by W. Eric Martin • U.S. publisher Capstone Games will release Pagan: Fate of Roanoke at Gen Con 2024 in August, marking the North American debut of this two-player asymmetric game from Kasper Kjær Christiansen and Kåre Storgaard that German publisher Wyrmgold released in 2022 following a crowdfunding campaign in 2021. Here's an overview of this design: The essence of this game is a witch's struggle against a witch hunter. As the witch strives to complete a ritual of renaturation, the hunter tries to discover her true identity among nine villagers. Each turn, the two players use their actio ..read more

by W. Eric Martin • U.S. publisher WizKids is bringing Star Trek to game tables once again, but instead of a design that focuses solely on combat, as with Star Trek: Attack Wing, the game attempts to cover more aspects of the Star Trek universe. Here's an overview of the 2-6 player game Star Trek: Into The Unknown – Federation vs. Dominion Core Set, which is designed by Max Brooke and Michael Gernes and due out in July 2024: Teleport to the bridge of the most legendary starships from Star Trek as you launch an epic adventure across the galaxy! Star Trek: Into the Unknown features the most d ..read more

by Jérémy Ducret 1. The General Idea February 2021: My game Daimyo: Rebirth of the Empire comes out in stores, which paradoxically leaves me with a big gap in my schedule. I need to quickly find a project that excites me to occupy my free time. Unfortunately, no old prototype seems worthy of interest to me now. Starting from a blank sheet, I'm going to try to make the game I want to play: Idea 1: Deck-building with alternating activation. I want to offer confrontational deck-building (Star Realms-style) but more strategic in the way of playing the cards. I don't want to "empty" my hand ev ..read more

by W. Eric Martin Given all that happened today — Asmodee becoming (sort of) independent again, Goliath buying Lucky Duck, me gushing about a game that's both new and nearly thirty years old — I almost forgot to publish BGG's Origins Game Fair 2024 Preview. Thankfully, I caught that oversight in time to meet my self-imposed publication deadline. Go, me! The preview has only sixty titles at the moment, with more than a dozen of those titles available solely for demo. The Origins 2023 Preview ended up with "only" 124 titles, so maybe I'm halfway done at this point, roughly two months before O ..read more

by W. Eric Martin Asmodee's parent company, Embracer Group, has announced — and I quote — "a transformative step for value creation through a separation of the group into three market-leading games and entertainment companies: Asmodee Group, 'Coffee Stain & Friends' and 'Middle-earth Enterprises & Friends'". (The official names of the final two groups will be announced later, which makes me wonder why Embracer was so rushed as to make this announcement before it knew precisely what it was announcing, but I'm not a business owner who must make such decisions, so what do I know?) Curre ..read more

by W. Eric Martin Goliath Games, a toy and game company headquartered in Hattem, Netherlands, is increasingly living up to its name. In January 2024, Goliath acquired an exclusive license to all the games marketed under the Funko Games brand, and on April 22, 2024, Goliath has announced the acquisition of Lucky Duck Games, which was founded in 2016 by Vincent Vergonjeanne. Here's most of the press release about this deal: Jochanan Golad, CEO of Goliath, says: "As a global games business, we see there are two major growth areas in games: (adult) party games and strategy games. Consumers and ..read more

by W. Eric Martin Buy a game now, or wait for the second edition later? Or maybe catch it on clearance? Or perhaps wait 5-10 years in order to pick up the collector's edition that will inevitably be available — and crowdfunded! probably with new material! — should the game succeed? (And if it doesn't succeed, then why would I want it in the first place, right?!) For all those who missed — or ignored or didn't know about — a game in the first place, here's your second chance: • New Zealand publisher Gale Force Nine has two such collections in the works, with one being Star Trek: Ascendancy ..read more

by Jorge Zhang Hi there, designer of Chroma Mix here. Today I am discussing my game and my experience designing and self-publishing it, but first, a bit about me: Over the past six years, I have designed roughly twenty board games. That sounds like more than should be possible, but many of them are compact games, some of which fit on a single card! A large part of my design journey was creating these small games primarily for BGG Design Contests, and participating in these contests is the first thing I recommend to any aspiring designers. Chroma Mix five years ago I bring up my experience ..read more

by W. Eric Martin • In mid-April 2024, CNN ran an article aimed at mainstream gamers by Saira Mueller that explains some of the process of getting a board game onto retail shelves, using CATAN, Wyrmspan, and A Gentle Dream as examples along the way. Interesting trivia from the article: CATAN: New Energies, which hits the U.S. retail market on May 24, 2024, "was in development around ten years ago before getting shelved. During the pandemic, [Klaus and Benjamin Teuber] revisited the idea and have been working on it since." Hmm, how many other CATAN prototypes might still make it into print d ..read more

by W. Eric Martin • Alison Collins' game design Wiñay Kawsay won third place in the 2021 Zenobia Awards, and it will come to market in November 2024 courtesy of U.S. publisher WizKids under the title Publish or Perish: Wiñay Kawsay. Here's an overview of this 2-4 player game: Machu Picchu has captivated the imagination of the world and academia alike. There's been plenty of theories about what its purpose could have been. Was it a lost city? Perhaps a citadel? Or maybe something else entirely? That is for you to decide! In Publish or Perish: Wiñay Kawsay — roughly pronounced win-nyay cow-s ..read more