by W. Eric Martin • Following the release of Bloodborne: The Card Game in 2016 and God of War: The Card Game in 2019, CMON Limited has announced a new title resulting from its partnership with Sony Interactive Entertainment — The Last of Us: The Board Game, which will be "set in the world of Naughty Dog's critically acclaimed and best-selling video game series, The Last of Us", according to ...
by W. Eric Martin • Belgian publisher Repos Production will release Just One: Neue Begriffe in September 2020, with this expansion for the 2019 Spiel des Jahres winning Just One coming packed with more than five hundred new terms to guess, in addition to two more player easels so that you can have up to nine players in the game.Note that currently Repos has plans to release this title only ...
by Rob Cramer The Grand Carnival has been in some form of design since 2016 and has finally been published. From a sketch in a notebook to a full-fledged board game, The Grand Carnival lurched from stage to stage in fits and spurts, sometimes even going into hibernation at various points. I did have a BGG thread early on about the game, but now I'll try to detail how this ...
by W. Eric Martin German publisher Lookout Games is preparing to launch its first Kickstarter campaign (preview page) on October 22, 2020 — the day that SPIEL.digital opens — with the featured game being Grand Austria Hotel, a 2015 design from Virginio Gigli and Simone Luciani that will be expanded in multiple ways.First, Lookout is expanding the gameplay elements with Grand Austria Hotel: Let's Waltz!, a large expansion for the ...
by W. Eric Martin • German publisher Dachshund Games has released the 1-4 player co-operative game Wolkenbruch ("Downpour") from designers and company owners Sabrina and Hanno von Contzen, with the game currently being available solely on the company website. (Dachshund head dice cups are not for sale, which seems like a missed opportunity given the publisher's logo.)Here's an overview of the setting and gameplay:Four flames are burning, and none may ...
by W. Eric Martin • In addition to Peter Rustemeyer's Paleo, which I somewhat previewed in February 2020, German publisher Hans im Glück is spiffing up two of its older titles for release in late 2020.One of those titles is Klaus-Jürgen Wrede's Carcassonne: Hunters and Gatherers, which debuted in 2002 as the first of many spin-off standalone games following the incredible success of Wrede's Carcassonne in 2000. This new version ...
by Neil Bunker [Editor's note: This interview was first published on Diagonal Move on September 9, 2020. All images were provided by Gemma Newton. —WEM]DM: Hi, Gemma, thank you for joining us. Please can you tell us a bit about yourself?GN: Hi, Neil, thanks for having me. I'm Gemma Newton, the founder of Moonstone Games and designer behind a little game called Plotalot. I live in a quaint village in ...
by Candice Harris • After recently finishing Clank! Legacy and being a fan of all things Clank!, I think it's great to see that Renegade Games released Evan Lorentz's Clank! Adventuring Party, an expansion that adds asymmetrical starting decks and allows up to six players to get their burgle on in Clank! A Deck-Building Adventure, while also being compatible with a completed copy of Clank! Legacy.What will you find in ...
by W. Eric Martin • Grey Fox Games has picked up Campaign Trail — first Kickstarted in 2016 by designers David, Nathan, and Jeff Cornelius for release through Cosmic Wombat Games — for release in a new edition that will be largely unchanged from the original game aside from the removal of the "Dirty Politics" module to lower the cost of the base game, as explained here by Jeff Cornelius.That ...
by W. Eric Martin • World Changers is a card game for 1-4 players from Japanese designer THEKI and publisher Korea Boardgames that seems to have been born from the "deserted island" conversation that sometimes arises between friends.Here's a summary of the setting and gameplay:Who would you take to another planet if Earth were no longer inhabitable? What if you could pick people from long bygone eras?Turns out that you ...
by W. Eric Martin • On September 23-24, 2020, BGG will host another game demonstration livestream — broadcast schedule here — and U.S. publisher Bézier Games is one of the publishers taking part, with Whistle Mountain from Scott Caputo and Luke Laurie — originally covered here — being demoed on Sept. 24 and with Ted Alspach's Silver Dagger, the fourth title in the publisher's Silver series — being demoed on ...
by W. Eric Martin • In July 2019, I wrote about The Dietz Foundation, a non-profit organization founded by Jim Dietz of Jolly Roger Games and Ultra PRO "to produce games which enhance critical thinking, the use of math, and historical knowledge with the goal of generating revenue to endow scholarships for budding teachers and current teachers seeking to bring creative new means of education to the classroom".The organization's first ...
by W. Eric Martin Draft cover• In June 2020, I wrote about Tory Brown's Votes for Women, which is being published by Fort Circle Games. That title is being Kickstarted (link) through September 24, 2020 ahead of a scheduled release in Q2 2021, and as a refresher, here's an overview of this 1-4 player game:Votes for Women is a card-driven game covering the American women's suffrage movement from 1848-1920, culminating ...
by Neil Bunker [Editor's note: This interview was first published on Diagonal Move. —WEM]This week, Volko Ruhnke, designer of Nevsky and Labyrinth: The War on Terror and creator of the COIN series, joins Neil Bunker from Diagonal Move for a retrospective of his remarkable career.DM: Hi, Volko, thank you for joining us. During your design career, you have created some of the most well-known historically themed games currently available. Please ...
by Candice Harris I have fond childhood memories of going to the shore and the Poconos with my family, hitting arcades with my older brother. We always played skeeball and pinball, and of course, Streets of Rage. Pinball was especially exciting because of the dopamine-inducing lights and sounds, not to mention the amusing variety of different themed machines from movies to rock bands and just about everything in between.Given my ...
by Miguel Bruque In 2015, I published my first game, and my head was full of new ideas that I wanted to develop.One of my goals was to take a classic game and add a twist that would give the game a completely different sensation while playing. I always played classic Spanish trick-taking games with my family, such as "la brisca" or "el tute", and I started to think of ...
by W. Eric Martin • German publisher Zoch Verlag has announced its releases for the second half of 2020, with a highly unexpected title leading the billing — Tobago: Volcano, this being an expansion for Bruce Allen's 2009 release Tobago.In the original game, players move around an island trying to discover treasure, and they hold pieces of treasure maps that — unlike normal maps — determine where the treasure might ...
by Hunter R. Hennigar My partner Kym and I launched Ugly Christmas Sweaters on Kickstarter (link) in November 2019. Being so personally tied to both the game and the campaign has spurred this "self-evaluation" of everything that's come to pass with the design process (which is coming up on the four-year mark).With Kickstarter fulfillment winding down, I thought I'd bring anyone curious about the game up to speed and, well, ...
by W. Eric Martin The co-operative trick-taking game The Crew from Thomas Sing and KOSMOS has won yet another award — the 2020 Deutscher Spielepreis.The DSP is determined by the votes of gamers, who rate their top five games from the previous year, in addition to naming their favorite children's game. Those votes are then tabulated, and here's the list of games that received the most votes:1. The Crew, from ...
by W. Eric Martin In May 2020, I posted an overview of Peer Sylvester's Polynesia, an October 2020 release from Spanish publisher Ludonova, and in August 2020, Sylvester posted a designer diary about the creation of that game.Ludonova has another title due out in late 2020 that's set in the southern Pacific: Reiner Knizia's Sumatra, a set-collection game for 2-5 players. Here's a detailed overview of the setting and gameplay:Join ...
I made this game.