BoardGameGeek News | BoardGameGeek BoardGameGeek features information related to the board gaming hobby

• 
  Designer Diary: Bayou Boss, or Getting Swamped with Ideas

  by Simon_Weinberg on January 9, 2026

  by Simon As with many games, it is astonishing to look back at the origins of Bayou Boss and realize that I started with a completely different idea! Bayou Boss is a trick-taking game with three twists, which I'll come to in a moment. As a recap, a classic trick-taking game like Whist involves a player leading a single card of a certain suit. Players must play a card with the same suit ("follow suit") or, if they cannot because they lack the suit, can "trump" if they want, with the trump suit being designated at the start of the game. The winner of the trick is the player who played the highest trump, or if no trumps were played, the player who played the highest card in the suit led. When I was a kid, my family played one trick-taking game avidly, and that was Solo Whist, or "Solo" as we called it. In this four-player game, you evaluated your cards, then there was a single round of bidding during which you said how many tricks you thought you could win. The player who bid highest would win the bid, and all other players would pit themselves against the bid winner to prevent them from winning that many tricks. The bid I liked the most in Solo was the "Misère" bid – literally "misery" – which is what it could feel like because you vowed to take no tricks, then everyone tried to make you win by playing their lowest cards! Perhaps a better-known game in which you try to avoid tricks is Hearts, although in this case you try to avoid only heart cards and the Queen of Spades, which is slightly more forgiving than in Solo. The idea of Bayou Boss is that each trick taken is worth 1 point. The player with the fewest points after several rounds wins, so players will try to avoid winning tricks — and now for its three twists: ▪️ The first twist is that players are obliged to trump when they can't follow suit, whereas in Solo and Hearts there is no trump suit. Fortunately, there is a way to change the trump suit — even during a trick round — by playing a raven, of which there will be a few in the game. ▪️ The second twist is that only half the cards are dealt out at the beginning of the game; the rest will be collected by players and added to their hands during the game, with the winner of a trick being first to choose. One card per player is turned over into the "swamp" in the center of the table, so you can see what's on offer and decide what to play. Winning no tricks with your initial cards will usually ensure that you collect only bad or fairly bad cards as you play, with "bad" meaning good since you'll likely win tricks with them later. This means that you must decide when to use your stronger cards to win a trick and take a point you don't want in order to get a "good" card for the future. ▪️ The third twist is that the swamp will contain character cards that do special things to mess with the game. Some characters guarantee you will win a trick, some guarantee you'll lose, and some will mess with who wins a specific trick or allow you to do other sneaky things – like give your trick away or determine who is start player. Then there's the raven, which allows you to change trump mid-term and stitch someone up. The game includes more characters than you use in a single game, so each play should feel different depending on who shows up in the swamp. Anyway, back to its origins... Bayou Boss started life in September 2023 as an idea to, like in Solo Whist, bid the number of tricks you wanted to win. I had a special idea for how to do that in which you reserved a bid so that no one else could make it. This seemed like a good idea...until I discovered that I had just reinvented Oh Hell! — or at least a variant of it that I found online. Oh well, oh Hell. I didn't give up, though! The next idea that occurred was to build your hand of cards during the game by having cards in the middle that you won and added to your hand. This then led to the idea of having bad cards as well as good cards to take, which ultimately led to my first prototype with the additional idea that you try to avoid tricks. The first special cards I had in the game were the "Change trump", "Always win", and "Always lose" cards, which are called "Raven", "Heron", and "Manatee", respectively, in the final game. I also had a title for the game: "Mea Culpa", which is the rough Latin equivalent of what the Australians might say as "Sorry, not sorry!" This was also the name for the card changing the trump, which can be very powerful. Within ten days I had a working prototype, and I put it to one side to test at the Gathering of Friends, an invitation-only event held each April. The event in 2024 included a day of playing trick-taking games, and we played the game with six players. It went down so well that I was approached by Brent Lloyd, who kindly wanted to playtest the game and help me find a publisher. Along with his friend Darren Bezzant, Brent playtested the game extensively, while I was able to test their suggestions in parallel. What came out of this was tweaks to the character card distribution and the endgame scoring. In addition, originally I had used several characters more than once, but in the end I added new characters that we tested so that every game could feel different. Then Brent approached me, explaining that he had decided to start a publishing company called Thunderbolt Games and would like "Mea Culpa" to be his first published game! I was honored. Brent explained that he would be working with Frank DiLorenzo from R&R Games, who would help in every aspect of the game as Brent learned the ropes. Fast-forward a few months as Frank and his team came up with a new name and theme for the game, with fabulous artwork from Brandon Lewis. Bayou Boss is a great name that fits well with the game as the central pool of cards became the swamp and the characters became swamp creatures whose nature is linked to their special abilities. The beautiful and fun art really gave flavor to the game, and I love it. Bayou Boss is great fun with all player counts, with the deck being designed to be adapted for the number of players. There are always twists to be discovered in the combination of the characters, with laugh-out-loud moments when a player is victimized or shoots themselves in the foot! All in all, it's a quick fun game that should go down well with gamers and families alike. Bayou Boss should be available in the UK, the U.S., Canada, and Australia at the time of writing. I hope y'all enjoy it! Simon Weinberg

• 
  Collect Your Crew and Grab Your Gang for New Adventures in 2026

  by W Eric Martin on January 8, 2026

  by W. Eric Martin ▪️ U.S. publisher Thames & Kosmos has announced two new releases that will debut at Gen Con 2026, with the headliner being The Crew: Journey to the Ends of the Earth, a standalone sequel to Thomas Sing's 2019 game The Crew: The Quest for Planet Nine. As with the original The Crew, The Crew: Journey to the Ends of the Earth is a co-operative trick-taking game in which players attempt to collectively complete missions through card play. Here's a teaser for the game's setting and what you're doing: Travel around the world in a race against time on the hunt for Charlemagne's secret treasure. Follow clues that will lead you up Mount Everest, through the Amazon Rainforest, and beyond. It's up to you how your story will end. Will you make it in time, or will you be too late? The only way to find out is by playing. Lava fits in there somewhere as well. The Crew: Journey to the Ends of the Earth, which retails for US$15, will contain 25 stages in the player journey, and Thames & Kosmos estimates that the game will ship to buyers in mid-August 2026. ▪️ The other Gen Con 2026 debut is related to a Q2 2026 release, with that being The Gang: More Players, which German publisher KOSMOS had already revealed in November 2025. This expansion to John Cooper and Kory Heath's co-operative game The Gang includes new four sets of bidding poker chips, allowing for games with up to ten players. New gameplay mechanisms are hinted at, but not revealed, so perhaps there's more of a twist to the expansion than finding room for more chairs at the table. One new item that is mentioned are "exit chips" that simplify the game when playing with five or six people. The Gang: More Players retails for US$10. ▪️ As for the Gen Con 2026 release, that would be The Gang: Deluxe Edition, which is a blingy edition of The Gang that features ceramic poker chips, casino-quality cards, and a custom playmat, as well as expansions, presumably the previously released The Jokers & More from 2024 and Tools of the Trade from 2025. However, the game page on the Thames & Kosmos website mentions two expansions, but the company's press release mentions three mini-expansions, including a new one titled "The Dealer". I've asked for clarification...

• 
  Toss Clowns, Snag Cat Toys, Make Colorful Teddy Bears, and Forgo Thoughts and Prayers

  by W Eric Martin on January 8, 2026

  by W. Eric Martin ▪️ Daniel Newman of New Mill Industries says that after releasing sixteen titles in 2025 — both original games and new editions of older titles — he's scaling back, with only two titles coming out in each half of 2026 and with rotating sales for titles in stock. Here are the two games available for pre-order on February 1, 2026: • The Fluffy Rite is a new edition of Kusaka Satoru's 2015 trick-taking game for 3-5 players from Japanese publisher Roughneck:7: As Lord Teddy's most prized toymakers, it is our duty to make the best bears possible for his approval. However, one must not shine too brightly as Lord Teddy is terribly insecure. The annual honoring of (and sacrifices to) Lord Teddy, known as "The Fluffy Rite", has come upon us once more and we must do our best — but not TOO good as we don't want to earn His wrath. Cards have only colors, not numbers, and each card can be used as either a head or a body of that color. Players combine two cards — one for the head, another for the body — to make one bear during each trick. The combination of colors of each assembled bear and the order of play will determine the winner of the trick. The player(s) with the second most trophies in a hand wins a game point, and whoever first gets two game points wins the game. • Newman's own Hearts and Minds is "a light-hearted game for 3-4 players about responding to tragic events. Thoughts and Prayers are worth nothing. What's really important is winning the Hearts and Minds...except when it isn't. In more detail, Hearts and Minds is a trick-taking game in which players each choose their own scoring conditions by selecting a goal card from their hand. Each goal can be used only once and "may have rules that change how the player must play that hand". ▪️ Swiss publisher Helvetiq has a new trick-taking game of its own for February 2026: Cat Trick, a 3-5 player game from designer Nagian. Players represent kittens who are grabbing at toys through their card play. You can play any card to a trick, then whoever has played the highest trump card (or the highest card if no trumps are present) wins the trick. Five colors of cards can be collected, but if you take more than four of a color, you've gotten too greedy and other kitties will pounce on your toys. ▪️ Another trick-taking game hitting the market in February 2026 is Joshua Buergel's The Fox in the Forest Deluxe from Renegade Game Studios. This new edition of 2017's two-player-only The Fox in the Forest add three expansion modules that can be used individually or in combination. Poison cards cost you a point when you take one; goal cards place two additional ways to score points into play each hand; and special cards make it less certain who will win each trick. ▪️ I covered two of Mike Petchey's card game designs from Huff No More in July 2025, and he came out with another before the end of 2025: Tricky Landing, which is a dexterity-based trick-taking game: The circus has come to town, and the troupe of clowns have an extravaganza prepared. All participants are ready for a series of death-defying stunts as they are fired from colorful cannons across the big top. Who will make the most spectacular landings and put their competitors to shame? Find out in Tricky Landing, in which rather than play cards, you throw them toward a target card! Make a successful landing for your card to be part of the trick, with the order in which cards land determining the lead suit. Miss the target and you'll set the trump for the next trick, but if more than one player misses the target, you all take a penalty. Play three rounds to determine which death-defying clowns have put on the best performance.

