Board Game News

Asmodee Signs a Deal with Exploding Kittens

I don't know whether it's possible to write a headline for this story without making it sound like a surrealist fantasy, but the details of this story are that the Asmodee Group has signed "a...

Fight Raccoons for Trash, Shoot Rats into Space, and Rob Banks at the Right Time

I've started seeing more and more announcements from German game publishers as they gear up for the Spielwarenmesse trade fair at the end of January 2022, albeit with some of these titles having...

Greater Than Games Purchased by Flat River Group

Publisher Greater Than Games has been purchased by Flat River Group, which describes itself as "an e-commerce business accelerator" and which functions as a combined distributor, consolidator,...

Designer Diary: Undaunted: Reinforcements, or Giving Gamers What They Want

By designers David Thompson and Trevor BenjaminGreetings, all. November 2021 marks the release of Undaunted: Reinforcements, the third title in the Undaunted series. We thought it would be a good...

Defend Your Citadel from the Monster Pit, and Eat Humans as Marvel Zombies

• Catacombs Monster Pit has been in the BGG database since 2017, and the game seems to be moving closer to release thanks to the revelation of a new name — Monster Pit: Overworld — the...

Designer Diary: That Time You Designed a Time-Travel Game

It's late 2018. You have a deadline, so you're cleaning your office. (It's excellent procrastination.)While you clean, you have a video in the background: someone attempting to play 4D Chess. It...

Game Overview: Free Ride, or Ticket to TransAmerica

Each year ahead of BGG.CON, I get fixated on one game to bring to the show and play the heck out of it. For 2017, that game was The Game: Face to Face (report here); for 2018 Loser (report here);...

Board&Dice Teases More "T" Games for 2022

In October 2021, publisher Board&Dice gave short previews of two big box games it plans to release in the second half of 2022, both of which are history-based games that start with "T", a...

Links: Surveying SUPERHOT, Selling Asmodee's Brands, and Clearing Out After Tasty Minstrel

• In November 2021, Portuguese designer Manuel Correia published a post-mortem video exploring the creation and development of SUPERHOT: The Card Game, a 2017 release from Board&Dice.It's a...

Interview: Miniatures Gaming with Joe McCullough, Creator of Frostgrave, Stargrave, and Rangers of Shadow Deep

[Editors note: This interview was first published on Diagonal Move in August 2021. All images provided by Osprey Games except where noted. —WEM]Joe McCullough, creator of Frostgrave, Stargrave,...

Lead Civil Rights Organizations, Rule the Assyrian Empire, Roleplay as Napoleon, and Check Out the 2020 CSR Awards Winners

• Non-profit publisher The Dietz Foundation is crowdfunding Free at Last on Kickstarter. Free at Last is a card-driven, co-operative and competitive game from designer Ted Torgerson (1989: Dawn...

In 2022, KOSMOS Offers Narrative Adventures Galore and a City Made of Dice

As is becoming its custom, German publisher KOSMOS is teasing upcoming releases on its game-focused Instagram channel, with almost all of the titles announced as of November 23, 2021 for release...

Behind the Scenes with Big Potato

In a departure from what I normally do in this space, I'm sharing a bit of the experience of a media person in the game industry, someone who receives sample games from publishers in the hope...

Designer Diary: Mindbug, or Four Minds, Eight Hands

Christian's StoryIn January 2020, I listened to a bunch of podcasts about game design. One I especially enjoyed was Nerdlab. Unlike many other such podcasts, it was quite focused on card games,...

Game Overview: Floriferous, or Flowers Are More Than Their Parts

Floriferous — a design by Steve Finn and Eduardo Baraf from Pencil First Games for 1-4 players — features a lot of design elements that you might recognize from other games:• Over three...

AMIGO Puts Its Cards on the Table for 2022

Almost as soon as SPIEL '21 ended in October, German publishers started teasing their early 2022 releases, with AMIGO sending out this teaser image ahead of more details at the start of January...

Links: Playing UNO for Cash, Cheating at Bridge, and Going from Game to Puzzle

• UK book publisher Welbeck Publishing has already released three puzzle books based on games in the Asmodee family — Catan, Unlock!, and Ticket to Ride — and in 2022 it plans to release...

Game Preview: Defeat Monsters in a Shifting Labyrinth in Pathfinder Arena

Italian publisher Giochi Uniti is launching a Kickstarter campaign on November 23, 2021 for their upcoming big release, Pathfinder Arena, from designers Flavio Anzidei, Giorgio Serafini, and...

2021 BGG Holiday Gift Guide: Top Heavy Games

While BGG's 2021 Holiday Gift Guide features more than 100 titles from 19 categories, today wraps my video coverage of select titles from the guide with brief summaries of a handful of heavy...

2021 BGG Holiday Gift Guide: Top Two-Player Games

Let's follow up my video overviews of the top family games and top party games in BGG's 2021 Holiday Gift Guide with a quick take on our six suggested games for couples, which range widely in...

2021 BGG Holiday Gift Guide: Top Party Games

Today's video highlights the party game suggestions from BoardGameGeek's 2021 Holiday Gift Guide, which features more than one hundred game suggestions in 19 categories. I've already covered gift...

Designer Diary: The Seeds of Stardew Valley: The Board Game

"If you're reading this, you must be in dire need of a change..."So begins Grandpa's letter to you as you set out to start a new life in a little place called Stardew Valley, arriving at an...

2021 BGG Holiday Gift Guide: Top Family Games

BoardGameGeek's 2021 Holiday Gift Guide is live, and it features more than one hundred game suggestions in 19 categories.To help others figure out what they might want to give — or get! —...

Designer Diary: The "Second" Tetrarchy, or A Lot of (Roman) History in a Small Box

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...

Interview: Peer Sylvester, Designer of The King is Dead, Brian Boru, and The Lost Expedition

[Editors note: This interview was first published on Diagonal Move in October 2021. —WEM]Peer Sylvester, designer of The King Is Dead, The Lost Expedition, and Brian Boru: High King of Ireland...

Build Your Deck and Lead Your Civilization to Victory in Imperium: Classics and Imperium: Legends

Imperium: Classics and Imperium: Legends are two fully-compatible, stand-alone, civilization deck-building games from the creative minds of ​​Nigel Buckle and Dávid Turczi. Turczi...

Gen Con 2021 VII: AEG Teases Wormholes, Wallpaper, and More Ways to Smash Up

During Gen Con 2021, U.S. publisher Alderac Entertainment Group held a press event in a nearby hotel to highlight the two titles it debuted at that show — Whirling Witchcraft and TEN, the...

Choice and Bias: Why New Games Top the BGG Rankings

In the early 1980s, I watched a lot of television — hours of it every day, starting with cartoons when I came home from school, followed by the ever-present re-runs of shows like Gilligan's...

Jerry Hawthorne Invites You to Play Familiar Tales

Designer Jerry Hawthorne loves to create rich worlds with stories that players can live in, walk through, and explore, often pitting players as tiny forces in a much larger world. He's done this...

Re-Imagining The Murder Mystery Party with Crimes & Capers

We have always loved murder mystery parties. The chance to play a fun role, interact with our friends, and solve a mystery was so much a combination of everything we loved that as kids we hosted...