll the Rainbow

The 2018 Spiel des Jahres nominations were announced on May 14, 2018, and by chance on the preceding weekend I had recorded an overview of Wolfgang Warsch's and Schmidt Spiele's Ganz schön...

Ticket to Ride Takes Manhattan; Status of Berlin Unknown

In February 2018, I tweeted the following pic from NY Toy Fair:Check out this miniature edition of Ticket to Ride from @days_of_wonder that retailers can get to demo the game. Mini-TtR? Hmm…...

Spiel des Jahres Nominations for 2018: Azul, Luxor & The Mind; Pandemic Legacy: Season 2 Takes Special Prize

Drop your pencils! Speculation time is over as the jury for the Spiel des Jahres — Germany's game of the year award — has announced nominations for its main prize as well as two related...

New Game Round-up: Hunt El Patrón in Narcos: The Board Game, and Go Underwater with Vladimír Suchý

• CMON Expo 2018 opens today, May 11, in Atlanta, Georgia, and publisher CMON Limited has announced a new title due out Q4 2018 that will be demoed during that convention: Narcos: The Board...

Episode #9 of The BoardGameGeek Show — Coverage of the Tokyo Game Market; First Impressions from Eric M. Lang

Scott, Lincoln and I are back with a new episode of The BoardGameGeek Show, and I'm somewhat amazed that this episode is here.Lincoln flew back from Tokyo on Wednesday, May 9 following his visit...

Rumor Dept.: Asmodee Potentially Maybe Up for Possible Sale

The Reuters news agency posted a short item from Harry Brumpton and Pamela Barbaglia on May 9, 2018 that suggests Asmodee is being shopped around:Quote:Asmodee Group, the French maker of board...

New Game Round-up: Traumfabrik Returns as Hollywood Golden Age, and Batman Must Protect Gotham Under Siege

• Reiner Knizia's classic auction game Traumfabrik, a.k.a. Dream Factory, returns in a new edition in 2018 from Spanish publisher Ludonova, with Hollywood Golden Age scheduled to appear in...

Z-Man Games Acquires Love Letter from Alderac

Seiji Kanai's Love Letter hit the U.S. market like a bomb in 2012, having an unexpectedly huge impact for a game that consists of only sixteen cards. As the story goes, Kanai taught the game to...

The Origins 2018 Preview Is Now Live

After a long, long day in which two of my three flights lacked decent wifi coverage, which led to little work done and many movies watched, I've now published BGG's Origins 2018 Preview.The 2018...

Tokyo Game Market • May 2018: A Short Report

I'll keep this short because time is precious at the moment: Lincoln Damerst and I have completed one day of filming at Tokyo Game Market, with seventeen video overviews recorded in a window of...

Game Preview: Menara, or Counting Colored Columns to Climb Consistently

As soon as the first picture of Oliver Richtberg's Menara was shown by publisher Zoch Verlag in early 2018, gamers around the world said, "Oh, it's like Villa Paletti", which is understandable...

Exploring The Mind; Bonus — Full Playthrough with Color Commentary by Dave Arnott

Magic isn't real. We've all seen magicians make objects disappear or float or move to a new location or be split in two, but we know that those magicians are performers who have tricked us into...

New Game Round-up: X-Wing Relaunches, Arboretum Sprouts Again, and Another Night of Nyctophobia

• I've already covered Catherine Stippell's Nyctophobia in this space, with a demo video recorded at the 2018 GAMA Trade Show showing off how this one vs. many game is played.In general, one...

Become One of the Incredibles and Save the Day — Or Not

The game industry has a long history of releasing titles that are based on movies in one way or another, and while some games are released long after the movies that inspired them — Harry...

Designer Diary: How Menara Took 23 Years to See Release

My name is Oliver Richtberg, and I have helped to release about a hundred games over many years, primarily in my role as art director of Zoch Verlag, but additionally thanks to my first and —...

New Game Round-up: Fury of Dracula Rises Again, Heartland Becomes Gunkimono, and Pax Pamir Perfected?

• U.S. publisher WizKids signed a licensing deal with UK publisher Games Workshop in October 2017 (as detailed here), and one upcoming title from that deal has now been announced — a new...