• 
  Let Computers Carry You from Junkyard to Night City

  by W Eric Martin on January 7, 2026

  by W. Eric Martin ▪️ In the first half of 2026, Allan and Jared Pincus will release Computer Junkyard, the first title from Dream Egg Games, which was crowdfunded on April 2025. Here's an overview of this 2-4 player game: You found a box of old computer games at a yard sale and can't wait to play them with friends. To your dismay, though, modern computers won't run them, so now you're each racing to build your own vintage computer out of spare parts. The first player to have a complete, bug-free computer that meets the specifications necessary to run their unique computer game wins. During the game, you will connect hardware tiles like puzzle pieces, attaching them to a central motherboard tile to fit within a 9x9 chassis grid. You collect hardware by purchasing tiles randomly drawn from the central junkyard, trading with other players, or outright stealing them. Why would you turn to theft? You start with a limited amount of money, and the tile price increases as the supply decreases. Don't be afraid to use computer bugs to sabotage others... ▪️ Moving from technology of old to new, we can look to the Cyberpunk TCG, which new publisher Weird Co. — or WeirdCo or Weirdco, as I've seen it all three ways — plans to kickstart in 2026 in partnership with CD Projekt RED, publisher of the 2020 Cyberpunk 2077 video game and the 2023 Cyberpunk 2077: Gangs of Night City board game. Weird Co. states that "we can't reveal any gameplay details just yet", but it does promise that you can "[m]ix and match your favorite characters from the Cyberpunk franchise to create an unstoppable netrunning crew" while being challenged to "overcome your opponent by not just doing damage, but completing gigs, gaining eddies, and increasing your rep as Night City legends". Polygon and IGN have both published articles about the game, which might be more to your speed than this lightbulb-flickering-style, self-proclaimed "hype trailer" if you're old like me. Youtube Video

• 
  Fight Monsters in a Wild World, and Use Goldfish in a Quest for the Kraken

  by W Eric Martin on January 6, 2026

  by W. Eric Martin Cover not final▪️ Norwegian publisher Chilifox Games is trying to get the jump on others by announcing its SPIEL Essen 26 release at the start of January. Here's an overview of Wild World: Wild World is a dynamic 1–4 player strategy game that blends worker placement, multi-use cards, engine-building, and tactical monster combat into one seamless, combo-driven experience. Set across five elemental realms — Forest, Ocean, Fire, Frost, and Magic — players gather fantastical creatures, explore vivid regions, evolve their champions, and brew powerful potions as they race to score the most points over three rounds. What makes Wild World stand out is the freedom and flexibility baked into every turn. You may perform a number of different free actions — placing cards to strengthen your engine, traveling through realms for rewards and prestige, or discarding for resources — allowing each turn to unfold as a meaningful puzzle. Every card has multiple uses, and clever sequencing often triggers reward chains that lead to explosive, satisfying combos. At the heart of the game are the mighty monsters guarding the world. Defeating them will give you permanent abilities, immediate bonuses, scoring conditions, new workers, and prestige, but reaching them requires smart planning: evolving creatures, upgrading your potion-brewing, unlocking stronger foes, and assembling the perfect moment to strike. Wild World is co-designed by Eilif Svensson, Åsmund Svensson, and Viljar Opdal Svensson, with father and son Åsmund and Viljar first starting to work on this game two years ago when Viljar was twelve. In his designer bio, Viljar writes, "I have played games since I was 5-6 years old, and I like thematic games with a combination of strategy, multi-use cards, and combat. All these things you find in Wild World, and I am very satisfied with the different realms and creatures." One of the player boards, featuring non-final art In more detail, the game is played on a shared board, while each player has a unique personal board for one of the five realms. Players start with three workers, and when placing a worker can in either order take these actions: • Purchase one of the two cards available in the realm where that worker was placed, gaining the associated reward for that purchase. • Resolve the realm's main action: gain coins, gain cards, unlock areas of your player board, brew potions, or evolve creatures. The multi-use cards can be discarded for coins, added to your engine for its effects, placed in your travel area for rewards and endgame bonuses, or used to conquer monsters — which is, the publishers note, the heart of the game. Players draft monsters at the start of play, so everyone knows which monsters are in play, the rewards they provide, the scoring opportunities available, and so on. ▪️ Another 2026 release that gives you a chance to catch monsters is Kraken, the debut release from designer/artist Sébastien Monnier through his Studio Agrume studio in Québec, Canada. Here's an overview of this 2-8 player game that plays in 20-30 minutes: Kraken is a pirate-themed fishing game in which each player secretly pursues a unique objective. On your turn, you draw cards, play actions, roll dice to catch fish, and upgrade your gear using goldfish tokens. Each pirate has a unique ability that influences their playstyle and strategy, and the first player to fulfill their secret objective or to capture the legendary Kraken wins. The game features action cards, attribute cards, sabotage cards, and fish cards divided into different environments: lake, sea, river. Managing sabotage and maximizing bonus effects are key to success. Multiple tactics are viable: boosting your gear, slowing down your rivals, or outright stealing their resources. Monnier plans to debut Kraken in Q1 2026. I asked him about accusations of AI-generated art being present, and he said, "No AI art assets were used in the creation of Kraken... I relied entirely on my own background and experience as a 2D and 3D graphic designer to create all the visual elements of the project myself, from the earliest concepts to the final designs... For the final design, I made all the cards on Illustrator to keep this vectorized style that I love." He did say that he uses ChatGPT "to correct my bad english", and as a monolingual U.S. resident who has used Google Translate for years, I can appreciate this use.

• 
  Designer Diary: Assyria: Second Edition, or Modernizing the Ancient

  by emaorny on January 6, 2026

  by Emanuele Ornella A Second Beginning Assyria's second edition began for me on October 18, 2023, with a simple Geekmail from Shem Phillips asking about my old game Assyria and mentioning that Garphill Games might be interested in bringing it back. Assyria first appeared in 2009 with Ystari Games, a French publisher then known for complex titles like Caylus, as well as their playful "ys/sy" naming pattern, which is how my original prototype, "Ziggurat", became Assyria — a change that ultimately fit the game perfectly. The game later appeared on Board Game Arena, where I tried it a few times, then moved on — only to rediscover it during the Covid lockdowns, after which I started thinking again about how it might evolve in a modern edition.​ When Shem reached out in 2023, I was thrilled and immediately began exploring ideas that had been simmering for years. One of the first concepts was adding a new column of cards, separate from the food cards, to give players more meaningful choices during the card-selection phase. (At that stage, I did not yet know the exact type of cards, only that this extra layer of decision-making felt promising.) From the outset, it was clear that the central mechanism would remain: expanding huts, feeding them to gain camels and points, then spending camels to trigger powerful actions. Collaborating and Evolving into Modernity Although I was familiar with Shem and Sam MacDonald's games and reputation, I had never met them before — and I quickly discovered how sharp and imaginative they are as designers and developers. They brought a strong, clear vision for the new edition and immediately started proposing mechanisms that integrated smoothly with the original structure. Playtesting happened on Tabletop Simulator, connecting my evenings in Italy with their mornings in New Zealand, and despite my clumsy handling of the interface, they patiently handled scoring, card displays, and continuous tweaks to the digital prototype.​ A major breakthrough came when we decided to link each of the four ziggurats to a specific action, allowing many of the original edition's actions to migrate directly onto the new player boards, which now show all ziggurat levels and a camel track. Each ziggurat gained its own role — buying cards, buying gold for trading with civilizations, advancing on the offering track, or acquiring boats and farmers — and improving a ziggurat would reduce the cost of its associated action. This created a new tension: whether to build more ziggurats to boost scoring from the offering track or to improve existing ones for maximum efficiency, opening different strategic paths from game to game. New Elements and Mechanisms Boats and farmers came later in development as tools to make the map more dynamic and to offer richer choices. Farmers act as a persistent wild food source tied to a specific hex, in contrast to one-shot wild food cards, which makes sustaining huts in that area much easier over time. Boats, on the other hand, let players leap over river hexes and engage in trade with civilizations, making spatial planning and timing more interactive than before. The civilizations in the new edition represent a re-imagined version of the nobles from the original Assyria. As before, players must "pay" for influence, and those who invest the most are rewarded during flood phases, but trades now also grant special actions, turning them into a compelling double benefit. Another important shift is that players no longer spend camels directly for these interactions; instead, they spend gold, which must first be purchased with camels, adding a two-step economy that deepens the decision space around when and how to convert resources. Once the system was stable enough, I moved to physical prototypes and began playtesting with friends. The additional actions and complexity initially pushed the playtime beyond that of the 2009 edition, and while Sam and Shem were not especially worried, I felt the game would benefit from a tighter arc. Reducing the number of rounds from eight to six, and the number of flood phases to two — once after the third round and once at the end of the sixth — achieved that goal, preserving intensity while making each decision more crucial and each flood less disruptive and time-consuming. Sharing Credit and Looking Ahead I could describe many small tweaks and refinements, but the essential truth is that Assyria: Second Edition would not exist in its present form without Sam and Shem's dedication. The core system is rooted in my original design, yet the new mechanisms, refinement, and variety are the result of our collaboration, which is why sharing design credit felt completely natural. Meeting them in person at the Play! fair in Italy in April 2024, playtesting the near-final version together, and sharing a real table instead of a virtual one made the whole journey feel complete. I also met Garphill's Zach Smith, who was preparing to move back to New Zealand from Italy with his family. We shared a great pizza while talking about future projects. Sam MacDonald (middle row, sixth from left, Shem Phillips (to the right of Sam), and me (front row, second from left) The only real regret in this whole story is distance. Co-ordinating design and play from opposite sides of the world makes spontaneous meet-ups almost impossible, yet this long-distance collaboration still led to the wonderful outcome of Assyria: Second Edition and the chance to work closely with Sam and Shem. A final word must go to the other Sam on this project, that is, Sam Phillips. His artwork is exceptional, and transforming a largely desert setting into a vibrant, engaging board is no small feat. He not only brought the landscape to life, but also gave the civilizations and favor cards a visual clarity that supports play as much as it delights the eye. Emanuele Ornella PS: You can even see a beard slowly appearing on my face between the last two photos. This wasn't Shem's influence, but my wife Juliana's. PPS: Please do not comment on what has gone missing from the top of my head between the 2009 photo and the 2025 one...

