Board Game News

Widow's Walk Brings More Betrayal to the House on the Hill

Avalon Hill delivered a shock to many gamers on April 20, 2016 by announcing Widow's Walk, a huge expansion for Bruce Glassco's Betrayal at House on the Hill that will hit stores on October 14,...

New Game Round-up: A Gathering of Games, Cathala's Archipelago, and Old Favorites in New Boxes

• I've already posted about a few of the prototypes that were played at The Gathering of Friends convention held in mid-April 2016: Codenames Pictures (here), a Quadropolis mini-expansion...

New Game Round-up: Shooting Zombies on Route 666, and Bringing Kaleidos to the U.S.

• I first wrote about Martin Wallace's Route 666 in April 2015, and now here we are again one year later with the game getting an official release date from publisher Space Cowboys of Q3 2016,...

Links: Nominees for the 2016 Origins Awards, Mensa Select for 2016, and Ernest and Peterson's Game Golem

• On April 15, 2016, the Academy of Adventure Gaming Arts & Design announced the nominees for the 2016 Origins Awards, the winners of which will be revealed at the 2016 Origins Game Fair in...

Crowdfunding Round-up: One If By Land, Two If By Sea, Three If By Kickstarter

• It's an accepted fact that lolcats are the pillars of web culture, and designer Aza Chen is building a brand on that reality, having signed three of his cat-themed games for wider...

New Game Round-up: Works in Progress — Zombies Around the Dark Moon in 80 Days

• Twilight Creations has announced that it plans to release a Zombies!!! Ultimate Collector Set in 2016, with this item being a giant carrying case that can hold all fifteen Zombies!!! sets...

New Game Round-up: Revisiting Vanuatu, Joining La Cosa Nostra, and Obtaining Happiness from Tramways

• In March 2016, I noted that Quined Games planned to release a second edition of Alain Epron's Vanuatu at Spiel 2016 as part of its Master Print Series, with this edition including both the...

New Game Round-up: Dark Souls on Your Table, and Diamonds in Your Treasure Chest

• Apparently I need to start paying attention to video games as more and more of them are making their way from the consoles to the dining room table, as with the news that Steamforged Games...

New Game Round-up: Setting Up Defense Grid, Reviving Arcane Academy, and Expanding Public Service

• Forged by Geeks is a new U.S. publisher that plans to release Defense Grid: The Board Game, a board game version of the Defense Grid video game franchise, in early 2017. Here's an overview of...

New Game Round-up: Duelling on Level 99, Getting Lost in R'lyeh, and Busting Yet More Ghosts

• U.S. publisher Level 99 Games is beefing up its two-player Duelist Line in late 2016/early 2017 with the release of the Duelist Library, a collection of five new two-player-only titles. Four...

Crowdfunding Round-up: Pyramid-Wielding Dictators Raid the Chthonic Rails, Bound for the South Pole

• At NY Toy Fair 2016 in February, I ran into designer Andrew Looney, who was practically glowing while talking about Pyramid Arcade, a collection of 22 pyramid-based games created over the...

New Game Round-up: Pizza in Naples, Pictures in Codenames, Broadsides in Merchants & Marauders, and Multilingual Maids in Tanto Cuore

• In mid-March 2016, I mentioned an upcoming title in Quined Games' Master Print Series — Papà Paolo by designer Fabrice Vandenbogaerde — but knew nothing about the design beyond those...

New Game Round-up: Details on Star Trek: Ascendancy, and the Return of Zendo (Maybe)

• Gale Force Nine has finally released more information about Star Trek: Ascendancy, a design from Aaron Dill, John Kovaleski and Sean Sweigart for which we previously had only the briefest of...

New Game Round-up: Sharks, Wonders, Juggalos, and the Start of a New Season for Baseball Highlights: 2045

• Everyone always talks about this game or that one jumping the shark, but what are you going to do when the sharks start flying through the air, hunh? Try to jump them then, and they'll tear...

New Game Round-up: Roll the Dice in La Granja: No Siesta, Prepare to Flick Up Tomahawks, and Rattle, Battle on an Angry Ocean

• On Brettspiel News, Daniel Krause has posted an overview of Matthias Cramer's revised version of Glen More following test games at Ratinger Spieletagen (a weekend gaming event) in March 2016....

