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  Designer Diary: Dragon's Roll / Würfeldrachen

  by mads b. on August 11, 2026

  by mads l. brynnum Dragon’s Roll is a game that combines three things I love: monsters, dice, and cooperative games. I’ve already made a game where you play as the monsters trying to catch humans (Monster! Monster! Which is inspired by a book of rhymes I’ve written), so this time I wanted to flip the script. And while I quickly found what has been the backbone of the game since the beginning, developing Dragon's Roll has been a matter of constant tweaking to get the balance and game feel just right. In Dragon’s Roll you have to protect your town from a boss dragon and its minions. They attack in three short lanes and gradually move towards your town. Every turn you roll your dice and then place some of them on dragons in order to defeat them. Specifically you can only use dice showing one number (so all threes or all ones etc). I got this mechanism from the very excellent Roll For Adventure, and I think it does a great job of limiting the player’s options while still allowing for some tough choices. You want to play a lot of dice, but sometimes just using that one six is the right play. In early versions I had rules for how you could reroll and thus reactivate your dice, but in the end I felt like it created a lot of overhead without adding extra excitement. Instead I settled on simply rolling those of your dice not currently on monsters each turn. This also adds the excitement of hoping for a specific roll which for me is a core part of dice based games. I know I can’t control the roll, but if I think really hard of the two ones I need, then maybe I can. Testing one of the very early prototypes with my then almost 7-years-old. Yes, I bribed him with candy.I also tried several different ways of spawning new enemies and moving the ones in play. At first, every time you rerolled your dice, you moved a token on a track which spawned and activated monsters. But it became too predictable and boring, so in the end the solution was simple: an evil dice that can move enemies and spawn new ones. And by giving the enemies different numbers and allowing them to push other enemies forward, suddenly different lanes would behave differently depending on the monsters spawned in them. Bossing AroundAt first the game didn’t have a boss – they are called master dragons in the final game. Instead you just had to clear the lanes in front of the town. It kinda worked, but it felt anticlimactic – especially since you could potentially win if the last monster in the grid attacked the village and then left the grid empty. Also, bosses are fun, but how to incorporate them? The first boss was placed at the bottom of the monster deck. You had to grind through monsters and then finally defeat it. It was okay, but it felt like you were just going through the motions in the first half of the game. And if the boss moved just like other monsters, it could risk only being in the grid for a few turns. The solution was to place the boss outside the grid and to give it a special abiilty that is always in danger of activating depending on the roll of the evil dice. That way you can attack it on any turn so you feel you progress towards victory, and you get the sense that you are actually pitted against the boss. And because bosses are tough, you have to defeat it twice to win the game. The prototype I pitched to HABA. Note the character on the right hand side with abilities that needed to be activated with dice before use.It’s the Number of Rules, Stupid!When I pitched the game to HABA, they liked it, but felt like the game had too many rules. Basically each monster not only had a combination of dice needed to defeat it, a lot of them also had special abilities. They asked me to make a simpler version without all the special rules, and it led to a much more streamlined game where reading the board state is easy, and with a tighter focus on the core game play loop. Another thing we simplified was the help you could get. In the game I pitched, you could use your dice to build structures or activate personal character abilities. It added depth and extra choices too the game, but it also made the board state a bit cluttered. And when playing with young and new players, they would often forget about activating their cards with dice. Instead HABA came up with the idea of one time-use magic scrolls the players share. It’s a very small change, really, but it had a big impact. It made balancing the difficulty easier, it made it easier for new players to understand their options (I can use this card vs. I can spend dice on this card and then use it later), and it also opened a new conversation between players about when to use the abilities. Of course you could also dicuss whether or not to use a personal ability, but if the abilities are shared, you have to. For me one of the core joys of playing coop games is discussing options and asking my kids if they think we should do a given thing like, for instance, use a scroll to defeat a pesky dragon. A New ThemeHABA suggested making the game a part of the world introduced in King of the Dice and I happily agreed. As a relatively new designer, being able to piggyback on an established game is a great opportunity. And when I saw all the dragons that would make up the enemies, it became even better. Render of the final cards. One of the village cards has been flipped to the burning side, so if two more dragons attack, the game is lost. And with dragons at the bottom of all three lanes and no dice placed, it looks pretty bleak.From there on out it was a lot of back and forth on minor tweaks. Maybe spawns should happen on 5-6 instead of 4-6, maybe the order should be first spawn and then move, and so on. And since it was a co-op game, I could test a lot of the stuff concerning balance and game feel myself in my kitchen and then involve testers to make sure. Finally HABA had an idea for a campaign, so the final step was to fine tune it. In the campaign you have to defeat the master dragons in a set order with each victory unlocking scrolls for the next fight. We had to make sure the bosses were in the right order, and that it was actually winnable. The campaign is very simple, but it adds a puzzly aspect to the game and just a hint of an evolving story which I’m quite happy with. And yes, I have won it, eventually.I started designing Dragon's Roll more than three years ago, and I’ve played it regularly ever since - both alone and with lots of other players. I’m still looking forward to rolling dice in my next game, and I hope you’ll like it as much as I do.

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  Beach Week? Party Games!

