Board Game News

Preview of the 2016 Previews: Origins, Gen Con, Dice Con and Spiel

With May more than halfway over, here's a look ahead at the summer and autumn convention schedule to let you know when to expect convention previews that highlight the new games that will be...

Designer Diary: Branching Out from Kigi to Kodama

Hello, hello! I'm Daniel Solis. This is the story of how I designed and self-published the tree-growing card game Kigi, which was later adapted into Kodama: The Tree Spirits by Action Phase...

New nestorgames Round-up: Melting Chess, Ouroboros, Iqishiqi, Ni-Ju, and Fano330-R-Morris

• I haven't covered titles from Spanish publisher nestorgames in a while, yet owner Néstor Romeral Andrés keeps kicking out one interesting title after another, so let's check out a bunch of...

Crowdfunding Round-up: Escapism Is What the Doctor Ordered

• The island of Vanuatu is a tropical paradise, but Alain Epron’s game of the same name has been nothing but heartburn for many folks who backed ill-fated IndieGoGo and Ulule campaigns in...

Designer Diary: Dice Heist, or Art and Other Accidents

In 2014 we — that is, Brett Gilbert and Trevor Benjamin — began working on a push-your-luck dice and card game. Dice Heist is not that game.In that other game, players took turns making a run...

Game Overview: Brix, or Complementary Colors Fight for Dominance

I posted an overview video of Brix from Charles Chevallier, Thierry Denoual, and Blue Orange Games in late March 2016, then I headed off on vacation without posting it in this space.Now that I am...

Designer Diary: Tramways, or a New Approach to Picking Things Up and Delivering Them

I have played Age of Steam more than two hundred times, and I really like the simplicity of this game. You just have to connect hexes of the right colors and move cubes of the same colors to...

"Full Distributor Support" for Privateer Press' "Free Rider Policy"

At the end of March 2016, Privateer Press announced a new sales policy aimed at eliminating "free riders", the company's term for deep discount online retailers. From an ICv2 article on the...

New Game Round-up: Revisiting the Renaissance, and Assassinating Hitler (But Not in the Same Game)

• Sierra Madre Games has already placed an October 2016 release date on Bios: Genesis, as noted on BGG News in April 2016, and now SMG has two other titles due out in time for Spiel 2016 in...

Designer Diary: ...and then, we held hands.

The following diary is from the perspective of designers Yannick Massa and Dave Chircop, with the author of each section signing off at the end.The JamSo we were asked to write a diary for the...

Stronghold Games Offers a New Kraftwagen Model, Deploys The Fog of War

Stronghold Games has now provided more details on two titles previously teased in April 2016.Matthias Cramer's Kraftwagen: V6 Edition is an updated version of his 2015 release Kraftwagen from ADC...

Designer Diary: Back to the Future and The Goonies, or The Fleeples Go to Hollywood!

Hello, Ben Pinchback here once again writing the main sections of a designer diary, while Matt Riddle will chip in his comments in green. We all know from his mysterious absence in writing...

Crowdfunding Round-up: Post-Apocalyptic Fundraising for Fun and Profit

Editor's note: Due to my travel plans, I'm writing this crowdfunding round-up far in advance of its May 8, 2016 publication date. Thus, some of the projects mentioned below might have been...

Designer Diary: Tetrarchia, or The Four Swords of Rome

By the end of the III century BC, the Roman consul Marcus Claudius Marcellus was nicknamed "The Sword of Rome" for his exploits in the wars against the Gauls and the Carthaginians.Five centuries...

Game Preview: Animals on Board, or Every Living Thing of All Flesh, You Shall Bring One or At Minimum Three of Every Kind into the Ark

Ralf zur Linde and Wolfgang Sentker's Animals on Board is built on a cheeky premise: You and others are populating an ark with animals during the time of Noah, but due to Noah's previously agreed...

Designer Diary: FUSE, or This Diary Will Self-Destruct After 10 Thumbs

One way that I think up new game ideas and refine game designs is to picture people playing a game and having fun. I try to picture different elements of the game and get a vague idea of what...

Links: Wizards of the Coast Gets Sued, Refugees Get Games, and Carcassonne Gets Tabled

• Four judges of Magic: The Gathering tournaments have sued Magic publisher Wizards of the Coast in United States District Court as they claim that they have been employed as judges by WotC but...

Thieves Join Five Tribes, and SeaFall Prepares to Set Sail

• Bruno Cathala's Five Tribes debuted at Gen Con 2014, then The Artisans of Naqala expansion joined the game at Gen Con 2015.For Gen Con 2016, publisher Days of Wonder will debut a...

Designer Diary: 13 Days: The Cuban Missile Crisis, or Blowing Up the World, One Card at a Time

My name is Asger Sams Granerud and with Daniel Skjold Pedersen, we are the designers of 13 Days: The Cuban Missile Crisis. We want to share the journey of our game from idea, through development,...

The Complaints in Spain Stay Mainly in Pandemic Iberia

As I noted in April 2016, Z-Man Games plans to hold the 2016 Pandemic Survival World Championship in Barcelona, Spain, and in an entirely not coincidental turn of events, Z-Man will also release...

Game Overview: ButaBabel, or Rising to the Occasion

Since I'm on my way to Japan at the moment to cover Tokyo Game Market, I thought it appropriate to cover one of the three games that I managed to acquire from the Kobe Game Market that took place...

On the Road Again...

I'm headed to the Tokyo Game Market once again, with this show taking place on May 5, 2016. I've created a GeekList preview to highlight some of the titles that will debut at that show or be...

Crowdfunding Round-up: All's Fair in Food and War

• Thunderworks Games is adding a third title to its catalog with Blend Off!, a real-time dice game from designer Scot Eaton. This is Scot’s first published design, but you may know him for...

Links: Making a Fortune While Going Broke, Crowdfunding as Art, and the 2016 Dice Tower Award Nominees

• The old joke goes: How do you make a small fortune in the game industry? Start with a large fortune, then try to publish a game. Note that this same joke is told about the wine industry, real...

Stonemaier Games Founds a Village with Charterstone

For the most part, legacy games have presented players with extreme situations — global warfare, global pandemics, the dawning of civilization, a shortage of furry costumes — but designer...

New Game Round-up: Agricola Unwrapped, From Stars to Heroes, and a Double Dose of Adventure Time

• I'm late to the party on this announcement, but White Wizard Games plans to launch a Kickstarter project "soon" for Hero Realms, a fantasy-themed deck-building game that's based on their own...

New Game Round-up: Scott Almes Prepares Heroes of Land, Air & Sea, and Strawberry Studio Offers Three Wishes

• Scott Almes and Gamelyn Games have created recurrent tiny, epic waves in the game industry that swell higher and higher each year, but the newest project by this pair fits only one of those...

New Game Round-up: Rise from Amino Acids in Bios: Genesis, Flick Others to Death in Catacombs and Castles, & Prepare to Save Andor

• Phil Eklund's Bios: Genesis from Sierra Madre Games has been listed in the BGG database since the start of 2012, but only now does the game have a release date attached to it — October 2016...

Crowdfunding Round-up: Ancient Games with Modern Funding

• For star power in a crowdfunded game this week, let's start with Tak, an abstract strategy game that novelist Patrick Rothfuss introduced as an ancient design in the book The Wise Man's Fear...

Links: Tabletop Season 4, Gaming in the Bookstore, and More Hasbro-Inspired Crowdfunding

• Wil Wheaton has announced the game line-up for the fourth season of Tabletop, an online series showing games being played by Wheaton and others. The titles being featured include Eldritch...