Toss Clowns, Snag Cat Toys, Make Colorful Teddy Bears, and Forgo Thoughts and Prayers
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▪️ Daniel Newman of New Mill Industries says that after releasing sixteen titles in 2025 — both original games and new editions of older titles — he’s scaling back, with only two titles coming out in each half of 2026 and with rotating sales for titles in stock. Here are the two games available for pre-order on February 1, 2026:
• The Fluffy Rite is a new edition of Kusaka Satoru‘s 2015 trick-taking game for 3-5 players from Japanese publisher Roughneck:7:
Cards have only colors, not numbers, and each card can be used as either a head or a body of that color. Players combine two cards — one for the head, another for the body — to make one bear during each trick. The combination of colors of each assembled bear and the order of play will determine the winner of the trick. The player(s) with the second most trophies in a hand wins a game point, and whoever first gets two game points wins the game.
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• Newman’s own Hearts and Minds is “a light-hearted game for 3-4 players about responding to tragic events. Thoughts and Prayers are worth nothing. What’s really important is winning the Hearts and Minds…except when it isn’t.
In more detail, Hearts and Minds is a trick-taking game in which players each choose their own scoring conditions by selecting a goal card from their hand. Each goal can be used only once and “may have rules that change how the player must play that hand”.
▪️ Swiss publisher Helvetiq has a new trick-taking game of its own for February 2026: Cat Trick, a 3-5 player game from designer Nagian.
Players represent kittens who are grabbing at toys through their card play. You can play any card to a trick, then whoever has played the highest trump card (or the highest card if no trumps are present) wins the trick. Five colors of cards can be collected, but if you take more than four of a color, you’ve gotten too greedy and other kitties will pounce on your toys.
▪️ Another trick-taking game hitting the market in February 2026 is Joshua Buergel‘s The Fox in the Forest Deluxe from Renegade Game Studios.
This new edition of 2017’s two-player-only The Fox in the Forest add three expansion modules that can be used individually or in combination. Poison cards cost you a point when you take one; goal cards place two additional ways to score points into play each hand; and special cards make it less certain who will win each trick.
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▪️ I covered two of Mike Petchey‘s card game designs from Huff No More in July 2025, and he came out with another before the end of 2025: Tricky Landing, which is a dexterity-based trick-taking game:
Find out in Tricky Landing, in which rather than play cards, you throw them toward a target card! Make a successful landing for your card to be part of the trick, with the order in which cards land determining the lead suit. Miss the target and you’ll set the trump for the next trick, but if more than one player misses the target, you all take a penalty.
Play three rounds to determine which death-defying clowns have put on the best performance.
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