Board Game News

New Game Round-up: Old Ones in AuZtralia, Explorers in the North Sea, and Sarahs in the Timeline

• I'm a sucker for time travel, so when I see a game (or a book or a movie or an opera) on the topic, I pay attention to it. The latest design spotted in this category is Sarah's Singularity, a...

Designer Diary: Frogriders, or Leapfrogging from 1687 to the Present Day

Tracking a game's origin back to 1687 is quite a feat as the game would be almost as old as what we call modern chess today. It is even rarer if we limit ourselves to games that are still played...

SPIEL '17 Preview: Bandido, or Close That Loop

Game designer, escape room expert, and director of the Brantford Games Network Scott Nicholson recently tweeted the following:My words of wisdom from my Game Design 101 class:"Your job as a...

Designer Diary: Dragon Island, or From Wyvern to Dragon Island, a Very Short 23 Years

In 1994, my first game, Wyvern, was published. It was a trading card game with a mythological dragon theme. I loved doing the research for that game and told myself I would revisit this theme...

SPIEL '17 Preview: Venice Connection, or Close That Loop

When we think about minimalist game design, we often point to Seiji Kanai's Love Letter as the source from which a thousand envelope-sized games were delivered. While to some degree that's true,...

Designer Diary: Five Fable Games, or What Was I Thinking? I Am a Stupid Idiot — So Much Work!

I am used to being involved in time-consuming and exhausting projects (and even to finishing them): I did 504, for example, and I had a five-year project called "Freitag", but...After finishing...

Crowdfunding Round-up: Consenting to Board Vasty Rockets

I haven't posted a crowdfunding round-up in weeks, perhaps even months although I'm not going to check.Let's press forward! Time to dump the inbox filled with hopeful messages from designers and...

Assistant Designer Diary: Sidereal Confluence, or TauCeti's Shadow

Editor's note: This story serves as an addendum to or parallel retelling of the events in TauCeti Deichmann's Sidereal Confluence designer diary on BGG News. —WEMIntroductionI walked over to...

Z-Man Games Invites You to Save the Netherlands in Pandemic: Rising Tide, Then Relive the History of the World

In a post earlier today, I mentioned the second edition of Kingsburg coming from Z-Man Games before the end of 2017. Turns out that's only one of many new releases on their schedule for the next...

New Game Round-up: Fight the DEA in Breaking Bad: The Board Game, Fight for Honor in Battle for Rokugan, and Fight a Familiar Enemy in Specter Ops: Broken Covenant

Now that SPIEL '17 info is mostly somewhat vaguely under control, let's run through another batch of game announcements that might be new to you and might be something I've overlooked in the past...

Designer Diary: Claim, or To Claim a Kingdom and Honor Thy Trick-Takers

The inspiration for Claim started with a love of trick-taking games and a sadness that there are very, very few for two players. My family traditionally has played a lot of card games, and...

Take to the Air in Small World: Sky Islands

If you bother to take a look around, you can usually find new places you've never been, even in familiar lands. Designer Philippe Keyaerts, in combination with co-designer T. Alex Davis, has done...

SPIEL '17 Preview: Okanagan: Valley of the Lakes, or Bidding to Be the Best in Canada

I started playing modern strategy games in the early 2000s, and one saying that sticks with me from that era is that every game is an auction game. At first glance that saying seems ridiculous,...

New Game Round-up: Doctor Who and Dirk Gently Say Hello, Android: Netrunner Gets a Reboot, and 7 Wonders Celebrates Seven Years

Having worn my SPIEL '17 blinders for several weeks now, I'm not sure what's new to people and what isn't any more, so let me run through a handful of game announcements and you can make use of...

A Brief Pause in the Action

I've been working on the SPIEL '17 Preview and little else the past few days, partly because I want to knock out as many titles as possible before sending out invitations to publishers to...

SPIEL '17 Preview: The Castles of Burgundy: The Dice Game, or Yes, I Understand That The Original Game Has Dice, But This Is Different, Okay?