  by whenindoubteatout on August 10, 2026

  by Justin Bell Whenever someone tells me they are bringing hobby games home to play with their family for the holidays, I always laugh; disappointment equals pain. Ain’t no way you are getting Wingspan in front of your grandparents; even if you are lucky enough to get Harmonies in front of your two distant cousins and that aunt who you love catching up with, working through even a moderate hobby game rule set can be a drag. (Why does it take 90 minutes to teach your uncle Catan? Because he’s never played a modern board game, that’s why.)I’ll post another article about this as we approach the holidays, in part because, like many of you, I love making this mistake every year. “Justin, you write about board games; why don’t you bring some of those really interesting games to Thanksgiving this year?” someone will say. Even though I know there is no way we are getting Shackleton Base: A Journey to the Moon, or even something lighter like Rebel Princess: Deluxe Edition, to the table, I relent and throw a half-dozen games into the bag in the hopes that, finally, this is the year I come up aces and somehow trick adults into a game of Recall after putting three pounds of turkey and two pounds of apple pie (with the ice cream!) into my gut.For the traditional holiday season, I am silly enough every year to give it a try. But for a summertime beach week, tabling games from my collection is much more reliable. That’s because beaches equal party games, and all of us have something worth a shot even with the family members who supposedly never play games. The mood is right, eventually everyone needs a break from the hot summer sunshine, and someone has to take on the role of Chief Keep the Kids Off the Tablets Officer.Usually, that someone is me.Every year, I tell my wife’s family that my worst week of the year to do a beach trip is the week right after Gen Con. I’ve just taken 3-4 days of vacation from my day job, and the thing I am most excited to do is to table a dozen of the treasures I just picked up in Indy. And, like clockwork, my wife’s family elects the annual beach vacation week to start the Saturday of Gen Con weekend, a week full of early mornings, screaming children, and humidity out the wazoo.I’m not a beach guy. (I AM an Ibiza guy and a South Beach guy, but I don’t go to those places for the beaches.) I do love kids, but as I get older, I’m finding that I love older children much more than younger ones; see “screaming”, above. But these kids offer opportunity, and the general vibes associated with beach vacations work in my favor when I can bring a bucket of hot-off-the-press party games to the beach.My wife’s family is great about slinging party games to the beach as well, so we had 20 or so party games lying around, waiting to be tapped. Cranium? A game I haven’t seen in years, but I’m more than happy to sit through. Connect Four? Not a party game, but it IS a family game, so my son and I took a double dip into the Connect Four pool one afternoon. Werewords? Sure! At the beach, I’m a surprisingly open-minded individual, and I’ll play any version of 20 Questions if it helps to keep the kids engaged.This year, I threw four Gen Con pickups into the bag: Size Wise, the new GameHead release designed by Scott Brady; Dino Racer, an Underdog release designed by Marceline Leiman; Trickarus, a design by Bajir Cannon now available through Smirk & Dagger; and, Jibber Jabble, an Allplay release designed by Cassie Sikes.To ensure the Gen Con batch was visible, I situated the games near the pile of other party games hauled to the beach by the in-laws, but on a shelf just above and off to the left of where the other family games were displayed. Curiosity didn’t kill any cats, but it did lead to questions almost as soon as I put the Gen Con batch out on the table.“What are those?” said an inquisitive 11-year-old.“Some new games I brought back from a show last week. I haven’t tried most of these yet, but we’ll see if there’s time to break some out.”“I’ll play any of them,” she said. I took her up on that offer with a play of Size Wise, a play that featured seven willing family members on the afternoon of my departure.Size Wise offers an interesting premise. A deck featuring cards with six items per card is placed, face down, in the middle of the table. The card backs have numbers ranging from 1-6, so when a card is flipped face-up, the face-down card just revealed from the top of the deck is the number that “selects” which item is in play for the current round.Each player has a string, with a ring at the end that can be slid up and down to adjust for size. When a word is selected, each player must secretly decide the length of the item and measure out that distance on their personal string. Once everyone is happy with their choice, strings are revealed then the rings are hung from a wooden stick, and the players who stray farthest from the group average—so, the shortest section of string, and the longest—lose a wisdom token from their personal pool of 5-8 tokens distributed before play begins, based on player count.When one player runs out of wisdom tokens, the player(s) with the most leftover tokens wins.On paper, this sounded pretty vanilla, but I like Scott’s other designs and I love the font on the Size Wise cover. That was enough for me to swing by the GameHead booth to grab a review copy. But the magic of the game surfaced almost immediately during this play, as children ranging from my nine-year-old to this 51-year-old howled at the ridiculous things I was suddenly having to size up.How big is a plate? If you can imagine the size of a normal dinner plate, it's not too rough, maybe 8-10 inches, right? But everyone has a different image in their mind of what a plate looks like. Later, we had to guesstimate the size of a hubcap. Easy for someone who drives a car everyday. But what if you are a kid, and you don’t know what a hubcap is?The “pièce de résistance” in our play of Size Wise came when the autoselector forced us to guess the size of an alligator’s mouth. I’m still laughing at the range of guesses we threw out for the mouth. How big is the alligator? Is the alligator’s mouth closed? How wide is the alligator opening its mouth? The range of string length from that example was enough for the group to decide that they loved the game.As a player, nothing beats the moment when someone finishes a game then immediately reaches for their cell phone to take a picture of the proceedings or search the online shopping sites to buy themselves a copy. I’m pretty sure at least one person at the table already has a copy of Size Wise en route to their home address.I pushed to get Dino Racer to the table—after a successful demo in Indy then a play with my review group the next day, I thought Dino Racer was a perfect fit for the beach—but while we were waiting to start dinner one night, Jibber Jabble got the call instead.Jibber Jabble is a word game. Yes, Jibber Jabble is a word game in a sea of comparable choices; for my money, the hobby word game space is so crowded that it is the almost literal definition of “a dime a dozen.” But, Allplay (a company that has come a long way from just making board game tables and accessories) has been on a tear, and each time I walked by the Allplay booth during Gen Con, Cassie’s demo table was usually packed with people keen on learning the game from the designer herself.My demo of Jibber Jabble on the show’s last day was only so-so, and a three-player game of it with my review crew was similarly lukewarm. But those two plays featured lower player counts, so I did a run with six folks from the family while standing outside the kitchen at the beach rental.Talk about turning that frown upside down.Jibber Jabble takes place over six rounds. Word cards are broken into three sections, with six words in total appearing on each card. The words scale in difficulty from top to bottom. The active player, in a manner used in games such as Just One, flips a word card face-up so that only their teammates can see the words. The team selects one of the six answer words for this turn, then the player to the left of the active player starts spelling a clue that the team hopes to use as one of three clue words the active player can use to guess the answer word on the card.The trick is that players have to find a way to get themselves onto the same wavelength when it comes to the clue word. The person who starts spelling a word has a good sense of the direction they want to go in…but then, the first clue giver has to hope others pick up what they are putting down, if you catch my drift.Let’s say the answer word for this turn is “statue.” A group of Americans might start by saying the letter L. That’s what I did when it was my chance to start off a new clue; it helped that we were playing in America. Luckily, the other players in the circle picked up the scent right away, and when we finished spelling the clue word “liberty”, someone said STOP after saying the letter Y, giving the active player a handsome clue that would hopefully point them towards “statue.”But one player went in a different direction for the next clue. With an air of confidence that broke almost as soon as he began spelling, he said the letter B. The player to the left of the confident one looked at them, confused. B? What word that starts with B might be related to statue?Jibber Jabble makes things fun at this point, because a player could say “Jibber” and continue to offer a letter that, they hope, still keeps things on track as the team tries to spell an appropriate clue word. The player could just pivot instead; maybe they don’t know what B word the first player wanted to use, but they could come up with something else that fits instead, related to “statue” but maybe not what the original clue giver had in mind. Or, they could just say “jabble”, a tell that they have no idea where the initial clue giver was trying to go, followed by a STOP command to just throw the active clue into the dumpster.And “jabble” is exactly what we did. On the strength of “liberty”, the active player did suss out the answer word of “statue” in the end. But then we went back to the scene of the crime. Hey, confident guy, what were you thinking when you said B?“I can’t believe you guys didn’t pick up what I was trying to do there,” he said. “The Statue of Liberty is made of bronze, so I was going for ‘bronze.’”“The Statue of Liberty is made of copper!” one person shouted. “COPPER!!!”Those of us who had cell phones immediately went in for the fact check…and, according to the interwebs, copper is indeed the correct answer, at least in relation to the Statue of Liberty in New York Harbor. But this exchange, and my entire play of Jibber Jabble, was the reason why I recommend giving the game a look. At higher player counts, groups are bound to get some of these words wrong or have some sequences blow up in the team’s face…and it was moments like these that made me happy I got to see the game in its best light.Party games need party-sized audiences to work well, and Jibber Jabble fits the bill.Other party games hit the table during the week, and of the 20-game pile, we probably hit a dozen of them over the course of seven days. When we wrapped up the play of Size Wise, some family members called out the fact that we need to have more beach days where we break out party games old and new.It’s always fun to contribute when the family is looking for ways to steer kids away from screens a few times each day. Gen Con always provides. Now I just have to figure out how I will convince myself to NOT bring some of the games on the SPIEL Essen 2026 Preview to turkey dinner this fall. Don’t worry…I’m sure I will blow it again this year!

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  Designer Diary: Sniper Elite: Operation Kraken

  by Skirmish_Tactics on August 9, 2026

  by David Thompson (This design diary was written by Roger Tankersley and posted on BGG by co-designer David Thompson)As the co-designers of Sniper Elite: The Board Game, we wanted to give you a few behind-the-scenes details of how we created the new Operation Krakenexpansion. If you’re a fan of the base game, this expansion gives you two new maps with some interesting movement elements, some new powers and actions for both Karl and the defenders, and adds a little bit more depth to the base experience. Since it is our second expansion we thought players would like to explore “but what if I could do THIS!”David Thompson and I both knew we didn’t want to just "add more stuff.” We wanted Operation Kraken to push the design in new directions but stay true to what makes Sniper Elite work: tension, stealth, and cat-and-mouse gameplay. We had a basic design question: What can we do differently with the maps that doesn’t break the core movement and shot mechanics?We also were listening to players who thought the defenders could use some help catching Karl. So we added a couple of actions and….armored cars! More on that later.What If the Whole Map Was a Ship?Ships are narrow, multi-level, and very linear. Staying hidden is a huge challenge and so is finding someone who is trying to hide. The map is unique because it depicts all three levels of the ship with only a few connections between levels. As we design we’re constantly asking “what do we want the players to feel on this map?”. We wanted Karl to feel trapped, and we wanted the defenders to feel like they had him trapped! I’ve always liked the idea of the players affecting movement on the map–on earlier maps the defenders can block routes, but they can never close them off. But on a ship? Defenders would definitely close and secure doors–so we gave them that ability. It leads to some great tactical decisions as the defenders effectively change the shape of the map (at least temporarily).So how can the sniper player deal with those locked doors? Make your own door! We introduced the ‘Explosive Entrance’ loadout card which allows the sniper player to blow a hole in the wall to serve as a door for the rest of the game. Sometimes though, a stealthy sniper doesn’t want an explosion–so we also introduced ‘Bolt Cutters’ which let them silently open a locked door without the defenders knowing. Both of these loadouts were developed with a lot of testing on the door locking mechanic, as we realized the sniper needed a way to deal with locked doors, but not a way to deal with all the locked doors. Loadout cards gave us a way to do that.The other interesting thing about the map is moving between levels. Ladders are available to defenders and Karl, and provide connections in just a few places. But that proved a little bit too limiting, allowing the defenders to really shutdown the map. How would someone sneaking through the ship deal with that? Air ducts. We tested those and they work great, giving Karl a way around and forcing the defenders to think “what if he crawled in there…..?”.The shape of the map also meant we had to change how ‘gather intel’ works–because the squad sectors are spread across multiple levels of the ship. So asking ‘are you in red?’ meant Karl could be on three different levels! To deal with that, we allow the defenders to ask “are you on this level of the ship” regardless of sector color. That decision had a knock on effect: two different squads could ask “are you on this level?” and “are you in this sector?” and that would narrow Karl’s location down to very few spaces–which didn’t work. We had to change the action so that you could ask sector or level, but not both in the same turn. These are the kind of design decisions that can only be made through testing.The Great Outdoors–But With Armored CarsAfter we finished the supercarrier, we wanted the opposite of enclosed, claustrophobic hiding–we wanted an open area where the sniper could really move. All that freedom of movement makes the defender job much harder, so we also wanted to add a way to cover all that ground–and we introduced armored cars to give defenders another way to move around the board. (Also, here’s a plug for ‘Sniper Elite: Escalation’: that expansion allows you to use the cars on the Heavy Water map from Sniper Elite: Eagles Nest expansion).The Norman Village map is interesting because it started out as…..an assault on a mountain base! As designers, David and I try lots of different things before we get the maps just right–hidden movement games live or die by the maps. So at first the village was a mountain base, and the armored cars were joined by cable cars that connected individual points to enable rapid movement across the map. This image shows a super early version with organic spaces, the cable cars, and even glacier spaces with special movement rules. In the end it was just too many changes on a single map. We talk a lot about ‘rules grit’: we prefer rules that are generalized and straightforward rather than rules that are very specific, situational, and ‘gritty.’ We knew we wanted a bit more grit in these new maps, since they are designed for players who have played four other maps in the series, so we threw everything on there and then worked backwards! Finding the right balance is tough. So we removed the cable cars and refined the armored cars. So how did the map change from a mountain assault to a Norman Village? When David and I finished the map we handed it over to our partners, the development team at Rebellion. They tested it extensively and found that the special rules for ice movement also were too gritty. And they had a story idea that revolved around the setting in France. When you compare our prototype map to the final map you can see that the general layout and objectives are there, but the spaces are more regular and the road is extended to replace the glacier. This is a really good example of how design merges with development–the folks at Rebellion are great to work with, and we agree the final design is cleaner and provides extra grit but in just the right amount. (But David and I haven’t forgotten about those cable cars!)Kraken UnleashedThe name Operation Kraken comes from the fictional Nazi superweapon plot that Karl’s trying to stop in this campaign. We wanted the expansion to feel bigger, a little more cinematic, and a bit more complex than the original game—without losing the streamlined rules that enable the players to face off without constantly reading the rulebook. We’re super happy with how it turned out and we hope fans of the basegame appreciate the changes we made! Happy hunting!