• 
  Game Market 2025 Autumn: Report from Table Games in the World

  by saigo01 on January 5, 2026

  by Saigo Editor's note: Game Market took place in Chiba Prefecture in the greater Tokyo area on November 22-23, 2025, and Saigo — who translates game rules between Japanese and English and who tweets about new JP games — has translated two reports about this event by Takuya Ono, who runs the Table Games in the World blog. Mr. Ono has given permission to reprint the photos from his post. Many thanks to Saigo! —WEM Report 1: The Venue Game Market 2025 Autumn took place at Makuhari Messe in Chiba on November 22 and 23. In warm autumn days with the minimum temperature staying above 10°C, the venue was filled with enthusiastic board gamers. According to the official announcement, attendance reached a record high of 30,000, with 17,000 people attending on the first day and 13,000 on the second. This marked the third time Game Market was held at Makuhari Messe, following last autumn and this spring. I've become used to the interaction between the Keiyo and Musashino lines, and the ten-minute walk from the nearest Kaihin-Makuhari Station no longer bothers me (although it is tough on the way home after buying many board games). Since hotels near the venue are scarce and expensive, I heard that people book lodging in Chiba or Funabashi instead. The entrance to Makuhari Messe entrance. Heading in, along with people going to other events... On Day 1, the show opened at 11:00 for the 2,700 people with early entry tickets and at 12:00 for other visitors. Even with early entry tickets, people still queued for hours from dawn to secure pole position. The weather was nice and warm for this autumn event. Applause erupted when the opening announcement was made and people entered the venue, showing their wristbands. Early entry queue on Day 1 Makuhari Messe layout Halls 3, 4, 5, and 6 were used for this Game Market. However, Halls 3 and 4 were divided by a passageway (see diagram above), resulting in a 3:1 booth allocation ratio. This created a significant difference in crowd density between the divided halls. For comparison, Game Market 2025 Spring used Halls 5 through 8 with a 1:1 booth allocation ratio. On Saturday, a long line formed at the Engames booth in Hall 6 for Bomb Busters. The line lasted until the afternoon. On Sunday, another long line formed in Hall 4 of people seeking to purchase famous TRPG scenario books. Meanwhile, Hall 3 was fairly deserted. View of crowded Halls 4 through 6 from the entrance of Hall 4 Hall 3 was fairly deserted, but visitors could be seen playing leisurely in the children's play area and the Big Game Park, where giant-sized board games were available Engames was likely the busiest booth at this Game Market. They prepared many copies of the reprinted Bomb Busters with the Spiel des Jahres winner logo. Ghost Lift, which was well-received at SPIEL Essen 25, also made a triumphant return. According to the Engames representative Takafumi Sugiki, the line peaked at 350 people. Still, Bomb Busters did not run out until Sunday, which shows just how many copies they had prepared. Takafumi Sugiki of Engames is at their bustling booth with Bomb Busters, which is reportedly scheduled for availability once again in December In Hall 3, Oink Games was putting up a great fight. They drew attention with eye-catching decorations and by releasing new titles showcased at SPIEL Essen. The Pokémon Board Game Club booth, which announced next month's release of Pokémon Goita, was also popular, with Pikachu caps spotted everywhere on attendees ranging from adults to children. Jun Sasaki of Oink Games At Pokémon Board Game Club, visitors could play Pokémon Goita At the regular special booth 本当に面白いユーロゲームの世界 ("The Really Fun World of Euro Games"), visitors could play famous classic games (midweight to light) provided by ten Japanese publishers with rule explanations. I also helped out there on Sunday afternoon for four hours, explaining various games to families, couples, and groups of friends. I think Strike was the most played game there, but quite a few customers also wanted to try Bomb Busters after missing their chance to buy it at Engames. People could purchase the games they played and liked at the neighboring Yellow Submarine booth. With the increasing number of new releases, opportunities to play long-selling classics may have dwindled lately. I hope events like this give people a chance to experience such masterpieces. The 本当に面白いユーロゲームの世界 ("The Really Fun World of Euro Games") booth drew a constant stream of visitors at this Game Market, too Walking around all day naturally made me a bit peckish. There are also convenience stores and restaurants in Makuhari Messe, but I was drawn to the food trucks by the enticing aromas drifting through the venue. At this Game Market, three food trucks were positioned in a corner each of Halls 3 and 6. I had a roasted, soy sauce-flavor mushroom hamburger in the less crowded Hall 3. A food court was located in front of the food trucks The block booths, which featured a variety of displays, were arranged around the standard booths. Alongside Saashi & Saashi and itten, which exhibited at SPIEL Essen 25, as well as Gamestore Banesto, which brought new titles from the event, there was an increasing variety of exhibitors. This included groups that regularly participate in Game Market, those who upgraded from standard booths, and newcomers, including overseas publishers. I also noticed more overseas attendees, as well as exhibitors striving to explain the games in English. The distribution network of Japanese editions of games brought to market by overseas publishers remains shrouded in mystery. I plan to gather more information on it. Saashi & Saashi's new title is Shall We Dance itten's new title is Diver Go! Gamestore Banesto brought new titles from SPIEL Essen 25 BookOff offered a lottery ticket for every purchase of ¥2,000 "Intelligence Assessment Program", an experiential event created by Riddler, reportedly had over two thousand participants ADICE introduced their new title, Liar Seven, with vibrant decorations and cosplayers After some time away, Sugorokuya returned to the Game Market with their Japanese edition of Hellapagos YOHO Brewing Company, under the Yona Yona Ale brand, presented 無礼講ースター / Burei-Coaster at the Yellow Submarine booth Due to the rapid increase in exhibitors, standard booths are also experiencing polarization and dispersion. Around seven hundred new indie board game titles are estimated to have been released at this Game Market. Despite pre-Game Market events like Vorspiel, as well as introductions by board game YouTubers, X posts, and flyer distribution at the venue, it is difficult to gain attention. The topic of zoning came up at this event. Although works rated R18 have always been prohibited at Game Market, an area was designated for works "themed around or emphasizing sexual depictions". However, this area could not be completely isolated from the other booths. It was located in an area where general attendees, including children, could pass through. Consequently, decorations and displays were not possible, and the area operated on a "bring items from the back to sell on customer request" basis. This rule was applied to four booths at this Game Market, but there seemed to be works emphasizing sexual depictions also at block booths. Toryo Hojo of LOSER DOGS once again released a game themed on a recent scandal Azb.Studio's new title, announced almost on the day of Game Market, was Originalite, in which players create recipes by stacking transparent cards on top of one another Following SPIEL Essen 25, Hisashi Hayashi was also busy at Game Market with an autograph session and a special stage. He released his new title, Sushi Otter Hisashi Hayashi on the special stage Attendees could send the games they purchased directly from the venue. There was also a temporary storage service where you could store the games in cardboard boxes. People were filling them up like pit stops. Game Market does not end until you have played all the games you bought — but is it possible to play through that many before the next Game Market? Game Market 2026 Spring is scheduled for May 23–24, 2026, and Game Market 2026 Autumn is scheduled for October 17–18, both at Makuhari Messe. Temporary storage section for delivery services Report 2: The Games The standard booth layout was arranged with long tables divided into small sections. Game Market 2025 Autumn had 1,368 exhibitors over two days, with over seven hundred new titles released. With 948 exhibitors at SPIEL Essen 25, the Game Market numbers alone show the involvement of many groups. Many of them were indie game creators, either individuals or groups, who used half or all of each long table. Even with brief stops for casual chats along the way, I focused solely on the exhibits, ignoring and not taking the flyers handed out to me. Nevertheless, it took me ten hours over two days to see all booths (averaging less than thirty seconds per booth). Below are some of the games that attracted me among those I could photograph the components of at the venue. Even these represent only 5% of the new releases. I conduct a survey on this blog about newly released games after each Game Market, and I will announce the results in a later article to see which game received the highest ratings. Climbing/Shedding Best Family Forever from Today (from Mysboard Games) is a shedding game without numbers. When three colors are played, the phase changes and the number of cards you need to play increases. Despite its appearance, it is quite a competitive game. 13月32日 / The 32nd Day of the 13th Month (from 6jizoGames) is a shedding game in which the strength of cards from 1 to 32 loops and the first card played is the weakest Dodicitre (from Kentaiki) is a shedding game in which two-digit number cards like "12" can be also be played as two number cards, like "1" and "2" Storm in a Teacup (from Gomi Kokusai) is a shedding game with only three types of cards without any numbers, namely Tea, Milk, and Lemon. Since cards returned to your hand can be played again, you need to think ahead when choosing which cards to play. Piplus (from KUJIRADAMA) is a card game that uses D4, D6, and D8 dice. You can use dice rolls to increase card totals or replace card values entirely. You can win by using up all your cards and dice. However, if you use up your dice before your cards, you must re-roll the dice to use them again. Other Card Games In DORON: Ninja Trick Taking (from HEX EYE GAMES), players can "doron" (vanish) from a play to bid on the number of tricks they will win. Players can adjust their bids using the chips they have, aiming for a successful bid by fine-tuning. Wizards Showdown (from Spiral Game) is a poker-like game designed by Masato Uesugi. Players create hands using their cards and community cards, but the points to gain (or lose if defeated) are awarded on a first-come, first-served basis. Dexterity & Gimmicks Snowp (from SzpiLAB) is a dexterity game in which players flick rings from the edge of the board to capture bells inside the rings. Matching bell colors yields higher scores. In たぬきとわがしとししおどし / Tanuki, Sweets, and Shishi-Odoshi (from AsobyTukoos), players put wooden balls into a segmented bamboo tube that is pivoted to one side of its balance point ("shishi-odoshi"). When enough balls accumulate in the upper end of the tube, they eventually move the tube's center of gravity past the pivot. This causes the tube to rotate and dump out the balls. The player who put in the last ball loses, and the player with the most balls inside wins. There are also some larger, heavier balls. ダシヌケッ！ / Dash-I-Nuke (from Kawasaki Factory) is a multiplayer Spit game in which players race to toss number cards into a box in specific orders. It is a remake of Wild Rush, which was released 21 years ago. ゆび感クレーンゲーム チャンピョンシップ / Finger Crane Game Championship (from Suki Games and Tentsuku Games) is a dexterity game in which players take turns grabbing a specified number of cards from the deck. Other players predict the outcome, and gain points if they guess correctly. 勉強 / Benkyo ("Study") (from TANSANFABRIK) is a pen-and-paper game in which you study five academic subjects — Literature, Social Studies, Math, Science, and English — for three minutes each, then take an exam. The questions come in authentic-looking envelopes. Soup Scoop (from Monobees) is a dexterity game in which players use a spoon to scoop specified ingredients. Beads count as penalty points, but speed is prioritized, so mixing them in is unavoidable to some degree. The new edition of Candibury (from Northgame) sold for 70,000 yen. As expected, the ten limited copies sold out quickly. Euro-Style Prema et Labora (from tete-a-tete × Koguma Koubou) is a set-collection game in which players harvest grapes, put them in a squeezer, fill barrels, and make friends. The squeezing mechanism, which acts as a randomizer, is impressive. Bluolino (from Sui Works) is a worker-placement game in which players move across six regions and build cities by constructing buildings. Action spaces vary through wheel combinations. To use resources, they must be placed in the area where you build. Bengara (from Sutekina Yama) is a two-player tile- and worker-placement game set in Okayama, Japan. Players must make difficult choices, such as matching icons on tiles to gain resources or enclosing areas with paths to create districts. 時空旅行の時代 / Era of Time Travel (from A.I.Lab.遊) is the publisher's tenth anniversary commemorative game. It is a combination of a rondel, worker-placement, and area-majority game. Players place workers while traveling through the author's previous games to gain majorities. In Splentia (from K*), players use miner tokens drawn from the bag to collect gems and arrange them into specific shapes to craft jewelwork. Over time, players can create larger pieces of jewelwork. Leiden 1637 – The End of Tulip Mania (from Spieldisorder) is a sequel to Leiden 1593 – The Beginning of Tulip Cultivation. To plant tulips and control the market for profit, players swap the cards in their hand with the cards in the play area. In Monster Estate (from Panpas), you sell houses on plots of land where monsters may appear unexpectedly. You can either sell the estate before a monster appears or wait and hope that it doesn't show up. Pattern Recognition 絶対ネオン感 / Absolute Neon Sense (from KogeKogeDo) is a pattern-recognition game in which players arrange cards according to the length of the neon lines. The actual length is indicated on the back of each card. In Happy Photo (from Sato Familie), using a map like in MicroMacro: Crime City, players listen to the leader's description and try to locate the spot on the map as indicated on each card. The cards also list words forbidden from being used. うんこ探偵 / Poop Detective (from Mosaic Gakari) is a game in which players must find the poop generated from nine tiles among face-down tiles. Similar-looking fake tiles are not poop. I bought it on the spot. Parfait! (from yonoBiii) is a co-operative game in which players select and draw pieces from a bag based on their feel and stack them with matching fruit symbols to earn high scores. They said they made the pieces and the box with a 3D printer. Communication 僅差線引屋 / Kinsa Senbikiya ("Almost Barely") (from Kakugari Books) is a communication game to draw the line between what is almost or barely something, such as "What is almost or barely edible?" In The Eryngii Mushroom's Family (from Yamada's House), players guess which photo corresponds to a story the game master made up based on an Eryngii mushroom photo. Once you hear the story, you start to see it that way. In My Fave Manga (from Futabaku Games), players each bring a manga. A bookmark is randomly inserted for the players to read the corresponding page. Then, using cards, they predict what will happen on the next page. This game was produced under the direction of Noriaki Watanabe of Drosselmeyer & Co., Ltd. Race In Cross Golems (from RMBC), you combine two cards to move your player token and collect treasure. The value of treasure stolen by the dragon increases. It was the most popular title in our poll ゲームマーケット2025秋：注目の新作ボードゲーム (Most Anticipated New Releases at Tokyo Game Market 2025 Autumn). You've GOAT Mail (from Kumanote Kikaku) is a game to deliver letters to the addresses specified on the cards. You can also travel on water by riding on a bird. Battle Kaiju on the Earth: LEGENDS Gamera (from Kadokawa) is an asymmetric battle royale game featuring monsters from the Heisei Gamera film trilogy. Players compete to deal the most damage until someone is eliminated or rounds progress until mana runs out. Designed by Yusuke Sato, Prison Battle (from New Board Game Party) is a two-player team elimination match featuring cyborg prisoners. The prisoners' unique abilities can lead to unexpected outcomes. Simultaneous Blind Bidding & Press-Your-Luck In Cryptid Spot (from POLAR POND GAMES), players search for unidentified creatures while engaging in simultaneous blind bidding. However, a mysterious character lurks among the players, deliberately canceling out numbers by bidding the same amount. Cheat Hopper (from Studio Citrine) is a racing game in which players advance according to the outcomes of rock-paper-scissors card battles. The cards are played sequentially, not simultaneously. Winning with rock reverses your direction, allowing you to lose on purpose. カケルくんのじゃんけんカードゲーム / Kakeru-kun's Rock-Paper-Scissors Card Game (from Saikikaku x kurumari) was created in collaboration with the Kozenhonten seaweed product shop in Asakusa, Tokyo. Dangerous Sweets (from Brekeke Games) is a press-your-luck game in which players take turns flipping sweet cards. Whoever reveals a "hot" card is eliminated. The words "delicious" and "hot" are printed on the cards in various languages. Pen and Paper FRAMLET! (from One More Game!) is a flip-and-write game in which players create patterns with gravity-affected polyominoes in a Tetris style. The first player to create eachpattern earns a bonus. In Roguewrite (from Fudacoma Games), players build a dungeon in the first half through roll & write, then stack all the dungeons for adventurers to explore in the second half. Dealing more damage to adventurers yields higher scores.

