Board Game News

Crowdfunding Round-up: Dollars for Coins, Checks for Mechs & Cool Preorders Or Not?

• Is it time for another Eric M. Lang/Guillotine Games/Cool Mini Or Not blockbuster on Kickstarter? Apparently it is because The Others: 7 Sins blew past its $100k funding goal in minutes,...

Game Overview: More Ca$h 'n More Guns, or If You Shoot This Man, You Die Next

Ludovic Maublanc's Ca$h 'n Gun$ debuted in 2005, the second release from Belgian publisher Repos Production, which is best known these days for 7 Wonders. I remember trying Ca$h 'n Gun$ at a...

Spiel 2015 Preview: Qwinto, or Qwixx But Not Qwite

In 2012, German publisher Nürnberger-Spielkarten-Verlag published Steffen Benndorf's dice game Qwixx — which was a bit odd given the "Spielkarten-Verlag" in the company name, but Qwixx...

Designer Diary: Zombie 15': Left Alone – Solo Campaign

Zombie 15' is a game that we — Nicolas Schlewitz and I — designed as a strong co-op for four players. And by "strong", I mean a game in which the players always have to watch for each other...

Spiel 2015 Preview: Karuba and Cucina Curiosa — Tile-Laying Twins

Let's look at a pair of games coming to Spiel 2015 that share a similar game mechanism, namely the Bingo-style gameplay of Take it Easy! in which one player draws a tile at random from a fixed...

Designer Diary: Don't Turn Your Back, and Don't Stop Believin'!

In late 2012, Zeppelin Attack had been designed, but most of the production work by Evil Hat Productions had not yet begun. Based on the encouragement of Chris Hanrahan (now Vice-President at...

Spiel 2015 Preview: Monster My Neighbor, or Kill or (Don't) Be Killed

Pesu Nabeno's Monster My Neighbor first appeared in 2013 as 犯人は踊る ("Criminal Dance") under his own Nabeno Kikaku publishing brand, and now both Korea Boardgames and Z-Man Games are...

Links: Behind the Scenes at Mattel & Marco Polo Wins the Deutscher Spielepreis

• David Tucker is the Senior Designer and Art Director for Mattel Games and Innovation, and he's been responsible for the look of many game titles published by Mattel, including the German...

Spiel 2015 Preview: Go da Cheese!, or Organized on the Same Lines with One Face, One Side

Designer Hisashi Hayashi of OKAZU Brand released two games at Tokyo Game Market in May 2015 — the card game Go da Cheese! and the heavier strategy game Minerva — and I purchased both of them,...

New Game Round-up: Kevin Wilson Heads to Mistborn & Ragnar Brothers Sail to North America

• Crafty Games has been publishing the Mistborn Adventure Game RPG, based on the novels of Brandon Sanderson, since 2011, and in 2016 it plans to release a giant Kevin Wilson design titled...

New Game Round-up: Get Your Pie Face on with Hasbro & Say Goodbye to Treefrog

• In the category of news I overlooked during Origins 2015, in June 2015 Hasbro announced that it had acquired a license from Rocket Games to produce and sell Pie Face in multiple markets,...

Crowdfunding Round-up: Even the Best Kickstarter Games Can Be Piles of Garbage

There was a bit of a lull for board games on Kickstarter in late July and early August, perhaps due to the "Gen Con effect" — publishers not wanting to coordinate a KS campaign and run a...

Spiel 2015 Preview: Kabuki, or Memory Masked

Games that have a memory element to them can be tolerated by most players because even if they don't excel at memorizing this or that, they can focus on other aspects of the design while playing...

New Game Round-up: Return of the Button Men & The Birth of Eyrewood Adventures

• Passport Game Studios now says that Joshua Gerald Balvin's Fool's Gold should be available through retail outlets in September 2015, along with reprints of Hansa Teutonica and the HT: East...

Spiel 2015 Preview: Rubbish Auction, or Finding Treasure in Trash

At heart auctions are simple. You want something, you bid on it. You want that something more than someone else? Prove it by putting up more money. If you don't, then clearly you didn't want it...

Publisher Diary & Spiel 2015 Preview: Reviving Reiner Kinizia's Res Publica

Reiner Knizia is well known through a variety of successful games such as Ingenious, Tigris & Euphrates, Keltis, Lost Cities, and many more. He has offered a lot to the gaming community all these...