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  Gen Con in Pictures and Interview with Felicia Day

  by LindyBurger on August 8, 2026

  by Beth Heile Instead of the usual lineup of game announcements and post-convention hauls, I wanted to write and photograph about the random tidbits that caught my attention at this year’s Gen Con, including a wonderful interview with Felicia Day (see below).Full up before we even beginHot Weather, Hot GamesLet’s start with the main reason I was present at Gen Con - to help run the Hot Games Room. The BGG team arrived on Tuesday and all day Wednesday was spent collecting games for the Hot Game Room, our event space at the Hyatt Regency which allows attendees to try as many of the newly released games as they please. Typically this prep day is dominated by long hours, lots of heavy lifting, very hot temperatures, and dodging huge piles of carpet and boxes in the chaos of the exhibit hall before it opens. In the calm before the storm, we caught this fun photo over breakfast:Some of the BGG Gen Con CrewOnce collected, we now had a pile of hundreds of new games that needed to be punched, prepped, and cataloged in our library system. Our Wednesday night is a multi-hour pizza punch party when we eat, chat, and punch out hundreds of games.LEFT: Games before getting punched. RIGHT: HGR library ready to go, over 800 boxes catalogued in our library systemOver 43 ticketed sessions, we saw over 2,500 attendees check out over 3,300 games! Our top check outs were: - Hell of a Deal - Entropy - Hanami - Fliptoons: Season 2 - Night at the ZooA panorama image of the Hot Games Room on Friday eveningGoodbye Balloons, Hello StatuesA personal highlight for me is seeing the annual balloon sculpture in the main hallway of the convention hall. After two serious latex allergy incidents last year, Gen Con decided to discontinue the balloon sculptures for safety. So I will share this picture of my favorite display from 2023 in remembrance of the hard work and amazing skills of those artists:2023’s balloon sculpture: a moon lander complete with space backdrop, lunar surface, and astronaut. Instead I noticed an increase in large statues within the exhibit hall. Gen Con is known for its cosplay events, and I found these stationary versions to be an interesting counterpoint.LEFT: No shade to Martin Freeman, but this is my favorite Bilbo. CENTER: Dungeon Crawler Carl was everywhere and this statue was impressively huge, RIGHT: Leonardo was life-sized and ready for battleAs always, Cardhalla is a glorious, chaotic whirlwind of construction, and this year did not disappoint. I took a photo of my favorite shape this year, a large shark (whale?) that eventually grew spikes from other builders as the days progressed:LEFT: An overhead shot of Cardhalla in its final hours on Saturday. RIGHT: The shark / whale in early stages.And to finish up this roundup of creative endeavors, I am more fascinated with the table setup for the miniature painting than the miniatures themselves. I forgot to count exactly, but this table seated at least 20 paintersFrom Tokyo to Philadelphia to IndianapolisFor the first time, Gen Con featured Game Market Indianapolis, a showcase of designers demoing and selling their new, self-made creations on the spot. This event was modeled after the success of the Indie Games Night Market at PAXU, which in turn was modeled after Tokyo Game Market. Held in one of the hallway lobbies at the JW Marriott, this market featured 20ish different designers demoing about 24 new games. I’m partial to trick-tricking games and picked up two titles: Short Stacked and Laundry Day. Unlike the exhibit hall, there are no flashy banners or elaborate displays - just the designers with a table, a single display copy of their game, and a stack of copies for sale. Attendees could wander freely between tables, listening in to demos in progress, or asking the designer to start the explanation. I would estimate about 100 people were there at the start, although we left after 30 minutes or so. I hope that small sales events like this continue to pick up speed in the US as it was fun to see designers at the beginning of the publishing journey. While many of the games used clipart and homemade cards, a good design will transcend the limits of its components. Hopefully some established publishers found a hidden gem and this event will be the launchpad for some first-time designers.Two demo tables at the Game Market Indianapolis. For the racing game on the left, the metal cars were included with your purchaseA Few Game AnnouncementsWhile taking a water break on Wednesday, one of the reps from Restoration Games was setting up the display cabinet in the main convention hallway, and I was lucky to snap a picture when the cabinet door was open. Inside was the layout for the newly announced King’s Gambit, a reworking of the Star Wars: The Queen's Gambit from 2000 but rethemed to Tolkien’s Lord of the Rings. This display took two shelves in the display cabinet but is designed to stretch in one continuous line on a table - a photo I was unable to capture unfortunately. Rob Daviau was one of the lead designers of Queen’s Gambit and returns again as one of the lead designers of King’s. Like the original, players will be juggling multiple battlefields at once, with players choosing to allocate their limited stock of cards and resources across those different locations. Unlike the original though, this Middle Earth version will support more than two players. A demo copy was available in the Restoration Games booth, with a projected retail date sometime in 2027.LEFT: One end of the playing field featuring (presumably) Mt. Doom and Barad-dûr. RIGHT: Minas Tirith with a baby Citadel at the very top.I haven’t done interviews for BGG since COVID, so it was fun to put those skills to the test again with a sit down with designer Sam Bailey and Kuba Polkowski from Chaosium. Sam is the designer of Forbidden Stars, a reimplementation of Starcraft: the Board Game. Like Queen’s Gambit, both Starcraft and Forbidden Stars will likely be out of print forever due to copyright and licensing issues. Fans of Forbidden Stars have been asking for a new version regularly (you can follow that conversation on this massive 79-page thread) and Sam was excited to give a reboot a try. He created a new implementation with a different publisher and that deal fell through from IP issues. He signed a deal with a second, different publisher…and it fell through a second time. Each time he put in significant time and effort to rework Forbidden Stars into something that was both familiar and yet new, only for that work to languish unused.Finally, it seems there is success with Chaosium and Forbidden Stars is now reborn as Old Ones Origins, with the setting and theme moved from space-facing sci-fi to a battle of eldritch gods. Unlike many Cthuhlu-flavored games that use a 1920s setting, Old Ones is a battle of ancient powers vying for control at the dawn of time - humans are not part of this picture! Game length can be dialed from two hours to all day, depending on the selected factions and choosing the short game vs. the epic game. I was demoed some of the game play and its evolution from Forbidden Stars, and it was clear that Sam put in massive amounts of work to translate this version’s mechanics into something that clearly supports its new theme.A Kickstarter campaign for Old Ones will begin in September 2026 with estimated delivery in Q4 2027 / Q1 2028.Closeup of prototype minis and game boardSpeaking of Reboots….This Gen Con was dominated by events supporting three large fandoms: Dungeon Crawler Carl, Critical Role, and The Guild. Celebrating its 20th anniversary, The Guild is currently being rebooted into a movie after a successful run as an online video series from 2007-2013. Thanks to a BGG volunteer in Felicia Day’s Twitch chat (thanks Walt!), Felicia was put in contact with me and stopped by the Hot Games Room for a tour and an interview. Aside from funding the movie, Felicia is also launching a TTRPG and a card game: Swords & Sweethearts. This card game is based on the combination of the music video “Do You Want To Date My Avatar?” combined with Felicia’s love of dating sim video games. Players collect items to increase their stats and then try to take a prospective match on a successful date. However, the suitor, location, and actions of the other players can all affect the outcome of your date, so romance is not guaranteed. Many celebrities have donated their likeness for cards in the game, so you could take Misha Collins, Alan Tudyk, Dungeon Crawler Carl, “Weird Al” Yankovic, or a sheep from Catan on a date.Felicia announced that she and Wil Wheaton are launching a new board game show called Conludo. I also interviewed Wil Wheaton at Gen Con over ten years ago, when his Tabletop YouTube show was at its peak. In that conversation, we discussed that many gamers credit that show as their introduction into modem strategy board games, and I hope the same will be true for Conludo as well. We also discussed The Guild’s TTPRG, written by castmates Vince Caso and Sandeep Parikh. Just as with Sword & Sweethearts, Felicia noted that humor was a critical piece of the RPG as well. That humor extends to an extensive line of merch, including a medieval popcorn bucket dubbed the “Poopcorn Bucket”.The Guild’s Kickstarter runs through Aug 21, and you can view the entire interview (slightly edited) below:Youtube Video

