Board Game News

New Game Round-up: 2015 Releases from Schmidt Spiele — Qwirkle on Cards, Kniffel on Boards, Vienna on Tiles & Princesses on Robots

• Time to highlight a few of the new titles that have been added to BGG's Nürnberg/New York 2015 Preview, which showcases games being featured at upcoming trade conventions before they make...

Nürnberg/New York 2015 Preview Now Live on BGG

This announcement might be supremely underwhelming at this point, but the Nürnberg/New York 2015 Preview — which highlights new games that will be shown at Spielwarenmesse and American...

New Game Round-up: Stronghold Preps Pictomania, Kermarrec Merges Bubbles with Bombs & Rosenberg Readies Beans for Youngsters

• In August 2014, I noted that Stronghold Games had added Vlaada Chvátil's Pictomania to its publication calendar for release in early 2015. Now Stronghold has set a firm street date for...

New Game Round-up: Mechs in Europe, Cities in Neighboring Hands & Tons of Titles in IELLO's Catalog

• I'll confess to being behind the times on this announcement, but perhaps this will still be new to you: In late 2014, Jamey Stegmaier of Stonemaier Games started talking about three future...

New Game Round-up: Ystari Heads to the Stars, Purple Brain Spotlights Ant/Grasshopper Relations & Spielworxx Looks to Next Year

• With 2015 just underway, it's already time to look past it to the future. Uli Blennemann from Spielworxx has signed a contract for Jeff Warrender's civilization game tentatively titled The...

New Game Round-up: Roberto Fraga Challenges You with Underwater Hunts, Cracked Ice, Medical Emergencies, Cannibal Penguins and More

• Designer Roberto Fraga has announced a few — wait, a half-dozen?! — pending publications in 2015, starting with Spinderella from Zoch Verlag (and to be released as Gare à la toile by...

Crowdfunding Round-up: Worlds Destroyed, Heroes Engaged, Stories Told & Necks Stretched

• Let's dash through another Kickstarter minefield of fun with single sentence descriptions of as many projects as I can muster, starting with Funforge's ZNA, a co-op zombie survival game from...

New Game Round-up: Kevin Wilson Draws Cthulhu Forth Once Again, Replicators Come to Space Empires & European Games Arrive in the U.S.

• British publisher Modiphius Entertainment is primarily involved with RPGs, which means that I rarely look at its output since RPGs aren't my bag, but six months after it announced a Matt...

Crowdfunding Round-up: Natives, Witches, Monks, Pirates and Viceroys (Is That the Plural of "Viceroy"? WTF is a Viceroy Anyway?)

• As 2014 comes to a close, I like to take a look back at all the great games that I have played with all the great people, and I realize it was an awesome year. I would like to thank each and...

Videos from Spiel 2014 XXXVII: Panamax, Diamonds, Kanban, Click & Crack, Nanahoshi & The Little Witches and the Mysterious House

• Okay, these first three game demonstration videos from Spiel 2014 are coming out particularly late given that these titles from Stronghold Games have been picking up tons of buzz, but in case...

Videos from Spiel 2014 XXXVI: Murano, Patchwork, Johari, Fleet Commander, Speakeasy & 1944: Race to the Rhine

• My initial plan of posting all of the game demonstration videos that BGG recorded at Spiel 2014 by BGG.CON 2014 seems ever more laughable given that we're nearly out of December at this...

Advice for Designers and Publishers: How to Write a Press Release

The year 2014 is nearly over, and before too long I'll be on the convention circuit once again: Spielwarenmesse in Nürnberg in January, NY Toy Fair in Manhattan in February, and so on until we...

New Game Round-up: Stronghold Picks Up Two Heavy Hitters, Upper Deck Preps for Gen Con & Heroes Prepare to Flatten Monsters

• U.S. publisher Stronghold Games has announced two upcoming releases for 2015, in association with German publisher Spielworxx, that should make a number of gamers quite happy. First,...

New Game Round-up: Exploring New Land as Homo Sapiens, Collecting Gamey Eggs from Eagle-Gryphon & Uncovering a Murderer in Mysterium

• Catch Up Games is a new French publisher that plans to release its debut title — Sapiens from designer Cyrille Leroy — in March 2015. Here's an overview of the game:Quote:The time has...

New Game Round-up: Teasers from Europe, Tasters from Japan & Tsars in Ukraine?

• Majdan by Krzysztof Dytczak and Symeo Games is a revamping of his 2006 release Pomarańczowa Rewolucja about the Orange Revolution in Ukraine to now cover the Ukrainian political situation in...