New Game Round-up: Party with Family Guy, Wear Monster Masks with Quickpick & Experience a Mad Lib with Looney Labs

• I love using BGG's Twitter feed to blast out news as I run across it, but sometimes I forget to carry that news back here or to the BGG database in general. At NY Toy Fair 2015 in February,...

Lamont Brothers Continue to Trip the Light Puntastic in A Game of Gnomes

Each year since 2004, the brothers Lamont — Fraser and Gordon — have released a single game under the Fragor Games banner at Spiel, and in recent years those games have gotten progressively...

Designer Diary: Stinker, or A Party Game I Designed Intentionally by Accident for My Ladylove

Why you should read thisThis is a story about a party game. Why should you, alpha gamer, with your BGG IV drip and Terra Mystica Strategy Omnibus, care about a party game, especially one designed...

Spiel 2015 Preview: Butts Away! Heroes, or The World Will Soon Tremble Before My Mighty Pumpkin

Butts away! Heroes from designer Chen Zhifan and publisher Big Fun Games has a super silly name that embodies the spirit of its gameplay.In this game, you're a bad guy and want to convince the...

New Game Round-up: Learn How to Inhabit the Earth, Prepare for New Planeswalkers & Revisit John Carter on Mars

• Designer/publisher Richard Breese of R&D Games has posted rules in English and German for Inhabit the Earth, his big game due out at Spiel 2015, on the BGG game page. What's more, as is his...

Z-Man Games Teases Pandemic Legacy Still More

In March 2015, I posted a long preview of Pandemic Legacy, a design by Matt Leacock and Rob Daviau that Z-Man Games and licensing publishers will release in ten languages around the world on...

HABA Prepares Games from Kramer/Kiesling, Dorn & Kloß for Spiel 2015

• German publisher HABA surprised gamers at Spielwarenmesse 2015 with the announcement of Phara-oh-oh!, a new edition of Gulo Gulo from the design team of Kramer, Grunau, and Raggan that's now...

Gen Con 2015 XXII: Survive: Space Attack!, Among the Stars: Revival, Wonky, Telestrations After Dark, Adventure Time Love Letter, Smash Up: Munchkin, Valley of the Kings: Afterlife & Castles of Mad King Ludwig

• Finally! (or unfortunately depending on your POV), this is the final video round-up of game demonstration videos recorded at Gen Con 2015, and this round-up mostly features videos that should...

Gen Con 2015 XXI: Champions of Midgard, Switching Tracks, Mare Nostrum: Empires, The Networks, Me Want Cookies!, Te Kuiti, Dead Drop, Council of Verona & Shadows of Brimstone: Caverns of Cynder and More

• Each time I see the title of Ole Steiness' Champions of Midgard from Grey Fox Games, I don't think of a "middleweight, Viking-themed, worker placement game with dice rolling in which players...

Crowdfunding Round-up: Guns & Steel, Caverns & Pirates, and Cats & Lobotomies

• Let's get right into this week's batch of games on the crowdfunding platforms, starting with the ever-so-appealing Trove: The Crystal Caverns from Patrick Leder, David Somerville and Leder...

Gen Con 2015 XX: Apocalypse Chaos, Dragon Farkle, Flick 'em Up!, Stallion Canyon, DragonFlame, Chaosmos & Magic: The Gathering – Arena of the Planeswalkers

• One of the biggest items buzzing at Spiel 2014 was the prototype of Magic: The Gathering – Arena of the Planeswalkers from designers James D'Aloisio, Ethan Fleischer, and Craig Van Ness....

Gen Con 2015 XIX: Ashes: Rise of the Phoenixborn, WWE Superstar Showdown, Helionox: The Last Sunset, Ninja Camp & Heroes Wanted: The Stuff of Legend

• Isaac Vega's Ashes: Rise of the Phoenixborn from Plaid Hat Games is a thing of beauty, and it was one of a handful of titles that had people salivating in anticipation prior to Gen Con 2015....

Gen Con 2015 XVIII: Thunderbirds, Pocket Imperium, Warehouse 51, Attila, Heavy Steam & Yashima: Legend of the Kami Masters

• Designer Matt Leacock and cooperative games go hand-in-hand, it seems, and he's cementing that relationship in late 2015 with the release of Thunderbirds from UK publisher Modiphius...

Spiel 2015 Preview: Dungeon Busters, or Sloughing Your Way to Success

• Tomohiro Enoki's Dungeon Busters from Divedice is a quick-playing, sort of simultaneous bidding game in which 3-5 players try to do as little work as possible fighting monsters so that they...