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  Mercenaries Wanted to Spotlight the Omens of Kano

  by boardgamersteph on August 5, 2026

  by Steph Hodge [imageid=9718883 medium rep]▪️ Cephalofair Games announced a new card game releasing this December called Mercenaries Wanted. From the designer Dennis Vögele (Gloomhaven (Second Edition)), he brings us back into the Gloomhven universe with this 1-6 player card drafting game. From the Newsletter and BGG:In Mercenaries Wanted you take on the role of a mercenary company leader, recruiting mercenaries to complete jobs for you. Assemble your teams carefully and send them out on assignment to earn the most gold. Between rounds, decide who to keep in your roster, who to promote, and who to let go. Race to complete jobs over several rounds before competing with your promoted mercenaries in a series of tournaments to earn the most fame and fortune.As head of a Mercenary Company, it's your job to find the best recruits the city has to offer. Or at least the most promising ones. Are they breathing? Let's be honest, you'll take what you can get in the city of Gloomhaven.Recruit, equip, deploy, and out-hire your competitors to become the most infamous Mercenary Company in Casskia. So get to it! The unemployment line is drying up... MERCENARIES WANTED. ▪️ Also, be sure to check for the Frosthaven Digital release on October 15, 2026!▪️ Horrible Guild announced a new game in the Spotlight series called Spotlight: Fantasy. from deisgners Hjalmar Hach and Lorenzo Silva (The King's Dilemma, Railroad Ink: Deep Blue Edition). This is a great series for families, as the game is a search-and-find and is super clever. This game plays 1-5 players and plays real-time and cooperatively. From the Newsletter:Using enchanted lanterns, you'll reveal only parts of the artwork at a time, searching for creatures, characters, and treasures hidden throughout each magical scene.Work together (or against each other!) to uncover everything before time runs out, but stay alert: every corner of the kingdom holds new surprises.Light your enchanted lantern, gather your fellow adventurers, and discover what secrets await in the darkness.Easy to learn, fast to play, and perfect for families and groups of all ages, Spotlight Fantasy combines cooperative gameplay, stunning illustrations, and a touch of magic to create an experience that... Shines at every table!▪️ The beautiful Kano was just available at Gen Con and will be available later this year. Kano is from Matagot and designers Pablo Jiménez, Angel Pintero. This game plays 2-4 players and takes about 30-40 minutes to play.From the BGG page:In Kano, 2 to 4 players compete to create their own Emakimono—traditional Japanese painted handscrolls—by skillfully arranging vibrant paint pots. The game elegantly blends tactical resource management with spatial optimization as players navigate a shared central mat to collect the pigments needed for their masterpieces.▪️ Omens from Spiral Éditions is a new team card game from designer Maxime Rambourg (The LOOP, Dracula vs Van Helsing). For 4-6 players and plays in 20-30 minutes.From BGG:You've found a mysterious box filled with strange cards. As you try to decipher their meaning, you soon realize that you won't be able to do it without help. Surrounded by your friends, you begin to unravel their secret: played the right way, the cards eventually disappear. But they always come back, safely tucked away in the box, for the next game.In Omens, you team up to get rid of your cards until you have only one left in your hand.Each of your cards interacts with the cards played by your partner, as well as those of your opponents, so you need to play them at the right moment! The team that sheds its cards first wins.▪️ Shape it from Randolph is a new cooperative party game from designer Thomas Dagenais-Lespérance (Decrypto). You have to mind-meld with all players to best guess the correct answer with the creations you make using the available shapes. A game for 2-7 players!From the newsletter:Sync minds with teammates to guess the correct words!Shape It is a cooperative game in which players move shapes to try to guess a word. What word is your group trying to illustrate? That’s the game - you don't know for sure! But it has to be on one of the 5 cards on the table. When it comes time to guess - will you all see the same word in the shapes you’ve placed? Good luck!

• 
  The Big Haul - Designer Diary

  by voskampj on August 4, 2026

  by voskampj I am Joey Voskamp, a Canadian designer of a small box card game called The Big Haul. This diary will shed some light on the process of making this game!Still on the Beach In early 2025, my wife and I were travelling on the auto train from Sanford, FL to Lorton, VA on the way home from a family vacation. The train ride was set to last 14 hours, so I set a goal for myself that I would design a game while we travelled. “Hey Jess, give me a theme.”“The ocean.”I had just received Air, Land, and Sea for Christmas and loved the idea of a small deck of cards that can all have different abilities. I had also just read the rulebook for Seaside and loved the final scoring. Whoever has the most tiles in their stack wins. So simple. What often happens when I learn new games is I think about how I would make a game using the mechanics I just read about. I often do this before even playing the game! With these two inspirations in mind, it was time to make a game about the ocean.I decided right from the beginning that this game was going to be about scoring cards, and whoever had the most cards at the end wins. Thank you, Seaside. A lot of feedback I got from players while playtesting were questions along the lines of “wait, everything is worth the same amount?” That is right, each card when scored is worth 1 point. Ok, the ocean is not really a theme, but a starting point. I don’t know much about the ocean, but I do know there are fish in there. I took out my phone and wrote down the first idea for a card, called the “Medium fish” (can you tell my background is in mathematics?). I also envisioned different play areas. The boat would be a collection of your own cards. The ocean would be the center of the table and affect all players. This led to the decision to make each card have two effects. The first is an action you can take using that card if it is in your boat. The second being a persistent rule change while that card is in the ocean. This small ruleset already created a very dynamic game. You really did care what other people were doing since they could muck up the ocean. Over the next 90 minutes, I had 11 unique cards designed in the notes app on my phone, with a rudimentary ruleset attached. The choice for 36 cards was that 36 divided by 2, 3, and 4, ensuring a somewhat equal number of turns for each player. Just Off the Coast The timing of this design was somewhat of a perfect storm. Up to this point I had toyed around with game design because I thought it was fun. I never really imagined it would go anywhere. My friend Isaac Stell always saw my games differently. After playing one of my very first designs back in 2023, I remember his enthusiasm in saying the game was very fun and that we need to publish. Well, in January 2025, Isaac became a coworker of mine. I scribbled some sharpie onto some playing cards, jotted down the boat abilities and ocean effects on some index cards and brought them to work to play with Isaac at lunch. The first prototyped cardWe were floored. The game was incredibly messy and we spent way too much time trying to reference the index cards whenever anything would happen. However, something strange happened. We had fun! The Big Haul had this tendency to create funny moments. It lets you do the impossible. Every fisherman I’ve met wishes they could catch Sturgeon as easily as you can in The Big Haul. The boat abilities came in two flavours; when played and when activated. Some cards would trigger as soon as they were placed in your boat and some you would choose to trigger on your turn. There were only a few ways to get cards out of your boat. The game very much depended on building a solid boat, then scoring cards until the game ended.However, this was not as streamlined as I wanted it to be. The first major change that came to the game was making all boat abilities “when activated”. Coupled with this, cards now entered the ocean after you used them. You may have a strong card, but as soon as you use it, it becomes available for your opponents to grab!This is when the game really started to sing. Turns consisted of either adding a card to your boat, or using a card in your boat. A delightfully simple loop made interesting by the constantly changing ocean effects. Into the DepthsOur lunch meetings became regular and each time I brought a slightly modified version of the game with me. What was great was that as we continued to playtest, our game time dropped to under 10 minutes. We could play two or three games and analyze them in one lunch break. After three months of playtesting just the two of us, we began showing the game to our families and friends. Introducing the game to new people showed me that the card effects need to be on the cards themselves. Index reference sheets would not do. This also revealed one of the game’s biggest weaknesses. You need to play it at least twice. There are 11 unique cards. When a player plays for the first time, they have to spend a significant amount of brain power reading each new card as it presents itself. Isaac and I had so much fun with the puzzle of the game since we knew all of the card abilities that existed. This is a conviction I feel about most games. You start playing the game when you move from “what can I do?” to “how should I do this?”.A flowchart used for teaching version 2 of the gameThese playtests pointed to some very obvious corrections we could make (like renaming the small, medium, and large fish to be tuna, salmon, and sturgeon). I was also reminded of the need to “design intuitively”. One of the phases of your turn involved “casting”, which was just a rebranded version of drawing cards. Everyone knows what it means to draw cards, do not make them learn a new word for no reason!Remember Your Heading All of this playtesting left me with a spreadsheet of card abilities that had been cut or altered. I put some work into two separate mini expansions, hopefully being able to expand the game to six players and add in more cool interactions. Only one of these expansions was playtested, and only three times. Isaac and I enjoyed a two-player game with the new cards. The problem was, the game took us around 45 minutes. Was a game this simple with more tactical than strategic elements worthy of such a long playtime?I decided that was not the case and scrapped the idea of making the deck larger than 36 cards. We were now trying to lean into the game being a “quick 20 minute game after dinner”. We want it to be snappy. Fast. This is why I love the set up of the game. Shuffle the cards. That is it. There is no hindrance in place to stop you from starting a game of The Big Haul.Time To Get Pretty We developed a semi professional run of six copies using art from Canva. The goal now was to get more people to play the game and test out the rulebook. I handed the game and the rules to some coworkers. The feedback I received from them was generally helpful (mainly that they managed to play a game from the rulebook alone). The greatest feedback I received was when they told me that they got the game out, on a different occasion, to play it again. This is when I knew I had something special. This was a game that people wanted to come back to after experiencing it. Version 4 and 5 of the TunaIn early 2026 we worked with Jenna Noordstra to get final art done for the game, giving it a very professional feel. Isaac and I decided to self-publish to see the full process of taking an idea all the way to a final product. We have learned a lot and found some things we could improve upon next time. Overall, I am very pleased with how the final game looks and plays. It is very cool to see a random idea you had a year and a half ago turn into a game that people can play. Game design is fun. A treasure I Did Not Expect To FindI believe that the game begins to reveal its intricacies the more that you play it. I have been blown away by the amount of support my friends and family have given this project. The people in my life really do make me think I can accomplish anything. We ordered 250 copies, so if you are interested, let me know!