Crowdfunding Round-up: An April Backer and His Money Are Soon Parted

• At the Tokyo Game Market in 2015, one of the biggest hits was Yusuke Sato's TimeBomb, a hidden-role game with terrorists trying to sabotage a SWAT team's attempts to defuse a bomb. In the...

Links: Delivery Troubles, Narrative Games, and Animals on Stage

• Designer Gil Hova of Formal Ferret Games offers advice to first-time publishers — well, all publishers really — on the costs and trouble spots involved with shipping your games to backers...

New Game Round-up: Zombicide Creators Welcome Massive Darkness, Alderac Revisits Valley of the Kings, and Dice Hate Me Gets Meta

• Zombicide publishers Cool Mini Or Not and Guillotine Games have announced a new title by the designers of that game — Raphaël Guiton, Jean-Baptiste Lullien, and Nicolas Raoult — a...

New Game Round-up: Riding the Rails in Europe, Fighting in Greece, and Rummaging Through the House

• I thought that I had covered everything on Rio Grande Games' 2016 release calendar in a Feb. 2016 BGGN post, but here's another title coming down the rails: Orient Express from the...

Game Previews from GAMA Trade Show 2016: Movie Edition — The Godfather x2, Ghostbusters, Speechless, and Fast & Furious: Full Throttle

• Both Cool Mini Or Not and designer Eric M. Lang announced many upcoming games at the GAMA Trade Show in mid-March 2016, and one place where those Venn diagrams of game announcements...

New Game Round-up: Drill for Dregs, Cultivate a Garden, and Freeze in the Great Outdoors

• Spanish publisher 2Tomatoes has licensed Peak Oil from designers Tobias Gohrbandt and Heiko Günther, with the game still being available in a print-and-play format now for those who want to...

A Historical Perspective on Changes Announced by Asmodee North America

April 1, 2016 is almost here, with that date being the start of Asmodee North America's new sales policies for U.S. hobby game retailers, whether brick-or-mortar retailer, online retailer, or...

Game Previews from GAMA Trade Show 2016: Islebound, City of Iron, Aura, Victory or Death, and Quartermaster General: Alternate Histories

• Designer Ian Brody has won great acclaim for his self-pulbished Quartermaster General, and now he's taking players into battle in a whole new era in Victory or Death: The Peloponnesian War...

Links: Funding, Broadcasting, and Designing Tabletop Games

• In old news that I forgot to link to months ago, tabletop games raised nearly twice as much financial support on Kickstarter in 2015 as video games ($88 million to $46 million), according to...

Game Previews from GAMA Trade Show 2016: Back to the Future, Star Trek: Frontiers, TMNT Dice Masters, Chronicles 1: Origins, and Tesla vs. Edison: Powering Up!

• We're not quite living in the future these days given that our hoverboards don't actually hover, so designers Matt Riddle and Ben Pinchback and publisher IDW Games are taking us Back to the...

Game Previews from GAMA Trade Show 2016: Star Trek Panic, Munchkin Marvel, Mystic Vale, Guildhall Fantasy, and Love Letter Premium

• USAopoly announced Star Trek Panic in Feb. 2016 to much excitement, and one aspect of the announcement that I found interesting was the realization of how many companies have a license to...

Game Previews from GAMA Trade Show 2016: Crazy Karts, Robinson Crusoe, Fast & Fhtagn, Heart of Crown, and Naruto Shippuden: The BoardGame

BoardGameGeek broadcast game demos live for sixteen hours over two days at the 2016 GAMA Trade Show, and now we've chopped up those videos into individual segments so that you can more easily...

Eric M. Lang Rhapsodizes about Bloodborne: The Card Game from Cool Mini Or Not

• Many games were announced at the 2016 GAMA Trade Show, with the one causing the most excitement being Bloodborne: The Card Game, a card game coming from Eric M. Lang and Cool Mini Or Not....

Game Preview: Tales & Games: The Pied Piper, or Taking a Spin on the Merry-Go-Rats

Getting back into news-writing gear following the 2016 GAMA Trade Show is taking a bit of time, but thankfully my audio equipment is working once again, and I've now put together an overview of...

Crowdfunding Round-up: Victory or Death or Prison or Demolition or Robot Combat or Yakitori

• Ian Brody's Quartermaster General from his own Griggling Games has been well-received since its release in 2014, and now he's designed a spinoff game that's coming to market from PSC Games:...