Board Game News

SPIEL 2016 VI: Codenames: Pictures, Adrenaline, Alchemists: The King's Golem, Lorenzo il Magnifico, & Martians: A Story of Civilization

 • We've already featured Czech Games Edition's Codenames: Pictures in this space a number of times, but when designer Vlaada Chvátil from Czech Games Edition is coming to your booth at...

SPIEL 2016 V: Escape from Colditz, Expedition, X nimmt!, Mino & Tauri, and Bohnanza, Bohnedikt & Bohnanza: Das Duell

• Now continuing with the SPIEL 2016 demonstration videos, we have Osprey Games with an updated version of the 1973 title Escape from Colditz, co-designed by someone who actually escaped from...

Game Overview: Costa Rica, or Central American Hexploration with Bonus Box Shrinking

I tend to love "press your luck" games, especially ones in which all the players are collectively pressing their luck. You're all in the same boat — at least at the start of the game — but as...

Crowdfunding Round-up: Exploring Video Dungeons for Resources, Monsters and Baby Defenses

• My find of SPIEL 2016 turned out to be a title that wasn't at the show and shouldn't have been visible to anyone — but a publisher just happened to place an advance English-language version...

SPIEL 2016 IV: Key to the City: London, Great Western Trail, Jórvík, Sola Fide: The Reformation, & La Granja: The Dice Game – No Siesta!

• Richard Breese has a steady one-game-a-year release pattern now with his R&D Games, and for SPIEL 2016 he and co-designer Sebastian Bleasdale took their 2012 design Keyflower and transformed...

SPIEL 2016 III: Power Grid: The Card Game, Fabled Fruit, Fuji Flush, Undercover, & Guilds of London

• Designer Friedemann Friese of 2F-Spiele had a packed SPIEL 2016, with two titles receiving a lot of buzz and a third being a light filler that will probably be ignored by gamers but sell more...

New Game Round-up: Building Forests, Fighting Rats, Drinking Randomly, & Avoiding Death

• We're ten days out from the end of SPIEL 2016, so it's time to start thinking about Tokyo Game Market in December 2016, right?Okay, you might not be thinking about that show, but I am, and...

SPIEL 2016 II: The Matt Leacock Show — Chariot Race, Thunderbirds: The Hood, Pandemic Iberia, and Pandemic: The Cure – Experimental Meds

• Designer Matt Leacock had four different releases at SPIEL 2016, so instead of trying to arrange demo times with the three publishers involved, we just arranged time with him and let him...

New Game Round-up: Playing with Noir, Being the Law, Driving Ogres, and Telling Stories

• In the first half of 2017, Upper Deck Entertainment will release Legendary: Noir, a 100-card expansion for the Legendary deck-building game set in the Marvel Comics universe, with this...

SPIEL 2016 I: Colony, New York Slice, Capital, Mea Culpa, Meeple War & Phalanxx

• For reasons unknown to me, Bézier Games typically kicks off our game demonstration livestream at SPIEL, and this was the case once again at SPIEL 2016, with Ted Alspach showing off the...

Designer Diary: Lotus, or Everything Blooms in Time

Hi there! We are Jordan and Mandy Goddard. Yep, you guessed it — we are married, and we design games together. We love getting the chance to work on projects together in our free time, and what...

WizKids and Lookout Games to Partner on Agricola Mini-Expansions

WizKids has announced a licensing partnership with Lookout Games for the publication of six Agricola Upgrade Kits in 2017, with each of these mini-expansions containing "five highly detailed...

F2Z Entertainment Is Now Asmodée Canada

In July 2016, the Asmodee Group — which is owned by French investment company Eurazeo — announced that it had entered into exclusive discussions to acquire F2Z Entertainment Inc., the...

Yarrington Responds to Shlasinger's Lawsuit over Fraud and Breach of Contract

In June 2016, Zev Shlasinger and Paul Gerardi filed suit against Dan Yarrington and Myriad Games, Yarrington's game retail operation in New Hampshire, alleging that Yarrington committed "Fraud...

