Board Game News

Hasbro Partners with Indiegogo to Find a New Party Game

I never thought that I would use the terms "Hasbro" and "crowdfunding" in the same sentence, but here we go: U.S. toy and game publisher Hasbro is partnering with crowdfunding site Indiegogo on a...

Gen Con 2015 XVII: Level 99 Games — BattleCON: War of Indines, Pixel Tactics 5, RESISTOR_, Dragon Punch, and the Exceed Fighting System

• Designer D. Brad Talton, Jr. of Level 99 Games loves head-to-head fighting games, especially if they feature individualized characters that each put a spin on how the battle plays out. He's...

Spiel 2015 Preview: TimeBomb, or Do Not Ask for Whom the Bomb Tolls

I've already written about Yusuke Sato's TimeBomb from New Board Game Party — a hidden role game in which 2-4 SWAT team members try to find all of the "Success" cards in play before the end of...

Gen Con 2015 XVI: Artifacts, Inc., Above and Below, The Last Spike, Arcadia, Chaos Cove, The Great Dinosaur Rush & Spirits of the Rice Paddy

• One of the many sellout titles at Gen Con 2015 was Ryan Laukat's Artifacts, Inc., published by his own Red Raven Games, and I believe that a second small batch of games was rushed in for the...

Odin's Ravens Flies Again, Courtesy of Osprey Games

Let's set the WABAC machine to 2013: A new edition of the long out-of-print two-player game Odin's Ravens from Thorsten Gimmler was announced, and many huzzahs were heard. A funding campaign was...

Designer Diary: Automania, or Assembling a Design on the Right Paths

Norway is a small country not far from the planet's north pole, and just outside its capital city, Oslo, live two gaming enthusiasts. One is Kenneth Minde, now a first-time-designer, and the...

Gen Con 2015 XV: Asmadi Games — Mottainai, Meow, Adorable Pandaring, One Deck Dungeon, The Phoenix Syndicate, Consequential & Innovation

• Carl Chudyk's Mottainai from Asmadi Games debuted at Gen Con 2015, and this involved card game is a successor (in gameplay terms) to Chudyk's Glory to Rome, with cards moving from one...

Spiel 2015 Preview: The Bloody Inn, or Know Where the Bodies Are Buried

"Each card represents a guest. The front of the card depicts the guest alive; the back depicts the guest dead."The sentence above is not one you'll often see in a published game, but you will...

Gen Con 2015 XIV: The 7th Continent, Nefarious, Risk: Game of Thrones, Lift it! Deluxe, Garbage Day, Hoplomachus: Origins & Fantasy Fantasy Baseball

• Jamie Johnson showed up at Gen Con 2015 to represent French publisher Serious Poulp, which has an immense "choose your own adventure" style of board game in the works from Ludovic Roudy and...

Gen Con 2015 XIII: Favor of the Pharaoh, Suburbia 5★, One Night Ultimate Vampire, Noble Treachery, Crowns and Axes, & The King's Armory

• While we intended to focus on newly released games while broadcasting game demonstrations at Gen Con 2015, Ted Alspach of Bézier Games apparently did not get the message — or he did...

Ticket to Ride Keeps Rolling to the United Kingdom and Pennsylvania

At Gen Con 2015, the North American branch of Asmodee held its annual press event to highlight a number of forthcoming releases from the publishers that it distributes: Doctor Panic from Repos...

New Game Round-up: Convoy Rides Again, Colosseum Reborn & Revolver Reloaded

• Portal Games plans to release a second edition of Ignacy Trzewiczek's The Convoy in Q4 2015, with this new edition being titled Neuroshima: Convoy to emphasize its place in the world of...

Gen Con 2015 XII: The Village Crone, Dragon Tides, Bears! Trail Mix'd, Castle Panic: The Dark Titan & Evolution Base Game, Flight and Climate

• The big release from Fireside Games at Gen Con 2015 was The Village Crone from designer/publisher co-owner Anne-Marie De Witt, with copies of the game being available in advance of its...

Spiel 2015 Preview: Antarctica, or A Shipping Rondel on Ice

You know what gamers love? Rondels. Since the debut of Mac Gerdts' Antike in 2005, a certain type of gamer has been enamored with the concept of going around in circles choosing actions, and...

Spiel 2015 Preview: BANG! The Duel, or Shooting Outlaws by the Handful

More often than I am comfortable with, we record a video in advance of a game being announced, then when the game is finally made public, I can't find the video or it no longer encapsulates what...