• 
  It's Not the Games, It's the People

  by whenindoubteatout on August 3, 2026

  by Justin Bell I learned a lot by watching Rodney Smith this weekend.Like many of you, I know Rodney from his YouTube channel Watch It Played. Prior to Gen Con 2026, I hadn’t met Rodney in person at any of the other shows I’ve attended as a member of the media. At Gen Con, I had the chance to join Rodney and fellow tabletop media writer Dale Yu of Opinionated Gamers for a demo of Mercenaries Wanted, an upcoming game from Cephalofair (Gloomhaven, Frosthaven, Founders of Gloomhaven).Mercenaries Wanted was a lot of fun, as one might expect given the brand pedigree. But that’s not what I will remember from the experience, even with some of the best smack talk and commentary of the weekend.What I’ll remember is what happened after we finished the demo. Rodney, Dale and I exchanged pleasantries and parted ways; as we stood up from the table, a group of maybe five or six attendees stopped Rodney to say thanks for the work he does on Watch It Played. Our demo finished late on the first day of the convention; everyone was tired, and with maybe an hour or two before the expo hall day wrapped up, I’m sure Rodney had other meetings to attend, and I was running off to a meeting as well.However, watching Rodney’s reaction to these attendees was something special. Rodney treated them like a consummate professional. Made small talk for a few minutes. Was overwhelmingly kind, even for a Canadian known for his excessive kindness. (No one does nice like Canadians, right?) For a guy who I’m certain was stopped like this a hundred times over the course of the weekend, Rodney treated these individuals like it was the first time someone had ever complimented him for his work, almost like they were family.This theme resonated throughout my time in Indianapolis over the weekend. In the board game industry, it’s hard to beat the quality of the people.The people who work in the board game industry are collectively the nicest people on the planet.I know that now, because I’ve been a member of the tabletop media space for about five years. The Rodney Smiths of the world are great, and I spent time with many other content creators at the show, from channels I both know and love, as well as newer channels, podcasts, and blogs that feature people I’m excited to get to know soon.Whether you agree with their opinions or whether you enjoy their content is secondary, at least to me; their intention is in the right place. I am always impressed with the passion of these folks for other people, both their followers and fans as well as their peers. I ran into so many creators this weekend I lost count: David from Man vs. Meeple, Professor Meg, Keith Law, Zazu, Tim Chuon, Ryan Guerra, Stella from Meeple University, The Dice Tower, Chris from The Nerdy Sole, Banzainator, Paula Deming, Ezeekat, Alison and Daniel from Play the Game HQ, a bunch of the folks from Tantrum House.All of them are wonderful. Many of them treat every convention like it is a college reunion, with big hugs available for both long-time friends and brand-new acquaintances. These folks fraternize with gamers just like Rodney does, and when I have been at shows ranging from PAX Unplugged to SPIEL Essen to BGG Con to Dice Tower West, it’s always fun to soak in their appreciation for their corner of the hobby.Publishers are great, too. I spent 20 minutes catching up with Dave Campbell from Taco Cat Games (formerly Dolphin Hat Games) about sneakers, and card games, and of course goats and cheese and a little pizza. I ran into my former media contact from Gamewright and we talked about why she is considering a return to the tabletop industry after spending a couple years away. I talked to the current contacts at Gamewright about Buffalo, New York and my time growing up in Rochester. I had dinner with a friend from Trick or Treat Studios, breakfast with folks from Eagle-Gryphon, drinks with Mighty Boards and eggs with Luma Imports, and during those meetups, we essentially didn’t talk about games at all.I love spending time with random segments of the gaming community. I spent some time with members of the Tabletop Gaymers Association. I did a fly-by with the speed puzzlers near the Ravensburger booth. (Doing a 500-piece puzzle, unseen and from scratch, in 22 minutes is absolutely not my thing.) The Northern Virginia Gamers community was running a table featuring Ares Zombies (Always Ready!) and I kept dropping by each day to see the progression of chalk outlines, dead bodies, destruction and scenery changes across the city map built up by the players.I don’t live in Northern Virginia and I don’t even know what Ares Zombies is, but it didn’t matter; just chatting with some of the people playing to learn more about why they love the game is why I love the people…it’s not about the game, it’s about bringing people together who share a passion for anything, games or otherwise.Sometimes, I get the chance to chill with game designers. On the second day of the show, I spent about an hour with Kevin Delger and Jacob Schacht, the men behind Asterisk Games and the co-designers of one of my favorite games of 2024, Railways of the Lost Atlas. We made a point to meet in person at Gen Con this year, even though we didn’t technically have anything to talk about beyond a swap of the duo’s new expansion, Landmarks of the Lost Atlas.But like every other meetup at the show, the conversation flowed easily and we didn’t talk that much about games. Naturally, we did, at least eventually; Asterisk is working on something new, and I talked about my impressions about the show so far. But then, we really didn’t talk about games, instead flying all over the place about topics ranging from hotels to Minneapolis to other conventions to weight loss to great food and having the right groups for game night.The Asterisk guys claimed that they are not in the same category of social butterfly that I occupy, but I saw none of that. Instead, I saw what I see every time I hang out with gamers: people who love spending time with other people, with games or without.On one of the first nights with my Wednesday gaming crew in Chicago post-COVID, I remember a few of us trying to figure out what we were going to play that night. As usual, everyone had opinions.“Honestly, I don’t really care what we play tonight,” I said.“You must have something you want to play though,” someone responded.“Sure, maybe; but I don’t actually come to game night for the games. I come for the people…and for the treats.” (One of the folks in that Wednesday group is a world-class baker.)Naturally, everyone made fun of this statement, and it still took us another 20 minutes to pick a game. But the sentiment remained: I can find groups to play the games I want, but finding the right people to join on nights to play the right games takes some people a lifetime. Lucky for me, I’ve already struck gold.This has carried me into my time as a member of the tabletop media and content creation space. I’ve worked in food and beverage, I’ve worked in professional services, I’ve worked in the sports industry, and I’ve worked in retail. Now that I’ve spent so much time in tabletop, it has become easy to see why I think the people in the board game industry are so unique.These people get the chance to make games and bring people joy for a living. As a job, they’ve taken on work that allows them to create chances for fun experiences with a targeted audience. Creating art is fun, and finding people willing to join that adventure is such a thrill. I see it in the eyes of everyone I meet when I go to shows.That includes the players.I talked to dozens of players across my four-day run at Gen Con 2026, and the sentiment I came away with was pure joy. Folks were going out of their way to spend cash. Players called out shirts, hats, costumes, and shoes worn by others: “I love your tattoos!!” Some people waited patiently, sometimes for hours, to buy a single card or a single set of new dice or a copy of a hot game or game-themed swag, from t-shirts to underwear to swords to $10,000 gaming tables.If we are being honest, Gen Con didn’t have a great show. Sure, things operated smoothly on site and people found their way to the booths that had their games. Events appeared to run mostly without a hitch. Cosplay was solid throughout the show and activities scattered between the Indiana Convention Center, hotel lobbies and Lucas Oil Stadium sounded like they gave fans what they wanted.But from a logistics perspective, Gen Con was at times a bumpy ride this year. Downtown Indianapolis was essentially a big, orange traffic cone, with construction, hazard signs and closed streets littering every part of the city within a mile of the ICC. Traffic was so bad on Thursday and Friday that a few EXHIBITORS were late to the show if they had to drive in from hotels around the area. I stayed near the Indianapolis International Airport this year, and my ride into town on Thursday–normally a drive that should take about 25 minutes–took 70 minutes thanks to a comedy of traffic issues, closed highway exits, and morning rush hour volume.And maybe you heard: a tornado warning turned into a roof leak at the ICC that damaged or destroyed some vendor inventory and served up a decent amount of water issues at nearby hotels. Rumors of a future vendor hall expansion only added to the worry that Gen Con might be trying to write checks its collective body can’t cash, to paraphrase a quote from the 40-year-old classic flick, Top Gun.Despite these troubles, I rarely heard players complain about the extra baggage. The players came to play games, but more importantly, they came to experience something special with their partners, their kids, their gaming groups, and total strangers.That’s because it was never really about the games, the traffic, or the high costs to make a huge trip to Indy. The players would do it all over again for the people, and I would too. Whether it is players, publishers, creators or anyone else tied to this space, nothing beats hang time with people who love the hobby!