• 
  Designer Diary: Xenology

  by Dan Manfredini on January 4, 2026

  by Dan Manfredini Alien Origins Some of my designs begin with a single starting point. Xenology, which Play to Z released in December 2025, began with several. Every once in a while, I sift through my old design notes and sketches. Revisiting them often sparks new ideas as I try to decipher discarded concepts and half-finished drawings. During one of these sessions, I came across a concept for an alien-themed board game. Not everything was fleshed out, but the core was there: Exploring a planet as an alien species and cataloging everything you could learn from it. I've always been captivated by aliens, especially their mysterious motivations. From The X-Files and E.T. to stories of late-night encounters, I've often wondered what things would look like from their perspective. If their goal is to gather knowledge, what exactly are they studying? How do they choose where to land? How do they organize what they find? Those questions were exactly the kind I wanted to explore in a game. So I dug into what could be salvaged from the old concept. The idea of visiting a planet from your mothership was definitely going to be carried forward. You could explore several tracks related to various forms of knowledge, like biology and geology. That seemed promising and helped show the breadth and enormity of the aliens' task. Reducing your risk of exposure and waking new aliens from cryogenic sleep were also fun ideas that I wanted to keep in the new design. With those pieces in hand, I began building Xenology as a full board game. Research Cards While I had the concept of aliens gathering information on broad categories like the "biology" of the planet, I felt that was too general. I needed something more specific and interesting, so I came up with research cards. These would represent sub-topics within the broader categories, like "reptiles" or "fungus", and give players more variety in what they are looking for. A sketch of the first research card The early versions of these cards used various symbols to show how you could complete the research. Some symbols involved the planet, while others involved further study and experimentation back on the mothership. Eventually, the cards were simplified to focus solely on planetary symbols. Each symbol represents something on the planet the aliens can study, with requirements tied to features such as biomes (forests or mountains), continents (tropical or polar), or population sizes. Examples of final research cards The Elder Council The Elders, that is, the ancient aliens guiding the mission, began as two separate systems. In early versions, the mothership had many more rooms with various actions. One of those rooms contained several spaces with seated Elders, each with their own ability. They provided resources you could use on your missions and allowed you to propose research by playing cards from your hand onto your player board. Early elder council chambers The knowledge tracks I mentioned earlier were another system in the game, but they were not as integrated as I wanted. I realized that I could combine the two, with each Elder becoming a specialist in a knowledge type, and with their bonuses moving on spaces along the corresponding track. Final Elder council chambers The Mothership and the Core Loop The heart of Xenology is a simple loop: propose research → travel to the planet → complete research → upload data → repeat At first, it may seem that you can just follow this pattern and everything will run smoothly. However, you quickly realize that your alien meeples are often working on different steps of this loop simultaneously. One may already be down on the planet without objectives, while others are still figuring out how to upload completed mission data into the database. Final mothership action spaces Earlier versions of the game experimented with more rooms on the mothership, some with one-way doorways to enforce this loop. Over time, the mothership became more flexible, with the "one-way doors" simplified into the single-directional paths of entering a landing craft and returning from a mission on the planet. Alien on a landing craft Sneaking around the Planet The planet is made of hex tiles, mostly face down to conceal their details. However, the backs of the tiles show population levels. I envisioned that an arriving alien ship would instantly detect population centers by the lights of their cities at night, while finer details would require closer investigation. The planet with a few visitors Aliens that make it down to the planet still need instructions. To complete their research, an alien on the mothership must take the "Mission Control" action. This allows each of those aliens on the planet to either explore a tile (that is, flip it over) or extract information to complete the research and return to the ship. Extracting information requires leaving behind "evidence" cubes equal to the tile's population. After all, a mission in New York City is harder to keep discrete than one in a remote field. When the alien returns to the ship, you check for matching symbols on the planet tile and your research cards or specimen containers. Matches allow you to complete research or collect specimens. From the earliest concept, I knew I wanted the evidence left behind to be a liability that players needed to manage. Cleaning up evidence is effectively the stereotypical "alien cover-up". In the final version, cleaning up returns all cubes on a chosen continent to their owners. This may mean helping other players with their mess, so I added an incentive: By cleaning up, you impress the Elders, which allows you to advance on any of their tracks. The Galactic Database The final destination for all of the research is the galactic database. When you have completed a research card (by filling it with cubes), you can visit the database to upload that data (cubes) into gaps in the database. The research card is then added to your score pile, which determines the value of your specimens at game's end. This took on many iterations, but it always included the placement of cubes onto a network of icons related to your research. For my first iteration, I knew I needed something basic to test the rest of the game. I wanted something that looked like a web of connections, something a detective might put together with their collected clues, so to start I drew several cards with boxes, icons, and connections via lines. I didn't know how many spaces I needed, so I made several that connected to each other in a chain... Early database prototype This version helped me start playtesting the core of the game, but I knew it was a placeholder with some obvious problems. For example, there was a fixed set of places to put your cubes. If you had completed biology research but no place was available for those cubes, then you couldn't add your info to the database. This led to the next version: the tiles. Database tiles prototype This version had empty white spaces between the symbols. These spaces are where you could place your cubes as long as an adjacent symbol matched your research. This meant that one space could potentially store different types of research cubes. Additionally, I switched to tiles to add another gameplay element; you could now build the database as you played. You could spend research cards from your hand to draw database tiles and play them (in addition to adding cubes). This allowed the database to grow and accommodate the types of spaces you needed. These tiles improved the database but still had a few issues. For example, when they were rotated, their lines didn't always match the other tiles. Another issue was that each tile had only two spaces for cubes – and the game still felt too tight in this regard. I wanted more options. These issues brought me to the final version of the database tiles... Final database tiles This version had more spaces per tile (3 or 4), so you had many more options from which to choose. Additionally, each tile could be placed next to another tile with the right rotation. Overall, this system gave the feeling I was wanting for the player. A Menagerie of Specimens Specimens were added later in development but quickly became a major pillar of the game. Collecting specimens works similarly to research: you find a matching symbol on a planet tile. Instead of placing a cube, though, you flip your specimen container to its filled side. Delivering it back to your storage locker grants a bonus — perhaps a special device, a research skill, or even the ability to wake another crewmate from deep sleep. Ultimately, specimens contribute significantly to your score, with their value determined by the scoring icons on the research cards you have completed throughout the game. Storage section with specimen containers Space Can Be a Lonely Place During development, I used makeshift solo rules, but I knew I needed to develop something more substantial. Rather than competing against a virtual opponent, solo Xenology became a race against time, with the planet on the brink of cosmic destruction. Your mission is to catalog as much as possible before it's gone forever. The main challenge was creating the right amount of tension. Without other players competing for resources, the only possible curveballs were random card draws and face-down planet tiles. To fix this, I created a small deck of event cards that gradually interfere with your mission: blocking planet spaces, landing craft, and database openings, as well as restricting card draws. Solo disaster cards This worked, but I wanted to turn up the pressure. I added versions of events that "escalate" if you ignored them for too long. For example, the card "Planetary Impact" adds disaster cubes to a forest tile, but if all such tiles are already full, it instead destroys all face-down tiles adjacent to forests. This forces interesting decisions about risk management and timing, making the solo mode both tense and unique. Close Encounter I am very pleased with the final result of Xenology, especially seeing it come to life with the otherworldly visuals from artist Bill Bricker. While many other mechanisms came and went along the way, it was a rewarding journey watching all of these systems evolve and ultimately lock together. I hope you get a chance to try it out for yourselves! Thanks for reading! Dan Manfredini

• 
  Command Railways in Bengal, Paddle to a Campsite, and Send Dwarfs Against a Dragon