Gen Con 2015 XI: Attack on Titan, Quest for Arete, Badass Zombie Killers, Civicus Dice Game, Hostage Negotiator & Portal: The Uncooperative Cake Acquisition Game

• In addition to filming 100+ videos at the BGG booth during Gen Con 2015, we also recorded game demonstrations elsewhere in the convention center, sometimes because the games were available...

Crowdfunding Round-up: A Rogues' Gallery of Repeat Creators

It wasn't until I had penned this entire post that I realized every single project mentioned is from a repeat creator. Miles Beckett calls this breed of person a "serial entrepreneur" and writes...

Gen Con 2015 X: Tasty Minstrel Games — Gold West, Steam Works, Flip City, Cthulhu Realms & Dungeon of Fortune

• What's the best way to have a sellout game at Gen Con? Don't bring a lot of copies. Tasty Minstrel Games airshipped a few dozen copies of three upcoming game releases to Indianapolis in order...

Links: Modern Fog, Busted Asylum & Kickstarting Success

• On statistics site FiveThirtyEight, Oliver Roeder presented an overview of Kickstarter's effect on the board game industry, with the title leading the conclusion: "Crowdfunding Is Driving A...

Gen Con 2015 IX: Blood Rage, Rum & Bones, Snow Tails, FUSE, Co-Mix & Car Wars: The Card Game

• If you were looking for giant boxes with lots of stuff inside of them at Gen Con 2015, Cool Mini Or Not might have been one of your destinations, mostly because you could have checked out...

Gen Con 2015 VIII: Stronghold Games — Space Cadets: Away Missions, Dark Moon & La Granja

• Stronghold Games had its usual stronghold of games at Gen Con 2015, with walls of thick boxes surrounding its playing space and gamers eroding those walls bit by bit as the weekend progresed....

M.U.L.E. The Board Game Debuting from Lautapelit.fi at Spiel 2015

Finnish publisher Lautapelit.fi has a smashing reputation, with Nations ranked in the top 50 on BGG and Eclipse in the top 10, and now that reputation will be put to the test with its latest...

New Game Round-up: Portal Unleashes Hunters and Steel Police, Lion Games Delivers Heroes and Aliens, & Sit Down Mashes Goths with Royalty

• Portal Games is expanding its offerings at Spiel 2015 with an expansion for Theseus: The Dark Orbit, a new faction titled Hunters from Theseus base game designer Michał Oracz and Andrzej...

Gen Con 2015 VII: New York 1901, Letter Tycoon, Boomtown Bandits, Maze Racers, Catacombs, Stockpile & Tesla vs Edison

• One of the other hits of Gen Con 2015 was Chénier La Salle's New York 1901 from Blue Orange Games, the first strategy game from a publisher normally known for speed-based reaction games and...

Designer Diary: The Making of Automobiles, or How a Design Reaches the Finish Line

Note about this designer diary: Chronologically, this picks up right where my Planes designer diary left off. Unlike with that diary, I kept a journal of my entire process this time. I tracked...

Spiel 2015 Preview: Two Titles from R&R Games: Mombasa and Rome: City of Marble

• I'm cheating a bit in the title since Mombasa actually originates from eggertspiele, with Pegasus Spiele serving as German co-publisher and R&R Games as the North American licensee, but so be...

Spiel 2015 Preview: They Come Unseen, or 1970s Game Design Today

The most amazing thing about They Come Unseen from Andrew Benford and Osprey Games is that the game originated in the 1970s, when Benford was a commander in the British navy. He designed the game...

Crowdfunding Round-up: Short Campaigns, Open Road Gaming & Cthulhu Everywhere

Gen Con 2015 crowded out the crowdfunding round-ups in this space to some degree, but now it's time to clean out the inbox and discover which projects you might see in print in 6-12 months time,...

Gen Con 2015 VI/Spiel 2015 Preview: Barony, Starfighter, Mysterium, RYŪ, Discoveries, Queen's Architect, Takenoko: Chibis & Five Tribes: The Artisans of Naqala

• Time to continue with the game demonstration videos that BGG recorded at Gen Con 2015, with this batch of videos also serving as previews of titles that publisher/distributor Asmodee will...

Spiel 2015 Preview: Dice City, or On the Road to Pipville

Dice City from Vangelis Bagiartakis, Alderac Entertainment Group, and Artipia Games was one of the few games that I played at Gen Con 2015, but it's not scheduled to be released until Spiel 2015...