Board Game News

New Game Round-up: Collect All the Cats in Here, Kitty, Kitty! & Expansions in the Works for Deus and Hostage Negotiator

• On National Cat Day in the U.S. — Oct. 29! Mark your calendars for next year! — Fireside Games announced Here, Kitty, Kitty! from Kris McCardel Ware for release in Q2 2016. Here's an...

Spiel 2015 XVI: Carson City, Haspelknecht, Xanadú, Treasure Hunter, Liguria, Steampunk Rally & Dungeon Saga: Dwarf King's Quest

• Dutch publisher Quined Games racked up a ton of support on Kickstarter for Carson City: Big Box, a deluxe version of Xavier Georges' Carson City that included the base game, all previous...

Spiel 2015 XV: Das Geheimnis der Zauberer, Among Nobles, Achaia, Billionaire Banshee, Karnivore Koala & PitRush

• For the past couple of years, the German branch of Mattel has offered a few...more involved...game designs than you'd expect based on its publication history, including the 2013 Kinderspiel...

New Game Round-up: Enter the Colosseum Again, Prepare for The Dresden Files & Become a Particle Accelerator

• Tasty Minstrel Games has unveiled the cover of its "Emperor's Edition" of Colosseum from Wolfgang Kramer and Marcus Lübke, which is heading to Kickstarter for funding since, in the...

Spiel 2015 XIV: Codenames, Tash-Kalar: Nethervoid, Through the Ages: A New Story of Civilization, Posthuman & The King Is Dead

• Czech Games Edition dropped a number of titles on visitors to Spiel 2015, with the most anticipated being the new edition of Vlaada Chvátil's Through the Ages, now subtitled "A New Story of...

Spiel 2015 XIII: Pandemic Legacy, Castellion, Skyliners, Carcassonne: Over Hill and Dale, Carcassonne: Star Wars & Flick 'em Up! Stallion Canyon

• A glance at the Pandemic Legacy page is jarring as the game sports a 9.02 rating after nearly seven hundred ratings. Could it really be that good?Having played only through May so far (5-2!),...

Spiel 2015 XII: They Came from Italy — Nippon, Signorie, Potion Explosion, Odyssey: Wrath of Poseidon & Quickpick: Island of Monster Masks

• Given the reception that Panamax received in 2014, it's no surprise that people have been eager to see what designers Paulo Soledade and Nuno Bizarro Sentieiro have achieved in Nippon, which...

Spiel 2015 XI: Black Hat, Race to the North Pole, Tiny Robots, Perdition's Mouth: Abyssal Rift, Rome: Rise to Power, Prime Time & City Council: Deluxe Edition

• Black Hat from designers Thomas Klausner and Timo Multamäki and publisher Dragon Dawn Productions features a giant black hat on the cover, but ideally all of the circuitry also present clues...

Game Preview: Four Gods, or Building Blocks of New Worlds

Despite being at Spiel for five days each year and being surrounded by hundreds of games new and old, I play only a handful of games in Essen, and the games that I do play tend to be prototypes...

Spiel 2015 X: Pegasus Spiele — Mega Civilization, Pi mal Pflaumen, OctoDice, Mondo: Der rasante Legespaß, Mmm! & Expansions for Istanbul, Camel Up and Port Royal

• The biggest game at Spiel 2015 by almost any measure that you can imagine was Mega Civilization from designers Flo de Haan and John Rodriguez and publisher 999 Games, with Pegasus Spiele...

Spiel 2015 IX: Grand Austria Hotel, Hengist, SteamRollers, Otter Nonsense, Argo & Dojo Kun

• Going in to Spiel 2015, gamers undoubtedly had high expectations for Grand Austria Hotel, the annual big box title from Lookout Games, given that the designers are Virginio Gigli — part of...

New Game Round-up: Kung Fu Panda, Siege of the Citadel & OMG Royal Goods!

• During Spiel 2015, Modiphius Entertainment announced two upcoming releases for 2016, and while I tweeted about them at the time — at least I think I did; it's hard to recall everything from...

Spiel 2015 VIII: Stronghold, Neuroshima: Convoy, Legacy: Five Families, Theseus: The Dark Orbit – Hunters and More from Portal Games

• Portal Games debuted three titles at Gen Con 2015 — but not content to leave it at that, the Polish publisher then went on to introduce four new titles at Spiel 2015, with two items being...