  by W Eric Martin on January 3, 2026

  by W. Eric Martin ▪️ In March 2025, UK illustrator and author Owen Davey crowdfunded Fame & Fable, with copies currently anticipated to reach backers in Q2 2026 and presumably available elsewhere after that. The publisher's game overview is minimal: Fame & Fable is a fantasy-themed competitive board game for 1-4 players. Use your actions to buy ally and item cards from the market, and play these to defeat monsters, complete contracts, or disrupt other players. Gain fame through your exploits to move your player token around the game track, picking up bonus tokens as you travel. The player with the highest fame at the end of the game wins. In April 2025, Ross Connell interviewed Davey about his illustration background and the challenge of creating more than 150 images for this project. Here's an excerpt: The game's lore centres on a realm overrun by monsters wreaking havoc across the land. Your mission is to gather allies and items to confront these threats head-on. In solo mode, the game introduces six key locations, each delving into classic terrains often explored in fantasy works. Prototype (image: Ilya Ushakov) Fame and Fable aims to strike a balance between something familiar and new, offering a fresh perspective on beloved fantasy tropes while remaining rooted in the joy of storytelling. ▪️ Another game crowdfunded in 2025 and hitting the market in 2026 is Movers & Shakers, a 1-4 player game from the design team of Nuno Bizarro Sentieiro and Paulo Soledade (Madeira, Nippon) and publisher Quined Games: In the late 19th century, Bengal became a key hub for railway expansion in British India, surpassing earlier developments elsewhere in the country. The East Indian Railway Company led the charge, beginning with the Howrah–Hooghly line in 1854. Driven by strategic, economic, and export needs, the rail network rapidly spread across the region. By century's end, Bengal had one of India's most extensive and vital railway systems, powering both commerce and colonial control. In Movers & Shakers, you play as a railway magnate in 19th-century Bengal, competing to transport goods, fulfill contracts, and invest your profits wisely. Over two rounds, you'll use your own and rival trains to move crates between Benares and Calcutta, aiming to build wealth through sharp planning and bold decisions. Only the most ambitious and efficient tycoon will rise to shape the future of Bengal's railways. Each round has two phases. During the action phase, players choose a card from their hand and perform the action shown on the card, as well as the action linked to the slot where the card was placed. These slot effects vary, so careful planning is essential. During the administration phase, players evaluate the shipping zone of the board, which affects deals and modifies turn order. After two rounds, the player who has built the greatest wealth wins. The game is available on Board Game Arena should you care to give it a go there. ▪️ A 2027 release — yes, we're already moving into next year — heading to crowdfunding is Pack & Paddle from the design team of Matthew O'Malley and Ben Rosset, who have previously partnered on The Search for Planet X and Fromage. Here's an overview of this 30-45 minute game for 2-5 players from publisher KTBG: The car is packed, nature is calling, and the time is right to get away from it all for a few days. Raise your tent and unplug for a weekend in the great outdoors. In Pack & Paddle, you spend three days in the woods with the stars as your ceiling and the wilderness your playground. Each day is filled with opportunities to explore nature, spot wildlife, and have an adventure or two. A seasoned camper knows the key to a successful trip relies on good planning and a well-stocked campsite. Throughout the day, you'll draft supplies and tour your surroundings, then at dusk, you'll gather around the fire pit and contribute wood to keep the campfire going. ▪️ Designer Luís Brueh and publisher Vesuvius Media are partnering once again, and given their history on the Dwar7s game series, you should not be surprised to learn that Flame & Forge features dwarfs. (Kickstarter) Flame & Forge can be co-operatively, with all players trying to bring down the red dragon before the town goes up in flames, or competitively, with players comparing points once the dragon falls. Each turn, you place a dwarf figure on the leftmost spot of a city tile, then take all actions to the right of where you placed: gaining gems, forging weapons, fighting monsters, healing damage, gain knowledge, and so on. However, you must place your initial figure on the tile row farthest away from the dragon, with your next figure going on a tile in the subsequent row adjacent to your first one, and so on. Thus, your initial placement determines which later options are available, but once all your figures have been placed, you retrieve them, then start from the bottom once again. You want to upgrade the cards in your deck with new weapons and defeated monsters to deal more damage on attacks, but the damage you take during an attack is also based on what's in your deck, so you'll want to gauge what remains to be flipped before rushing blindly into a challenge.

