by W. Eric Martin

To follow up on early January 2026’s post about three titles due out in the U.S. from Thames & Kosmos — The Gang: More Players, The Gang: Deluxe Edition, and The Crew: Journey to the Ends of the Earth — here’s what else is coming from that publisher:

▪️ As I noted in November 2025, Kasper Lapp‘s Wildblooms will receive an English-language edition, with this being a game for 2-5 players in which you take turns drafting flowers from a shared area.

Each drafted flower causes all flowers of that color to grow, no matter who owns them. In this imaginative interpretation on pollination, flowers have bonus effects on them, so growth in your orange bloom might cause growth in a red one. Whoever ends up with the most fully grown flowers wins.

Wildblooms is due out in Q2 2026.

▪️ Another family game coming from Thames & Kosmos is Temple Twist, a 1-4 player co-operative game from Bernhard Weber that presents the following challenge:

A cryptic notebook leads your archaeological expedition deep in the jungle to an ancient temple rumored to hold incredible artifacts. Your goal: Explore the rooms of the temple and escape before your energy runs out!

But that’s easier said than done because the temple is a maze of movable walls and mysterious mechanisms! Now it’s time to work together. Using your action cards, you’ll navigate through this unique structure, move walls, and even rotate the entire temple!

In this action-packed game, players take turns choosing an action card from their hand to strategically manipulate the three-dimensional temple and move the explorer cube through the maze of rooms. Play through a series of increasingly difficult expeditions, or pick up some challenge cards and dive right in. This game combines strategy, co-operation, spatial reasoning, and hands-on action with a first-of-its-kind 3D-maze-gameboard that changes as you play.

Temple Twist is due out in Q2 2026 in the U.S. and in early March 2026 from KOSMOS. The description hints at what you’re doing during play, but this promotional image included in the Thames & Kosmos catalog is far more illustrative of gameplay.

▪️ Oh My Word is a real-time, word-based party game for 2-6 players from Andrew and Jack Lawson that KOSMOS released in German in Q3 2025 and that Thames & Kosmos will release in the U.S. in Q2 2026. Here’s how to play:

▪️ A second party game on the Thames & Kosmos schedule is Realtalk: Fourth Wing from Johannes Berger and Julien Gupta for 3-6 players. Yes, another Fourth Wing-related game following these two others! I can imagine creative industries employing an adaptation metric to compare the “hotness” of various IPs, with the license cost ramping up accordingly.

Each round, one player sees two question cards in secret, with sample questions being “Who would be most likely to wrap Xaden around their little finger?”, “Who would really get on Dain’s nerves?”, and “And who wouldn’t even make it through threshing?” They secretly rank everyone at the table by how well they think each person would fit the question, then shuffle a third question card with the other two before revealing them. Everyone else is trying to figure out which question that player is answering, scoring a point for the group if the majority of guesses are correct.

▪️ With more than thirty million EXIT games sold worldwide, you won’t be surprised to find more on the 2026 release schedule:

• Q1 2026: EXIT: The Game – The Circus Mystery from Inka, Markus, and Emely Brand asks you to solve a series of high-profile burglaries that have occurred in each of the cities where the circus has performed.

• Q1 2026: Inka and Markus Brand’s EXIT: The Game – Kids: The Great Bee-scape is a 20-minute challenge for players aged 5 and up to help a bee find her way home.

• Q2 2026: EXIT: The Game – Family: The Trophy Case/Night at the Carnival from the Brand trio features two cases that each take about an hour to play. In one, a thief wants to steal the trophy from an animal talent show, and in the other mysterious power outages keep occurring at the fair, threatening to leave our heroes in the dark.

• Q3 2026: In the newest EXIT advent calendar, The Magic of Christmas, the Brand trio places you in a bizarre situation:

Peace, the scent of pine, not a soul in sight – a long hike through the unspoilt forest is just what you need. You’re happy to have escaped the hustle and bustle of the pre-Christmas season and are resting in a picturesque clearing when you hear a loud bang and everything goes black.

When you wake up, the forest around you is enchanted, and you are surrounded by snow! Red baubles hang in the trees; lights twinkle in the undergrowth. Then, shock hits you: Your hands! They’re completely covered with green fur…

To make your way through this adventure story, you open a new door in the advent calendar each day. Solve the riddle or challenge presented, and you’ll know which door to open the next day, with the secret of the forest being revealed once you’ve cleared all 24 doors.