by Justin Bell Usually, I play games four days a week. Mondays, with my review crew; Wednesdays, with a group in Chicago I’ve known for years; Fridays with my wife; the occasional Saturdays with a group that gets together for a few hours in the afternoon. (I play games with the kids almost every day, so I’m not short on opportunities to chuck those dice.) Working through multiple plays of review c

by Emiliano Sciarra The BANG! System's Long Voyage to the Caribbean It may seem strange to say it now, with Black Flag! about to be published by DV Games nearly a quarter of a century after the release of the first edition of BANG! , but a pirate setting was actually the very first setting I considered for the second title in the BANG! System . The oldest notes I have managed to track down date ba

by Mark William Howdy everyone. I am Mark William, former video editor, current data insights officer and the designer of Tanglung . This post is adapted from the blog series that I wrote on the game’s page. The Malay word tanglung [tahng-loong] is a direct loan from the Cantonese term for lanterns: 灯笼 [dang1 lung4], literally meaning ‘light’ and ‘basket’. Brought in to the Malay Archipelago by ea

by Nicolò Chioato Twenty Days, a Couch, and a Rubik's Cube It was the autumn of 2022, and I had just undergone surgery for two herniated discs in my back. My recovery came with some fairly strict instructions: I couldn't stay on my feet for too long, but more importantly, I couldn't sit down. That meant no board games, no computer, and not much television either. For about twenty days, I could ess

by Steph Hodge [imageid=9848748 medium rep]▪️ Czech Games Edition (CGE) announced Codenames Party! An all-new way to play Codenames . Now on Netflix! You simply need your phone connected to the tv as a controller. If you have Netflix, you are ready to go! From the newsletter: Alongside the new Party Mode, CODENAMES Party includes: Classic Team Mode (2–10 players): The traditional CODENAMES experie

by Guillem Coll Nascard aims to capture the excitement and feel of big racing games, but condenses that experience into a deck of just 110 cards. The challenge, however, was precisely that: how could we represent a race—complete with overtaking, risk, car management, tires, and fuel—without a board, without miniatures, and using only cards? And, above all, how could we ensure that this wasn't just

by Justin Bell “I mean…how are you DOING all of that???” The exasperated player to my right had finished their turn, and they were staring at my player board as I was finishing up a very long turn of my own. The game we were playing: Timespan , the upcoming SPIEL Essen release from the team at Alion—by Dr. Ø …the same publisher that gave us last year’s strategy title Recall . As profiled by the de

by Julian Steindorfer Where and when does this story start? Let me try to untangle the thread and tell you how Fadenfroh * came to be. *(a German word creation merging the words “thread” (Faden) and “colorful” (farbenfroh). Does this story start in June 2025 at the Austrian Game Design meeting? I walked by Alexander Pfister 's table and saw a game I had never heard of before, even though we playte

by Remo Conzadori By Remo Conzadori & Andrea Mainini Sometimes, a game begins with a simple idea that refuses to grow. Other times, it just needs the right collaboration to finally take root. A Mechanic Looking for a Game For a few months, I had been experimenting with a “sowing” mechanic. I was intrigued by the idea, but all my attempts felt flat—confined to abstract hex grids that never quite ca

by Peter Hayward [heading]Triangulation Design Diary[/heading] Triangulation was designed in three years and four hours. During the height of the pandemic, I had the idea: two teams, one leader on each team. The leader of Team A is trying to get their team to guess a word (e.g. orange ). They write down two clues, hand them to the leader of Team B. They pick one to show to their team, and the team

by Steph Hodge [imageid=9149394 medium rep]▪️ Tycoon Games released Everdell Emerland , From designers James A. Wilson & Clarissa A. Wilson ( Game: Everdell ). This is the next Everdell installment for 1-4 players and plays in 30-120 minutes. Many find this a great addition to the Everdell family. From BGG: Deep in the tropical jungle to the west of the Everdell Valley lies the country of Emerland

by cafestorybook Bake or Break started in a somewhat unusual place for a board game...behind the counter of my cafe in Osaka, Japan. I run a picture book cafe called Cafe Storybook , where people come not only for the picture-book-themed food and drinks, but also to read books and spend time together. The cafe looks peaceful and relaxed from the outside. But in the kitchen, it is a completely diff

by Peer Sylvester Game design is a mix of experimentation and inspiration. If you condensed a description of Upland & Prairie down to a single sentence, you’d be excused for thinking I’ve simply remade T he King is Dead : ‘Place one of three colours of marker on a board, then take one for yourself, and whoever has the most markers of the type that wins on the board, wins the game. Oh, and with fou

by Justin Bell Welcome to my second edition of “Behind the Hype”; if you missed the first, I spoke with Eveline Foubert at Mighty Boards a few months ago. This week, I’m sharing a conversation I had with my friend and colleague Rawan Anbar at Gigamic , the massive French publisher and distributor of quick, family-friendly abstracts, party, and strategy titles such as Quarto , Looot , Akropolis and

by BGG Cranio Diary written by Johannes Goupy & Matthieu Verdier Crossing Heroes is our second game together after Odysseus , a family game published in France by Gigamic in September 2026. While both games reflect our love of Greek mythology and revolve around acquiring the right skills to overcome heroic challenges, they offer two completely different gameplay experiences! February 2025 We met a

by BGG Cranio Diary written by Marco Piola Caselli If I had to describe in a few words the process that turned Oil Rock into the game it is today, I’d say it’s a story of oil, ambition, and collaboration. It’s the result of a long journey full of twists and turns;from the initial chaotic sketch through months of conceptual development to the awarding ceremony of the Premio Archimede ceremony and g

by Shawn Stankewich I wanted to share with you all the story of the evolution of Forage - a puzzly roll-and-write game about foraging in the Pacific Northwest! Molly, Robb, and I have been designing and publishing games together for almost ten years and we wanted to share some of our process in working through the design and also the development that happens with the Flatout Games CoLab team that

by Steph Hodge [imageid=9759680 medium rep]▪️ Capstone Games announced the release of Yin Yang , which was originally released from BGNations ( Tang Garden , 12 Rivers ). From designer DuGuWei ( Jiangnan: Life of Gentry ). This is a tight resource game to control the lands. for1-4 players that plays in 45-75 minutes. Also, the Metal Shell is simply awesome! From the newsletter: Yin and Yang is a c

by Kaleb Wentzel-Fisher The creation of Power Vacuum is a bit of a cliché. "I have not failed. I've just found 10,000 ways that won't work," - Thomas Edison It’s a story about how I struggled for years to design a game, ultimately gave up, but then with a stroke of inspiration came up with something in just a few days that worked. Weeks later the game was signed by Keen Bean Studio and just six mo

by Peter Prinz ... or: How to Spend Almost Six Years Developing a Game When All You Wanted Was to Improve a Prototype Hi, I'd like to give you a little glimpse into how Sixty Below came to life. In the second half of the 2010s, Alex Pfister established a group of Vienna-based game designers that met weekly at Café Sperlhof, a traditional gaming café in Vienna's 2nd district. Ideas were born there,