I need to start this preview of The Castles of Burgundy: The Dice Game with a confession. Despite my love for almost all games created by Stefan Feld, I've yet to play The Castles of Burgundy.I...

Gen Con 50 Museum: An Homage to the Rise of U.S. Gaming

In between filming game demonstration videos at the BGG booth during Gen Con, SPIEL, and other conventions, we occasionally get to roam free in the hall and film more unusual fare: notable...

SPIEL '17 Preview Update — 500 Listings and Counting

BoardGameGeek's SPIEL '17 Preview now contains more than five hundred listings, and I'm almost caught up on all the SPIEL '17-related email in my inbox. Only a few dozen more messages to go!...

SPIEL '17 Preview: Manhattan Rises Again, Far More Colorfully Than Before

The hobby game industry has grown a lot since I got into it heavily in 2003, and each year new people come into the hobby only to discover that hundreds of fantastic games were released in years...

SPIEL '17 Preview: Amun-Re: The Card Game, or A New Kingdom for an Old Game

Reiner Knizia's Amun-Re holds a special place in my gaming heart as (I believe) it was the first game I played at Guy Stuff Gamers in Attleboro, Massachusetts in 2003. I had played a random...

New Game Round-up: Alpacas in Altiplano, Castles in Minute Realms, and Artificial Intelligence in the Future

• Orléans designer Reiner Stockhausen of dlp games has announced his new release for SPIEL '17, and you can be sure that this llama alpaca on Altiplano will be popping up in people's hands...

SPIEL '17 Preview: Lining Up for Michael Kiesling's Azul

As is often the case at Gen Con, I played almost no games during that convention, and of those games that I did play, one of the three was under embargo since it's a SPIEL release about which not...

Rosenberg Heads North, Riverboat Heads South, and Lookout Games Heads to SPIEL '17

• Rumors of an Uwe Rosenberg game set in Norway have been around for a couple of years, and now Lookout Spiele has officially announced Nusfjord as a SPIEL '17 release in October, with Mayfair...

New Game Round-up: Wheel Through Noria, Arrange Leaves in Indian Summer, and Dance with The Bottle Imp

• Following last week's busyness at Gen Con 50, I've been racing through my inbox to update our SPIEL '17 Preview, which debuted on Monday, Aug. 21 with 168 listings and which now features...

New Game Round-up: Treats from Renegade, Beasts from Bézier, and Glorious Feats from Ninja Division

• After a wildly successful Gen Con (not to mention a fine 2017 overall), U.S. publisher Renegade Game Studios is going to close out the year as one closes out a meal — with dessert!...

Ticket to Ride Invites You to Paint Tracks in France and Claim Land in the Old West

Many publishers had surprise game announcements at Gen Con 50, with one of those announcements being the revelation of Ticket to Ride Map Collection: Volume 6 – France & Old West from designer...

SPIEL '17 Preview Now Live

BoardGameGeek's SPIEL '17 Preview is now live! For those who didn't immediately leave to go look at it, a few notes about the preview:• Currently the SPIEL '17 Preview has "only" 168 titles on...

New Game Round-up: Gen Con 50 Edition — Clank! In! Space!, Stuffed Fables, Sid Meier's Civilization: A New Dawn, and Twilight Imperium (Fourth Edition)

• Lots of game announcements have been coming forth in the week prior to Gen Con 50. Well, no more than normal actually, but the games being revealed (1) tend to be of higher profile and (2)...

Designer Diary: Wasteland Express Delivery Service, or Roaming Across a Post-Apocalyptic World and Trying Not to Die

"Wasteland Express Delivery Service includes an emergent narrative story that takes place interactively over the course of eight games. Alternatively, players can dive in with a randomly...

Designer Diary: Ex Libris, or Books, Brains and Building Things

OH, HI BGG! I'm Adam P. McIver. You may know me from the art/graphic design work I've done on the smattering of games flashing in my GIF-y little avatar over there on the left, or you may...