• 
  Designer Preview: Dark Pact

  by Tom Lehmann on January 2, 2026

  by Tom Lehmann Dark Pact is a deck-building game for 1-4 occult researchers seeking to make pacts with otherworldly forces. The game includes thirteen dark pacts, and the first player to obtain and satisfy a dark pact's condition wins. An Occultist's Tools In my games, I want players to be able to act immediately, so each player's initial deck includes a Laboratory to gain actions, a Library for draws, Self-Sacrifice to thin their deck, and Investigate to alter what's on offer, as well as some money. Cards are bought from a central display of ten cards that are drawn from a single deck. This style of card appearance, familiar from games such as Ascension, tends to be fairly tactical. Investigation sends cards from this supply to the Exile, allowing players to filter cards in the center, both to obtain desired cards and deny their rivals needed cards. In addition, each player begins with three reserved cards in their grimoire, a tile that holds up to three cards that only its owner can purchase, including Inscription. If added to a player's deck, this card enables them to reserve an expensive card from the center, either for their own later use or for denial, adding a strategic element. This emphasis on immediate player action is further emphasized by allowing unplayed cards to optionally be saved — not discarded — from one turn to the next and having purchased cards go to your hand, not your discard pile. Buying a card has both strategic value — improving your deck — and a potential immediate tactical use, in combination with your saved cards for next turn. Since purchased cards go to your hand, triggering an early reshuffle isn't a big effect. This allows a set-up change from most deck-building games, with players (in order) selecting their initial five-card hand from five, six, seven, or eight cards of their ten-card start deck, respectively. Later players get better first turns on average, typically generating an extra coin or two. This compensates for always being later in turn order in a first-to-win game. Test statistics on player position vs. win %s confirmed this. Insight and Curses Thematically, occultists are seeking to obtain knowledge from beyond, represented by insight. But, of course, there are temptations and dangers lurking in the nether realms. Insight and curse points mostly have no direct effect — though you cannot buy Insight cards if you have any cursed treasures in play — but various dark pacts refer to them: In addition, if the deck runs out before any player satisfies a dark pact, the game ends, each player totals their deck's insight and negative curse points, and the player with the highest net value wins. This alternative end condition happens rarely, unless one or more players buys Banishing Spirit and aggressively pushes the game along by repeatedly sweeping most supply cards into Exile. Cards sent to Exile can sometimes be recovered or exchanged. Further, the Exile is the realm of spirits and exiling cards makes the Spirit Lord — who can only be destroyed, not exiled — more powerful. Destroyed (not exiled) cards go to the Graveyard and are generally harder, but not impossible, to recover (though Fool's Gold tends to recover only the treasures destroyed for being too weak). Multiplying Effects Some of the costs and requirements on the cards above may seem high, but players also start with one 2x multiplier card (and are guaranteed access to second 2x multiplier which begins play in their grimories). Multiplier cards are played with another card (an action or a treasure) and multiply every numeral (not "choose one" or "a") on a card, so a 2x Guiding Spirit provides +2 actions, 4 draws, and requires 2 discards, while its clean-up effect is done only a single time. Multiplying only numerals, as opposed to playing a card multiple times, greatly simplifies the rules and can lead to some surprising effects. Multiplier cards are either 2x or 3x, and several of them can be played to affect a single card. For example, Visions played by itself draws 2 cards and shifts 3 cards to the start of next turn (after you replenish your hand to five cards at the end of this turn) — a nice, but not game changing, effect. Visions played with both a 2x and a 3x draws 12 cards and shifts 18 cards (likely, most of your deck and your remaining hand) to next turn. You'll begin next turn with 23 cards (five from replenishing your hand) and will be quite likely to win...if you have a dark pact and have set up your deck for it. Multipliers make achieving some dark pact requirements much easier. For example: 45 insight to satisfy Hallow the Ground becomes possible with 2x, 2x Enlightment for 40 insight plus, say, using Enlightenment to play Attunement directly from the supply for 5 more insight. 25 Curse points to satisfy Curse the Land becomes 2x, 2x, 2x Cursed Gold (-3 Curses) for 24 Curse points plus, say, 1 Curse point from playing A Little Learning earlier that turn. In my games, I try to include things for all three player personas that Mark Rosewater described in his seminal Magic: The Gathering article. I surround a core of efficiency (Spike) with large, fun effects (Timmy) and opportunities for creative play (Johnny). Deck-building games — by their nature — involve efficiency considerations. Multipliers add both large effects and ways to creatively play cards. Designing Dark Pacts The thirteen unique dark pacts divide into two broad groups: Keepers (shown above), with large requirements that involve playing several multipliers and one or two key cards to win, and Instants, mostly based on revealing cards in your hand. Instant pacts have much lower requirements since multipliers affect cards as they are played, never those in your hand. These pacts are all about timing your card draws and arranging your hand to get both the Pact and its needed cards together. Other dark pacts count things besides insight and curses, such as coins or cards in play. As new players are often unsure as to which direction they should adjust their decks, for your first game each player begins with one of four straight-forward Keeper dark pacts to provide them a focus. (They can also win with any other dark pact that they acquire during play.) Experienced players don't get a starting dark pact and are faced with the dual challenge of how to focus their deck and which dark pact to acquire. A common denial tactic by players who already took a dark pact is to exile other dark pacts from the supply. As it is hard to win without a dark pact, Investigation exiles either 1 dark pact or 2 other cards to discourage — but not eliminate — this tactic. Renegotiation lets a player shift pacts to match different strategies, while Temptation is added in four-player games to help ensure that all players get at least one Dark Pact. While a random dark pact could be dealt to each experienced player, this has two issues: First, it conflicts thematically with the idea that players are occult researchers exploring the unknown. Second, and more important, while the dark pacts are balanced, some groups may feel that a given dark pact is stronger than the other ones — for their group's play style — and that a player randomly dealt that pact has too strong an advantage due to luck during set-up. Testing, Testing I had been thinking about deck-building games when Trick or Treat Studios reached out to me. I wanted to design one with varied "play shapes", not just: buy cards to make your deck efficient via thinning or draws, possibly slow your rivals via attacks, acquire a payload, then purchase victory points. Instead, I wanted alternate payloads (based on different card types or sets of cards) and multiple deck archetypes (efficient decks, big decks, draw everything decks, multiplier combos, sweep the supply for deck-end wins, etc.) so that play would vary more, using unique victory conditions to drive this. Since Trick or Treat Studios is a publisher specializing in occult horror, this led me to a Faustian setting and a game title: Dark Pact. From these ideas, I put together a prototype. The first big hurdle was controlling card flow and proportions. I had lots of card ideas and the central supply (which initially scaled in size from 6-10 cards with 2-4 players) got too easily clogged with cards that were too situational, early game cards showing up too late, late game cards showing up too early, etc. I changed the supply to always have ten cards, eliminated some cards, improved Banishing Spirit to help with clogging, and figured out which fifteen supply cards were central to game play and needed to scale at one per player. Another sixteen cards needed to scale at one per pair of players and I split the second of each of these across the three- and four-player cards. That left seventeen unique specialized cards, which got split up by game function. The two-player supply deck is 57 cards, plus all thirteen dark pacts, with 26 more cards for each additional player. Adding needed duplicates and fewer cards per player for three- and four-player games keeps card dilution in check. With card flow working, I then examined balance issues. Initially, all dark pacts cost the same amount (5 coins), but I knew this would change during development. Being able to vary both pact requirements and cost gave me two tuning knobs. Two pacts were particularly hard to balance as they line up with efficient play. If you build a deck by thinning and buying that works off a single treasure and has lots of draw power with cards that chain together in an efficient action economy, then this deck will tend to play all of its cards every turn, satisfying Great Work. If it can do this without playing any duplicates — which greatly limits your use of multipliers — then Diverse Learning also becomes trivial once your deck has fifteen unique useful cards. By tripling Great Work's cost, it is hard to buy with a single treasure, even with multipliers. Having multiple treasures makes it harder for a deck to also have the draws and action economy to play itself in a single turn since the treasures tend to clog up your hand. Needing duplicate multipliers, in turn, slowed down Diverse Learning. Like many Instant pacts, Great Potential is conceptually simple: play x2, x2, x2 Visions to draw and set aside most of your deck. Next turn, add those cards to your hand, play Great Potential, and win. However, not only do you need card filtering and retrieval powers to get this combo