• 
  Québec: Redesigning Artwork and Accessibility

  by Anton_Hallmann on August 2, 2026

  by Anton Hallmann "The game is ugly as the night“ - said the first reviewer I saw about the new artwork. Well, that is a good start into writing a blog post about redesigning an existing game, I guess. So I prepared my next failure and started writing about the process.Contrary to what some people think, a redesign isn't simply replacing old illustrations with prettier ones. If only it were that easy. Sometimes changing the artwork means changing almost everything around it, not only because the Game Designer did some adjustments to the game.And to put an (obvious) disclaimer in front: By no means is the first edition design not good or even bad - in most cases we realize the things, which we could’ve done differently only when the product is released and used. (And don't even get me started about the two year gap between first touch and release and the urge of changing everything midway, which is like an itchy spot that you can't scratch.)How I Blindly Said "Yes"Back in 2023 I sent my portfolio to a handful of board game publishers.I feel most comfortable in illustrating for editorial, infographics and children's books. But board games had always fascinated me. They're one of the few creative fields where almost all my learned skills (from typography to composition) come to use - you design an entire object. Box art, rulebooks, player aids, cards, boards, icons, tokens... every single element has to work together. It's a designer's playground.Fortunately, [user=Uli Blennemann]@UliBlennemann[/user] from Spielworxx got back to me.The game? Québec.My reaction? "...Sure!"Nice, I got a commission, but unfortunately I had absolutely no idea what Québec was about. Looking back, blindly agreeing before researching the project may not have been the most professional approach. On the other hand... I often receive inquiries about topics I know nothing about. Learning new things is always a pleasant side effect of the job.First Things First: Learn the GameI already knew that the game was originally published in 2011 by le Scorpion Masqué and designed by [user=filou]Philippe Beaudoin[/user] and [user=Zendor]Pierre Poissant-Marquis[/user]. Since I didn't own a copy, I did what most people do these days. I looked for a playthrough.Watching a game teaches you something that reading the rulebook never quite can. You don't just learn how the game works - you learn where players hesitate, where they get excited and which parts of the table naturally draw their attention. Plus I did not need to work myself through another rulebook.I stumbled upon Heavy Cardboard's playthrough. This one stood out in particular, because both designers were present in the chat. A big advantage: Besides learning about the mechanics, I also learned something that immediately influenced the entire redesign: One of the designers is color-blind. That single piece of information completely changed how I approached the project.Accessibility Isn't a FeatureIt's easy to think of accessibility as something you add at the end of a project. But, oh wonder, it isn't.Good accessibility usually results in good graphic design.If information is easier to distinguish, if important elements stand out naturally, if the interface does not cause any friction with the players to understand what's happening, everyone benefits - not just players with visual impairments.Color blindness alone affects a lot of people. Roughly one in twelve men and one in two hundred women have some form of color vision deficiency, with red-green color blindness being by far the most common. (And that is a big chunk of gamers, too.)Looking Through Different EyesAs a designer, I spend a lot of time choosing colors that look good together. I particularly love a limited color palette. Québec one the other hand required lots of colors: 4 zones of power, backgrounds and 5 player colors. (which led to many iterations of color through the process) 🙃Here's the original board viewed through the lens of red-green color blindness (deuteranopia).Suddenly the political districts started melting into the background. Meanwhile, Religion and Culture - both relying on fairly similar shades of blue - become difficult to tell apart. None of this was intentional, of course. It's simply one of those things that's easy to miss unless you actively try to design for accessibility.Fortunately, the solution wasn't particularly complicated, because the original board used a richly colored background underneath the hex tiles. Which was beautiful, but not very helpful for reading purposes. Replacing it with a neutral, slightly aged parchment immediately allowed the colored hexes to stand out far more clearly. Instead of competing with the background, the hextiles became the focal point. As cheesy as it sounds, sometimes less is more and removing visual noise can be very helpful. Although I did not had the intention to trim it down to an excel sheet. Then Came the Real PuzzleAccessibility via color was one issue, the other was the construction of the game board. Looking at you cascading mechanism.It is the heart of the game and therefore should work as smoothly as possible. In the first edition the cascading zones of power were placed in the 4 corners of the board, which led to long distances between the cascading zones. So instead of spreading them into four corners, I brought them into a circle next to the central play area. Suddenly the cascade became much easier to follow. And the visual information of how many workers you have in one zone is in one space, a clear visual hierarchy, which reduces eye movement.I had this change in mind from the beginning, it felt natural - which is usually a sign that it was the right decision. (But to be fair: I somehow thought "cascading" means going in a circle, oh boy.)Part 2 - I Like Things In Order By this point, we had made the board easier to read and the cascading mechanism easier to follow. And one personal preference of mine: having as much content as possible on the game board itself. Whenever possible, cards should have dedicated spaces on the board instead of living in a vague area somewhere off to the side. It makes setup cleaner, the table easier to read, and gives the whole production a sense of intention. Québec contains two different types of cards.: There are five Leader cards, all of which remain visible throughout the game. And then there are the Event cards.Normally that wouldn't be particularly complicated, except in Québec, here the very first Event stays in play until its objective has actually been completed. Makes two slots for Event cards. Which means the game needed seven homes for seven visible cards. The Board Can't Be the Size of CanadaSpace is always a problem and so the most tempting solution to make the canvas bigger is not a real option. Unfortunately, board games are no exception and eventually need to fit inside a box. And for most players even more important the board has to fit on a dining table. Not everyone owns a dedicated gaming table the size of a medieval banquet hall.Uli had already specified the box dimensions: 308 × 308 mm. Working backwards from that eventually gave us a board dimension of 780 × 560 mm. Big enough to breathe. Small enough to fit on a regular dining table. Probably. And so the first rough version was born and looked like that. Blue was the color we were going for, because Québec's flag code is blue and orange. Which was handy because the Bang Wong Palette suggests blue and orange as most color blind friendly.It already looked surprisingly close to where we eventually ended up. The center contained the heart of the game: the hex tiles resting on map inspired by a historical map of Québec, based on Jacques-Nicolas Bellin's 1744 map.The left side housed the Leader cards. The right side became home to the Event cards, the four zones of power and a player aid that explains the cascading mechanism.Everything in its right place, but everything... had problems. The first one is obvious: Looking suspiciously like a prototype, although I thought, that it is almost done... bit delusional.With A Little Help From My FriendsThankfully [user=hoshbad]Sebastian Wenzlaff[/user] joined us as editor. And he made all of my design life easier (unfortunately this was not always reciprocal - drove him crazy by always inventing new file names to his perfect system - sorry! 🫠). Good graphic design is usually a lot of quite ordinary decisions that quietly support one another. Fortunately, this is also where collaboration becomes incredibly valuable. Working with Sebastian meant there was always someone asking the right questions - or occasionally pointing out the flaw I'd become completely blind to after staring at the same file for far too long. His feedback was pointing to the things I could no longer see myself. Working together with someone is a blessing. And working together with Sebastian double.The first thing we tackled was the centre spaces. Everything not only looked unfinished and way too bright, but also the districts were not clear enough. The visual hierarchy was weak. One of the improvements came from something surprisingly simple: Looking at the original. It had actually handled this rather well. The districts needed stronger visual separation, so we widened the borders surrounding each one and fully colored the district spaces. Suddenly your eye immediately understood where one district ended and the next began.Sometimes, during a redesign, you spend hours trying to invent something clever, only to discover that the original designer had already solved the problem. So I learned that one of the parts of redesigning an existing game is knowing when not to redesign something. After myriads of tiny adjustments, the center of the board finally began to behave itself. Now we could get into detail... The Giant Arrow Nobody Asked ForWe all might develop tunnel vision at some point in our work, at least I do quite fast… Once I've spent enough hours staring at a layout, my brain is just to used to the design, that mistakes or uncertainties do play no role. Usually I pass it to a fellow designer to have a look at it (hello my wife!) or just rotate the canvas for a new angle. But sometimes it seems that tunnel vision is infectious and all just have it…Thankfully we had Uli, who pointed out that the banners on the districts "seem to form a gigantic arrow."And well once I saw it... I couldn't unsee it.The district banners collectively pointed left. Not intentionally, but they just did...It was one of those accidental compositions my eye got pulled toward now over and over again. So the banners first moved upwards and were also slimmed down in a later iteration. Problem solved. Mostly.The Workers Were TinyThe next issue wasn't artistic at all. It was practical. Up to this point we had kept one feature from the original edition: the wooden worker cubes. They were meant to stand neatly in rows on top of the hex tiles.On screen? Perfectly sensible.In practice? Tiny. Fiddly. Easy to bump. And so slightly annoying.Anyone who's ever tried placing several small cubes into precisely printed spaces while reaching across a crowded table already knows where this story is going. We eventually swapped the roles of the components. The century markers became cubes. The workers became discs. Such a tiny change. Such a massive improvement. Because the discs stacked beautifully, were easier to manipulate, and made both the end-of-round cleanup and the cascading mechanism noticeably smoother.It's one of those invisible improvements players rarely comment on. Which is exactly what good graphic and component design should do. When nobody notices it... it's probably working. Or in the worst case players just arrange with the situation.The accessibility was better now.The cascade made sense.The workers were easier to handle.Now we could finally focus on making the board look less like a collection of individual elements and more like one cohesive game.Leaders Need More SpaceThe second construction side was the Leader area. The cards refer to 4 respective personalities from each of the 4 eras. In the first edition they were only written at the bottom of the card. To depict them was the goal. First we made bit more space for the cards and I had placed generic historical figures there.They looked fine. But there was an obvious question. Why was I showing anonymous people when the actual Leader cards already featured real historical personalities?The background caused another issue. Both the board and the cards shared almost the same color. As long as every card was in place, everything looked nice.The moment a card was taken... nothing happened. Well, technically the card was taken, but visually? It was surprisingly difficult to notice. Which is exactly the opposite of what I wanted. Empty spaces should announce themselves immediately. Instead they cleared their throats quietly.I rotated the Leader cards into landscape orientation. That immediately distinguished them from the Event cards, which remained portrait format. Easier for players to read. Check.Borrowing a Little ArchitectureBut I also wanted the Leader area to feel connected to Québec itself. Rather than filling the background with decorative flourishes, I started looking at the architecture of Québec's National Assembly. Its ornamental details and the speakers chair became the inspiration for the surrounding frame. It quietly supports the theme without competing with the information players actually need.That's often the balance you're chasing. Theme should enrich usability. Not fight it. After that I just recolored the places where the cards lie with the background tones. Suddenly an empty slot looked... well... empty. Funny how difficult it can be to make "nothing" visible. The Leader Cards Itself Needed Some TreatmentChanging the board meant changing the cards too. Originally, the Leader cards featured relatively small portraits. Perfectly functional. But once the board itself became more elaborate, those tiny portraits started feeling disconnected. Instead, we decided to put collages of the zones portraits on the cards. The portraits became the focal point of richer compositions that immediately gave each card more presence. The cards felt less like reference material and more like characters. That's important because players spend the entire game looking at them. If something occupies that much visual real estate, it deserves a little personality.Part 3 – The Point Where Everything Finally Started Looking Like a GameContinuing making tiny steps and decisions...Should this icon move up two millimetres?Should this border be darker?Is this heading too close to the edge?Does this symbol still work when printed smaller?Would anyone actually notice this? (The answer here is always yes.)After myriads of tiny adjustments, the center of the board finally began to behave itself. The accessibility was better. The cascade made sense. The workers were easier to handle. Nothing was accidentally pointing left anymore.Here is the board seen by someone with red-green color blindness (deuteranopia). The districts can be easily distinguished, in addition icons support readability. The Surprisingly Easy PartThe focus of this diary is of course on the elements that changed the most during development, but some of them barely changed at all. The Event cards were one of those (except that I wanted to include an illustration of the historical event on the card). So were the building sides of the hex tiles. Both were established fairly early and remained remarkably stable throughout the project. Most later adjustments were simply the natural consequence of changes happening elsewhere. If the board colors evolved, the cards evolved with them. If icons became clearer on the board, they became clearer on the cards too. Everything stayed visually connected.One example is the 1663 Event card, whose layout barely changed—but whose colors and iconography gradually evolved alongside the rest of the game. That meant lots and lots of color swapping. But also the change of iconography (which was the part we focused on first to keep it coherent through the game): The first player to build two buildings in three of the four colors (six buildings in total) immediately scores 8 VP, second 4 VP. Looking BackWhen I first agreed to work on Quebec, I honestly thought I was being hired to create new artwork. Instead, I found myself asking questions about accessibility, visual hierarchy, component usability, historical references, table space and how players actually move their eyes around a game board. It demanded a way deeper understanding of how a designer has to approach a board game. "Good design is obvious. Great design is transparent", said Joe Sparano. Players should just simply play without getting distracted. They find the information they need. They understand what happens next. That's exactly the goal.If players spend an evening talking about the decisions they made rather than struggling with the interface that presented those decisions, then the design has done its job, even if it is „as ugly as the night“ to some. But I hope you enjoy the game or maybe even the read too.

