Board Game News

SPIEL '17 Preview: Origami, or Eric Folds Five Families

I love card games. I'd be fine with never playing a board game again as long as I had card games available to me. Each time you pick up a hand of cards, it's like opening a present. You have some...

Designer Diary: Origami

The idea for Origami started a couple of years ago, but I'm not able to say which arrived first between the game mechanism and the setting. In my memories, it was always about origami and with...

Publisher Diary: ¡Adios Calavera!, or Days of the Dead Are Different in Mexico

Gauck (r)Joachim Gauck, who served as President of Germany from March 2012 to March 2017, has a strong connection to Martin Luther. After all, long before he became President, Gauck served as a...

Designer Diary: HUNGER: The Show

Hello, everyone! We at PHALANX fell in love with HUNGER: The Show from the first play. This fast-paced family/filler game with a catchy story and rich player interaction debuted at the UK Games...

Printing Your SPIEL '17 Picks

BGG's SPIEL '17 Preview is nearing one thousand listings, and given that I'll be updating the preview for one more week — and that my inbox has recently been hit with plenty of late submissions...

SPIEL '17 Preview: HATSUDEN, or Energizing Found Cities

I try to avoid reading or watching reviews of games that I want to play. I prefer to approach such a game with a blank slate — beyond whatever info or description inspired me to want to play...

Designer Diary: Launching the Exodus Fleet

Exodus Fleet is my baby. It's the first real game I designed, and I absolutely love it.Now, of course, I've already lied. Exodus Fleet wasn't really my first game. Robbery! was. (Yes, it had an...

SPIEL '17 Preview: Arkham Noir: Case #1 – The Witch Cult Murders, or Crafting a Cthulhu-Free Case

H.P. Lovecraft's work has been stripmined repeatedly by game designers and publishers around the world, and why not since the stories are rich with atmosphere, can be applied to numerous types of...

Publisher Diary: Nomads, or From Jeju to Luma

The BeginningIn June 2016, Cédric, Ian, and I — the three who comprise the Ludonaute team — first played Jeju Island, a game published by our Korean partner Happy Baobab in 2015.We...

SPIEL '17 Preview: Sweet Honey, Bee Mine!, or Buzzing Down Your Opponents

Sweet Honey, Bee Mine! from designer Katsuya Kitano and publisher New Board Game Party plays out like an aggressive, in-your-face version of Thorsten Gimmler's classic card game No Thanks!In most...

Designer Diary: Warriors of Jogu, or Inspired by an Accident

Some things happen through inspiration; some things happen by accident. Warriors of Jogu, my second game design, is a combination of both. Inspired by Liar's Dice and Poker, the core idea for the...

SPIEL '17 Preview: King of the Dice, or Rolling and Rueing

"New games are for new gamers." I've said this before, and I'll say it again. In fact, I just did.What do I mean by this? Hundreds of new games hit the market each year. Our SPIEL '17 Preview,...

Designer Diary: Panic Mansion, or Waiter, There's a Rolling Eye in My Haunted House

Panic Mansion — a big box design from me, Asger, and Blue Orange Games — is debuting at SPIEL in October 2017. We are very proud of it and hope you will have as much fun with the game as we...

SPIEL '17 Preview: Sakura Hunt, or Between Our Two Lives There Is Also the Life of the Cherry Blossom

I've traveled to Japan a few times to cover Tokyo Game Market, but I've yet to see the annual cherry blossoms since they typically bloom in early April in Tokyo and I show up in May. (I also...

Designer Diary: Dragon Castle, or How to Do Proper Justice to Your Mechanisms

Here in the western part of the world, the game called "Mahjong" we're mostly familiar with is the solitaire variant. This label is since it doesn't have anything to do with the real traditional...

Crowdfunding Round-up: The 7th Sunset Panic Over Evil Potato Trench

• Hard to believe that only five months have passed since Gloomhaven raised nearly $4 million on Kickstarter, but here we are in October 2017 with another giant, heavily immersive adventure...

SPIEL '17 Preview: Cosmogenesis, or Building Blocks for a New, Better Solar System

Are you ready to create a solar system? A solar system that includes the board game Cosmogenesis from Yves Tourigny and Ludonova, a game in which you create a solar system?While I wish this level...

Designer Diary: Liberatores, or The True Nature of Games with a Traitor

Hello, I'm Yan Yegorov, and here are my designer notes on the board game Liberatores: The Conspiracy to Liberate Rome.During the past few years, I've designed several games. They are based mostly...

New Game Round-up: Devil Pig Readies Heroes of Black Reach, Renegade Revisits the North Sea, and Eurydice Explores Zombology

• In May 2017, I posted brief news of a deal between Devil Pig Games and Games Workshop to release a game line in the Warhammer 40,000 universe that makes use of DPG's "Heroes System" from...

Designer Diary: Peak Oil, or From Published Game to Prototype PnP

Heiko: To call this a diary is funny at best. Sounds like we meticulously took notes and photographs something like years ago because, yes, we knew, deep in our hearts, and as a fact cold and...

SPIEL '17 Preview: TimeBomb Evolution, or Time for a Rainbow-Colored Rematch

Whenever a sequel appears for a successful game, it is almost always more complicated than the original title. Catan, Carcassonne, Ticket to Ride, and Pandemic all have many examples of this...

Designer Diary: A Tale of Pirates, or Isn't Turn-Based Real-Time Play an Oxymoron?

I remember exactly when the first seed of inspiration for what eventually became A Tale of Pirates was planted. It was Easter 2012, and I had attended the Danish board and role-playing game...

SPIEL '17 Preview: Herbalism, or Guess for Success

Taiwanese publisher EmperorS4 has six games and one expansion on its SPIEL '17 release calendar, and after the success of Hanamikoji in 2016, which I previewed on BGG News, I'll be looking...

Designer Diary: Kaiju Incorporated, or A Kaiju By Any Other Name Would Be a Cable Car

The Thing I Miss Most Is My Memory...I ThinkFair warning that this designer diary may be a little vague in spots. Once in a while, a game of mine has such a long and convoluted path to...

SPIEL '17 Preview: Minute Realms, or A City-Builder By Any Other Name...

Minute Realms from Stefano Castelli and dV Giochi is billed as "the most compact city-building game ever", but I think that statement does a disservice to the game because if you're like me, you...

SPIEL '17 Preview: Multiple, or Saved by Zero

Many games from amateur Japanese designers seem to be born from the notion of taking an idea and saying, "Can we make a game out of that?" Then they do it. The quality of the games can be all...

Designer Diary: 250+ Plays of Iron Curtain, or How to Measure Replayability

Iron Curtain is a short and brutal microgame cramped with tough decisions in a 20- to 30-minute time frame. You play as the U.S. or the Soviet Union, map out the Iron Curtain to your advantage,...

SPIEL '17 Preview: Iquazú, or Majorities on the Falls

German publisher HABA kicked off its family game line in 2015 with Adventure Land, Spookies, and Rüdiger Dorn's Karuba, which went on to pick up a Spiel des Jahres nomination in 2016.The company...

Artist Diary: Lisboa, or "That Game Is Too Blue!"

Lisboa is my third collaboration with Vital Lacerda and Eagle-Gryphon Games, following The Gallerist and Vinhos Deluxe Edition.However, it was actually the first game I worked on for Vital....

SPIEL '17 Preview: Azul, or Tiling Up Your Hopes and Dreams

I've already posted an overview of Michael Kiesling's Azul, which Plan B Games will debut at SPIEL '17 in October, but now I've played the game many more times since then — ten total on a...