together, you must also have at least nineteen cards in your deck, which takes time to buy, during which the pacts for efficient decks might win first. For both this pact and Occult Mastery (play 22 cards), tuning consisted of first taming the "efficient deck" dark pacts, then setting the required card thresholds for these cards to match the desired speed. In addition to basic treasures — copper, silver, gold — Dark Pact also has various special treasures. A pact needing some number of different treasures in play seemed obvious, but it was surprisingly hard to balance. My first attempt (called "Pieces of 8") required eight different treasures. Players begin with three treasures — copper, cursed copper, and silver — but this is misleading as thinning your deck by replacing its copper is a frequent early move and being encouraged to keep them while hunting for five more treasures is a bit of a trap. I reduced the pact's requirement to six different treasures. To counter it being too easy if you get it before thinning your initial copper, I increased its cost. Now, buying it is hard to do with just your start cards, and it competes with buying either gold or 2x multipliers (which both cost 6). We tried using it as a start pact for new players, but the other players then denied them treasures by either buying or exiling them, which was frustrating. Seeing this, we swapped Occult Mastery for it as our fourth starting pact. Players who don't aim for an Insight pact tend to exile the Insight cards, which can be frustrating for a player aiming for Hallow the Ground, Sun Aspect, or the Four-Fold Path. This behavior, however, was expected, and the game has various ways to get Insight cards out of exile, including Inheritance. As I dislike player frustration, my initial design had a reserve to hold some useful cards so a player couldn't get stuck. While wrestling with card flow, the tactical nature of the supply, and higher cost cards, the need to reserve cards for the future during play became clear. My original reserve became the current grimoire, which begins with an extra silver and a second 2x multiplier, plus Inscription. The Demon in the Corner With an occult theme revolving around pacts with otherworldly beings, many cards could suggest things lurking in the background, but I knew we would need some demon cards and, thematically, they would need attack powers. What attacks were needed? How would they work? I considered and rejected Dominion-style curse cards for Dark Pact. First, I didn't want attacks to help players going for dark pacts involving curses. Second, I think cards that throw "dirt" into the gears of a deck-building game work best if they are not present in every playing, which didn't match this game's Ascension-style card appearance from a single deck. While deck-building games tend to be multi-player solitaire, one advantage of the common supply and exile mechanism is that they provide player interaction. (A Spike player who immediately thins their initial Investigation card for deck efficiency often rues their lack of control over what's in the supply.) Destructive effects weren't needed for player interaction; instead I wanted effects that mostly slowed rivals, given players are racing to complete pacts. Oppression puts cards back on your rivals' decks, forcing one of their next two turns to be a bit worse. Maxwell's Demon is a fairly mild discarding attack that, due to the card selection it provides, can sometimes actually help your rivals. In addition to supplying defense cards, I discovered an interesting property of how multipliers interact with attack cards that also provide a benefit. If you apply a multiplier to obtain a bigger benefit, then the attack part ceases to matter (as most rivals, in the case of the attacks shown above with a 2x multiplier applied to them, won't have ten cards in hand to be affected by them). In games with attack cards, once you obtain them, you almost always play them. You've paid their cost, why not? Here, there's a trade-off. Depending on the situation, you can either play them to slow your rivals down or multiply them to speed up your own progress. It's often an interesting choice. The strongest attacks — if not multiplied — can slow players substantially, especially when combined with another attack on the same turn. Experienced players know how to use retrieve powers and defense cards to deal with this, but newer players can find them frustrating. These attacks — just 2-4 cards, depending on the number of players — have a * in their upper right corners. We recommend that players don't use them in their first game. Players who prefer fewer, milder attacks can remove them as a variant. Solo Considerations The oldest way to play a game solo, familiar to most wargamers, is to switch positions and play both sides. Many players don't find this satisfying as they want to play their position against decent opposition, so one solution is to provide a "Bot" player to play against them. In my solo designs, I usually avoid Bot opponents for two reasons. First, it is hard to design paper Bots that play well; that's something neural net AIs in apps do far better. Second, the amount of effort to run a Bot is often substantial, interfering with the player's enjoyment. My preferred approach is to abstract play as much as possible to provide some opposition (plus a timer) against which a player can try their best. However, with Dark Pact, I saw an opportunity. What if I seeded a Bot with a particular dark pact, the Four-Fold Path, plus Banishing Spirit, and had it try to end the game on Insight, either by playing that pact first or by rushing the game and trying to win via a deck end insight victory? These are both narrow and strong strategies and not too hard to simulate, which would provide a solo player with strong opposition. I could also have the Bot seek to claim Hallow the Ground and try to win by playing it with 45 Insight points. This means the Bot would also try to obtain multiplier cards, so the solo player couldn't just scoop them up or ignore this pact when it arrived in the supply. I then wrote out the simplified Bot rules in a "checklist" fashion and developed and tested it. It works pretty well. The first few Bot turns go slowly, but as you get used to the checklist and how it loops, you get a feel for what you need to check carefully and what you can skip over because the Bot doesn't have the relevant cards, and everything speeds up. The biggest hurdle was presentation. Despite a detailed explanation and sample turns, the checklist is pretty intimidating, especially for solo players who have not played the multi-player game. Andy Van Zandt of Trick or Treat Studios wrote a Bot behavior summary, along with a flowchart, to complement the checklist and help a solo player to better visualize what's going on. Andy also challenged me to come up with simple ways to adjust the Bot's difficulty, both to make it easier and, once the solo player is experienced, more challenging. Thanks, Andy! Artistic Considerations After Trick or Treat Studios accepted Dark Pact, we discussed theme and presentation. Trick or Treat Studios has, due to its other business lines, relationships with many talented artists. My vision for the art was to suggest a late Victorian spiritualism and occult vibe, with the demons having a very different appearance. They suggested Dug Nation as an artist who could do this, showed me pieces he had previously done for them, and then discussed the project with him. Dug was enthusiastic and developed three different styles for the card illustrations. For pieces involving the occultists or their interactions with the spirit world, he used an etched style suggesting late Victorian newspaper illustrations. For the mystical insight effects, Dug evoked a bit of the black and white line art style of the Victorian artist Aubrey Beardsley, along with pyramids, eyes, and other staples of Victorian spiritualism. For the circles and magical treasures, he did somewhat more naturalistic pieces in this style. For the demons and cursed activities, Dug did painted pieces. Tonally, I didn't want blood and gore and had named most of the demon and cursed actions either for negative emotions (envy, jealousy, oppression, torment, etc.) or to suggest bargaining and deals gone wrong (temptation, debt, renegotiation, thief, fool's gold, etc.). Dug liked these themes and emphasized these things in his paintings. When I reviewed Dug's first painted pieces, I noticed his overall red/orange color palette and suggested using splashes of color in the later pieces to visually vary things. We wanted the player start decks to include at least one card in each art style, so Dug also created a painted piece for A Little Learning. This is one of my favorite pieces. I love the almost completed circle and how the occultist's upturned head and the looming shadow suggest the danger involved in contacting forces beyond our ken. Jody Henning designed the graphic frames for the action cards to suggest Victorian detailing. As many later deck-building games don't use a Dominion-style action economy, we designed the action cards so their tops overlap to make it easy for new players to track actions and coins generated during the action step. (Experienced players who are used to tracking actions can ignore this and play their cards in other arrangements.) For the basic treasure cards, Jody and Dug created sculptural-like art suggesting elaborate stone carvings and, for the cursed treasures, grotesque metal work. I was still testing and fine-tuning cards, so as Dug and Jody completed pieces, I would print them out and swap them into my test kit. This allowed me to gather usability comments, and we made various adjustments such as increasing the size of the numbers on coins, lightening the background colors behind text boxes, etc. to improve the graphics for playability. Andy, Jody, and I then worked together on the rules, figuring out how to best present the game. I'd like to thank Dug, Jody, and Andy for all their hard work on this project. Publishing games is now quite challenging in a constantly changing business environment. I'm grateful for Chris Zephro and Trick or Treat Studios producing the game in these trying times. To sum up, Dark Pact is a deck-building game for 1-4 occult researchers with thirteen unique victory conditions that combines the tactics of a changing supply with an action economy and different ways to specialize your decks. Enjoy! Tom Lehmann