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  King of Tokyo Godzilla - Illustrator Diary

  by Roger_IELLO on August 1, 2026

  by Roger IELLO As a Godzilla fan, I had always hoped to work on a project like this. Around the release of the first U.S. Godzilla movie in 2014, I created a series of personal chibi kaiju illustrations inspired by the Monsterverse. Florent Baudry, the project manager of the game at IELLO, came across these illustrations during last SPIEL Essen fair and asked me if I would be interested in working on the, still secret at the time, King of Tokyo: Godzilla game. It was an incredible opportunity: working with both IELLO and Toho. One of the biggest challenges was defining the visual style. At first, the direction was still quite open, so we explored many different approaches before narrowing it down to the final look. We experimented with ideas ranging from retro Japanese ink drawings to a style that mixed old comic book influences with the nostalgic feel of 1960s and 1970s wallpaper patterns. The illustrations I created in 2014 were digital watercolor illustrations, and we knew early on that we wanted to use chibi kaiju in some way for this project. Moving toward a digital watercolor style therefore felt like a natural way to bring the old and new ideas together.About the Chibi MonstersFrom the beginning, it was planned to use this exact chibi watercolor style for at least a few illustrations of the power cards, so finding the right direction here was easy. Through several thumbnails and idea sketches, we refined the concept for each card before finalizing it in the watercolor style. Here is one example. I already showed you Mecha Godzilla from the old illustrations I created in 2014. Since this was already a very stylized version of Mecha Godzilla, we did not have to change much from the original design, apart from the red eyes.During the process, we also changed the Japanese sun on the airplanes to avoid any potential cultural issues, and added another finger. Checking the correct number of fingers happened surprisingly often, especially because some costumes had more fingers than others. The First StandeeAfter the chibi, which I was used too, we had to start with the monsters standees. I did a lot of reference gathering and style research before starting a series of trials with the first real test illustration. The original Godzilla standee, later used for as an alternative board offered at events, went through several scenes and iterations before we reached the final version. In the final version, you can see the amount of work that went into the brushwork and line art as a reference to traditional Japanese watercolor. Why? Another version was an alternative style test, closer to traditional Japanese watercolor art. In the end, it felt a little too old-fashioned for a modern game, but we still wanted to keep some of its retro charm without pushing it too far.Another example with the Mecha Godzilla StandeeThis is a good example of how the detailed process worked later on, once the style had been clearly established. We started with thumbnails to explore the overall direction of the composition. The Design of the CoverNaturally, we also put a lot of work into the cover. After exploring several thumbnails, we created a selection of color sketches, each taking a different approach. Some concepts referenced classic movie posters, while others stayed closer to the visual identity of the existing King of Tokyo games. In the end, we decided to explore a stronger shape-based composition and moved forward with a mix between versions A and E.The following steps allowed us to develop those ideas further in different directions.Overall, this was a fantastic project to work on, and I really hope there will be some kind of expansion in the future. I would love to design the full roster of kaiju, prepare 3D prints, or even work with TOHO on new ideas.So far, the feedback has been great, and I am now looking forward to the official release of the game in the USA for Gen Con as well as my next project with IELLO.Markus Erdt(editor's note - diary transcribed from an interview with Markus and uploaded by an employee of IELLO)

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  All New Releases this Fine Gen Con 2026 Week

  by boardgamersteph on July 29, 2026

  by Steph Hodge HELLO GEN CON! We are all ready for these new releases![imageid=8916698 medium rep]▪️ Mythologies from Super Meeple is set to release August 12, but will be available for Gen Con pickup as well. This new game is designed by Maxime Babad, Mickaël "Froh" Garcin. Mythologies is a new light civ and tableau building game that plays in 20-40 minutes and plays 2-4 players. From the Hachette Website:Summon deities and legendary creatures, build your pantheon, and earn their favor! In Mythologies, you'll journey through the beliefs of the world's greatest civilizations. Choose the right cards, and unleash powerful abilities, overcome thrilling challenges, and position your deities and creatures wisely to gather gems and win divine favors. With 70 different starting setups and endless combinations, no two games are ever the same. Guaranteed replayability makes Mythologies a perfect match for families and seasoned players alike!▪️ Mountain Goats: Legacy from Allplay has a limited release at Gen Con with a wider release set for September. From designers Alex Cutler, Michael Mihealsick, and Stefan Risthaus. This game plays 2-5 players and each session is about 20-45 minutes. From the BGG:Mountain Goats: Legacy combines dice rolling/combining and events into a longer version of Mountain Goats. But, after the first session, more and more hazards and gameplay tweaks show up. The dice now have a goat symbol — when rolled, you’ll get to use one of the unlocked player powers. These can change with every session! There’s also a new system called “Courage” that greatly affects your ability to mitigate luck and refine your dice rolls.This game can be played as either a single session or a legacy game. As a legacy game, it is fully replayable and resettable. You will not be asked to destroy or modify components. The first session can also be combined with the original Mountain Goats game.▪️ Czech Games Edition (CGE) announced the release of Lost Ruins of Arnak: Surprise Shipment, a new expansion for Lost Ruins of Arnak! From BGG:A package with no sender—what could be inside? It appears there are still treasures to be unearthed and secrets to be unveiled. Gear up with new items and head back into the jungle. The island of Arnak is expecting your return.Lost Ruins of Arnak: Surprise Shipment is the final addition to the vast and mysterious world of Arnak. The expansion is packed with 50 new cards (30 artifacts, 20 items), two new sites, and an updated site. It comes in a beautifully illustrated box that will complement every player's Arnak collection.▪️ Six Sojourns from Red Raven Games releases July 30. From designer Ryan Laukat, this is an Eight-Minute Empire game. This is a game for 2-4 players and takes 30-60 minutes. From BGG:Six Sojourns is a reimagining of Eight-Minute Empire. It's a short area control game full of tough choices, creative strategy and tactics, and high player interaction.Your goal in Six Sojourns is to grow your family and broaden their influence. Players take turns selecting a card from five on display. Each card has actions that let players build houses, gain ships, move, and gain new family members. The cards also have special abilities and sets of icons that represent your family's expertise in various trades: cooking, carpentry, sewing, shoe-making, art, blacksmithing, and jewelry. Each game, you only select nine cards, and you'll be faced with meaty choices each turn as you focus on trades, abilities, or the map.When all players have 9 cards, the game ends. Players count victory points, and the player with the most points wins.▪️ Bézier Games has a small new card game coming out called Warp 99. From designer Reinhard Staupe (La Habana, David & Goliath...), this is a quick-paced card game where you are racing to collect 99 points first. for 2-4 players and plays in 30 minutes. From the BGG page:Zoom through space in the super-fast card game Warp 99!On your turn, add 1 card to your own growing card row—it has to be a bigger number than the last one, and NO repeating colors!Then blast as many cards as you can onto the 2 middle piles using cool rules like Same Color, Plus 1, or Total 10. Get Stuck? Change the rules! Match extra rules? Get bonus cards! Empty your hand? Get another turn!Score big points by making long card rows and get 15 more points every time you use up your Personal Draw Deck. First to reach 99 points wins!

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  Designer Diary: The Story Behind Arnak’s Surprise Shipment

  by Minmyska on July 28, 2026

  by Mín Hi everyone, it’s Mín here, and I would like to share a few things about the new addition to the Lost Ruins of Arnak! The name says it all: the Surprise Shipment is an expansion even we didn’t really expect. It wasn’t planned originally, but when we were designing the Adventure Chest, there was this little bit of extra space in the card compartments that we ended up with, and we thought it would be cool to use it for some more cards. That is also the reason why Twisted Paths was advertised as the last major expansion–we were hoping to be able to fill that empty space in the Adventure Chest. When we got back to actually designing the cards, it surprised us that there was actually still a lot more design space than we expected. When designing some of the previous expansions, it was easy to feel like we already exhausted all the interesting ideas for card effects. But as it turned out, there were many fun ideas still waiting for us, some actually changing the game in interesting ways.New Card Effects The base game comes with 75 items and artifacts, and the Surprise Shipment adds 50 more unique items and artifacts, which is actually a lot. We tried to aim for effects that are not overly complicated so that you can play with them even with beginners, but they still offer interesting effects that can change your playstyle and open the game to new strategies. Adding new effects into an existing game can be both easier and harder than coming up with a new game. You already have some framework in place, but you need to fit into it and make sure you do not break anything. Thankfully, we had the “CGO”–the CGE online testing platform–at our disposal. This expansion was tested there extensively, for which we’re very grateful to the community of testers there! We were pleasantly surprised by how big of an impact this seemingly small expansion had on the gameplay. Let Us Introduce a Few of the Cards!For example, the Thermometer card affects the timing–suddenly, you want to play a lot of cards in a turn. Even gaining a fear from an effect does not sound like such a bad idea, because that is also a card that goes to your play area 🙂.The Golden Wing can also be a game-changer if you are fairly rich and manage to snatch it at the right time. It can be especially useful when you are short on cards and need to travel a lot. Have you ever had a game where you were just drowning in Fear cards? These artifacts may make that a strategic choice! And sometimes, especially towards the end of the game, you might be lacking travel symbols when all the cards in your hand are just too precious to use just for the travel icons. That's where these new cards shine, giving you just the extra push you need to reach your destination. One of my personal favorites is definitely the Stew Pot–a card with great versatility! It allows you to get to the gold side effect of an assistant much faster, and even interact with your opponent's assistant. That can be especially useful in some situations, like when they snatch the one assistant you really need. It's definitely a card that creates some memorable moments and encourages friendly banter! Like: “Why is my assistant eating at your camp again?” “Well, if you fed your assistant properly, maybe they wouldn’t come over!” and so on!Art Progress We had a lot of fun with the artwork. Milan Vavroň is a pleasure to work with–he comes up with interesting concepts for the cards easily, which was very useful here, especially for Artifact card illustrations. The Item cards are much easier in that regard, since it’s easy to find some inspiration in the everyday world, but Artifacts need to feel unique and mysterious. They represent the culture of the Arnakian past and need to fit into the rest of the world seamlessly, while also communicating the in-game effect visually. For example, we usually try to have the illustration carry the same color as the important resources you gain from the card effect. Ondřej Hrdina once again worked on the beautiful illustration for the cover, the new sites, and also the Kitten and Puppy cards. The idea we had for this cover was to make it cute and playful. One of the all-time favorite cards is the Dog, of course. We wanted to create cheaper and weaker versions of the Dog and Cat cards, and when I saw the new cards next to each other, the image you see on the cover just popped into my mind. It was hard to unsee it–I really liked the idea of these two being the first ones to find a lost shipment in the Jungle. So keep an eye out for two new cute and cuddly expedition members - if they're not too busy chasing butterflies, that is! Sometimes the theme of a card is closely connected with the way we represent its effect, but the intention does not always “survive” thanks to limitations like readability or balancing issues. The Calendar card is a nice example of the former–we really wanted the effect to slowly change into another bonus from round to round, just like the seasons change. But the icons were too small when placed on the card like that. Placing the icons in the zig-zag looked strange because the round and square icons in different places created a scattered feel. So in the end the idea may not be as obvious from the final effect, but at least those of you who read this Diary will know. Oh, and the date in the calendar also changed - it’s the date of the day when we (shortly before midnight) sent the Arnak rulebook to print, and with that, all the work on the base game was finished, and all we could do was to anxiously await how the game would be received. We have a few more Easter eggs like that hidden in the game, but let’s not spoil you all the fun of looking for them.New Sites When designing new sites, we wanted to keep the balance among the different resources that you may gain while digging at sites. Since we only had room for two extra sites, we decided to go for a unique new effect that is more flexible in what resources it can offer. The effect allows you to take back one of the previously used idols, making both the idol and the slot available for use again. This creates some interesting new combo opportunities!We hope Lost Ruins of Arnak: Surprise Shipment brings fresh energy to your games of Arnak, whether you’re exploring new strategies or just enjoying the unexpected twists these cards can create. The new expansion will be released July 30, 2026. See you on the island, explorers!

• 
  Designer Diary: Combo Creatures

  by Muemmelmann on July 27, 2026

  by Christian K This is a designer diary for Combo Creatures: The Quick Ones and Combo Creatures: The Witty OnesPrologueWe, Michael and Christian, met at an event at our local Board Games Café Papas Papbar, for a release party for Biotopia. We quickly got chatting about games and even had a few beers (or at least it felt that way). This kind of meeting between game designers is always an interesting and exciting moment. At the end of the night, we hugged goodbye, and one of us whispered the lovely phrase “we should totally make a game together”.10 Years LaterNah just kidding, it was like half a year later or something that we seriously started working together. We started meeting up regularly and experimenting with games. We tried various ideas, but it was hard finding a good common project that actually worked. After we added like five tracks to one of our other games (which surprisingly didn’t make it any better), we felt a bit stuck and like we hadn’t quite found the right game."Faunas" (as we called Combo Creatures at the time) emerged as a breath of fresh air. The initial prototype was fast playing and delivered a lot of crazy moments that occasionally had one of us pause and say... “Is this allowed?” The answer was always yes.The GameThe game is super simple, and surprisingly, most rules are exactly the same as in the very first prototype.You have a hand of cards. On your turn, you pick one to play. It has a cost, which you pay by discarding other cards. You put it into play, and it has a play-ability that you trigger. Those abilities tend to be quite wild and powerful, often allowing you to play more stuff (sometimes even for free). We wanted to give you the feeling of playing a crazy combo deck in a TCG, but with almost no rules, no complex timing, and very simple and powerful abilities.[Michael: I remember coming home from those early playtest sessions with an overloaded brain just sitting there staring into space, trying to figure out whether I could have played my hand more efficiently, all while new ideas for cool card abilities kept popping into my head – And right there I knew we were on to something!](Ok ok, occasionally on your turn, you don’t have a cool card combo to play so you spend the turn picking up new cards to load you up for a powerful next turn. But most of the time, you are just playing cool combos, we promise!)To prevent too much time from being spent reading the cards in your hand, we found it useful to limit the number of different cards in the deck. When you play, there are just 7 different ones. You quickly know the cards so you can use your energy to find the best possible ways to play them, rather than reading an endless stream of cards.A Weird SystemWith only seven cards though, we were looking for creative ways to increase the variety of the deck and the number of situations that the players will face. We made the deck modular, so you wouldn’t use the same seven cards every game. But within each game, we also wanted more variety.We came up with this weird system that felt like it shouldn’t work, but surprisingly it did.Each card comes in three variations. The same ability, but with costs of 1, 2, and 3.However, the cost is also how many points that card is worth. So, if you play the 2-cost variation of a card, you discard two cards for the exact same ability that sometimes costs one, but you also get an extra point.So, the dilemma the player faces is, do they play a lot of cheap cards, not getting so many points but triggering a lot of abilities, or do they prefer playing a single expensive card for big points but only the one ability.The next step was to figure out how strong the abilities should be to make this dilemma work. So that you sometimes go for the cheap option and sometimes the expensive. An especially tricky thing to factor in here is the implicit cost in spending your turn playing the card.[Christian: I actually remember writing some equations to try to figure out if this concept even made sense, and if so, how strong an ability would need to be so that one option wasn’t always strategically superior. The math dictated that each ability needed to be SUPER DUPER STRONG. This was something we would have to accept as designers. No innocent little “Draw 1 card” abilities, sorry!]We had a good excuse to put really powerful abilities on the cards. In fact, we had to do it or the game wouldn’t work. This fueled our combo machine to even greater heights. Coming up with simple yet exciting and powerful abilities is one of the most enjoyable things as game designers, and this game was a blast to work on.Pitching and PublicationThe excitement we felt for the game turned out to be contagious; several publishers became very interested, which is an amazing feeling as designers. DV Games was particularly excited about the game. It is not uncommon for publishers to take many months to play your game and give feedback. However, with DV Games, Luca wrote immediately after SPIEL Essen asking for the files, and a few days later they proposed an offer of publication.DV Games has been great to work with. Marta, our editor, has been tirelessly testing, evaluating, swapping cards around between sets, proposing minor changes etc. It is great seeing someone else match the passion you have as a designer for your little baby game. Seeing the game come alive with the beautiful artwork from Jeff Hong was one of the absolute highlights during development.Two different boxes (with completely different cards) are being released simultaneously, Combo Creatures: The Quick Ones and Combo Creatures: The Witty Ones. Each one is stand-alone, but they can of course be mixed. Either one is a good starting point. The Quick Ones is a bit more approachable, while The Witty Ones leans into more involved and tricky abilities.After many years of hard work from a lot of people, the game is at the finish line. But in a weird way, the finish line for a game, where it finally comes out, is also the starting line. This is the first time the wide public gets to see and play it. Fingers crossed you like it as much as we do! Cheers and happy gaming.