New Game Round-up: Conan Clears a Path, Killers Clear Out an Inn & Wombats Clear the Room

• As part of its preparations for a January 2015 Kickstarter campaign, French publisher Monolith has passed along a few more details about Conan: Hyborian Quests, starting with the cover...

New Game Round-up: Mutants Revolting, Martians Attacking, Werewolves Expanding and T&E Reissuing?

• Hmm, I tweeted a note about WizKids Games' X-Men: Mutant Revolution while on the way to BGG.CON 2014, but never posted anything about it. This game, believe it or not, is based on Spartacus:...

Videos from Spiel 2014 XXXV: Witness, Bania, OWACON, Warships, The Golden Ages & CIRCUS! Viola Volente's Sensational Show

• We'll lead this latest (but not last) batch of game demonstration videos shot at Spiel 2014 with Dominique Bodin's Witness from Ystari Games. Witness is an odd duck of a design, being a...

Videos from Spiel 2014 XXXIV: RYŪ, Artificium, Costa Ruana, EverZone, Altaria & Abraca...what?

• And we're off on an overview of another half-dozen games that the BGG crew saw at Spiel 2014, starting with a preview of RYŪ, a game due out in Q1 2015 from French publisher Moonster Games...

Videos from Spiel 2014 XXXIII: Body Party, Gothic Invasion, Age of Soccer, Steam Donkey, Whacky Wit Mini & The Lord of the Ice Garden

• Okay, with this being the 33rd (!) collection of game demonstration videos that BGG recorded at Spiel 2014, I thought I'd start with a self-indulgent look at Body Party, designed by me,...

New Game Round-up: Multiplying Sentinels, Raging Vikings, Avenging Heroes & Flicking Bandits

• On Nov. 28, 2014, I announced What the Flick?! as the final title for a Western-themed, team-based, disc-flicking game from Z-Man Games and the design team of Jean-Yves Monpertuis and Gaëtan...

Videos from Spiel 2014 XXXII: Colt Express, Stimmvieh, McJohny's, Lap Dance, New Dawn & Among the Stars: Expanding the Alliance

• Yes, here are still more game demonstration videos recorded in the BGG booth at Spiel 2014. Ha ha, it's like they'll never end! Never!!French publisher Ludonaute typically hits the market...

Spiel des Jahres Jury Chairman Tom Felber on Choosing Germany's Game of the Year

Spiel des Jahres jury chairman Tom Felber has been touring North America to talk about the Spiel des Jahres — Germany's "game of the year" award — at various conventions and game stores, and...

Videos from Spiel 2014 XXXI: Red7, Hexemonia, Ifrito, Spells of Doom, ESSEN The Game & Argent: The Consortium

• Red7 from designers Carl Chudyk and Chris Cieslik and publisher Asmadi Games was a bit of an oddball title at Spiel 2014 as Asmadi didn't have a booth and copies were in scarce supply.I...

Videos from Spiel 2014 XXX: Arkwright, Neptun, Cubo, Escape: Zombie City, Orcs Orcs Orcs & Apocalypse Universe: Galactic Arena

• My goodness, thirty posts of recorded game demonstrations from Spiel 2014! That's 153 videos so far in the Spiel 2014 playlist on BGG's YouTube channel, and now I'm adding another half-dozen...

Designer Diary: Three Kingdoms Redux

We have read a number of designer diaries on BGG. Each diary walks us through the designers' thought process during the game's development, allowing us to develop a finer appreciation of the...

New Game Round-up: Dark Seas from AEG, Twinned Theomachy & Mare Nostrum Hits the Water

• Alderac Entertainment Group has announced another title due out in March 2015 in addition to a pair of new Love Letters: Anthony Rubbo's Dark Seas, which it describes as follows:Quote:Build a...

Crowdfunding Round-up: Building Robots, Finding Cinderella, Hacking Tricks & Helping Elves

• I enjoyed doing the single sentence descriptions in the previous c.f. round-up, so I'm going to give it another go this time, starting with the industrial-looking game Robot Factory from the...

Videos from Spiel 2014 XXIX: Onirim, Mat Goceng, MashUp Monsters, Spexxx, Canopy Walk & The Extraordinaires Design Studio

• It's time for another round-up of game demonstration videos shot at Spiel 2014, leading off this time with a looong video of me speaking with Shadi Torbey, designer of Onirim. Thanks to a...

New Game Round-up: Plaid Hat Welcomes Specter Ops, Mayday Games Plans for New Viceroy & Petersen Games Reveals Theomachy

• As anyone who has ever attempted to design a game knows, games tend to change between their origin and their publication (should they get that far), and sometimes they change even after...