Links: SPIEL 2016 Attendance, AEG Channels, & Brick-and-Mortar Pyramids

• Time to catch up on industry news both recent and aged, some of which has been sitting in the inbox for months waiting for me to put aside SPIEL-related info — which makes it somewhat...

New Game Round-up: Feeding Dingos, Hunting Spies, Detecting Batman, & Mastering Orion

More news and announcements that slipped through the cracks while I focused on SPIEL 2016:• Upper Deck Entertainment plans to release Mike Elliott's The Dingo Ate The Baby in March 2017, with...

New Game Round-up: Distributing Citadels, Robbing Trains, and Eating Buckets

Time to catch up on yet more game announcements that piled up in the inbox, both while I was at SPIEL 2016 and in the preceding weeks. Hard to keep up with everything when the biggest event of...

Crowdfunding Round-up: Looking Ahead to Mid-2017 Releases

Time to catch up on a few of the many things not related to SPIEL 2016 that have happened in the past few weeks, including more crowdfunding campaigns than a person could possibly support unless...

LudiCreations, R&R Games Robbed at SPIEL 2016; Steal This Game Launched in Response

At SPIEL 2016, at least two publishers had their cashbox swiped near the end of the day on Saturday, the busiest day of the fair.Frank DiLorenzo from R&R Games, located in Hall 1 of the Messe...

Designer Diary: From Quiet Shores to Troubled Whirlpools: The Making of Nautilion

Ancon — a charming city with a lake surrounded by verdant hills, a pleasant marina, a beautiful opera house…In winter when tourism is dormant, its streets are empty and fog rises from the...

Designer Diary: Motion Pictures: Movies Out of Cardboard, or From One Art to Another

One of the first things they taught us in film school was that when writing a script, you need to write about what you know. Although we didn't agreed with that opinion, inevitably we did write...

Portal Games Unearths Alien Artifacts, Expansions for Multiple Titles

Portal Games plans to debut its new edition of Robinson Crusoe at SPIEL 2016, along with expansions for Neuroshima Hex! and Imperial Settlers, but hey, why stop there? Let's announce even...

From Tarts to Pizza with New York Slice

Not content to have new games for sale at SPIEL 2016, a few publishers have also decided to announce upcoming titles at this game convention in Essen, such as Bézier Games with New York Slice, a...

Game Preview: SPIEL 2016 — Hanamikoji, or Give It Away, Give It Away, Give It Away Now

For my final pre-SPIEL 2016 preview, let's check out the two-player game Hanamikoji from Kota Nakayama, first released by Japanese publisher Takamagahara in 2013 as 21 Flowers (with the cards...

Game Preview: SPIEL 2016 — Inis, or Big Box Celtic Flair

At SPIEL 2015, I recorded an overview of Histrio with Bruno Cathala, who said that his co-designer on that game — Christian Martinez — was doing great things and going to be a big name in the...

Tokyo Game Market • May 2016 IV/SPIEL 2016 Preview: Guns & Steel: Renaissance, PaiMiahhh, and Crabs!

• I'm sometimes amazed by how much material I write and record but don't publish —not intentionally, mind you. I certainly didn't mean to record a bunch of videos at Tokyo Game Market in May...

Game Preview: SPIEL 2016 — Fruit Spy, or A Lion's Reach Should Exceed Its Grasp

I hadn't noticed earlier, but one designer name mostly missing from the SPIEL 2016 Preview is Reiner Knizia, with frequent publishing partner Ravensburger having only a handful of new titles due...

Designer Diary: Behind the Throne

In the present day, new movies, comics, books, video and board games are constantly struggling for our free time. New products come out every day, and many of them are so extraordinary that you...

Game Preview: SPIEL 2016 — Tallinn, or Making the Most of a Medieval City

Heike and Stefan Risthaus started OSTIA Spiele in 2011 to release their own games and expansions, and they've issued one or two titles annually, with each of those designs usually having multiple...

Designer Diary: Steel Arena: Friday Night Robot Fight, or Giant Battle Robots and Game Balance

In this designer diary, I'll cover my experience of balancing a design using concrete examples from my new game Steel Arena: Friday Night Robot Fight. Also, there will be some words about what...