Board Game News

Flick Discs to Score in Carrooka and Not Score in Table Golf Association

• While scanning a wrap-up of the 2021 UK Games Expo that I'd saved in my non-stop quest for info on new games, I ran across mention of Carrooka, a dexterity game handmade by designer Jack...

Batman Enters the Brave and the Bold World of Munchkin

U.S. publisher Steve Jackson Games has announced yet another edition of the company's best-selling game, Munchkin, which would not be a surprise given that SJG releases a new Munchkin item...

Relive German History in Oranienburger Kanal and Weimar: The Fight for Democracy

• In July 2021, German publisher Spielworxx teased a mid-2022 release from designer Uwe Rosenberg — and somehow I missed the announcement of this game in December 2021. For shame...In any...

Designer Diary: Dice Miner

By Joshua DeBonis and Nikola RisteskiWe're a team of designers who met through a playtesting group in NYC that Josh organized and Niko would often host. We started hanging out after work, and...

Game Overviews: Blokus Shuffle: UNO Edition and UNO: All Wild!

As I noted in a February 2021 post, the card game UNO celebrated its 50th anniversary in 2021, and to mark the occasion publisher Mattel planned to release multiple versions of the game...

Create Your Own Vietnam War Stories with Purple Haze

In late January 2022, UK-based publisher PHALANX launched a crowdfunding campaign on Gamefound for Bernard Grzybowski's Purple Haze, a unique, cooperative, story-driven campaign game based on the...

Rio Grande Games to Launch Space Station Phoenix in April 2022

Starting with 2007's Race for the Galaxy and its multiple expansions and spinoffs, U.S. publisher Rio Grande Games seems to have developed a solid niche for games about space exploration and...

Take to the Seas Again in Libertalia: Winds of Galecrest

In Q2 2022, U.S. publisher Stonemaier Games will release Libertalia: Winds of Galecrest, a new version of Paolo Mori's 2012 game Libertalia from Marabunta.Let's start with a brief description of...

Tsumptuous Tsuro Tseased by Calliope Games

Tom McMurchie's path-building survival game Tsuro debuted in 2005 from U.S. publisher WizKids, then it was picked up in 2009 by Calliope Games and it's remained in print ever since. Three...

Thumbs for the Memories

I hope you'll indulge a somewhat selfish post as today I'm going to forgo my usual policy of not talking about myself to celebrate something that's taken more than a decade to achieve, something...

Designer Diary: Shinkansen, or The Bullet Train that Travelled Across a Pandemic

Like many of our prototypes and published games, Shinkansen: Zero Kei was born with a trip. You cannot travel to Japan and not to ride the Shinkansen — and if you ride the Shinkansen, it is not...

Sit Down to Throw Fingers, Collect Bulbs, and Divine Where Crops Go

Belgian publisher Sit Down! has a diverse range of games on its release calendar for 2022, starting with Olivier Mahy's Dexterity Jane, which had 250 copies available at SPIEL '21 and will be on...

From Screen to Table with Far Cry: Beyond, Deep Rock Galactic, and Under Night In-Birth

• In July 2021, French publisher Funforge teased a collaboration with Ubisoft on "a major project coming end of 2021". In September 2021, Funforge revealed the name of the project — Far Cry:...

KOSMOS' U.S. Line-Up for 2022: Karak, Switch & Signal, and Another Handful of Exits

Thames & Kosmos, the U.S. branch of German publisher KOSMOS, has released its catalog of 2022 game releases, and as you might expect those upcoming titles are English-language versions of games...

Prevent Books from Being Destroyed by the Illiterati

Given the news of Art Spiegelman's Pulitzer-Prize-winning graphic novel Maus being banned by a Tennessee school district, this game announcement seems timely.In 2022, U.S. publisher Gap Closer...

Command Cute Robots in Quirky Circuits: Penny & Gizmo's Snow Day

Have you been looking for more opportunities to tell robots what to do?If so, you're in luck as Quirky Circuits: Penny & Gizmo's Snow Day is coming from Nikki Valens and Plaid Hat Games. This...

Experience the Beginning of the Vietnam War, Explore British Counterinsurgency, and Shape Urban Life in the South Bronx

• It's probably no surprise that I'm a big fan of Volko Runke and GMT Games' COIN series, especially if you read my post in January 2021 covering VPJ Arponen's All Bridges Burning, the first...

Dominion: Seaside to See Second Edition in April 2022

In 2016, U.S. publisher Rio Grande Games released second editions of Donald X. Vaccarino's Dominion and Dominion: Intrigue, each of which replaced some of the original Kingdom cards in those sets...

As d'Or Nominees for 2022

The Festival International des Jeux, held annually in Cannes, France at the end of February, has announced the nominees for the 2022 As d'Or — France's game of the year award.For 2022, the...

Break Out the Peanuts for Blaseball: The Card Game, and Cast a Spell with Similo

• Are you familiar with Blaseball? If not, here's a description of this "baseball simulation horror game" courtesy of Wikipedia:Quote:Blaseball centers on an absurdist simulation of baseball,...

Make Deals with Yak to Build Stone Towers

Publisher Pretzel Games doesn't release games frequently, but when it does, those titles tend to be a huge production. Yak, a design from Michael Luu for 2-4 players, fits this model perfectly. I...

Reignite Fire Tower with Rising Flames

Fire Tower is a quick-playing, card-driven, abstract strategy game for 2-4 players from designers Samuel Bryant and Gwen Ruelle. As the debut release from Runaway Parade Games, Fire Tower hit the...

Designer Diary: Familiar Tales

Hello, everyone! My name is Jerry Hawthorne from Plaid Hat Games. Our newest adventure game, Familiar Tales, will debut in Australia on January 26, 2022, and we're anticipating that it will...

RuneScape Coming to Tabletop from Steamforged Games

UK board game publisher Steamforged Games is working with UK video game developer Jagex to bring the 21-year-old MMORG RuneScape to tabletops in two different forms: a board game and a "tabletop...

Game Overviews: My Bad Farm Shop Company, or Building Spaces on Your Base

Despite their looks, Rüdiger Dorn's My Farm Shop from Pegasus Spiele and Bad Company from Kenneth Minde, Eilif Svensson, Kristian Amundsen Østby, and Aporta Games feel like close cousins, with...

Escape the Wandering Towers, and Push People Around

As far as I can tell, German publisher ABACUSSPIELE has only one new title in its catalog for the first half of 2022 — a family game from the famed design team of Wolfgang Kramer and Michael...

Become a Gotham City Detective in Batman: Everybody Lies

To follow up my earlier post about narrative games in which you solve mysteries, Polish publisher Portal Games has announced a deal with Warner Bros. Consumer Products, DC, and Genuine...

No Release from More Escape Room Games

Have we reached peak "escape room game" yet? Absolutely not, with the prime evidence for the continuation of this trend being KOSMOS' sales report of over 14 million games in its Exit: The Game...

Pop Bubbles, Make Soup, Toss Garlic, and Return to Isla Nublar

I've already covered two new titles coming from German publisher Schmidt Spiele in the first half of 2022: Auch schon clever and Mit Quacks & Co. nach Quedlinburg, both from designer Wolfgang...

Rediscover Amun-Re, Santa's Workshop, and Reiner Knizia's Odd Socks

• One of the first games I played when I dove deep into hobby games in 2003 was Reiner Knizia's Amun-Re. I was already familiar with Lost Cities, but like many people I connected that game more...