Crowdfunding Round-up: There's a New Grim Reaper in Town

(Editor's note: My apologies to Dustin, but I've been on the road since Spiel 2015, so I wasn't able to publish this post on Sunday, Oct. 18 as scheduled. I've updated some of the listings to...

Spiel 2015 VII: Antarctica, CVlizations, Motto, KLASK, Game of Trains, Sly Dice and Voilà!

• German publisher Argentum Verlag releases one game — usually something largely tactical — annually, and for Spiel 2015 that title is Antarctica from designer Charles Chevallier, who...

Gale Force Nine to Release Multiple Doctor Who Games Starting in 2016

Gale Force Nine has a reputation for strong game designs built to take advantage of an existing media property, as with its games based on Spartacus, Sons of Anarchy and Firefly.Now GF9 has...

Spiel 2015 VI: Ships, Sifaka, Insekten Hotel, Operation: Kindergarten, [microfilms], Pocket Imperium & KUNE v LAKIA

• In addition to having the second edition of A Study in Emerald at Spiel 2015, designer/publisher Martin Wallace of Treefrog Games had the new game Ships, and while we strongly encouraged all...

Spiel 2015 V: A Game of Gnomes, G.Nome, Coup: Guatemala 1954 – Anarchy, Mysterium Expansion, Tiny Epic Galaxies & Stronghold Games

• Each year since 2004 Gordon and Fraser Lamont have released one title through their Fragor Games brand, either selling out and washing their hands of the title or licensing the design and...

Spiel 2015 IV: Simurgh, Mistfall, KUMO Hogosha, Los Aprendices, Terra & Favor of the Pharaoh

• Pierluca Zizzi's Simurgh from NSKN Games spent time atop The Hotness on BGG, and I think that relates to a contest being run for the game during that time — it's hard to keep track of...

Spiel 2015 III: Inhabit the Earth, AYA, Dino Twist, Celestia, Thrash'n Roll & Between Two Cities

• Designer/publisher Richard Breese of R&D Games is one of a few independent publishers who set up a stand each Spiel, then sit behind a wall of boxes not so much demoing his latest release as...

Spiel 2015 II: My Village, Porta Nigra, Mombasa, Rome: City of Marble, Face Chase, GobbleStones & Panda Head

• Designers Inka and Markus Brand and publisher eggertspiele won the Kennerspiel des Jahres in 2012 for Village, a game in which your playing pieces aged and died over the course of the game...

Designer Diary: High Frontier

The third edition of High Frontier is the culmination of 37 years of design and development work! Here I talk about some of the scientists, engineers, and entrepreneurs from its early days.ATOMIC...

Spiel 2015 I: 504, Automania, Cornwall, Completto, Team Play & Power Grid: The Stock Companies

• Let's start the individual game demonstration videos from Spiel 2015 with one of the most anticipated titles out there: 504 from designer Friedemann Friese and his own 2F-Spiele.One game...

Spiel 2015: Hall 7 Walkthrough

Spiel 2015 featured four halls of stands from game publishers and other vendors, and our fourth walkthrough video samples those vendors in hall 7, which was newly added to Spiel in 2015 —...

Spiel 2015: Hall 3 Walkthrough

Hall 3 at Spiel 2015 features the largest game publishers and the largest booths, with the space occupied by Asmodee and its Days of Wonder brand on its own being roughly half the size of Halls...

Designer Diary: Dead Men Tell No Tales, or Curse You, Kevin Lanzing!

In 2010, I designed my first game, Pressure Cooker, and it got picked up by Rio Grande Games. That got me thinking...maybe I could be pretty good at this game design thing, so in January 2011 I...

New-ish Game Round-up: Brick Party, Amphipolis, Saving Time, Villages of Valeria, London Dread, Don't Get Eated & Something with Bunnies

Yesterday while clearing out my inbox, I ran through a handful of old forwarded messages that contained still relevant game-related articles. Today I'm going to revisit game listings in the BGG...

Links: Dealing Death, Designing Responsibly & Dumping Ideas

Each week I receive hundreds of email messages about game announcements, distribution deals, rulebooks being available, and the latest blitz of Kickstarter campaigns — and to make matters...

Designer Preview: Race for the Galaxy: Xeno Invasion

Xeno Invasion expands Race for the Galaxy with two new play experiences: a full expansion set, plus a bonus invasion game.This expansion portrays a galaxy under siege by a newly discovered...

Spiel 2015: Hall 1 Walkthrough

Time for another overview of one of the four halls used in the Messe Essen for Spiel 2015, the annual game convention in Essen, Germany that attracts tens of thousands of gamers who want to check...