• 
  Wingspan, Scythe, Cartographers, and More: Teasers for 2026 from Stonemaier and Thunderworks

  by W Eric Martin on January 1, 2026

  by W. Eric Martin ▪️ On Dec. 31, 2025, Jamey Stegmaier hosted a preview video of Stonemaier Games' 2026 release schedule, giving teasers for each title, with more info to come as each game nears release. In chronological order: • January 21: The fourth Wingspan expansion from Elizabeth Hargrave will be available for purchase through the Stonemaier webstore, with this expansion featuring birds from South America, Central America, and the Caribbean. In this expansion, hummingbirds are introduced as a new card type with a smaller card size (aside from the hummingbirds already present in the Wingspan game line, which are treated like all other birds). The expansion includes a shared gameboard that seems like a perch upon which to place these tiny tweeters. • January 21 is also the launch date for a new Viticulture expansion that Stegmaier describes as another take on the Tuscany board, with this being a four-season board with new mechanisms and twists. • Q2 2026 will bring Euphoria: Essential Edition, with this including a mildly tweaked Euphoria: Build a Better Dystopia base game and the Ignorance Is Bliss expansion, which will no longer be available separately. The tweaks focus on a new gameboard layout to make the game more intuitive to teach and play, with this gameboard being available separately in case you already own the originals. • Q2 2026 will all see an expansion for David Gordon and Michael O'Connell's Finspan, as well as a small April Fool's Day product. • Q3 2026 features two big items that I imagine will be present at Gen Con 2026. The first is a standalone Wingspan game from Hargrave for 1-5 players that, Stegmaier says, "offers a Wingspan-like experience playable in 20-30 minutes in a much smaller box". The game is almost entirely cards, with gameplay being icon driven and featuring a row-activation element. • Q3 2026 will also have a standalone 1-2 player dueling game that simultaneously serves as a new expansion for both Scythe and Expeditions. How? The dueling game is effectively a Scythe vs. Expeditions race to four stars on a tight gameboard that includes a new Scythe faction and a new Expeditions mech. These new elements can be used as expansions in the earlier games, and all existing factions and player mats from Scythe and all existing characters and mechs from Expeditions can be used in this game. (Metal components will be available separately to match the "Ironclad" edition of Expeditions.) If you're unfamiliar with the earlier games, you'll need to learn the rules for both of them in order to play. • A smaller Q3 2026 release will be an Origin Story expansion that features twenty-ish new cards for use in the final round. • Q4 2026 will see Stonemaier Games release Antoine Bauza's Namiji in a smaller box than the original Funforge one. This box will include the Aquamarine expansion and can be recognized by the Stonemaier logo. • Finally, Q4 2026 brings the lone original game on the Stonemaier schedule — the first Stonemaier title set in "The Smoking Bones" universe created by Andrew Bosley that he describes this way: "The Smoking Bones" centers on the adventures of Captain Red Jones and the Smoking Bones Travel Company as they clash with magic, pirates, and troublesome travelers. In this world, magical landmarks, known as Wonders, dot the map and a flourishing tourism industry has developed around them. But they're beginning to disappear. Red Jones, a man with a complicated magical heritage, makes it his personal mission to find the problem, fix it, and restore the world to its magical glory. Stegmaier says that Stonemaier has been working on a series of games set in this universe, with this particular title resulting from a designer's unrelated submission that seemed ideal for this series. The design is a mid-to-heavy Eurogame that will debut at SPIEL Essen 26 and feature engine building, track advancement, worker placement, and airships. ▪️ Thunderworks Games released a far more succinct overview of its plans for 2026, with: • A Stonespine Architects expansion being crowdfunded in Q2. • The Tenpenny Parks: Winter Lights & Spooky Nights Expansion crowdfunded in October 2025 will be fulfilled in Q2, with this item debuting at Gen Con 2026. • Another Gen Con 2026 release, codenamed "Q", is a small box game set in the World of Ulos universe of Roll Player, Cartographers, and Stonespine Architects. • Speaking of Cartographers, something for that game line will be crowdfunded in Q3 2026. • And something will be coming for the Gen Con 2025 title FlipToons.

• 
  Travel to Gold Country, Return to Las Vegas, and Await the New Condottiere

  by W Eric Martin on January 1, 2026

  by W. Eric Martin ▪️ U.S. publisher Bitewing Games has revealed its next collaboration with designer Reiner Knizia: Gold Country, which this being a re-implementation of 2012's Spectaculum that has been "reworked from the ground up", according to Bitewing's Nick Murray. "Compared to Spectaculum, Gold Country has core rules changes, new gameplay concepts, and new maps that all crank this experience up to eleven." Why is "eleven" our highest experience rating? Not sure since we have lots more numbers available, but eleven it is! Here's an overview of the game's setting and what you do during play: Eureka! Gold flows like an endless sea in the rich hills and forests of California, and countless would-be prospectors have flocked to the lush landscape to stake their claim and make their fortune. Gather your pick axe and pan, scout the land, and invest in the richest mines to collect the most gold! Each turn in this stock market manipulation game, you develop mining companies, buy and sell shares of those mining companies, spend your money on powerful abilities cards, and more! Gold Country enables shared incentives, encourages tactical pivoting, and rewards strategic foresight amid its simple rules and challenging decisions. The game ends once all the gold veins have been discovered, then the richest player wins. Gold Country will be crowdfunded in January 2026 for release later in the year. ▪️ In mid-2026, U.S. publisher WizKids will release Bruce Glassco's Marvel: Remix the Cosmos, which is a standalone game that can be combined with 2022's Marvel: Remix, which was a licensed spinoff of 2017's Fantasy Realms, which has also been released in editions featuring Greek legends and Star Trek. All of these remixes aren't surprising given the open-ended nature of the design. You start with a hand of seven cards, and on a turn, you draw a card — from the Remix deck, the villain deck, or the discard area — then discard a card. Once ten cards have been discarded, the game ends, and everyone scores their hand as long as they hold at least one villain and one hero/ally. From whatever you've been dealt initially, you want to craft a valuable hand of cards, but what's valuable depends on the interaction of everything you hold. Once you're familiar with the game, you can get a sense of what others hold by what they discard — and that can clue you in as to what might not be available for you. This new set includes characters such as The Fantastic Four, Guardians of the Galaxy, Captain Marvel, Silver Surfer, Doctor Strange, Ms. Marvel, She-Hulk, Venom, and Doctor Doom. ▪️ German publisher Ravensburger will release yet another version of Rüdiger Dorn's dice game Las Vegas in 2026, with this edition keeping the basics of the 2012 original, adding a couple of elements from 2014's Las Vegas: Boulevard expansion, and changing a few details of play. The game lasts three rounds, each carried out the same way. Next to each of the six casinos lay out two bills from a deck that contains bills valued from $10k to $100k. Each player — with six being the maximum player count — has seven dice in a single color, with one being larger than the others and counting as two dice. On a turn, roll all unplaced dice, choose a single value that you rolled, then place all dice of that value on the casino of the same value. Take turns until all dice have been placed. For each casino, whoever has placed the most dice on it claims the most valuable bill, then the player with the next most dice takes the other bill — but if two or more players have the most dice, then you remove those dice from play and re-evaluate who has the most. After three rounds, whoever has the most money wins. A "one-armed bandit" can be added to play as a seventh casino, also with two bills to be claimed. When placing dice, you can place all dice of one value that hasn't yet been placed on this casino. When resolving ties on this casino, whoever has placed the most pips wins, with a further tie broken by whoever has placed the highest single value. ▪️ To dip into role-playing games for a few paragraphs, Steve Jackson Games is crowdfunding a second edition of Greg Costikyan's Toon RPG, which debuted in 1984 and had a deluxe edition released in 1991 that I recall selling while working in a game store at the time. Amazing to see a second edition of this come to market more than forty years after the original! For those who don't know, Toon is inspired by classic Saturday morning cartoons — do kids these days even know what those are?! — with players taking the role of a customizable character that can be any creature or object, whether real or imaginary, the player chooses. Have you dreamed of being a lobster telephone? Now you can make that dream come true! Pick me up as I've got something to say... Toon: Second Edition is an entry-level role-playing game that contains more than a dozen adventures that await your silliness. ▪️ In the comments on a Bluesky thread, CMYK dropped word of a new edition of Dominique Ehrhard's 1995 game Condottiere: