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Designer Diary: Final Titan

Phelddagrif — Thu, 22 Oct 2026 14:00:02 +0000

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The Origin

I forget the exact chain of events that lead up to Christian sharing an early prototype of Final Titan with me. We were talking about autobattlers, a digital game form that I think is particularly good for board game players. My early attempts to make autobattler board games felt clumsy; like they would be more fun on computer than around a table. We were also talking about making an analog to Magical Athlete – a simple battling game with warriors that have special powers rather than a simple racing game where the racers have special powers. I am not sure if I realized, at that point, that Magical Athlete was effectively an autobattler.

Christian: An amusing fact is that at that point, I had actually never played Magical Athlete, though I had a vague idea of how it worked. This was one of those designs where the initial prototype was already working extremely well and though many mechanisms changed, the feelings and excitement of the players remained from those initial plays.

Marvin from Nerdlab participated in those very early playtests and immediately offered to sign the game. Despite it being in a rough and very early prototype state, he immediately saw huge potential in it. Nerdlab had knocked it out of the park with Mindbug. But they were also a small company. We considered if a company of that size could really pull it off. I remember Richard had a strong vision for the game, and he really wanted it done right. He agreed to go with Nerdlab on one condition: There should be 100 Titans in the game. This is an absolutely crazy and wildly ambitious number. I think most companies would do 20-30. But Marvin agreed and we are all extremely proud to have delivered on that promise.

The gameplay, described briefly: Each player drafts a team of Titans. These take turns fighting 1-on-1 in the middle of the table. When one Titan wins, it stays in the middle and the other players spend resources in a No Thanks way, to avoid having to go in and fight it. The fights themselves are resolved through rolling a single die, which in turn triggers all kinds of attacks, rerolls and crazy abilities. It sounds dumb, and it kind of is. Yet also strangely exciting once you try it.

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The Interaction
The thing that most excited me about Christian’s design was the interaction, which he described as a No Thanks! style auction. I am always interested in the interaction in games – I enjoy many low interaction games but feel that higher interaction games are often underrepresented. Being able to interact more with another player can bring a host of problems – and I have a big virtual toolbox for ways to deal with that, and this felt like something new.

To illustrate what I mean, consider my game King of Tokyo, which was originally an exercise to make Yahtzee more interactive. In King of Tokyo, I use a king of the hill style interaction; players can generally only affect a player who is on the hill (in Tokyo), and a player who is being attacked can always retreat from the hill. This makes it so you can have a highly interactive game but aren’t constantly needing to choose who to pick on, and can limit how much people can pick on you.

With Christian’s No Thanks! interaction, you have a champion and players bid for the right not to challenge them. Eventually someone will have to challenge the champion, but players aren’t choosing which other player to pick on, and, they have some agency in what battles they are involved with; it serves a similar purpose to the interaction in King of Tokyo but feels fresh. It also reminded me of Poker; even though Poker is usually played with many people, the interaction often ends up being two players with other players saying “No Thanks!”

This idea is powerful – in a game where you want to be the last standing the best position to be in is always watching other players fight. Bidding for that position rather than, say, the right to fight makes a lot of sense.

Christian: Players of Final Titan will probably never think of it as an auction game, but indeed one of the central mechanisms is a no-thanks style auction, where players are spending upgrade-cards to avoid going in and fighting the blood thirsty Champion that is waiting in the middle and probably totally overpowered.

Evolving the Interaction
Originally the bidding was done with chips, each player had some chips and could spend them to avoid a fight. Early on, however, we felt we could use cards instead of chips and give the cards some play value. This would give players some more decision making with the card play, and with figuring out which cards to spend to avoid a fight. As anyone who has played No Thanks! would expect, the chips were already much more interesting than they seemed at first since the value of the chips changes based on what the current distribution of chips are. Making it so that the chips were different from each other gave us another layer of interest.

This wasn’t an easy transition, however. We were all on board for adding these cards, but what cards to add and how powerful they should be? I would guess, in fact, that this was the biggest design challenge in the entire project. I believe the main issue always came back to power level. We wanted the cards to be spent to avoid fights, not just played to win fights.

If the cards become powerful enough to reliably swing a battle then the dynamic is more about collecting and spending cards than it is about ducking dangerous fights, particularly since we wanted to give a bonus card to the victor each time. At its extreme, no one will spend cards to avoid fights – the next person in line will challenge rather than give up a card and the dynamic becomes one focused on the cards rather than the hero match-up. A good game can be made this way – and in fact I think we went through several – but it is much more pedestrian… you step up on your turn and decide how many cards it is worth investing, rather than spend cards to duck the fight and possibly get a big haul of cards when you choose to fight.

I remember many iterations where alarms were going off in my head as players became too attached to their cards and would always step up to avoid spending them. This sort of thing is sometimes difficult to spot as a designer, because we know how the game is ‘supposed’ to be played and we tend to play it that way. If we aren’t actually in the game though, and people choose – correctly or not – to play in this way the entire game can suffer.

Final Titan worked fine, in fact, I think it worked great with the cards just being blank. That emphasized everything we wanted the game to be about, finding the right matchups and only being able to avoid the wrong ones so many times. However, we couldn’t simply make the cards weak – there were some versions we played where the cards were so weak and uninteresting that I stopped paying any attention to them. At this point we would be better off going back to chips, which felt like a lost opportunity. The cards had to be strong enough to consider and compare, but not so strong that you wouldn’t look at a fight and say… “nah, I think this should be someone else’s problem.” To me, it was that particular decision that made this game special.

One approach that worked pretty well was making cards that were situationally good, or good for particular characters or matchups. These could be relevant and potentially game changing, and yet clearly worth pitching to avoid the wrong fight.

The other problem facing the cards was keeping them from slowing down the game. If you have cards that you can play during the fight, then you risk slowing the game down a lot. Cards like ‘reroll an attack’, or ‘dodge an attack’ will inevitably lead to the game slowing down as players stop to make sure there is no card play, or barrel ahead and hear “wait – go back, I didn’t get a chance to play this card!” There were some natural windows to keep the cards in which wouldn’t slow the game down much – like – cards that are played before you roll, or before the fight starts, or after the fight ends.

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Christian: Ah yes, figuring out the right way to do cards was definitely the trickiest part of development. I was particularly sensitive to the occasional occurrence of “Oh don’t roll your die yet, I was considering playing a card”, despite it generally having very good gameplay. In the end, we went for all card plays happening before the start of each fight, to make the fight flow as smooth as possible.

Evolving the Fights
The way the fights worked also evolved over time. At first we threw everything into the game to get a sense of what worked well and what didn’t. This is often a technique I use, rather than carefully prescribe a domain which I know will work, I try it all then cut back as needed.

One of the most important features added was a critical hit, which eventually lead to a fun, distinct ultimate power for each fighter. This came about in part because situations could often feel hopeless, and it gave the player a way to win.

The other side of the coin was the fail, the miss, the blank side of the die. The presence of that along with the ultimate power meant that every roll, in general, could succeed or fail; which kept the matches alive and with the possibility of surprise far longer than when these were not a baked in part of every character. There will still be hopeless situations, like with poison, but their rarity makes them special.

There were some times where we experimented with giving the standing champion a disadvantage in order to make the turnover more reliable. I think there was one character in particular that made us consider that – maybe it was a well-known Barbarian – who had a bit of difficulty winning the first match but would heal and get stronger after each victory. I always came down on the side of wanting the champions, if anything, to have more defensive power because it is the entrenched victor that has an epic battle to oust that stands out as the most exciting sort of story that can come out of Final Titan. The standing champions usually have a disadvantage anyway since they often have diminished life points, and always have the disadvantage of their opponent being able to choose the best matchup from those available. I think the game just tends to become more exciting as a champion notches up a few victories; and if they can ride that all the way home? Well, it is a short game, play again!

Christian: For a while, all characters had the same “ultimate attack”, which was simply a KO. The guys at Nerdlab really wanted each character to have its own Ultimate attack. I remember fighting this for months as I did not for a second believe that there would be enough design space to make this a reality. In the end, mostly to finally shut them up, we gave it a shot giving each character their own ultimate attack. It immediately worked super well and I kick myself for having fought against it for so long.

The Flavor
Final Titan was a battling game, a game in which players drafted and then fought some sort of character in a series of 1v1 battles that would leave a single champion. But, what were those characters? Where was that battle? The first draft was a collection of characters taken from public domain books, including, for example, King Arthur, Alice (of Alice in Wonderland), Frankenstein’s Monster, Sherlock, the Artful Dodger, and even Moby Dick. It was meant to be a placeholder flavor, but its charm helped guide it to its final place.

As champions were added to the mix, many were not public domain – which we intended not to use but to inspire us for mechanics and tone – like Conan and Shelob. As we understood and explored the mechanics more we began to make champions from the mechanics – for which we often used a faux-superhero flavor.

To this point we hadn’t really decided what the flavor was going to be, and there were many places it could have gone. I remember one approach in particular was kids battling toys in a toy grand melee; so all the champions would have been Dolls, Toy Cars, and Stuffed Animals, for example. The merit of such an approach is that it looks fresh, unlike, say, generic fantasy. The problem with such an approach is that a potential player doesn’t really understand what is going on immediately, and when they are picking the champions they often can’t read much into the images. You have some idea of what a dragon or an ogre might represent in a battle, but, a rocking horse and a football?

In the end we chose to go with Superheroes. It was easy and fun to translate what we had into superheroes, and the origin of the characters from its public domain roots often gave them an original, but plausible presence. Tying them together with art from their comic books really gave the game a cohesive feeling – one in which any onlooker could tell what was going on. Also, it felt endlessly expandable – so we could make as many as we wanted, and any fans of the game could easily add their own if inspired to do so.

Christian: As a little anecdote, I wanted to have a character representing my home town of Odense, which is probably most famous for being the birthplace of author Hans Christian Andersen. We chose one of his characters, The Ugly Duckling, though of course it was represented in an over the top crazy muscular version which felt fitting to the game.

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The Name
During most of the game development we called the game G.O.A.T. We all liked the name; I even mocked up a box cover complete with a goat bursting through the background. However, it turned out that there are legal claims to the name and we would be better off choosing a different one.

As usual, this process was difficult. When my games have had to be renamed, they often end up being unable to stand up to the original name, at least in the minds of the people who had lived with that name for so long. Sometimes you end up with a worse name, like I think happened when "Fat Dracula" got changed to The Hunger. Occasionally a better name, like when "Inconceivable" got changed to Half-Truth. Sometimes we give up and go back to the original as happened with Magic, which changed to "Mana Clash" briefly before we went back with Magic: The Gathering.

With G.O.A.T. we couldn’t find anything that pleased us all in the same way. We worked on it quite a while and it felt like we weren’t ever going to find something with the feel we wanted – light humor with something of the nature of the game reflected in the title. It was undoubtedly not helped by the fact that we had people from at least four different countries weighing in who saw, for example, different connotations for the word Titan. For a long time my favorite name was one of Christian’s (I think), 100 Titans. I liked it because it felt humorous and would also force us to deliver at least 100 characters – which was the sort of epic number of champions I wanted to see. Also, leading with a number felt distinctive.

Not everyone cared for 100 Titans, though. One reason was quite legitimate, which is that it did commit us to 100, and also it might look weird if we added more. We ended up with Final Titan, and for me, this name works quite well. I liked that it told you something about the game, and felt a little cheesy but was still, to me at least, pretty cool. I hope that the rest of the team has grown to like it as much as I have.

Christian: And here we are, at the end. Development was long as this was one of the most ambitious projects I have been a part of. But we are very happy with where it ended: A box of 100 cool, different, weird, and wonderful Titans to keep players excited and engaged for a long time (actually more like 140 if you include expansions and promos). While development is a lot of hard work, we also got the pleasure of continuously seeing new and exciting artwork from the super talented team of artists that worked on the game. Seeing our ideas turn into these amazing comic-book-like characters was such a thrill, it is just the best feeling.

Final Titan is now being released into the wild. I actually expected the game to be quite divisive, but so far it has been extremely well received from reviewers and players, who really seem to feel that same weird excitement of rolling a die and seeing what happens. I will end with a quote I really liked from a comment here on BGG:

“I was a doubter. I watched some videos. Heard the rule summary. Draft dudes, then roll until someone wins. How could that be fun? Where's the crunchy decisions? Really, where's any of the decisions? But then I saw the a demo on TTS, so why not? I tried it out... and then immediately late pledged.

I think you need to see it to believe it.”

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SPIEL Essen 2026—The Novelty Show

whenindoubteatout — Wed, 21 Oct 2026 23:00:02 +0000

by Justin Bell

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On the day before SPIEL Essen opens to the general public, the fair hosts a media session and awards activity to show off the latest and greatest data. Part of the press conference includes an awards announcement for the Deutscher Spiele Presse (German Games Prize); the main category for family and adult gamers was won by the game Artengarten (Sanctuary), the lighter Ark Nova release designed by Mathias Wigge and published in Germany by Feuerland in 2025.

In a release shared by the events and PR team behind SPIEL Essen, Merz Verlag, lots of fun info was included:
* The show’s first three days are already sold out; assuming Sunday also sells out, more than 230,000 visitors will stroll the eight halls of Messe Essen this weekend, a new record.
* The fair has broken its attendance record for four years in a row.
* 997 exhibitors will have wares on display this weekend…and, you can tell even from the release, everyone wishes that the number topped a thousand. (Next year? Probably, although I’m not sure where else Merz Verlag will be able to accommodate more booths!!)
* Those exhibitors call 53 different countries home. While Germany, the US, France, China, and Poland lead the way, even Iceland has a booth this year. Kuwait does too! The people who make these games, toys and puzzles come from everywhere, so it is a delight to have the opportunity to meet people from so many different places.
* There are more than 1,800 novelties repped by those exhibitors this year. It’s gonna be tough to see everything, but you can’t argue about one thing: gamers of all shades should be able to find SOMETHING they like!

Of those 1,800 new products, about a thousand of them were on display at the press event that opened up for a few hours after the press conference, known as the Novelty Show. In essence, press members get to snap photos of the show’s hottest games up close, before the masses descend on each publisher’s booth and get in the way of my very amateur-looking photos taken with my Pixel phone’s camera. (I kid…sort of.)

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The other great thing about the Novelty Show is the access to a range of each publisher’s representatives, to chat about the games or the things they have coming up soon. That might mean anything from a conversation with a marketing rep about plans for upcoming crowdfunding campaigns, to a studio head excited to talk about their 2026 results, to game designers who can provide a brief overview of a game you have never seen before.

I’m always fascinated by what each exhibitor decides to do for the Novelty Show. In limited cases, a smaller exhibitor might have someone who sits in all three of these roles, like Leonie Grundler, the founder of Lioness Games who also designed Biome and struck me as the lead marketer for the items in the Lioness catalog. (She is also one of the tallest people in tabletop, so it was a little shocking to meet someone at the Novelty Show who was noticeably taller than I am.)

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The Novelty Show is so large that Merz Verlag organized the event in the Grugahalle, a multilevel event and stage space in between the Messe and the Atlantic Congress Hotel Essen. A funny tagline surfaced among the gathered media/content creator community during the Novelty Show: “wait, there’s a downstairs, too?” Those who entered from street level saw an entire floor’s worth of games…and then learned that the morning press conference that took place upstairs had another whole floor of games, but there wasn’t clear signage for anyone who skipped the initial press conference.

So, there’s an opportunity for next year. The other ding: the exhibitors on the first floor had lighting that was poor in certain parts of the space. That meant many of my pictures required flash photography and/or professional equipment to really shine. A number of media members get away with using mobile phone cameras for their images; some exhibitors suffered a bit from the lack of better overhead lighting.

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Strolling the Novelty Show took a couple hours. Hugs and high fives were available everywhere I looked, and everyone had their full, normal-sounding voice for what is likely the final time of the weekend.

There were a number of highlights, outside of the catch-ups and the networking on display.

For the first time, I met designer Friedemann Friese (2F-Spiele, and the designer of many “F”-titled classics over the years, such as Findorff, Fishing, and Funkenschlag, which is the first edition of the game now known as Power Grid). Friedemann is hard to miss, not only because of the bright green hair but more because of the big, hearty laugh.

He was the person manning the 2F table, on the Grugahalle’s upper level. We had a brief conversation about tabletop celebrity status that resonates, now that I have met other popular game designers over the years.

At SPIEL Essen, Friedemann is a celebrity; making great games for 20+ years will do that for you. But he was so excited to meet players from around the world, something he gets excited for every year. “I only have to be a celebrity for five days, then I can go home and not be a celebrity for the rest of the year!”

At the Czech Games Edition booth, I ran into Eleni, a member of the CGE marketing team who handles teach and promo videos for the company (and who you usually see running around doing CGE vlogs at SPIEL Essen and Gen Con). Eleni had a busy morning, including putting the finishing touches on the edits for the now-live teach-while-playing video for Kingdom Come: Deliverance—The Board Game. I’m still shocked by how many people I have met or know through my networks who have been anxiously awaiting a rulebook, so this teach video will probably have thousands of views by the time I wake up Thursday morning.

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I also ran into Branislav Berec at CGE’s booth, the man behind the Nithrania—Game in a Nutshell video series of board game instruction videos. I love Branislav’s work, and it sounds like we’ll be seeing more content from him in the very near future. The teach space for medium- and medium-plus strategy games is crowded, and for good reason: there are so many providers of great content right now, in a category that seems to be getting bigger every year.

The best part of that stand visit was getting a picture with designers Vlaada Chvátil and Tomáš Holek, dressed in costume for their appearances tied to Kingdom Come: Deliverance—The Board Game. They’ll be at the CGE booth all weekend signing autographs and taking pictures with fans.

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And, even though I thought I had a long journey to Essen from my home in Chicago, the reality is that many people come from outside of Europe to attend the show. Two of my favorite people in tabletop are Maggie and Amy, the Australian couple better known to their community as Thinker Themer. I ran into them while running around the Novelty Show.

It sounded crazy to me when I heard it, but it felt even crazier after talking to them at the show: they are doing a multiweek round-trip tour that launched in Australia, then went to Tokyo Game Market in Japan, then arrived in Germany for SPIEL Essen, then they’re flying back home to Australia. I love board games as much as anyone, but I could feel my body weight shift when they shared the flight pattern. I’m turned over just by flying to Germany…imagine doing that across so many more time zones. Thinker Themer, we salute you!

I’ll let the pictures do the rest of the talking. But first: a big thanks to the people who stopped me at the Novelty Show to say thanks for the work I’m doing here at BGG. It means a lot, but it also helps to know that for some, the work is resonating in ways I was hoping for when I joined this team. It’s pretty cool to meet people from all over the world who read BGG to get some of their tabletop news. From the BGG folks behind the scenes to the community here and abroad, it’s great to be one slice of the news pie you bite into every time you need it!

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Take Time to Rage about the Hunt for Ring in the Castle!

boardgamersteph — Wed, 21 Oct 2026 16:00:02 +0000

by Steph Hodge

[imageid=9603186 medium rep]▪️ Libellud Just released Take Time: Mirage. You will need Take Time to play as this is a small expansion that includes one more envelope to play and a new mechanic to include in past envelopes to increase the difficulty. from designers: Alexi Piovesan & Julien Prothière. This expansion plays 2-4 players in about 30 minutes.

From Asmodee:

This first expansion explores a different facet of the experience by moving away from the chapters of the base game. Featuring a fresh theme and brand-new mechanics, it introduces a surprising standalone twist that can be enjoyed independently. Designed to welcome both newcomers and returning players, it expands the Take Time universe while remaining true to its core identity.

STANDALONE EXPANSION EXPERIENCE: Enjoy a fresh Take Time adventure that can be played independently from the base game.
NEW MECHANICS & GAMEPLAY TWIST: Introduces innovative systems and surprising gameplay elements that expand strategic possibilities.
FRESH THEME & DESIGN: Explores a new facet of the Take Time universe with a distinct theme while maintaining its core identity.
ACCESSIBLE FOR ALL PLAYERS: Designed for both newcomers and returning fans, offering an easy entry point with added depth.
EXPAND YOUR GAMEPLAY OPTIONS: Adds variety, replayability, and new ways to experience the Take Time series.

]]>▪️ Another game that just released last week is Star Trek: Space Hunt from Matagot. From designers Roberto Fraga, Yohan Lemonnier, & Delphine Lemonnier. This game reimplements Captain Sonar and Sonar. It plays 2-4 players and takes 25-40 minutes. Buckle up, we are jumping into wapr speed for this!

From BGG:

Star Trek: Space Hunt is a real-time, hidden movement game that uses the Captain Sonar system, for 2-4 players that demands intense coordination and sharp deduction.

Players are divided into two opposing crews, each commanding iconic starships from across the franchise’s history with each vessel featuring unique builds for asymmetric gameplay.
The game covers several generations of the saga, allowing players to step into the roles of legendary duos such as Captain Kirk and Spock, Captain Picard and Data, or even the formidable Khan and Joachim.

]]>▪️ Blood Rage: Valhalla from Tycoon Games is set to release this November. From designer Eric M. Lang (Blood Rage). This is a whole new game that plays 3-5 players and takes 60-90 minutes.

From Asmodee:

Rage into the afterlife in Blood Rage: Valhalla! Occurring after Ragnarök ends the world, take up arms and empower your clan beyond their mortal limits, competing against your rivals for glory, honor, and the favor of the Gods.

RAGE INTO THE AFTERLIFE: Take your Viking conquest beyond the mortal realm! Blood Rage: Valhalla shifts the action to the afterlife, where players empower their clans and compete for eternal glory, honor, and the favor of the Gods after Ragnarök has ended the world.
DYNAMIC GOD POWERS: Experience a fresh challenge every time you play. The Gods shift each game, drastically changing the powers and strategies available to players. You must adapt your tactics on the fly to remain the most powerful clan in the afterlife.
DEEP STRATEGIC DEPTH: Master the art of war with refined card drafting and intense simultaneous combat. Valhalla challenges you to outthink your rivals in a high-stakes environment where every decision and card play is a test of your strategic foresight.
THE RAINBOW BRIDGE MODULE: Connect your games! This expansion includes the iconic Rainbow Bridge module, which allows you to link your Blood Rage base game and Valhalla sessions into one epic, long-form match that starts in Ragnarök and ends in the afterlife.

]]>▪️ The Lord of the Rings: Circle of Conflict from Office Dog is set to release this November. From designers Stephen Buonocore & Geoff Engelstein. An epic game for 2-4 players that takes 60-90 minutes to play. Many tough choices to make in this dice game.

From BGG:

It is the Third Age of Middle-earth, and a great war between the many nations is unfolding. In The Lord of the Rings: Circle of Conflict, you simultaneously command both The Shadow and The Free Peoples armies; your Free Peoples will fight the Shadow of the opponent to your left, and your Shadow will fight the Free Peoples of the opponent to your right.

As the dice are rolled, you will decide how to apply the results. Will you recruit iconic characters for The Free Peoples or perhaps muster the troops of Mordor to fight for The Shadow in one of two pivotal battles? Will you hunt your opponent’s Fellowship with your Nazgûl or secretly move your Fellowship to evade Sauron’s watchful Eye?

To win as The Free Peoples, get The Fellowship to reach Mount Doom or defeat The Shadow in battle. As The Shadow, you must fully corrupt The Fellowship or defeat them in battle.

]]>▪️ For those who enjoy digital games on your phone, there is a new app for Castle Combo from Catch Up Games and Mantita Games. This is currently available for both Android and iOS. New additions to the game, like a 12-chapter campaign solo mode!

The People Behind Coffee Rush: Winter

leftmin — Tue, 20 Oct 2026 14:00:02 +0000

by River Kang

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]]>Hello everyone, I’m River Kang, the developer and editor of Coffee Rush: Winter. I’m happy to share some of the story behind the game with you.

Coffee Rush: Winter is a standalone version of Coffee Rush. We wanted to preserve the fun and flow of the wonderful original game while capturing the atmosphere of a cozy café in winter. That led to many discussions about everything from new drinks and a modular ingredient board to the shape of the mugs and the light spilling out of the café windows.

To share some of that process, I’ve adapted an earlier interview with Coffee Rush designer Euijin Han, graphic designer Sooyeon Lee, and myself into this post. Here’s a look at the ideas we explored, the challenges we faced, and the details we refined along the way.

Q. Why winter?
]]> Sooyeon Lee (Graphic Designer): There were two reasons. One was that the seasonal feel of the base game was yellow-green, in other words spring and summer, so we wanted to present something completely different. The other was that we felt cafés in winter had a distinctive atmosphere.
]]>Euijin Han (Designer): We drink all sorts of beverages in spring, summer and autumn too, but winter has so many drinks with real character, such as hot chocolate and vin chaud.

Q. How do the rules differ from Coffee Rush?
Euijin Han: A lot of the feedback we received was that people wished they could rearrange the ingredients on the board. So we made the board modular and let players assemble it themselves. We also added more drinks suited to the winter theme. We tried not to stray too far from the original Coffee Rush. The basic principle was to keep most of the core structure and make only minor changes. The two biggest changes are the modular ingredient board and the new drinks.

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River Kang (Editor): We wanted to make a game that people who had been enjoying the original Coffee Rush could play this one in much the same way, while also offering extra options for those who want a little more freedom.

Euijin Han: Oh, and upgrade tiles were added as well. There are six in total: four from the base game, one from the Piece of Cake expansion, and one newly designed for Winter. Players choose four to use.

Q. What changed in the design?
Euijin Han: Design was what we paid the most attention to while preparing Coffee Rush: Winter, so quite a lot changed. First, we changed the shape of the cups. The original cup is a round cappuccino cup, but we turned it into a mug for hot winter drinks such as hot chocolate and added an engraved snowflake. We thought this style of cup fit the winter theme well.

River Kang: We also took the aprons off the pawns and gave each one a differently shaped scarf. We had heard that some players with color-vision deficiency had trouble telling which pawn was theirs. Even in the base game, we used different shades of red and green to make them easier to distinguish for players with color-vision deficiency, but we heard that players were still getting confused, so we decided to give each pawn a different scarf.
We made a similar seasonal change to the ice, shaping it like a snowman. The most important change, though, was switching one of the ingredients from caramel to fruit. The fruit piece itself is shaped like an orange slice. There are a lot of citrus drinks in winter, so we wanted to make that change.

Sooyeon Lee: We also redesigned the rush tokens as cookies, with three different shapes. The shapes make no difference to the rules, but they are cute.

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Q. What Did You Focus on the Most?
Sooyeon Lee: The visual side, above all. We changed the various components to suit the season, and we redrew all of the artwork. Illustrator Siwon Hwang created the artwork for Coffee Rush in 2022, and her skills have developed even further over the past three years. So while we were at it, we redrew almost everything: the package, the board, the drinks. Other than the existing drink and ingredient icons, almost everything was redrawn.

River Kang: You could say that our main focus was bringing the winter theme to life through the artwork and 3D components.

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Q. What was difficult, or what did you worry over?
Euijin Han: The biggest challenge was how little time we had between the initial idea and the completion of the final version. We also debated whether to change the rules more boldly. We thought about adding something like an obstacle to the board, or introducing variations to the tiles. We explored changing the rules in various ways. But it felt like it did not suit the cozy, playful feel of Coffee Rush, so we took it out.

Sooyeon Lee: On the art side, finding the right color palette for winter was a bit difficult. From the beginning we wanted the feel of winter at night rather than winter in daylight. We wanted the artwork to convey the feeling of winter: a slightly dim world, light spilling out of buildings, cold outside, and warmth inside. So we asked the illustrator to capture the feeling of a winter evening. But when the art came back, it was much darker than we had expected, and the overall mood felt gloomy. Many of the reference images we had found showed dark exteriors with warm light glowing from inside, so we had not anticipated this problem. Once we saw the artwork, however, we realized that the box art was too dark overall.

After a great deal of discussion, we finally asked: “Please aim for a level of brightness somewhere between 5 and 6 p.m. on a winter day.” We wanted enough light to be visible inside the shop so that players could feel its warmth. After all, the coziness of winter comes from being indoors. Finding that middle point, giving the feel of a winter night while keeping the Coffee Rush look from seeming too drab, was a little hard.

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River Kang: Getting the component sizes right was another challenge. We made new 3D components, and when we received samples made to the dimensions we had initially envisioned, there were problems: some pieces were too large, and the cup was too deep. The cup in the original Coffee Rush is round and narrows toward the bottom, so the ingredients settle in naturally and the wide opening makes them easy for players to see. But a mug is deep and not wide at the top, so the ingredients became difficult to see. So we solved this by adjusting the size of the ingredients and raising the bottom inside the mug. If you look closely, you can see that the cup’s interior base is about 3 mm higher. We adjusted it so the ingredients look full whether you look from above or from the side.

Euijin Han: Balancing the proportions of the drinks was also a major challenge. When the ingredient changed from caramel to fruit, every drink that used caramel had to be reworked. That meant new drinks had to come in, but simply replacing caramel with fruit in the existing recipes did not work. Caramel drinks mostly contain coffee and milk, and if you put coffee and milk together with fruit, wouldn’t that be a drink that is hard even to imagine? So we had to readjust the proportions of all the ingredients.

Coffee Rush has four regular ingredients and four special ingredients, and the ratios of cold drinks to hot drinks, milk to coffee, and regular drinks to specialty drinks are all carefully balanced. To match those proportions in Coffee Rush: Winter as well, we made a table comparing the new and existing drinks so we could keep the ingredient ratios as consistent as possible.

Q. How did the ideas for the new drinks come about?
River Kang: As soon as designer Euijin Han proposed fruit tea, I wanted to include vin chaud (editor's note: French mulled wine). The broader idea was to include warm drinks with fruit flavors that fit the winter theme. Korea has many kinds of hot fruit tea, so we wanted to include drinks like those as well We researched fruit-based drinks from various sources and asked people for suggestions. As we built the ingredient list, we selected the ideas that seemed like the best fit.

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We also created a few new drinks that suit winter even without fruit in them. One of those is the white chocolate latte. Snow is white, so the drink naturally feels wintry. The combination is identical to that of the chocolate latte, but we created new artwork for it. We added an affogato as well. It is a distinctive drink that contains both a hot ingredient and a cold ingredient. Since the ice is snowman-shaped, we thought, “Let’s make an affogato with a snowman in it.” We came up with a combination in which milk plus ice makes ice cream, while steam plus coffee makes espresso. That is how the first drink in the Coffee Rush series to contain both ice and steam came about.

We also included a drink called bicerin. It is visually appealing because it is made in three layers. We had also received a request to include an unusual drink, so we decided to add it.

Q. What do you think people will like about it?
River Kang: I think the greatest strengths of the Coffee Rush series are its beautiful artwork and components, which players can now enjoy in a fresh winter setting. From an experienced board gamer’s perspective, another strength is the modular ingredient board. You can arrange the ingredients freely, somewhat like in Catan, which means you can have a different experience every time you play.

We also redesigned the ingredient trays so that all the ingredient tokens can be divided evenly between the two trays. This lets players place the two trays in separate, easy-to-reach spots around the table during play. I also put a lot of care into the box insert, which holds all of the components. It was designed to keep everything neatly organized, so packing the game away should be much easier.

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Q. Any fun stories from development?
Sooyeon Lee: The snowman ice originally had a nose. But the nose was so small and pointy that someone might get hurt during play, so we had to remove it. Sadly, the snowman ice became a little less cute.

Q. This is the first spin-off. What are your hopes for it?
River Kang: We set out to remake the game while preserving its original fun and flow as much as possible. At the same time, we tried to address some of the shortcomings of the previous release in a different way, so I hope people are satisfied with those changes. In fact, I think the most important thing is for people to enjoy the game without being particularly conscious of what has changed. I think that if someone finds themselves thinking, “Why did they change it this way?” or “This is inconvenient,” then we have failed. That is what concerns me most.

Euijin Han: I hope people can choose the game according to the mood of the day. Shall we play Coffee Rush today? Or Coffee Rush: Winter today? I hope people can enjoy both like that. The best thing for us would be for people to love them both. One of the reasons we made Coffee Rush: Winter is our wish that people enjoy a version with a different, more wintry look. One of the most rewarding experiences after the release of Coffee Rush was seeing a child at a board-game demo event who, without knowing the rules, put whatever ingredients they wanted into a cup and excitedly said, “Dad, look, look at this! I made this.” That is why we put so much effort into the artwork and the components. I hope people have a good time playing it together.

Sooyeon Lee (Graphic Designer): If I hear people say, “I bought it because it’s pretty,” or simply, “It’s so pretty,” I’ll feel like we’ve achieved what we set out to do.

Q. Will more titles in the series follow?
Euijin Han: The Coffee Rush series will continue. It may not be about coffee, though; the next game could involve a different kind of food. I cannot say for certain that every future title will be called Coffee Rush, but the Rush series can definitely continue.

Q. Finally, a word each for the people who will play the game.
Sooyeon Lee: It’s cold in winter, so people tend to stay indoors more, and I hope they have a good time indoors with Coffee Rush: Winter. You don't even have to go outside!

River Kang: When you line up the three boxes on a shelf, their colors look really nice together. You can choose between Coffee Rush and Coffee Rush: Winter according to your preference, and if you’ve played the original, you can enjoy winter in a slightly different way. I hope you get to enjoy the whole series.

Euijin Han: I hope Coffee Rush makes its way around the world, so that even people in countries without winter can experience winter through Coffee Rush: Winter.

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It's the Most Wonderful Time of the Year

whenindoubteatout — Mon, 19 Oct 2026 06:00:02 +0000

by Justin Bell

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I’m a huge movie fan; before kids showed up on my doorstep, I used to see 50-100 movies in theaters every year, including 160 flicks in 2013. Part of my junkie status is tied to film festivals; I have attended the Sundance Film Festival twice, including the fest in 2007 when prices were not completely ridiculous. (Fun fact: when I went in ‘07, a Sundance single film ticket cost $15, about $24 in today’s dollars. The 2027 Sundance Film Festival price for a single ticket is $37 a pop. I love movies, but I don’t love movies quite that much any more.)

Sundance is a blast, mainly because there are hundreds of movies being screened and you get to escape with other cinephiles, enthusiasts who wouldn’t dare do something like pop open a phone or have a full volume conversation with two friends during the trailers. (In part, that’s because films at Sundance don’t begin by showing 25 minutes of previews.)

At Sundance, you get movies from all over the world, and all genres—documentaries, art-house dramas, a few mainstream movies, and animated films seeking a distributor. You’re there with film junkies like me, sure…but you are also at Sundance to sit side-by-side with other industry players, studio heads, PR types, and actors, trying their best to hide their celebrity status by wearing sunglasses, knit caps, and heavy jackets (all indoors).

But the main reason why I love going to Sundance is because I get to see a bunch of flicks before (almost) anyone else. Many of the movie rights at Sundance are negotiated and sold at the show, with some popping up the following summer or fall in theaters or on streaming platforms thanks only to their appearance at the festival.

And I think that’s why I love going to SPIEL Essen, the biggest tabletop convention in the world kicking off this Thursday, especially as an American. I love the chance to get some of those games before anyone else. If Gen Con kicks off games season here in the US, SPIEL Essen is what makes fall the most wonderful time of the year, and it’s the reason why I always play the Andy Williams holiday song of the same name on my flight over to Dusseldorf.

I love the term “world premiere.” And SPIEL Essen has a whole lot of world premieres, making the convention my personal favorite.

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“Unfortunately, no one can be told what the Matrix is. You have to see it for yourself.”

That line from 1999’s The Matrix still resonates…especially when I think about attending SPIEL.

“What’s it like at SPIEL Essen?” someone will ask when they want to know more about the show.

I usually respond with something like this: “Have you been to Gen Con? SPIEL Essen is like Gen Con, but with an expo hall space five times bigger.”

Now, that’s not completely accurate; in terms of expo hall square footage, SPIEL Essen is “only” about three times the size of Gen Con’s expo hall, not five. SPIEL Essen is spread across eight separate expo halls in a single building in Essen. (That building, Messe Essen, isn’t exactly a looker. I’m still not sure I love Essen, the city, as a place to visit. But the chance to be surrounded by other hobbyists, games in every direction, collectibles, and apparel for four days? Count me in.)

There’s something special about attending a global trade show that features such an exceptional mix of large publishers and many much smaller businesses from anywhere you can think of. SPIEL Essen is the opposite of a “play con”, with no dedicated play area and demo tables serving as the only spaces you can find to sit down and play games on site. So, I almost never play any games at the show, with days that stretch into the 12-14 hour range because of transit to and from the Messe along with parties that run into the night.

The months leading up to SPIEL Essen are such a thrill. That’s because the hype machine is in full effect!

“When do you fly to Germany?” dozens of friends will ask in the weeks leading up the late October show. “I’m seeing a lot of news about some of the new games debuting at the show. You must be getting pretty hyped, right?”

Guilty as charged; I’m pretty fired up. That said, I get pretty excited in the lead-up to Gen Con too, in part because it’s such a short stroll to get down to Indy from Chicago. But for someone coming from North America, SPIEL Essen is a bigger endeavor. Flights aren’t cheap (flights aren’t cheap anywhere any more, right?), hotels aren’t cheap, Germany is a distant journey, etc. So, there’s a minor amount of mental fatigue as I imagine the process I need to take to get all the way to my Essen accommodations.

But then the game news starts to flow, with updates every single day. The SPIEL Essen Preview here on BGG builds every day for months, and watching new titles enter the preview gets me more and more excited to arrive. About a month before the show, I start reaching out to publishers for meetings, industry contacts for breakfast, and other creators for dinner.

A week before I fly out, I start prepping all the things I need, from board game shirts (ahh, THERE’S my bright red EXIT: The Game—CATAN t-shirt that I only wear at shows) to board game business cards to board game-themed meeple skull caps to board game pins to board game convention pass badge holders. Geek prep is vital! I chuck it all in the luggage, with enough bags to ensure I can haul as many games home as I can.

The people part is probably why I get most excited about SPIEL Essen, because some of my friends in places ranging from Tokyo to Budapest to London to…well, even Chicago are hard to catch between shows. But, I know I can count on seeing them in Germany. (Yes, one of my Chicago friends is a guy I’m going to see at the show but I can never seem to find in Chicago! Life is crazy.)

The games are the reason we all show up in Essen. And I’m excited to share more about some of those games in the weeks ahead.

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The day this post went up, I wrapped up all my game tracking plans. I loaded up my SPIEL Essen app with the booth locations for the 140-ish games on my personal SPIEL Essen preview list, all the publishers I want to visit, all the after-hours booth parties, and all the special events I want to experience during the show.

Like many of you, I’ve got all of the most thumbed games on my hit list too, from Queen Alice to -60° to Kingdom Come: Deliverance—The Board Game, the game I will likely table first when I get back to the US. But because it is the most wonderful time of the year, all the games I bring home from SPIEL Essen are going to be great because it is just like opening presents for the holidays. Some friends have “SPIEL Day” game events already set up for the days immediately following their return home, and I’m hoping to host a couple game nights back home in the days just after I return, to get those treasures onto the table.

I’m fired up to just walk around the eight halls of the Messe to soak it all in. (And I WILL be inside, because the weather for SPIEL week looks atrocious.) Board games, everywhere. I know some people hate crowds; I’m the opposite. Bring on those massive crowds full of nerds. I love watching people make a run to get in line for the game they most want to bring home from the fair.

(I learned recently that the German word for nerd is…”nerd.” I validated this with a German co-worker, and I’m still bummed that there’s not really another word for this. Then I asked this same co-worker what the German word for “geek” is. “Geek,” she said. This is a travesty.)

The huge signs at each booth with the hot games and the fantastic box art? Can’t wait to share the pictures. Promo cards that you can only get at conventions? I already have a list. Running the halls on the final day of the show to try and score a deal or three? My track shoes are ready. German convention hall chow in the Galleria breezeways? Obviously.

Let’s have some fun folks! It’s the most wonderful time of the year!!

Designer Diary: The Journey of The Great Harbor

Serdarot — Sun, 18 Oct 2026 14:00:02 +0000

by Milan Tasevski

]]>The Great Harbor has had quite an interesting journey since it first arrived on our table.

The game originally came to us from designer Matteo de Nardis, under the working title Lubecca. At its core, we immediately saw something we liked: a clever dice-placement system built around constructing your own engine, with plenty of interesting decisions packed into a relatively straightforward structure.

But as we started developing it, we also began seeing just how much further we could take the idea.

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From Lubecca to Carthage

One of the first major changes was the setting.

Around the same time, we were looking to expand the world we had created with Magna Roma, and it felt natural to explore another part of the ancient Mediterranean through a very different type of game. This felt even more fitting because Matteo is also the designer of Magna Roma, making the connection between the two projects feel very organic.

That eventually brought us to Carthage and its incredible harbor.

The Great Harbor of Carthage was one of the most impressive engineering and commercial achievements of the ancient world. It gave us exactly the setting we were looking for: merchants, ships, colonies, trade, construction, and a city whose power was deeply connected to the sea.

And once we made that decision, the game started changing with it.

This wasn't simply a case of changing the artwork and names. The setting inspired new systems, new interactions, and new ways of connecting the different parts of the game.

Simplifying Without Making It Simpler

A big part of our development philosophy was to make the game easier to understand without reducing the number of interesting decisions.
One example was the way dice interacted with harbor tiles.

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Originally, dice were placed at the corners where four different tiles could meet. In addition, in order to place a die, you were required to match its number. This created plenty of possibilities, but it also meant that every placement required players to process quite a lot of information.

During development, we changed this so that dice are placed along the edges between two tiles instead, and that you were free to place a die with any number - the number would just affect how much you gain from the placement.

It sounds like a few small changes, but these changes had a surprisingly large effect. The board became easier to read, turns became quicker, and the decision of where to place the die remained just as important.

And these were exactly the kinds of changes we wanted to make. Fewer rules to process, without losing the decisions behind them.

Building More Than a Harbor

As development continued, the game gradually expanded beyond the Great Harbor itself.

The placement of dice in the Great Harbor board remain at the center of everything you do, but they now connect to a much larger economic machine.
You draft dice. You place them in the harbor and gain resources and cards. You develop your colony. You construct buildings. You attract useful people. You build and crew ships. You trade valuable goods. You prepare voyages and send those ships into the Mediterranean, sometimes having to deal with pirates along the way.

All of these systems feed back into each other, and that interconnectedness became one of our favorite parts of the game.

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The Icing on the Cake - Trading

During the final stages of development, we introduced a push-your-luck trading mechanic, and this ended up being the icing on the cake for us.
It added something we don't see very often in Euro games: a moment where careful planning suddenly turns into tension, risk, and everyone around the table watching to see what happens.

Do you take the current successful trade and walk away, or do you push for something better and risk losing the opportunity? It sounds simple, but it created some of the most memorable moments during development.

We had so much fun playtesting this in the office that we were literally screaming whenever someone pulled off a successful trade at the far edges of the Mediterranean! Every time somebody decided to push their luck one step further, everyone stopped what they were doing to see how it would end.

For a game with so much planning and strategy, having these sudden bursts of excitement gave The Great Harbor a personality we really loved!

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Keeping the Game Moving

We also paid a lot of attention to pacing.

The Great Harbor contains plenty of strategic possibilities, but we didn't want it to feel slow or overly procedural. The game lasts only five rounds, so you rarely have enough time to do everything.

Do you develop the colony? Build more ships? Push trade? Prepare voyages? Focus on prestige? Or try to build an engine connecting several of those things together?

And because the dice available to you are never exactly the same, you constantly have to adjust.
That tension between building something long-term and reacting to what is available right now became one of the defining parts of the game.

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A Game That Changed a Lot

Looking at The Great Harbor today and comparing it to the first prototype of Lubecca is quite fascinating.

The foundation is still there. You can still see the original idea that made us interested in the game in the first place.

But around it, almost everything has been examined, questioned, adjusted, simplified, expanded, or rebuilt at some point during development.
And these are only a few examples. There were many other changes along the way, from ships and voyages to the colony, economy, and the different ways players can build prestige.

For now, we are incredibly happy with where the journey has taken the game.

What started as a clever dice-placement prototype has gradually become The Great Harbor, a strategic Euro game with its fair share of planning, building, and engine creation, but also those wonderful moments when somebody decides to risk everything on one more trade and the entire table suddenly erupts.

Thanks for reading this!
- Milan, Archona Games

Illustrator's Diary — Turning Myth into Reality

SuperMeeple — Sat, 17 Oct 2026 14:00:01 +0000

by Charles Amir Perret

]]>Super Meeple is posting this diary on behalf of the illustrator of Mythologies Arthur Boccard. If you haven't read the Designers' Diary for the game, you'll find it HERE.

From Concept Artist to Illustrator

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@boccardarthurWho am I? I originally come from the video game industry. I started working in the field in November 2022, and during that time I had the opportunity to contribute to two productions as an environment and character concept artist, at Artefacts Studio and Microids Lyon. Being a Concept Artist is first and foremost about listening, adapting to an artistic direction, thinking in terms of process, and staying creative under tight deadlines. From my perspective, it is closer to design than illustration.

Still, I wanted to try stepping into the world of board games. I believe it is vital to move between different creative environments. It helps me change my perspective.

“Art does not reproduce the visible; rather, it makes visible.”
— Paul Klee, The Theory of Modern Art

Illustrating a Game

When I embarked on this adventure thanks to Igor Polouchine (Origames), I had very little idea of how much work would be involved or what processes would be used. I was in for quite a surprise. For this game, I had an average of just one day per card, including feedback and revisions.

So I knew I had to focus on efficiency, because I simply wouldn’t have much time to spend on each illustration. I started by putting together a reference board, exploring different colour palettes and technical approaches.

My main reference was the work of Yohann Schepacz, both in terms of colour and his painterly approach using Photoshop’s Round Brush.

I wanted to see what I could achieve using this technique. I started with the Egyptians, and they set the direction for everything that followed. I began with one card, then repeated the process to see whether I could make it consistent and stable. There weren’t many iterations — it was more or less a case of going full speed ahead. As soon as I had an idea, I ran with it.

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I took a risk and came back to Igor after ten days with the first seven Egyptian cards, giving him a much clearer idea of what I wanted to explore. For me, the best way to work was by blocks or families of cards, so we could consolidate the feedback. I was given a great deal of freedom, and I’m still grateful to Igor for that trust. First block delivered. I was still working with the idea of a flatter art direction, closer to Eliot Baum’s style.

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First test: Ra.

The main challenges that emerged when illustrating the game were the framing dictated by the UI, distinguishing gods from creatures — which I struggled with at first — and giving each family its own identity.

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Reference image provided by the art director, giving me a quick indication of the UI placement

Giving Each Mythology a Strong Identity

As mentioned earlier, my main reference was the work of Yohann Schepacz.

I wanted this game to be an opportunity to immerse myself in the way he approaches his work. It is highly graphic, uses very little colour, features strong lighting, and is created entirely with Photoshop’s Round Brush.

Here, the brush itself becomes central to the visual identity. There is nowhere to hide behind gradients or soft blends. Every transition has to be painted.
What I find interesting is that you can see the struggle in every one of these cards. Little pieces of me emerge through them. I think that makes them feel very alive.

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Quick photobashing using my references. This allowed me to see whether the approach could work from a colour perspective → Result for the associated families
I established a few simple rules to guide me through the first productions:

• A background with a dominant flat colour and a secondary pattern

• Gold, white and black shared by all cards

• One dominant colour and one secondary colour for the characters of each family

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I also tried to give each mythology its own theme to help guide the design process. I didn’t always have time to think things through properly. Sometimes, I simply had to start without having found a solution yet—things had to move forward, and I couldn’t really afford to get stuck. The Chinese mythology is a perfect example. Working with porcelain helped me enormously when developing the shapes of the characters.

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Environments

I have rules, but I don’t always follow them either. When it came time to tackle the landscapes, I hesitated — and it shows.

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Normally, I make extensive use of textured brushes. They allow me to fake detail and add complexity while keeping the amount of time spent under control.
Here, it’s a mixture of both approaches.

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textured brushes used
For the creation of the boards, I wanted something calm. If there was architecture, I didn’t want it to dominate the image. I wanted the sky or a body of water to take centre stage and echo the family’s dominant colour.

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The whole thing had to contrast with the density of the cards. It all comes down to where you cut the horizon.

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Landscape composition diagram
Checking and Making Changes

Replayability and Endless Possibilities
The changes were made in blocks: minor adjustments here, a few cards redone there. Overall, the process was fairly efficient. The revisions often came down to problems identifying a creature or a god. For example, the Draugr originally had horns. I liked the graphic solution, but it didn’t fit the idea of an undead creature. Freya had a helmet and a shield. I had been misled by the references I was given. Mamacocha also went through a lot of changes. I struggled to find a clear visual reference to the sea. The Hindu family had its fair share of changes as well. I admit I struggled quite a lot with this one. I couldn’t get far enough into its world or create figures that felt clear enough.

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Reference provided → First version — too warrior-like → I wanted to bring her back towards the fishing deity. It wasn’t exactly very sexy. → Finally, I added a much clearer marine element, as if she were emerging from the sea foam. Final version.

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We hope you’ll enjoy playing Mythologies as much as we enjoyed bringing its world to life. If you haven’t read it yet, don’t miss the Designers' Diary, and discover how this whole adventure began. And this is only the beginning: we look forward to expanding this rich universe with new mythologies in the future. After all, there are still plenty of gods to draw and quite a few more worlds to explore.

Designers' Diary — The Making of Mythologies

SuperMeeple — Sat, 17 Oct 2026 14:00:01 +0000

by Charles Amir Perret

]]>Super Meeple is posting this diary on behalf of the designers of Mythologies, Maxime Babad and Mickaël "Froh" Garcin, and we invite you to read the illustrator's diary for the game HERE.

Genesis
The origins of a unique game, according to the two designers who made it…

]]>Mythologies — or Mythic Mashup, as we called it in the beginning — did not exactly spring fully formed from the heavens. It went through a long and sometimes winding development process before becoming the game you know today. What began as a journey for two people was sometimes complicated, often exciting, and always enriching. A collaboration that could be restrictive at times — and, on more than one occasion, a genuine lifesaver.

In these notes, we invite you behind the scenes of Mythologies: a game born from the unlikely combination of strategy, ancient myths (obviously!) and an almost unreasonable amount of replayability. Discover how two distinct visions gradually came together to create a gaming experience unlike any other.

The Primordial Spark
The meeting, the first spark, the initial chaos.

Fun fact: After two and a half years of development, Mythologies came to life. Yet its two designers had only ever crossed paths once… briefly, at Cannes.

It all started with a fan-made project based on Blood Bowl Team Manager, for which Mickaël designed around twenty additional teams. Maxime, already the designer of Saint Seiya Deckbuilding, joined the dream team, also being a passionate fan of BBTM. Then Mickaël joined Maxime’s playtesting team for his second game to be published, Death Note.

Little by little — or rather, through tackles to the carotid and more than a few unfounded suspicions — our duo of passionate gamers came together, united around a shared vision: a game built on replayability, interaction, originality, and a strong theme.

The Mythic Mashup project was born.

Woven Destiny
Key dates and the first divine choices.

October 18, 2018 First contact. Maxime offers to help with the Blood Bowl fan-made project. Mickaël tries to score a free game (spoiler: he fails).

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[Mickael waves hello! Click to wave hello too]
"Hello, I thought you’d be all over this ;)"
"Hola. Welcome. Feel free to ask any questions if needed, but also feel free to send me a free copy of Saint Seiya*."
*the deckbuilding game designed by Maxime
2020 - Max takes advantage of lockdown to recruit playtesters for Death Note.

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- Hey Mickaël, how’s it going? (Well, within a reasonable radius of your home, with the required paperwork.)
- Could be going better, but I’m surviving.
- Would you be interested in testing my next game, Death Note, sometime?
- Absolutely.
Max is still owning his questionable jokes five years later. Mickaël, meanwhile, prefers to forget them.

Late 2021
Max suggests to Mickaël they move on to a “real” project, in order to finance Mickaël’s solid-gold swimming pool (filled with normal water, since liquid gold is rather impractical). They decide to create a game together. Max wants a drafting game. Mickaël wants a swimming pool. The project is launched.

The Founding Myth
Civilizations, creatures, and the sacred foundations of the game.

When Mickaël came up with a historical Civilizations theme, Maxime suggested reusing the universe of a prototype modestly named Gods Pantheonic Battle, in order to use its templates.

It was not far removed from the concept of Civilizations, but it gave the game a more epic dimension, while allowing us to reuse the card files already prepared for the prototype and adapt them.

At that point, we had a foundation of six mythologies, each containing four Deities and three Creatures. More than enough to test the first mechanics of Mythic Mashup and its famous carousel…

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The six mythologies were already quite diverse, including the Hindu and Inca mythologies alongside much better-known cultures such as Ancient Egypt and Greece, the Norse, and Japan.

With a few exceptions, these 36 Deities and Creatures are still present in the final version of Mythologies. Among the Egyptians, the Criosphinx and Hieracosphinx were replaced by the Mummy and the Scarab. And the Norse Berserker became the Draugr it always should have been.

The Carousel of Souls
From a curse to the resurrection of a concept.

The foundation of the game was meant to recreate the experience of a carousel found in autobattler video games (Dota Chess, Teamfight Tactics, etc.). In other words, each round would begin with a Selection phase during which everyone would try to grab units from a rotating board, with units passing by as it turned. Depending on their position, players would try to quickly claim the ones they were interested in before they slipped past them and were taken by the next player.

We quickly developed a prototype of a mechanically rotating board, on which players could select a card from a mythology whenever the arrow on their section of the board pointed toward that mythology.

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Unfortunately, this choice created several problems:

• Card readability on a moving platform: this required the cards to be extremely simple.

• Stress and lack of time to rethink your strategy when a coveted card was taken by an opponent: making it difficult to strategize.

• Mechanical boards that were too complex and expensive to produce for a publisher: possibly the number-one issue. It was simply impossible within a limited budget, and represented a major publishing risk.

We had to find an alternative solution. But we wanted to preserve two key ideas:

• Open drafting, allowing players to anticipate their choices and their opponents’ strategies.

• Simultaneous selection, making for fast games and sudden reversals.

Goodbye carousel, hello Destiny cards. These are drawn at random during each Selection phase and determine the random order in which players can select one of their two cards — or choose not to — from each area of the board, one after another.

We kept our key ideas, but introduced a new source of tension through uncertainty: Which mythology will I have access to next? Should I pass up an available choice in the hope that the next one will still be there? The stressful tension imposed by the rotating-board mechanism was therefore replaced by the tension of dilemmas and “bets” on our own choices and those of our opponents. “A bird in the hand is worth two in the bush,” as they say… You’ll be the judge.

Offerings and Gems
Personal Pantheons and sacrificial strategies.

Alongside the selection system, we needed these mythological entities to serve a purpose. Rather than having gods beat the living daylights out of each other with superpowers, something other games already do very well, wouldn’t it be more interesting to combine them in order to create a unique culture?

How could we measure the relevance of our choices without direct confrontation and without repeatedly comparing values, while still keeping the game moving at a good pace?

From the outset, building an original and unique Pantheon seemed to us to be the more interesting approach, and a great promise of depth and replayability for players. What if the positioning of these Creatures in our Pantheon could give us more than simply collecting them?

That is the whole point of the tableau-building system we wanted to create.
To do this, we needed to identify ways for players to move toward victory. Different paths to renown? Resources with different values? Offering tokens to collect or spend? We knew we were starting with a game rich in combos and depth, where every choice would have an impact, while absolutely wanting to maintain the goal of short games.

The Tablets of Ancient Knowledge
Design choices: text or symbols, tradition or modernity.

Defining a game’s mechanics starts with clearly identifying the experience we want to offer, then trying to stick to it — to keep it as a guiding principle throughout the game’s development. There are multiple dials to adjust and just as many points of balance to find: the length of the game versus the feeling of growing in power, depth versus accessibility, richness versus complexity, and so on. Finding effective and enjoyable gameplay is the foundation of game design, and the more criteria you set, the harder it becomes to find something that meets all of them.

Board game design has evolved considerably over the past two decades, favoring short games, clear rules, and another particular feature: cards with as little text as possible (or even no text at all). This is the case for many modern games aiming for the same playing time as ours.

We stuck to the first two constraints (short games and clear rules), but chose to embrace text on the cards. This gives us greater versatility in terms of effects, and therefore more thematic depth. Likewise, we chose to move away from the constraint of dynamic drafting, which only introduces new cards each round. It may seem like an insignificant choice, but it is often one of the points players come back to after their first game.

Our game offers a feeling of growing in power, not because the cards in Round 2 are stronger than those in Round 3, but rather because they combine with one another, while the Deities come in to add those spikes of power.

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A completely sourced and impeccably formatted graph depicting a typical game of Mythologies.
Here, the tension can be felt from the very first round, thanks to a drafting mechanism that is both simple and tactical. During this phase, players can take risks, anticipate what their opponents will do, but also react to their choices and adjust their own strategy accordingly. The game is driven by opportunities and highly varied card combinations, with effects that can be extremely versatile depending on the situation.

This choice also brings several benefits:

• Beginners have fewer cards to read in later turns, since some cards have remained available.

• More experienced players can rely on those remaining cards to guide their combinations.

All of this takes place in a game where every card has several uses (effects, immediate gains, and value toward objectives). In other words, a card that may initially appear bad often really isn’t — and may not remain so from one game to the next. This is the discovery aspect that means no two games will ever be alike.

The Epic of the Pantheons
Romans, Chinese, Celts, Zulus: the chosen ones of the expanded Pantheon.

]]> After various iterations and major changes to the gameplay, we reached the point where we felt that our mechanism was the right one. At the very least, it was solid enough to serve as a foundation for developing more content.

We started by expanding the bestiary with a fourth creature for each mythology (and later a fifth, then a sixth). But above all, we realized that we had a concept that was perfectly suited to modularity and replayability. With six mythologies, we had 15 possible combinations of four mythologies, and 180 different setups, with these setups defining the objectives of the game.

Since the heart of the game was mixing mythologies together to constantly discover new synergies, we quickly wanted to expand the number of mythologies, with each new mythology increasing the number of possible combinations exponentially.

Mickaël always developed projects with 30 factions or more, while Maxime wanted to make games that could be played hundreds of times and have each game feel different. So we immediately launched into the design of four additional mythologies at once. That brought us to 210 mythology combinations and 2,520 setups!

For our additional mythologies, we chose the Romans and Chinese on the one hand, as they seemed like obvious choices.

The Romans: A culture that is both rich and well known, with plenty of material for introducing new Deities while avoiding duplicates with the Greeks. The Creatures were a little more difficult, as we had to find ones that were more characteristic of Roman legends than Greek ones.

The Chinese: Probably the best-known mythology in the world that we had not yet included in the game. Here, choosing the Deities was the difficult part. Not only because there are so many of them — which is also true of many other mythologies — but because we struggled to determine which ones were considered the main figures.

By cross-referencing different sources of information (encyclopedic references, specialist websites, AI and native speakers), we settled on the final cast, which we felt both represented the major Deities of the Chinese Pantheon and met our game-design constraints.

For the other two mythologies, our goal was to explore cultures that are less frequently represented. We wanted to move away from Antiquity and the Mediterranean basin, which are often favored in cultural works. Since our game highlights historical and cultural knowledge, we chose to reinforce this aspect by giving players the opportunity to discover as many new cultures as possible — cultures that many of us are not very familiar with.

We chose the Zulus, with their mystical and wild bestiary, as worthy representatives of the African continent.

We had to dig through the depths of the internet to cross-reference enough reliable sources to properly identify the Deities and Creatures that could be highlighted in the game. The sources were much rarer and more scattered than for any of the other mythologies we had incorporated.

Finally, our last choice was the Celts, whose beliefs turned out to be much darker than we had imagined.

It is a mixture of different cultures, and the Deities are not as clearly established as those of the other mythologies. Their bestiary, on the other hand, is truly unique, with a strong focus on sometimes rather sinister legends (the Headless Horseman, for example).

Although the game is highly mechanical, we made sure to give each mythology a particular influence, expressed through one or two major themes for each of them.

Thus, the Incas focus on sacrifice, the Greeks on movement and interaction, the Hindus on summoning, the Norse on aggression, and so on.

And individually, wherever possible, each card has an effect related to the role that the corresponding entity appeared to play according to our current knowledge. Thus, Anubis rules over the abyss, Valkyries strike down Deities, Râkshasas are shapeshifters, and so on.

The Eternal Return
Replayability and infinite possibilities.

One of the most important aspects of Mythologies is its unparalleled replayability for a tableau-building game, and even more broadly for a game of this format.

Its high degree of modularity comes from the fact that the game was designed with this goal in mind from the very beginning (those who know us are aware of how important replayability is to both of us). We very quickly incorporated key elements into the heart of the game’s design. They became the core of the game design, and we never questioned them afterward.

The starting point is that you have to choose four mythologies for each game — or draw them randomly; that works too. What matters is that every combination works. Since each mythology has its own particularities, levels of interaction, key mechanics, and so on, each combination of four mythologies will give your game a different feeling. With eight mythologies in the box, that already gives us around 70 different experiences, along with all their synergies to explore.

And that’s without counting the fact that you will not see all the cards from each mythology in a single game. You can get your full dose of gaming pleasure by playing several games with the same configuration.

Seventy different experiences is already a significant amount. To go even further, the central board is assembled from the boards of the 4 mythologies in the game. This assembly, which we call the Sanctuary, serves in particular as the market from which players obtain cards. But the order in which it is assembled is crucial, because each board is double-sided, with the beginning of a sentence on one side and the end of that sentence on the other.

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The way you assemble the four selected boards will therefore create two unique sentences, which serve as the objectives for the game. That gives us a grand total of 840 unique pairs of objectives!

Each pair of objectives creates genuine choices: emptying your Pantheon, placing Creatures in ways that may be less than optimal, filling certain columns…
This focus also provides a degree of predictability for player interaction. And it creates genuine dilemmas during your turns, even when you know the game very well.

A card may therefore not necessarily be interesting because of its effect, but may be extremely interesting because of what it provides toward an objective.

Obviously, some objectives are similar — for example, if one objective asks you to fill one row or another. Except that the cards you play will not have the same effect, provide the same gain, or have the same usefulness depending on which row you play them in.

The value of each card will therefore vary from game to game, but also over the course of a game depending on how it develops. The same very powerful synergy in one situation may be far less profitable in another configuration. In Mythologies, it is impossible to rely on your usual strategy for winning. The key word is adaptability. You will always have to adapt your choices to the objectives of the game, its development, and the opportunities available to you. And who knows? You may discover new horizons with cards you would not normally have played.

As for synergies, we worked extensively to ensure that the mythologies combine with one another rather than each operating independently.

Do the Egyptians reward crushing? You will be able to find effects in other mythologies that interact with crushing. Do you have a card that generates significant gains? It may require the presence of different mythologies in your pantheon. This allows us to avoid the pitfall of “mono-faction” games, where the optimal way to play is to dive headfirst into a single color, sometimes competing with other players doing exactly the same thing.

So we leave behind the routine of following the usual plan, because you will have to consider every card available to you — which will inevitably maintain a certain amount of tension during the drafting of those cards.

The Oracle’s Quest
Finding a publisher, or how to read the signs of the gods of the market.

]]> Finding a publisher is easy.

Finding a publisher who will actually sign is more complicated. You have to understand the timing: publishers are overloaded, have projects planned for the next three years, and have absolutely no room left in their schedules. Then along comes our UFO of a project, with significant graphical demands (lots of illustrations!), and a game aimed at experienced players that nevertheless only takes 30-minutes to play. That is very rare.

Quite a few publishers saw our project, and we thank them for the time they spent on it. Some may have gone through the pitch a little too quickly, and the feedback we received from physical prototypes showed us that not everyone really engaged with the game, with feedback that was sometimes strange and sometimes very interesting. But that was fine. We persevered.

After a year of back-to-back meetings, Charles-Amir from Super Meeple, having tested different iterations of the game throughout its development, increasingly appreciated its specific qualities and understood the direction we were heading in. He probably realized that his inbox was going to receive this project every month until his death, and therefore, out of sheer desperation, accepted.

The work did not stop there. Hundreds of games and countless pieces of feedback had to be taken into account. Directions to pursue, and others to abandon. What makes a game project interesting is maintaining a direction. Because a project that tries to please everyone will ultimately please no one.

The Fleeting Apex
The Wheel of Time cannot be stopped.

One aspect that is somewhat unusual for this type of game, which focuses heavily on combos: Mythologies is NOT an engine-building game.
The more powerful combos we create, the more tempting it becomes to repeat them and improve them in order to extract the maximum benefit. We absolutely did not want players to feel as though they were repeating the same sequences over and over, with the additional risk inherent to engine-building games that the gap between players simply keeps growing as the game progresses. On the contrary, we wanted players to reassess the situation and their options every round, with no automatic moves. This is truly a mantra for us, burned into our philosophy of what makes a game engaging and captivating all the way to the final scoring.

Although the open drafting aspect contributes to this, other, less mechanical elements also help keep players engaged until the very end. We made sure that the game did not contain too many permanent effects that could be reactivated every turn. We adjusted the timing for completing objectives, imposing certain constraints on players at specific moments, even if that meant rearranging their Pantheons just before or after in order to optimize their cards in a different way.

The fact that the game ends after four rounds also contributes to this. In only four rounds, well-optimized one-off effects can be far more profitable than permanent passive bonuses.

Player interaction adds another layer to all of this. The more we allow players to throw a spanner into their opponents’ plans, the more we force them to adapt. But don’t worry about this last point! It is obvious that some players do not like having their plans disrupted, which is why the level of interaction is modular. Each mythology is more or less focused on interaction, and this level of interaction is clearly indicated. It is up to each player to choose more or less interactive mythologies for each game.

The Heroes’ Pact
Working as a pair: synergy, balance and shared faith.

]]> There are several advantages to working as a pair, especially when you complement each other. One of the main points was to determine, from the outset, the objectives we wanted to set for the game: accessible rules, fast games, high replayability, and good depth.

These objectives guided most of our design choices. If an idea went completely against one of these four pillars, poof, it was gone. It sounds simple when presented this way, but each idea was often beneficial in one respect while detrimental in another. We therefore had to take the time to weigh the pros and cons. An unavoidable task, for which two perspectives are better than one — even if it can easily lead to lengthy debates.

Even with clearly defined objectives, even with important shared references, and even when we have a fairly similar vision of what makes a good game, disagreements are bound to arise from time to time. Most of the time, they stem from a misunderstanding. It is therefore important to take the time to listen to each other, put yourself in the other person’s shoes, and get to the root of the problem or disagreement. What is the other person trying to achieve? What exactly is bothering them? Which part of the proposed solution is bothering you? It requires genuine introspection to silence our egos and move forward.

But there you have it: disagreement is the art of compromise.

An art… that is rather verbose, since our discussions on even the smallest subject can require an enormous number of paragraphs filled with pseudo-justifications, all in the hope of being right.

Pulling the Threads of the Fates
Where we talk about destiny.

If the game finds its audience, we obviously have plenty of things planned. Even before Super Meeple took the project under its wing, we had already worked on expansion concepts and additional mythologies (yes, they already exist). And because we are (perhaps a little too?) passionate, we have also continued working on them alongside the development of the final game. But for all these great ideas to become reality, that cannot depend on us alone.

It depends on you, dear players, who will have embraced our vision and our gaming proposition — which we hope will convince you of its merits as you play more and more games.

Thank you, valiant players.

If you’re heading to SPIEL in Essen, come and find us at Hall 6, Booth F301. Come and talk to us about the struggle, the excitement, the brilliant ideas, the questionable ones, and all the compromises that somehow turned into a game. We’ll be delighted to delve deeper into the joys and tribulations of game design — and, if necessary, explain how two perfectly reasonable people managed to spend so much time arguing about ancient gods.

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Mickaël & Maxime

Discover the Illustrator’s Diary as well: PART B — Making Myth a Reality
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Designer Diary: Kano - AN AMAZING JOURNEY

PabloJimenezRoman — Fri, 16 Oct 2026 14:00:02 +0000

by Pablo Jiménez

]]>Editor's note - an artist diary for Kano was published at the same time, which you can read HERE.

Part 1: Early Concepts and Thematic Shift

I remember the first time we met with Pablo Jiménez. He had a simple but incredibly fun and efficient mechanic to capture colorful gems. They were just placed on the board and some scoring would happen. General patterns that we would share or not. The first exciting thing was to repeat a well-known movement from games like Candy Crush: switching to adjacent gems. And it was a fantastic start.

But the problem was that all the gems were left on the table, with the bag getting empty, and when the objectives were common, the luck of the draw was driving too much of your score. But we agreed that there was something there and that we would work on this game together. This was the start of a long adventure. We tried many ways to make the combinations interesting and varied—pick up contracts, perform specific ones—but nothing really clicked.

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He took the best part of a year and nothing significant had happened. At the same time, the mechanic was still quite fascinating and we decided that "Gems of Saqqara" was something we were so excited about we could not give it up.

And this is when it came to its first massive turn: One friend who’d been looking. At the prototype maze a version drawing on their passion for Japanese culture and the school of painting that used ink and gold. Gems were replaced by paint pots and a tatami mat was use to show them. It was rolled out to serve as a board. Extremely cute handmade pots were produced. The game had a direction, and unbeknownst to us, our main problem was essentially solved because from there it would be a smaller leap to be making a Kano-style painting.

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Some people believe that substance is superior to form. I believe the form gives a guide for substance. Playing with pots, trying to solve a mathematical abstract problem, I realized I was going nowhere. There was no real soul in the game, and so it stayed for another year, always in the back of my mind while other projects based on themes were making progress.

Part 2: Refining the Mechanic and Balancing

It was Christmas vacation time and we, of course, played games at home. After a frustrating experience playing another game, I realized the problem: the game was promising an experience, creating an exciting picture, but it was just purely an optimization problem with bits and pieces placed in position without ever trying to deliver the promised experience. It was like building a town just by putting together cubes and numbers in the way that caused a high number of points.

That’s when it hit me: if the paint pots combinations were representing a painting, then we should actually see your painting in the end. I reset my computer and printer and, after eight hours spread over ne and a half days, I had built the first version of what would become Kano. It didn’t work yet, but I knew all the right paths and started to share them with Pablo.

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I created fixed objectives and scoring rules. I had to go quickly because our best friends and board game fans were coming over to spend a few days with us for New Year’s Eve. The size of the board was made smaller to make the experience around 30-minutes instead of 45 and, more importantly, create some space constraints. Removing eight squares made a big difference. I found a discarded plastic tray that would hold all the pieces in place and in order. It was so convenient that we later insisted that it should be part of the final game.

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When our friends came and the testing began, I quickly observed that whilst the game was designed as a race to score points faster, they would play it just for the enjoyment of completing the puzzle and creating a picture. The masterpieces in particular were played more than anything. I realized it was needed as a guide to first plays, something clear and simple to do while learning how to play the game. I also quickly had to make sure they were balanced and did not score too many points. Interestingly enough, even in the final version, despite not being the highest scoring option on average the masterpiece remain the favorite of new players.

Our friends love for the game was real, and we played many times. They were eager to get their hands on a final copy. There was so much to do and we were far from finished.

The great news was that at this stage Matagot was ready to commit and find an artist to illustrate the game. It was through a board game miracle, with the help of a friend publisher recommendation they eventually got in touch with Jun Sato.

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With this news came another one, and that is that the beautiful pots could not be manufactured at costs that would keep the game accessible. There were simply too many of them. So once again, it was form that pushed substance. This constraint gave us a choice: get rid of the beautiful pots, or have a fully functional game with fewer pots. Of course, we chose the latter, and this is how we made the calculation that if at any point in time every player had a maximum of five of them on the board, we could reduce significantly the total amount: 16 on the mat and 20 on the player boards made 36.
And since we have five colors, our target was 40 pots.

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That seemed correct, but after a lot of testing, we realized that it didn’t quite flow properly. Too many pots could be stuck of the same color and the balance of colors was off in the central board. And since we really wanted that pool of five available colors to represent inspiration and therefore create interesting puzzles and constraints we removed one more from the bag, and this led to the limit of four on the board and seven of each color. Now players could not just wait for the color they wanted they had to change their plans, it just didn’t work if they stuck to the one or two pots of the color they hoped for.

The cost constraint led to a better gaming experience. Creativity it seems was at its best when challenged.

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Part 3: Final Touches and Player Experience

From this point onwards, the theme drove almost all the rules decisions. For starters If there was a limit on the players’ board that’s because naturally the paint would dry. Dry paint would not be removed it would be made messy and cloudy, not scoring any points because it’s a mistake from the painter.

During advanced testing, somebody asked if they could paint over, and the obvious thematic answer was yes.

More testing brought up the question about claiming a picture on the following round instead of right away. Again, all the paint had been positioned on the canvas. It made no sense not to claim the picture, so the rule was obvious.

As we played more and more, and after many iterations, the initial listing of all things that could be painted started to move into something different that would become the red, white, and blue objectives. Red would be variety, White would be position on the board, and Blue was the position of paintings one next to the other. The puzzle had become quite crunchy; you constantly had to choose between speed and point efficiency. It eas impossible to complete all objectives. As we played more and more, people enjoyed the balance between the three types of objectives.

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In order to reinforce the feeling of a race, we also had an intermediate scoring which pushed players to go faster right from the start. Competition was fierce and we loved it.

This is where a new problem appeared. As Matagot was getting art pieces from Jun Sato and cultural advice from Tomoko Sato, they were also running tests with a larger audience. It quickly appeared that we had created a great game for us. Not for new gamers. We had played it a lot, and enjoyed the additional challenge, we relished the frustration of never being perfect, of not finishing the painitng. So we had to go back to the drawing board. It was tough expanding so much, besides deciding what we would remove.

Another piece of advice that was provided to us was that people really enjoyed playing casually and were not so keen on the competitive aspect we enjoyed.

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This led to a realization, we had a rule that gave negative point for empty squares. To ensure maximum impact of this rule the game ended at the end of the round following the round where at least one player had five or less empty squares. You read that right. It was hard. Only exceptionally good players would have a full board and complete painting at the end of a game. Frustrated casual gamers would carry on playing after game end. So the theme came to the rescue, clearly in a race to paint, someone had to cross the finish line.

Obviously, the negative scoring is also something that changed. The penalty led to ending the game one full turn after the board of any player had fewer than five squares open. Quite a lot of things to count! But players were frustrated because the painting was often incomplete. The end-frame rule was redesigned to please the casual Zen gamers. For gamers wanting competition, a bonus was awarded to whoever finished the board.

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It is always a difficult decision once you’ve worked on developing balanced elements to remove them. This is where a friend, an extremely humble and talented designer, made a big difference. After playing the game a couple of times, he told me that the game had an expansion built In. The blue objectives. That framing was a perfect way to look at things. We didn’t have to abandon this design lifeline.

While the blue objectives were put it aside as an expansion that may or may not see the light of day, At first we also excluded the competitive mode, now accurately named Samurai, it seemed coherent to remove this harsher part of the game. We were getting close, but as things happened, Matagot realized—thanks to one of their contacts and a YouTuber—that the Samurai mode was truly a very short rule and that gamers who wanted to increase competition actually enjoyed it a lot, and it made its comeback into the game.

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That simple rule really changes the way the game felt and I’m glad it was kept in the end, opening the game to a wider range of gamers.

That rule actually changes the game curve completely with the intermediate scoring. It also increases the balance between the red objectives and the white and Masterpieces. Everything is more balanced; mistakes are paid for faster.

To some degree the game can adapt to the audience. If no one wants to win, but rather enjoy the process of playing, it’s a simple Zen experiment with players often choosing what is pretty over what is point-efficient. If players want competition, it’s an exercise in speed and adaptability that runs with them, as fast as they can or want. Change your plans for a high pace or stick to your guns for a higher amount of points per square. But of course, keep your finger on the scoring trigger unless you want the others to decide when to score.

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Jun and Tomoko Sato, who had played the game and came up with the wonderful idea of the clouds, provided incredible moral support. They adjusted some elements to be more accurate culturally but also accepted some core principles of the gameplay. The game really felt Japanese and we hope you’ll also feel like you are painting.

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At this stage, we are after close to five years of a journey that started in the sands of Saqqara and ended in the cobbled streets of Kyoto.

We hope that this account of our journey was somewhat interesting and informative. Thank you for reading.

Thank you, Merci,
Angel & Pablo

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Artist Diary: Bringing KANO to Life Through Japanese Art

matagot_contact — Fri, 16 Oct 2026 14:00:02 +0000

by Matagot Contact

]]>Editor's note: a designer diary for Kano was published at the same time, which you can read HERE.

Jun Sato first connected with Matagot via an Instagram DM. That short message revealed possibilities in an industry still unknown to us. At the same time, however, based on my past experience, I was convinced that the task would be extremely difficult for him. The reason for this is that, particularly over the past few years, he has focused his activities exclusively on creating purely original works rather than commercial illustrations.I was worried that having to follow specific color schemes or draw prescribed characters and buildings might stifle his creativity.

After a long discussion with Jun Sato, he expressed a strong determination to see this project through to completion. Accomplishing the task required an assistant―much like Sherlock’s Watson and although he already had several professional partners, he concluded that I was the ideal choice for this role, given my expertise in both painting and traditional Japanese styles. Initially, I suggested that he create the artwork digitally to facilitate the workflow, but he strongly preferred to paint on paper. When using an illustration drawn on paper for commercial purposes, the biggest issue is color specification.

With digital data, colors are assigned numbers, making them easy to recognize. It required some ingenuity to ensure that the colors drawn on paper were perceived accurately by both the workshop in Kyoto, Japan, and the company Matagot in Bordeaux, France.

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In the early stages of illustration production, communication with Matagot was not yet fully established. However, it was necessary to align our understanding regarding the game's primary color palette.I painted candidate colors onto a paper board and shared them with Matagot through numerous videos and images. Maxime, who handled my case, was very polite, prompt, and kind in our email exchanges, which put me completely at ease. The creation of art always remains within Jun Sato in a mysterious form, never to be revealed to the outside world. However, in this job, I had to share information accurately and in a way that was easy for others to understand. Jun Sato kept notes to accurately track every color used in the illustration, but the volume of these notes eventually became enormous. The work proceeded with him recording the specific color mixtures and quantities of paint used in handwritten notes.

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Another concern was grasping the rules of the game. We weren't very familiar with board games, so we felt uneasy about not knowing the rules. However, there was a wonderful opportunity to put those concerns to rest. Arnaud Charpentier, the CEO of Matagot, visited Japan and gave us the chance to play a demo version of the game. It was highly significant that Jun Sato met Mr. Arnaud Charpentier in person at that time. For an artist like Jun Sato, who creates original artwork, a dialogue with a client not only stimulates his creativity but also serves as a catalyst for pouring even deeper passion
into his work.

Grasping the game's rules was also a great help to him in shaping his ideas for the designs of the characters―such as the animals and people―that appear in the game, as well as for the design of the main animal. The puzzle pieces included "T" and "L" shapes, which gave Jun Sato a great deal of trouble. However, because he was accustomed to creating original works, he was able to devise and propose a way to harmonize them. He was particularly particular about the lines of the clouds. He paid meticulous attention to ensuring that the clouds in the background connected seamlessly.

In traditional Japanese painting, clouds represent time and space. In a game, even if you place a randomly acquired graphic element in a location that might seem unnatural at first glance, separating it with clouds allows the entire composition to come together as a unified painting.

In his original works, he consistently depicts a world where biodiversity is preserved and all forms of life pursue happiness together, cooperating with and understanding one another. Ultimately, in creating the illustrations for KANO, we succeeded in bringing to life a world where humans and nature coexist a defining characteristic of Jun Sato's work. I feel as though each of those pieces is a small miracle.

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While Matagot (France) and Jun Sato (Japan) differ significantly in their values―stemming from the distinction between Western and Eastern perspectives―they were able to share a common goal for this project: giving form to themes of greater significance to humanity, such as humanity itself, nature, creativity, and sensibility. In artistic collaborations, it is rare to reach a state of mutual understanding that transcends nationality and identity. We are grateful for this valuable opportunity.

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Furthermore, I have deeply moving memories associated with this project. After finishing the illustration work, Jun Sato and I reunited with Arnaud Charpentier at Tokyo Game Market and shared the joy of holding the completed KANO in our hands. After that, we traveled to Bordeaux, France, and visited Matagot, where we had the opportunity to interact with Maxime and the people involved in this project. An autograph session for Jun Sato was held in Bordeaux, where he was able to meet people who had been eagerly awaiting KANO. And the trip to Paris after Bordeaux became an unforgettable memory.

In his twenties, Jun Sato visited Paris repeatedly while dreaming of becoming an artist. Holding an autograph session for KANO in that city he had long admired gave him a wonderful opportunity to reflect on his original aspirations. Through this project, I was able to discover a new and different side of the artist Jun Sato. Jun Sato's existing fans likely feel the same way. A work of handmade art has transcended time (time zones) and space (national borders) to become a finished board game.

It is truly wonderful that people who play this game can enhance their sensitivity and enrich their hearts through the creative experiences it offers. We hope that many people will play KANO again and again, savoring the joy of collecting and arranging pieces each one a small miracle in itself.

JUN SATO Office
Art Director
TOMOKO SATO

The Jailbreak Questline had Gaudi plotting with Drops of Evil

boardgamersteph — Wed, 14 Oct 2026 16:00:02 +0000

by Steph Hodge

[imageid=9200434 medium rep]▪️ Devir is releasing Gaudí this month both at Spiel and at retail. New game design from Dani Garcia (Barcelona, Windmill Valley...), this new title will surely look stunning on any table. For 1-4 players and plays in 60-100 minutes.

From BGG:

Step into a world where art defies gravity and stone becomes dream. Shape forms, balance light and nature, and bring to life the visionary style that redefined architecture.

Antoni Gaudí was a visionary Catalan architect born in 1852, renowned for his imaginative and distinctive style that blended Gothic and Art Nouveau influences.

Players will travel through Gaudí's life and work, earning Victory Points in the three pillars that shaped his works: Nature, Catalonia, and Religion. To succeed, players must keep their progress balanced—only their two lowest VP scores among the three pillars will count toward final scoring.

]]>▪️ Thunderworks Games released Questline recently from designers Marc-André Lavoie and Martin Lavoie. This game plays 1-6 players and takes 15 minutes. Small box card game with a real-time element.

From BGG:

Questline is a fast-playing, simultaneous play card game for 1-6 players. Compete to earn the most reputation stars (points) by chaining together a sequence of seven cards that tell your hero’s most compelling story, all in about 15 minutes.

Refine your hand swiftly in secret as you search for compatible numbered cards, each depicting events paired with icons and effects that play off of each other. Form these cards into an ascending numerical sequence, optimizing the reputation stars gained while avoiding numerical gaps.

Draw, discard, and swap cards with one another in real time. Discard cards you don’t want face up, where your neighbors can see them. Obtain new cards from the face-down decks, from your discards, or from your neighbors' discards! Keep an eye out for them to discard the perfect card for your hand.

Once you’re satisfied with your questline, remove your discards from play and claim an epilogue card. The first to finish claim the most valuable epilogues, so don’t take too long. But don’t be too hasty and find yourself with an unmemorable tale full of plot holes, either!

]]>▪️ Drops of Evil from Horrible Guild is available this Spiel! From designers Hjalmar Hach and Lorenzo Silva (The King's Dilemma, Railroad Ink: Deep Blue Edition...), I was told this has been brewing for a while! Perfect release for some October fun. Drops of Evil plays 2-4 players in about 60 minutes.

From BGG:

In Drops of Evil, players take on the role of witches competing to brew the most powerful poison.

Gather ingredients from the forest by sending out your Familiars, then combine them in your Alchilab, a powerful device used for the synthesis of lethal mixtures.

Place Ingredients strategically to improve their toxicity and unlock bonuses. Recruit shady Assistants and follow grim Recipes to make your draught even more wicked. Can you brew the deadliest poison?

]]>▪️ The Jailbreak is a cooperative scenario-based game from Adam's Apple Games, LLC. From designers Joel Kennedy & Karl Lange, this is a small box card game for 2-4 players and plays in 20 minutes. Great for those who love to work through missions that ramp in difficulty as you play! This game will have limited supply at Spiel and is set to be released in Q1 2027.

From BGG:

The Jailbreak is a cooperative deduction game where your perspective and clever communication will be needed to carry out your escape.

Work together with your teammates over 44 challenges broken up across 11 pivotal days of your jailbreak. Each day gets more challenging as you take on more risks in planning and executing your escape.

During the game, each player holds a hand of double-sided tools, and each tool has a non-overlapping front/back pairing. Your perspective at the table may help you give clever clues to your teammates to help them, with some deduction, play their tools to the right spot and complete the challenge.

Be careful - if you get it wrong, you risk being caught by the guards.

Designer Diary - Nature: Climate - Redesigning a Classic

domcrap — Tue, 13 Oct 2026 14:00:02 +0000

by Dominic Crapuchettes

]]>The Nature system currently has a BoardGameGeek rating of 8.6 - well beyond my wildest expectations! This designer diary tells the story of its most recent module, Nature: Climate.

The first five modules introduced entirely new material, but Nature: Climate takes a different approach: it's a redesign of an Evolution expansion. I saved it for last because I knew it would be the most challenging module to create.

Evolution: Climate is widely regarded as the pinnacle of the Evolution series, so its successor was going to face intense scrutiny before it even shipped. It had big shoes to fill, and I was daunted by the challenge.

So I started with the people who know the game best: the players.

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I reread every review, comment, and forum thread I could find, then surveyed nearly 500 Evolution: Climate fans with two simple questions: What should we never change? And what would you most like us to change?

The answers from that poll became my guiding principles.

What to Keep
Evolution: Climate is a highly thematic game, generating epic stories about how how life on Earth evolves over eons of time. That core concept was the sacred cow I could not tamper with.

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Another aspect that stood out immediately is the extra trait slot. People loved the extra variety a fourth trait slot provided for their species, so Nature: Climate keeps it. And fans wanted more traits overall, so Nature: Climate doubles the number of the base game, making it the largest module yet. Since Nature allows duplicate traits, the number of possible species combinations grows far beyond a simple doubling.

What to Change
This was harder to solve: players wanted the climate to swing more dramatically, but they also wanted the game to feel less random. Those goals sound contradictory — more movement should mean more chaos, not less. But things are not always as they seem...

Looking closely at Evolution: Climate, we realized the problem wasn't how far the climate moved. It was when the movement took place. You adapt your species first, then learn which way the climate moves. You could make the smartest possible decision and still get punished by a threat you couldn't mitigate against.

So we flipped the sequence. In Nature: Climate, the climate moves first, then you adapt in response.

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That single change allowed us to make the climate swings much more dramatic while giving players more strategic control. You know where the climate will end before deciding which deck to draw from and how to adapt your species.

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The Climate Movement
Perfecting the climate movements took real work. One of my goals for the module was for it to tell a different story every time you play. I want players to think they've mastered the strategy, play again, and land in an entirely different ecosystem. One game might start in a temperate ecosystem and slowly slide into a blizzarding ice age. Another might spike into scorching heat immediately. Another might swing hard in one direction and then reverse course.

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I would roll five times and plot the climate movement for a game, then do it again for 30 games
I have more than 20 tabs of systems I modeled by hand to see how the climate would move. Then I color coded the cells to help visualize the movement. It was a painstakingly stupid method.

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Then Jared Cleary, one of the Nature playtesters, offered to model them in a statistical program. He could spit out 200,000 games in ten minutes!

Together, Jared and I modeled more than a dozen candidate systems and ran hundreds of thousands of simulations on each, tracking how fast the climate reached its extremes, how long it stayed there, and how often it reversed. The system had to move in a way that felt dramatic, but it also had to stay simple enough to explain at the table.

Here is a visualization of the system we decided upon.

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With this model, once every two million games, the climate will march straight into an Ice Age, and then march immediately back, ending the game in a Scorching Age. It might never happen, but if it does, it will become the kind of story your group still talks about for years.

We weren't just balancing numbers. We were designing stories.

The two extremes are also deliberately asymmetric to increase the number of different stories that get told.

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In an ice age, large, round animals have an advantage because they retain heat more efficiently. Think mammoths.

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In extreme heat, the advantage reverses: smaller animals and heat-dissipating traits become valuable.

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Those differences ripple through the ecosystem. Predators need to be at least as large as their prey, so cold climates can support large predators in ways that extreme heat cannot. Food availability changes, too. Warm, humid environments can produce enormous amounts of plant food, supporting far more animal life.

We also wanted the extremes to actually hurt. If an ice age could support as many thriving species as a lush rainforest, the simulation wouldn't feel right. The rules become deliberately more punishing at the edges of the climate track. That's where the world should feel like it's closing in.

So the climate track isn't simply a difficulty meter. It changes what kind of game you're playing. Different traits become valuable. Different species combinations work. Predator-prey relationships change. The synergies change.

That's exactly what we were after: enormous variety, real drama, ecosystems that transform as the climate does, and extremes that feel genuinely extreme, but underneath all of it, skill still had to matter.

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Hello, Old Friend

whenindoubteatout — Mon, 12 Oct 2026 06:00:02 +0000

by Justin Bell

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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 copies occupies much of my week, but on Wednesdays I usually play games from the personal collections of both myself and others. Three weeks ago, I hosted the Wednesday play session, and as the host, I got 3-4 “main” games ready to play by refreshing myself on the rules, a set that also ranged by player count that included Orléans, Coimbra, and Railroad Tiles. There was no chance we would play them all, but I like to be prepared…you just never know.

I also prep a couple of small box games when I host, shorter games like card games and party games that we can squeeze in with a few extra minutes.

On that night, my small box game of choice was Xylotar, the trick-taking game designed by Chris Wray that reimplements his original game Magic Trick. Xylotar hadn’t hit the table all year, so the dust was blowing around a bit in its section of the closet.

We wrapped up our game of Orléans, a five-player game that ran long. A couple guys from my table were cool doing something for about 20 minutes before heading home…and that’s when I met eyes with my copy of Xylotar.

Hello, old friend.

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There’s a moment during the Xylotar teach—a moment that occurs AFTER players ask why the cover features a polar bear named Bobby McColdsnap deviously staring at a rainbow-colored xylophone synthesizer guitar, creating what is easily the richest backstory for any trick-taking game ever made—where I get to see the sparkle in the eyes of other players. It’s the same glint that I, myself, get every time I play the first of Xylotar’s three rounds.

“...so, after you organize the card values in your hand from high to low, tuck the ‘High Note’ card on the left-most side of your cards…then pass your entire hand to the person on your left,” I said. “Then take your newly-passed hand and fan out the cards face down in a line in front of you. That’s correct: you don’t know the exact value of the cards in your hand.”

Oh, we have something here, the player's faces seem to say.

That’s before they get to see the magic of the bidding system, quickly understanding how to carve out what kind of hand they have, and finding ways to hit their bid exactly to score five bonus points in a round.

Like all 3,700 trick-taking games released each year (a rough estimate), Xylotar is a trick-taking game with a twist. But it’s a blast. It’s a trick-taking game that plays 3-5 players, and I most prefer it at the max player count. It’s got cards with musical notes as suits, suits that range in total cards, and despite the fact that my big hands struggle to shuffle those cards, fanning them out to then learn that I have a terrible scoring hand for the round gets me all fired up to hit a bid of zero.

Xylotar is a game that I seem to fall in love with all over again every time I get it to the table. Part of that is because I love it, a fresh reminder of why I continue to occasionally push it to the table. And, part of it is because I love the reaction of other players when they try it.

“That first round…hmm. I liked that one a lot,” said one player following my most recent play.

“The bidding system is really cool,” said another.

Part of the attraction with Xylotar is that it is not a game everyone knows. “Hello, old friend” is likely not a line one uses when they whip out Terraforming Mars or Hot Streak or Jenga or a game that hobbyists likely know. Xylotar currently holds down spot 4,450 on BGG’s list of the top-ranked games in the database. If you are lucky, you had the chance to see someone from Bézier’s marketing team dancing around their booth at a convention in a polar bear suit.

This gives Xylotar a bit of cachet; it's a discovery for many players. My favorite moment when breaking out games like this comes when someone pulls up a game’s shopping listing on their phone and buys a copy while they are still at the table.

“Thanks for showing me Xylotar; I think my ____ [insert name of partner, gaming group, or roommate here] will like that, so I just grabbed a copy!”

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Rediscovering the games that you already own is such a thrill.

Each time I play Hansa Teutonica, I find myself admiring its genius, even though I don’t choose to play it very often. I only seem to think about playing Concordia when I have to table something for six players, then we play it and find everyone musing about how we “need to play Concordia more often”, then we don’t. This really hits home every time I play an average (or worse!) game that was released earlier this year, and that inspires me to play similar games I liked more that were released five, eight, 20 years ago.

When I look for that older game, I utter the same line almost every single time when I peek into my game closet: “Hello, old friend.” The game was always great, but I neglected it for so long that I simply forgot how good I felt each time I got it to the table.

Just a few days ago, this happened again, when a friend suggested Shackleton Base: A Journey to the Moon for game night. I jumped at the chance. Even though I’ve played Shackleton Base and its expansion four times this year and it sits prominently on a shelf right in my eyeline at home, playing “Shack Town” with only the base game made me utter, out loud, “hello, old friend” to everyone in the room when I arrived at my friend’s house to find the game set up on the table.

Teaching the corporation rules got me all excited, as we discussed the corporation actions of Moon Mining, Sky Watch and To Mars. Drafting shuttles for resources, workers, and turn order felt like putting on that old, comfy, ratty sweater you wear when you are doing work around the house. I sipped bourbon and laughed like Santa as we worked our way through round-end maintenance and claiming workers from the crater. As I evacuated a laboratory from the crater using the To Mars corporation action, I thought back to previous plays featuring my favorite corporation combinations.

Even during my second or third turn of the first round, I knew it wasn’t about scoring the most points…I was already a winner because I was nestled in the warmth of a board game that brings me joy. That’s why we play, right?

Designer’s Diary: BLACK FLAG!

EmilianoSciarra — Sun, 11 Oct 2026 14:00:02 +0000

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 back to a game simply titled Caribbean, dated March 30, 2004, but the project itself goes back to 2003, just one year after the release of the original game.

There were several reasons for this. One of them was that, at the time, the Caribbean setting was considered overused in board games (unfortunately missing the wave generated by Disney’s blockbuster Pirates of the Caribbean: The Curse of the Black Pearl, released in Italy in September 2003, and the films that followed).

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This very first incarnation of the game already featured the concept of the Ship, which had only two characteristics: Range and Size, while the number of Broadsides allowed each turn was fixed at two. In fact, much of Black Flag! was already there: Cannons, Sail and Sailor cards, the Storm (which at the time was actually a Doldrums), and above all a brilliant Mutiny card that allowed the player who used it to switch sides for as long as it remained in front of them. This card created what I considered an extremely interesting and layered decision: if I am an English player who has mutinied, how should I play? As a Spaniard, hoping to remain one until the end of the game? Or should I continue playing as an Englishman, trusting that someone will remove the Mutiny card before the game ends? It was all very compelling, but there were at least two problems to solve: players who had the Mutiny card tended to play it on themselves at the right moment; and even by forcing it to be played on others, the best strategy was to hold onto it until the very end, when the factions had become clear, hoping there would be no time left for anyone to remove it.

Even more complicated was finding a way to remove player elimination from the game: a daunting challenge that would keep me busy until 2010, when I came up with the scoring system later used in Samurai Sword. As anyone who studies the game carefully can see, player elimination in BANG! is not merely a stylistic choice: it is a fundamental pillar of almost every game mechanic as they were designed. For example, elimination is the game’s true timer: if you remove it, when does the game end? It also serves as the game’s intrinsic scoring system: the winner is determined by who is (or is not) still in play. Finally, it acts as an indirect balancing mechanism: a player may bleed themselves dry to eliminate another, but if they succeed, they make enormous, measurable, and permanent progress toward their objective, because the eliminated player will never return to seek revenge. This mechanism works well in a harsh and unforgiving Wild West setting, but it is far too punishing in other contexts — not to mention that some players dislike it, considering it an objective flaw, even though it is in fact a deliberate design choice, with both strengths and weaknesses.

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The Roles were hidden until the end, and the Pirate, like the future Ronin of Samurai Sword, doubled their score.

Whenever your Ship was sunk, you could play one of the Ship cards in your hand. These Ship cards were shuffled into the deck together with all the others, and they could also be played simply to switch to a different vessel and restore your Hull Points to their maximum, at the cost of giving up your card draw for the turn. If your Ship was sunk and you did not play a Ship card, you were automatically assigned a Pinnace as a temporary replacement: a weak vessel that was easy to sink.
The game ended when the draw deck was exhausted, and to speed this up there were Hourglass cards which caused the top 8 cards of the deck to be discarded.

From Tobago to Kyoto
Despite reservations about the setting, development did not come to a complete halt. Six months later, the game resurfaced under the name Tobago. To avoid explicitly referring to Pirates, the independent faction was represented by a Dutchman: something that did not convince me at all, because a game about the golden age of piracy has to have Pirates flying the Jolly Roger! The Ghost Ship also made its appearance, brutally sinking your current Ship before passing to the next player, but allowing you, for one turn, to command a vessel far superior to any other. The Mutiny card was still there as well, along with all the problems it brought with it.

Publishing plans changed over time, and in 2008 the game took on a different shape and a different setting. Without going into too much detail, I experimented with a new scoring system (only points earned against members of your own faction counted, meaning it was necessary to keep track of who eliminated whom) and I had already decided to separate the equivalent of the Ships from the main deck.

For a while I continued working on the project without any significant breakthroughs. The game worked, but it was still somewhat rough around the edges, and the Mutiny mechanic had not yet been solved. I shifted my focus to future expansions for BANG! and especially BANG! Duel, until a few years later the discussion finally turned to creating the next game based on the BANG! System rather than just another expansion (and “just” is a relative term: every BANG! expansion requires the same meticulous care and playtesting as a full-fledged game). At first, it seemed the new game would be inspired by Chinese martial arts, but then came the request for a version set in feudal Japan.

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A simple change of theme with only a handful of mechanical tweaks would have been enough, but I don’t like repeating myself, so I took the opportunity to expand and transform the original system. I therefore took the existing foundation and spent a couple of months immersed in studying the (wonderful) culture of Japan, searching for the right ideas and sources of inspiration for the cards.

I refined the scoring system thanks to a flash of insight that came to me while I was driving alone, mulling over the problem along the winding curves of the Via Aurelia highway. I also reworked the game flow into the form it has today, adding elements that fit the concepts of honor and traditional Japanese combat, including the rule that makes players untouchable if they have no cards in hand, the various Weapons that were actually used during the period, and so on. The concept of the Ship made no sense in that setting, but other cards did: for example, the Peasant from the Rising Sun expansion is exactly what the Sailor used to be, while Quick Draw corresponds to the Cannons.

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It was painstaking work, but it paid off in the end, as I had the immense satisfaction of receiving compliments and full approval from our Japanese partners. It confirmed that doing serious research when designing games can lead to the results you hope for — and sometimes even to results beyond your expectations.

Back to the Caribbean
Samurai Sword was a success (and still is), and I had already begun working on the next setting, but for various reasons the project was put on hold and only revived in 2020; and even then, to my great disappointment, it still wasn't about pirates...

When the plans changed once again, after another three years and yet another prototype built from scratch and ultimately abandoned, I finally decided the time had come to stop hesitating and finish what I had started, bringing BANG! to the Caribbean once and for all. Codename: CaraiBANG!

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The beginning was not encouraging. The rules I had developed twenty years earlier no longer fully satisfied me, and the game also needed a new scoring system because, as before, I didn't want to simply transplant Samurai Sword onto the high seas. The real challenge was to make it explicit which side was ahead, reducing the long discussions that often arise among Samurai Sword players (which are fascinating, but not for everyone), while still avoiding the need to reveal everyone’s Role, especially the Pirate’s. After an initial phase in which it seemed the game might sink before it even left port, I came up with the idea of a “tug-of-war” between the two teams, with the Pirate acting as an additional weight on the scale. With the Roles now clearly defined, the Pirate no longer had to ask, “Who should I eliminate?” but rather, “How far can I afford to push the Treasure in one direction?” The game became a constant struggle for control of the score, without losing the tension that is characteristic of the BANG! System.

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At first, the Roles were still hidden, but for the tug-of-war system to work, it had to be clear what at least one of the two Roles involved actually was: the one belonging to either the player who had been sunk or the attacker. Years of experience, especially with the original game, had shown that with experienced players, the Roles are often fairly obvious after just a couple of rounds around the table. So, my playtest group and I asked ourselves: “Why not reveal the Role of the player who was sunk? It should take about two or three rounds to sink everyone, which is roughly the same amount of time it takes players to deduce the Roles in BANG!” The insight proved to be a good one, and suddenly many pieces of the puzzle fell beautifully into place.

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The original rules I had developed back in 2003 were not so bad after all when viewed from this perspective: the Ships, with the addition of Ammunition and a cost, worked very well and fit the setting perfectly, becoming almost like an extra character; and the pirate theme, enriched by the films released in the intervening years, provided wonderful ideas such as Parley, the Kraken, and Davey Jones: concepts that were not invented by the screenwriters, but which those films helped bring to the general public. The “drifting” rule (draw a card as soon as you have no cards in your hand outside your turn) was introduced to avoid punishing players too severely for attacking and then being left defenseless, while also adding a great deal of unpredictability and many memorable situations.

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Two major obstacles remained: the endgame was either too slow or too predictable, and it proved impossible to balance even-numbered tables as satisfactorily as odd-numbered ones, since the sides were too asymmetrical and the dynamics were simply too different. After a couple of years of experimentation and endless discussions, I arrived at the introduction of the Corsair in place of the Pirate in games with four, six, and eight players: a fascinating Role, and one that is both challenging to play well and difficult to design. As for the ending, for about a year the most stable version had already featured the Ghost Ship haunting the players, but it was too slow because it skipped over players who had been sunk. Changing it into Davey Jones and making its effect apply even to players without a Ship dramatically shortened the game's duration, as if by magic, while also making it consistently stable. The final piece was finally in place.

In Port
Looking back, I am very satisfied with how it’s turned out. In terms of gameplay, I see Black Flag! as sitting halfway between BANG! and Samurai Sword: the former is raw and visceral, while the latter is more refined and lends itself to highly elaborate discussions among the players. Black Flag! reduces the need for speculation by making the score immediately visible to everyone, at the cost of giving up hidden Roles until the end: and, in my opinion, that is an entirely acceptable compromise.

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Above all, neither the classic strategies of the original game nor those of its Japanese-inspired successor apply here. As a result, this is, in every respect, a brand-new game with an identity entirely its own.

My only regret? Having to abandon my beloved Mutiny card. Unfortunately, it stubbornly refused to be balanced, and in the end, I had to cut it. Many people think that designing a game is all about coming up with one brilliant idea. In reality, it often means having the strength to let go of dozens of brilliant ideas that simply refuse to work in that particular context.

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It is amusing to think that the second derivative title for the BANG! System was already conceived back in 2003, yet had to wait more than twenty years before setting sail. Apparently, it simply had to find the right wind.

And who knows, perhaps one day the tide will finally turn for the Mutiny card as well.

Designer Diary: Tanglung

MarksmanGames — Sat, 10 Oct 2026 14:00:01 +0000

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 early Chinese Settlers, paper lanterns have been part of the Mid-Autumn Festival for centuries. Lighting up animal-shaped tanglung and carrying them around neighbourhoods together have now become a shared cultural experience for Malaysians.

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Tanglung Tokens
Tanglung is my first published game, developed by Evan CheahEvan Cheah, illustrated by Yuki Joe Gaik KeeYuki Doodles and published by LUMALUMA. It is a game that tries to capture the feelings of the final bit of chess where you are trying to corner the king.

To have a better idea of what I am talking about, here is a brief description of the rules.

Tanglung has minimalistic rules but it is a deceptively strategic and tactical game that exists mostly in the players heads. You have 18 cards (2 reference cards, 16 Tanglung cards, 1 fan (block) token, 2 player tokens). First to win two matches wins the game. To win a match you need to reveal the final facedown card, bump (capture) your opponent twice, or leave your opponent with no valid moves. You can either move 1 space orthogonally then move the fan token, or use the card you are on for its movement powers, then discard that card after use.

Limitation Breeds Creativity
There is a saying that necessity is the mother of invention. I like to think if that is so, limitation is the father of creativity. Tanglung started its life as an entry to the 2025 ABGF MY (Asian Board Game Festival Malaysia) 18 card game competition. During that time, I was already playing around with the notions of minimalism. Of ‘pack small and play big’, and the competition’s constraints of 18 cards with no extra components perfectly encapsulates that idea.

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Tanglung (formerly known as We Are Kings) won 1st runner up in the ABGFMY 2025 18 card competition
If I couldn’t have a big sprawling table presence I could still take up that play space not physically, but mentally. The game is represented in reality by 18 cards, but it exists in the yomi/donkey space that is the players minds.

Shedding Light On Its Purpose
Initial versions of this game were serviceable, but initial playtests had a recurring thread in the feedback. What was the point? The game was technically sound, but the possibilities felt endless and gameplay felt like busywork. It lacked a pulse.

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The prototype stage
In the beginning, the sole objective was capturing your opponent twice. But that felt more like a side effect rather than an objective. But through some deep soul-searching and playtesting revealed two more goals. Flipping the final facedown card when explored, and outwitting your opponent tactically by leaving them with no valid moves. Now the game has a direction.

3 Acts Told in 16 Cards
Cole Wehrle said that “Games are these weird narrative spaces. You can’t have beginnings, middles, and ends the way a story can have.” And I agree - but games still need progression.

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We Are Kings (Tanglung) was extensively tested both offline and online
At first all 16 cards were set up facedown. Players had a huge possibility space where every move felt as valid as every other. So I thought let’s have some cards face up - that signposted where players may want to go, and gave a shape to the decision space.

But it still felt static where the beginning of the game felt the same as the end. So then we added the rule that when you use the cards for their movement powers, they are then removed. Having cards be removed as you use them also helped to reduce mental load while also letting the game have an escalating tension.

[imageid=9768099 medium square]
Seeing the Lantern For the Trees: Letting Go
This part will be significantly different from the designer diary - as it was written before the game was released.

I have been in the creative industry for the bulk of my working life. I was no stranger to that delicate dance between your creation as a personal expression and as a professional and collaborative pursuit. Yet I would be lying if I said that it wasn’t a struggle.

As designers, we become attached to ideas, mechanics, and the stories we tell ourselves about our designs. Yet if I held on too tight and did not allow people into this space that is Tanglung; I believe it would not have made as much of an impact as it does.

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Tanglung gave Yuki the illustrator a reason to dive deep into the history, aesthetics and cultural significance of the lanterns to the Malaysian people. Tanglung gave LUMA a reason to share about the lanterns at the George Town Heritage festival. My mother-in-law was even interviewed as she made lanterns the traditional way when she was younger.

Gameplay wise I’ve seen the smiles that people had while playing the game, the laughter, and of course that face when you are locked in - brows furrowed, jaws clenched and for some people red faced, yet internally they are having the time of their lives (one of the inspirations for Tanglung was this exact feeling when I was playing Hive with a friend and we didn’t speak throughout the game but as soon as it ended we were laughing, teasing and giving play-by-play analysis of what went right and wrong).

Perhaps most humbling of all are the testimonials from players using Tanglung (which has a puzzly but cosy solo mode) to keep their minds active and comfort themselves in hospital wards post-op. That deeply moved me.

This is all a long-winded way of saying: If I hadn’t let go, Tanglung would have just been my game. But by letting people in, it became ours - a shared experience, with effects outgrowing the people involved.

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Tanglung is available at retail through “Play Play Asia” an onsite shop that curates tabletop games from across Asia.
It will be at Spiel 2026 in Essen, Germany. I will also be there (Say hi!)
We are working to get it available to be purchased online in the future.

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Designer Diary: Dungeon Cube

Craving — Fri, 09 Oct 2026 14:00:02 +0000

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 essentially do only two things: walk or lie down.
A tragedy.
Fortunately, at the time I was learning how to solve a Rubik's Cube. So I spent a lot of those days lying on the couch with the cube in my hands, turning it over and over, studying it, and trying to memorize the algorithms needed to solve it. After staring at it for long enough, one day a rather strange thought occurred to me:

"What if the creator had chosen these particular colors for a reason?"

What if yellow meant loot? Blue meant the sea? Red meant danger? Green meant open plains?
What if, all these years, we had been solving the cube as a simple puzzle without realizing that behind those colors there could have been a story of journeys, monsters, treasures, and adventures?

Of course, I didn't actually believe Ernő Rubik had hidden a fantasy game inside his cube. But the idea was there now.

One Face, One Tiny Adventure

There was one property of the cube that particularly fascinated me: the six center pieces always remain in the same position relative to one another. Everything else moves, rotates, and gets scrambled, but the centers do not. So I started imagining that each center could represent a hero, while the eight squares surrounding it formed a sort of micro-map. Suddenly, when I looked at one face of the cube, I could see a scene.

The yellow hero, for example, became a thief, specialized in recovering as much treasure as possible. There was a monster to his right. Another was approaching from the opposite corner, skirting the orange desert in front of him. Behind him, the sea blocked his escape, but to his left there was treasure waiting to be claimed.

All he had to do was defeat the monster beside him, and the loot would be his. Nine colored squares had become a tiny adventure.

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One of the first scenes I imagined while looking at a face of the cube: the yellow hero surrounded by monsters, terrain, and treasure.
The First, Gloriously Useless Prototype

At that point, I wanted to see the idea physically in front of me. I happened to own a LEGO cube onto which pieces could be attached on every side. I could even place a LEGO minifigure in the center of a face, which seemed perfect for representing the hero. It felt almost made for the job. So I built the first prototype of Dungeon Cube.

It didn't work.

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The first Dungeon Cube prototype. Much more useful for discovering what not to do than for actually playing the game.
The problem was that I needed to communicate far more information than those tiny LEGO pieces could convey. A monster, a chest, a trap, a coin, a mountain — on such a small space, each element needed to be recognizable immediately. LEGO pieces were either too abstract, or, when I tried to make them more descriptive, simply too large. I needed symbols.

From LEGO Pieces to Stickers

The second prototype kept the LEGO hero in the center of the face, but the other squares were replaced with stickers. Monsters, treasures, and obstacles could finally have a clear visual identity.

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The second prototype. Visually, it was getting much closer to the final idea — but the actual game was still missing.
Now I had a hero, and I had a vocabulary of symbols. The important question remained: What was the player actually supposed to do with them? My first idea was to connect the symbols physically to the hero. If a mission required the hero to equip a sword, the sword symbol should end up next to the minifigure's arm. If the hero had to confront a monster, that monster should be directly in front of him. And that was when the core mechanism of the entire game began to emerge:

Manipulate the cube to bring the right symbol into the right position.

The missions would give narrative meaning to those configurations. You were not simply moving symbol X into position Y: that symbol might be a sword the hero needed to wield, a monster they had to face, or a treasure they needed to reach. A configuration of nine squares could tell a story.

Giving the Colors a Meaning

At this point I returned to the question that had started the whole project: "What if these colors really did mean something?" I decided that each color should have its own thematic identity.

Red would contain monsters, dangers, and threats to fight or avoid.

Yellow would contain treasures, coins, gems, and other rewards.

Blue would represent the sea, water, and similar elements.

White would contain allies, help, and generally positive elements.

Green would represent travel and open spaces.

Orange would represent mountains, difficult terrain, and challenging routes.

These associations changed and evolved during development, but one thing I still find amusing is that the final version of Dungeon Cube remains surprisingly faithful to them. I now had the heroes, the symbols, the colors, and the missions.

It was time to actually play the game.

A Puzzle Wasn't Enough

The first tests were disappointing. Simply using a symbol's position relative to the minifigure wasn't precise enough. It wasn't always clear which square counted as being "in front" of the hero, when a monster was supposed to attack, when it could be defeated, or exactly what consequences it should have. I could have written everything explicitly on the mission card: "Move this symbol to exactly this square."
But then the game would have become: "I managed to get symbol X into position Y in three moves instead of four."

That wasn't what I wanted. I wanted the player to have a specific objective, but I also wanted things to happen while they were trying to accomplish it.
Perhaps while trying to reach a treasure, they would encounter a monster. Perhaps they would be forced across a mountain and suffer fatigue. Or perhaps they would unexpectedly discover something useful. The cube couldn't just be the puzzle. It also had to generate the consequences of solving that puzzle.
That was when I came up with what I called the connection points.

Connection Points

Every symbol on a movable square would have one or more small connection points. The hero's center square would have corresponding points of its own.
Whenever a connection point on an outer square lined up with a matching point on the hero, that symbol became active.

That was all I needed. Now you could look at your face of the cube and immediately understand what was happening.

- If the activated symbol was the one required by the mission, great.

- If it was a monster, you fought the monster.

- If it was an obstacle, you suffered its effect.

- If it was a bonus, even better.

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Connection points solved one of the fundamental problems of the design: they made it immediately clear which elements on the face were interacting with the hero.
For the first time, you could actually read a face of the cube. The system seemed to work. Then I ran into a much bigger problem.

Too Many Moves, Too Many Monsters, Too Much of Everything

I started writing more complicated missions. A mission might require, for example, two different symbols to be present on the same face at the same time. To create that kind of configuration, the player inevitably needed to make several moves. Initially, I resolved the hero's face after every single move.

It was a disaster.

Getting two symbols into the right positions could require a long sequence of rotations. Every rotation meant checking the face again, activating new symbols, fighting more monsters, and resolving more bonuses and penalties. A simple mission turned into an endless chain of effects. It was clumsy, slow, and almost impossible to control. This problem stopped development for weeks. I had the object. I had the concept. I had even found a way to turn the squares of the cube into a little story. But I couldn't turn it into a game that was actually enjoyable to play. I seriously considered abandoning the project.

The Solution Was Already Inside the Cube

Then, one day, I was back on the couch. I was studying algorithms for solving the Rubik's Cube when I noticed something that, of course, anyone familiar with the cube already knows: some algorithms allow you to rotate the lower layer — or even the two lower layers — without changing the upper face.
And suddenly I saw the solution. Not every move needed to have the same cost.

A player could freely make any number of moves that did not disturb their own face, while having only a limited number of moves that were allowed to change it.
In the version I was developing, this meant having two moves that could disturb your own face, plus unlimited moves that did not, before resolving it.

That one rule changed the entire game.

Complex missions could now be solved in a reasonable number of steps. Players could focus on the objective and manipulate the rest of the cube to prepare their position, but unexpected consequences still happened. I had finally found the balance I was looking for: enough control to make plans, but not enough control to prevent every surprise. That was probably the moment when Dungeon Cube actually started working as a game.

Six Faces, Six Heroes

I began writing missions and testing them.
But while working on them, another detail of the Rubik's Cube kept returning to my mind. There are six center pieces. And in my game, each center represented a hero. Until then, I had mostly thought of the game as an individual experience, but why not use all six faces? What if several players played on the same cube?

I loved the idea of the cube representing a single shared world viewed from different perspectives. Each player could have their own hero, their own face, and potentially their own asymmetric abilities. Starting from the mission system, the most natural multiplayer structure was a race. Everyone would try to complete the same mission, but each player would work from their own face of the cube. At the end of their turn, they would physically pass the cube to the next player. The first player to complete the objective would be the one who had managed to do it using fewer turns — and therefore fewer meaningful moves — than the others.

This was not a dexterity race. Nobody had to perform cube algorithms faster than anybody else. It was a race of efficiency. And during the first multiplayer tests, something appeared that I hadn't fully planned.

When you improve your own face of a Rubik's Cube, you inevitably change the others as well. In other words, while trying to help yourself, you are potentially making life more difficult for your opponents. With the rule allowing unlimited moves that did not disturb your own face, this could even become intentional. A player could use those "free" moves to leave as many problems as possible on the next player's face, forcing them to spend their precious moves clearing the obstacles. The interaction came directly from the physical structure of the cube. And once players became comfortable with the system, it was a lot of fun.

IDEAG

By this point, the prototype had almost reached its final mechanical form. I tested it with friends, collected feedback, and continued making changes. Eventually I brought it to IDEAG, the Italian gathering where board game designers bring prototypes to playtest and exchange feedback. That was when I noticed something I hadn't really been able to judge while testing mostly with people I already knew.

The prototype attracted people.

A Rubik's Cube turned into a board game was immediately curious. People would stop, look at it, and want to understand what it was and how it worked.
I received a lot of feedback there, and several of those suggestions found their way into later versions. The game worked. But there was still one thing that didn't feel right. Failing a mission was too frustrating.

Failing, but Becoming Stronger

That problem found its solution after the game was signed by Red Glove. Development was handled by Federico Dumas, who introduced an idea that completed the structure of the game: a roguelite-style progression system. If a player failed a mission, they would not simply start over from scratch. The failed attempt still earned them a reward that could be spent on bonuses and upgrades. On the next attempt, they would therefore be slightly stronger. If they failed again, they would gain even more tools to work with.

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Failure was no longer just a punishment. It had become part of the progression. This also meant that a particularly difficult mission could no longer become an impassable wall. You might not beat it on your first attempt, but by continuing to play you would gradually accumulate enough advantages to find a way through. That was the missing piece.

Six Heroes, One Story

At that point, the main mechanisms were finally in place. But the game still needed something I had not been able to give it myself: a real story capable of connecting all those missions. This was where Simona Lombardo joined the project. She wrote six stories, one for each of the game's heroes. Those six adventures were not separate stories. They intertwined into one larger epic narrative, with meetings, twists, and different endings. That narrative structure finally gave the missions something they had previously possessed only in embryonic form:

A context.

A reason to face them.

A world to be part of.

Dungeon Cube

Then came the illustrations, the final graphic design, and the components. And the little prototype born during a forced recovery — after passing through a LEGO cube, stickers, minifigures, connection points, countless tests, and more than a few moments when I thought the whole thing would never work — finally became:

Dungeon Cube: La Furia dei Drahakor
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Dungeon Cube: La Furia dei Drahakor in its final form.
Looking back, I find it amusing that so much of the final game was already hidden, although I couldn't possibly have known it at the time, inside the very first question I asked myself while lying on the couch with a Rubik's Cube in my hands:

"What if those colors really meant something?"

The Capsule Collector and the Azul Kids Played Codenames on Netflix for the Gunsen

boardgamersteph — Wed, 07 Oct 2026 16:00:02 +0000

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 experience, with teams competing to identify their agents based on one-word clues from their spymasters.
Case Studies (1–10 players): The mode that is tailored to everyone who prefers the guesser role in CODENAMES. Players compete with their friends in solving prepared puzzles.

CODENAMES Party is included with Netflix memberships at no additional cost, with no ads or in-app purchases.

]]>▪️ Office Dog released Gunsen: The Battle for Toshi Ranbo from designers Matthew O'Malley and Ben Rosset (Fromage & The Search for Planet X). This game plays 2-6 players and has a box playtime of 60-90 minutes. The race is on to complete 7 objectives first.

From BGG:

In Gunsen: The Battle for Toshi Ranbo, Rokugan teeters on the brink of upheaval as the Great Clans—the Crab, Crane, Dragon, Lion, Phoenix, Scorpion, and Unicorn—clash for control of the legendary fortress, Toshi Ranbo. Once a strategic gem on the borderlands, the castle now stands at the heart of a war-torn battlefield, its banners contested by rival warlords seeking glory and vengeance. The air hums with the tension of drawn steel and elemental magic, as ancient shrines smolder and village alliances shift like the wind.

In this strategy game, players take on the role of ambitious daimyō representing one of the seven Great Clans: recruiting samurai heroes, drafting powerful orders, and building their clan's military might and strategic influence. Through tactical maneuvers and clever engine-building, they strive to fulfill seven victory objectives—from capturing and holding the coveted castle to completing secret missions and claiming sacred locations. Only one clan will write its legend in the blood-soaked chronicles of Toshi Ranbo.

]]>▪️ Azul Kids from asmodee is available now! From designer Michael Kiesling (Azul). This is a new stand-alone game for children and families. Designed with kids in mind ages 5+, Azul Kids plays 2-4 players in 20 minutes.

From the Asmodee Website:

Welcome to the mosaic workshop! Sit down at your workbench and choose a mosaic you'd like to create. Collect pieces from the bowls and place them on your board. The winner is the first player to complete their mosaic!

MY FIRST MOSAIC WORKSHOP: Welcome young artists to their very own workbench! Azul Kids introduces children to the world of strategy as they choose a mosaic to create and collect colorful pieces to fill their personal boards.

]]>▪️ Capsule Collector will be one of many games found at Spiel from Korea Boardgames. Capsule Collector is a small box card game for 2-4 players and plays in 15 minutes. From designer Joohyun. Be sure to check out all the titles from Korea Boardgames!

From BGG:

Capsule Collector is a set-collection game for 2–4 players in which players compete to gather and open colourful toy capsules. Players draw cards from a deck and add them to a communal queue, then choose a colour and take all available cards of that colour to fill a 4×4 personal collection grid. Because cards are initially collected "capsule-side" up, players must strategically activate Action Tiles to flip them to their "toy-side" to score points. The game features a dynamic action system where the number of cards collected in a turn determines which tile is activated, and tiles are shifted after use to change the available actions for future turns. The game concludes when a player fills their 16-card grid, leading to a final scoring phase. Toys vary in rarity; for example, a colour set like red might contain three high-value "5-star" toys, five "3-star" toys, and ten "1-star" toys, which shifts the probability of a big score depending on the colour's total card count. To maximize points, players must use "Open" actions to flip connected groups of the same colour or spend Open Tokens for individual reveal.

Designer diary: NASCARD

Koyitaxs — Tue, 06 Oct 2026 14:00:01 +0000

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 a simple abstraction, but truly conveyed the feeling of driving on the edge, deciding when to push and when to preserve the car?
The answer came from combining a trick-taking system with a car race. A combination that allowed us to concentrate the decisions of each round on how to drive, how much to risk, and which resources to sacrifice to try and gain positions.

However, reaching the current system required a lot of testing, changes, and ideas that would eventually disappear. This is the story of how we went from a trackless race with seven asymmetrical suits to the final version of Nascard.

STARTING POINT

At SPIEL Essen 2023, we (Ferran Renalias and Guillem Coll) were presenting our first joint game, Trekking, published by TCG Factory. That year, Ferran was in the spotlight, as his game Lacrimosa, published by Devir, was one of the sensations of the fair. Devir was also presenting their new 'Pocket' games, a line of small-box, economical games that particularly caught our attention.

I knew Ferran was passionate about Flamme Rouge—he always brings it to meetups along with all its expansions—and that year I was playing a lot of Heat. So I started mulling over an idea: could we bring the feelings we loved from those games into a Pocket box?

Once I had a first idea, I proposed it to Ferran, and we started working on it together.

FOUR PREMISES
Before starting to build prototypes, we defined four ideas that we wanted to serve as the foundation for Nascard. Each one addressed one of the challenges the project presented:

- How to represent a race without a board

- How to differentiate it mechanically

- How to convey the theme

- How to create interaction between the drivers

1. No Track → The Space Problem

In racing games, the main component is usually the track. Since we couldn't fit a board inside the box, the first challenge was how to represent movement and the distance between cars without a physical track.

The initial idea was to dispense with it entirely and represent only the relative distance between the drivers. If a car had a better turn than the one behind it, it would place a space card between them; if it was better than the one ahead, it would remove one and, if there weren't any left, it would overtake it.
With this minimalist system, we thought we could accurately represent the back-and-forth of a race. Later on, we would discover that it created more problems than it solved.

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2. Trick-taking → The Main Mechanics Problem

The second challenge was finding a mechanic that would set Nascard apart from traditional racing games. Ferran proposed an initial premise: making the race work through a trick-taking system.

We didn't know of any game that combined these two concepts, and it seemed like an interesting way to turn every round into a battle between the drivers. But we were clear about one thing: the trick-taking couldn't be an abstract mechanic— it had to be the engine of the race.

3. Suit Abilities → The Thematization Problem

This brought us to the third challenge: how to prevent the trick-taking from being just an abstract card system with a racing theme slapped on top?
To achieve this, each suit needed to have an ability tied to car management: tires, fuel, overtaking, and so on. Suits wouldn't just be a way to determine who wins each trick— playing a card would also mean deciding how to drive.

4. Turn Order → The Interaction Problem

Finally, we wanted the order of play to convey race feelings as well. Instead of a start player and clockwise order, turn order would be determined by the position of the cars: the driver in first place plays first, followed by second place, and so on. Beyond making thematic sense, this introduces a minor catch-up mechanism: cars behind can see what the ones ahead have done before making their decision. Just like in a real race, the lead car chooses its line first, and the others can react to it.

These four premises defined what we wanted to achieve. Now all that was left was to find a system that made it all work.

EVOLUTION OF THE TRICK-TAKING SYSTEM

The main challenge was creating a trick-taking system that was interesting enough on its own, yet at the same time fit the feelings of a race. We didn't want to simply use tricks to determine who moved forward the most; we wanted every decision in the game to convey the feeling of deciding when to push and when to preserve the car.

The First Version
At the beginning, we proposed a system of seven suits with values from 1 to 9, featuring a specific ability per suit and a varying number of cards (from three to nine cards).
The card of the suit that set the round acted as trump and received a +3 to its value. Thus, a trump 5 became an 8 and could beat a 7 of another suit, while a trump 1 would still lose against a 7.
The idea had a lot of potential, but we quickly realized there were too many different abilities and that the system was hard to control and balance. We decided to simplify it and moved to five suits with 10 cards each.

The Stage System
At this point, we introduced a stage system to add more variety to the rounds. Each round, a stage card was revealed, determining rewards based on your final position in the trick: you would move forward more or fewer spaces and could recover or expend fuel on a track.

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However, despite all these variants, we still hadn't quite found the kind of decision we were looking for. We wanted players to ask themselves: 'Do I go all out this round, or do I save the car and drive less aggressively?

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Early stages of the trick-taking
The Key: Trump or Ability
And that question led us to what would become the key to the final system. If you play trump, you drive aggressively and move forward more; if you play another suit, you move forward less, but you can take advantage of its ability. From there, we also simplified the stage system. Each round, the winner of the trick moves forward 6 spaces, the second place moves 5, the third 4, and so on down to sixth place, who only moves 1.

This simplification made the decision much clearer: do you want to compete to win the trick and move forward more, or do you prefer playing another suit to take advantage of its ability? And above all, this decision was directly tied to how we wanted the driving to feel.

The Four Suits
With the system more defined, we had to balance the abilities of the four suits so that all of them were equally powerful, incorporating a thematic leitmotif into each one:

Yellow - Power: allows you to move extra spaces.

Orange - Fuel: allows you to draw cards from the deck.

Grey - Tires: allows you to recover worn-out cards in front of you.

Blue - Leadership: allows the card to always act as a trump.

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Four ability variants - orange suit (prototype version)
And built upon this scheme, we also created four ability variants for each suit—preserving their character and core function, but varying their power and requirements from one game to the next.
That way, the trick-taking stopped being merely the system that determined who moved forward the most and became the engine behind driving decisions: pushing hard, saving resources, taking risks to win the trick, or letting it go to leverage an ability instead.

EVOLUTION OF CAR WEAR
We were clear that, to convey the feelings we were looking for, Nascard couldn't just be a trick-taking game where whoever places best in the trick moves forward the most. We needed the car to experience some wear, and for driving decisions to have real consequences.

The first approach was a very simple fuel management system, with a small track that forced players to find a balance between spending and recovering fuel. But we quickly noticed a problem: it isn't very thematic to recover fuel simply by driving. If we wanted to keep that system, we would need to introduce pit stops.

And that's where an idea popped up that fascinated us: instead of managing fuel, we could manage car wear by introducing a tire card directly into our own hand.
The system was based on two very simple rules: you couldn't change the order of the cards in your hand, and you could only play cards that were to the right of the tire card.

At the start of the game, the tire card was placed all the way to the left, so you had all cards available. When you played certain cards—especially when following trump and pushing the car to move forward more—you had to wear down your tires and slide the tire card to the right. Any cards left to its left were no longer available. The more you pushed the car, the fewer options you had left to keep driving. And when you needed to recover, you could make a pit stop: draw new cards and slide the tire card all the way back to the left.

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We loved the idea because the wear wasn't an abstract tracker: it was physically right there in your hand, directly affecting which cards you could play. However, during playtests we discovered it had a major flaw.

It restricted players' options too much. They often ended up with very few available cards, which created a frustrating experience. On top of that, since you had to handle the cards to move the cars and manage other actions, maintaining their strict order without messing it up was an added headache.

That's why we decided to simplify the system and remove the tire card. Now, all cards in your hand are always available, but when an action requires you to wear down your tires, you choose and place the affected cards in front of you. These cards remain temporarily out of play, and you can recover them when you make a pit stop or when you use a grey suit ability.

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And we were still missing one element to represent: fuel. Instead of turning it into another track, we decided to allow certain actions to burn fuel by permanently discarding a card from your hand. That card can no longer be recovered for the rest of the race.

This way, we ended up with two distinct forms of wear: tires limit you temporarily, while fuel permanently reduces your options. And both are a direct consequence of the decisions you make during the race.

EVOLUTION OF THE TRACK
As mentioned earlier, our starting point was to create a racing game that relied on the relative position of the cars rather than moving them around a physical track board. In early versions, we used a system of adding or removing space cards between cars, but we quickly realized it created too many edge cases and exception rules. On top of that, constantly adding and removing cards felt clunky and tedious.

We then tested several alternatives. In one of them, the cars moved down a straight track with multiple lanes, using trick-taking cards to switch lanes and hunt for open spaces. It was more tangible, but at the end of each round we had to reposition the cars to maintain the gaps between them, making the system impractical.

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In the end, we accepted that maybe we didn't need to reinvent the track and decided to build it simply with cards. Each track card provides space for two cars-one in the inside lane and one in the outside lane. But what happens when a third car tries to occupy the exact same space? Well… things get bumpy!

Stock car racing has a key feature that fit our system perfectly: contact and bumps between cars. That's how collisions were introduced, eventually becoming just another part of the race.

In the end, the simplest solution turned out to be the best one: a track built with cards that allowed us to represent the race in a tangible way, without sacrificing the pocket-sized spirit of the project.

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SOLO PLAY AND LOW PLAYER COUNTS
From the start, we wanted Nascard to work well at different player counts, but there was an obvious issue: with only two or three cars on the track, part of the tension and interaction we were looking for got lost. The solution was to create an automa that could add extra cars to the race. This way, it not only allows for solo play, but you can also use it in two or three-player games to fill out the grid and make the race more competitive.

However, we wanted to avoid creating a complex automa that required a lot of its own rules. The automa needed to behave almost identical to any other car in the race, use the same system as the players, and most importantly, enrich the decisions you have to make while playing the game.

The solution (after numerous iterations) was as simple as placing a card in front of each automa at the start of every turn. By doing this, you can see the suit played on the card back, but not its value. Five seconds of maintenance, bringing extra tension to the game. A natural extension of the core racing system that also lets you adjust the intensity in lower player counts.

WORKING WITH DEVIR
A few months after that SPIEL Essen game fair, we pitched the game to Devir. Fortunately, the proposal fit their Pocket line and we began a new development phase—this time working alongside Diego San Martín.

Reaching this stage didn't mean the game was finished, though. One of the most interesting parts of the process was seeing how the game continued to evolve with a fresh pair of eyes. We worked to polish the ability cards as well as the turn order, ensuring everything ran as cleanly as possible.

The illustration and graphic design were handled by Meeple Foundry, who, as with all their projects, did an incredible job, giving the game a spectacular look.

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And that brings us to the end of the journey: from an initial idea of making a trackless race to a complete racing game packed into a 100-card deck.
This SPIEL, we'll be presenting Nascard, and we hope to have achieved what we set out to do back in 2023: capture the thrill and feel of big racing games, all inside a... Pocket box.

We hope you enjoyed this designer diary, and above all, that those of you who try the game enjoy playing it as much as we enjoyed creating it.

Ferran i Guillem

Please Pass the Combo

whenindoubteatout — Mon, 05 Oct 2026 06:00:01 +0000

by Justin Bell

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“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 designers themselves in a recent Designer Diary posted here on BGG, Timespan is a peaceful, simultaneous play civilization game. Now that I’ve played it, Timespan has a few similarities to the recent “conveyor belt” civ game Ancient Knowledge.

While I enjoyed Ancient Knowledge, I think Timespan is the game that will connect with more players, in large part due to its excellent—and exceptionally clean—action and resource management systems, its setup variety, a unique batch of cards, and a very straightforward teach.

That, and the combos. Oh my goodness, the combos.

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As I placed Timespan into the permanent collection—seven plays in, it’s safe to say that Timespan is a keeper—I looked at my other games that offer sexy, combotastic things I look for, especially when the player count stays low.

The player count bit is worth noting, because as much as I love combos, I don’t like to wait for every other player in a four-player game to finish combos of their own. So, give me my combos, but all I need is enough time to figure out my next series of combos…ideal for a two-, maybe three-player operation.

The loaded combo plate game I come back to the most is Tiletum, a Board&Dice release designed by Daniele Tascini and Simone Luciani. I love Tiletum because I love dice and I love combos…but, I generally avoid Tiletum at its full, four-player count. Two or three players? Perfect. That way, I can wrap up a turn, start milling on the ways I can attack my next turn based on the dice left on the action wheel, and by the time I have a few thoughts, bam: I’m up again.

It’s the moment during any combo-rich turn, when you unleash your genius on the rest of the table (stay with me here), that I love most. “I’m going to take the light blue die, which gives me six iron, but only one action point, to take the Merchant action. But thanks to that move I made earlier, I have a +3 bonus action point marker for Merchant actions, so that gives me a total of four action points.”

At this moment, your friends might be giving you the side-eye…but, no matter. Remember: you are a genius.

“I’m going to use a bonus tile to take a two-point Architect action, so that I can move into position to use the iron and some stone I picked up on a previous turn. Then, I’m going to hoover up a couple more action tiles, then build this pillar in Firenze but also fulfill a contract with that iron I just picked up…”

And on and on. In a game of Tiletum, there will be three or four times—maybe more, depending on the players’ skill levels—where you feel like the queen of the world, the king of the castle, a noble of distinction, as you round out a turn with a final, massive VP salvo of scoring bombs that will make you say something out loud akin to “the prosecution rests, your honor.”

And it will feel good. No…it will feel great.

Sometimes, it’s not even about winning the game. It’s about setting up the massive combo plate that you will deliver late in the third round of a four-round epic, by—depending on the game—moving your pieces into place at just the right moment to sell everything you can all at once, or spend six workers across two action areas to fulfill two huge public milestones and trigger end-game scoring for the card tableau that’s been waiting to explode for a few turns now.

Now, watching another player’s combo can lead to mixed emotions, certainly like what I mentioned at the start of this article. “Track envy” might kick in as you watch another player’s combo land them at the end of a 15-space track that you have no chance of reaching. Or, you might celebrate another player’s huge turn with an envious, mocking round of applause as you wonder how that player was able to accomplish so many crucial game elements with a single worker. Or, you might just nod in approval, as you wrap up combos of your own.

I have called out my love affair with Rats of Wistar here before; SETI: Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence is another combo plate special. Sometimes, the combos are small, but I still love them, in games as varied as En Route, Inventions: Evolution of Ideas, or Yokohama. When one thing gets me even a single other thing that allows me to trigger an action I otherwise could not, I want to taste that moment…because I want to feel clever as I can.

Combos give you that. And Timespan…Timespan has a LOT of that.

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Like the best combo-rich environments, Timespan offers a very nice, slow burn that crescendos into a final round that many of you will need to experience in order for it to be believed. I’ve now seen games where it feels like reaching 75 points will be a struggle before the fifth and final action phase…then the game ends, and you look up to see that you have 133 points. Or maybe a lot more.

It is for this reason that I think many players, media, and industry types will have Timespan on their end-of-year top 10 lists. As the Diary indicated, Timespan is the kind of medium-weight Euro with zero direct conflict. As much as I love direct conflict in other games, Timespan is very clearly going for a different angle—”peace” is a trackable, scorable resource—and many people in my network are looking for a game that can be just as robust solo as it can be with other players.

So, come for the setting and the theme as a race through history, although I would admit that Timespan doesn’t really feel like a civ game. Fine, but stay for the combos.

During one of my multiplayer games, I showed the new players how a first round could look, and even during that sampling of gameplay, the two other people sitting with me began to see the magic of getting resources, then using the upgrade system to buy basic resources like wood or spending them to upgrade different resources, to then have enough resources to buy that card you thought was out of reach in the game’s first round.

With an expanded worker pool and an action tableau unique to each player, Timespan dials up the combos to fever pitch even by its third action phase. From time to time, I would look up and see other players literally giggling with excitement as they were messing around with their tableau. Luxury tiles boost action strength. Advancing on any of the game’s five tracks (science, culture, spaceship, balloon, and ship) might offer bonuses that change the scope of that round in real time. A player’s tech board might have a one-time bonus that feeds the start of a new combo.

Getting all of this into a 90-minute package (or about an hour when playing solo) is quite a feat…but, again, simultaneous play changes everything. Now I see why so many designers are coming up with ways to squeeze these efficiency engine-building experiences into tighter timeframes: everyone loves the puzzle, and no one likes the waiting.

Love a good combo? I’d love to hear from you. What are some of your favorites? And do we need to add a “combo” family to the BGG categories we use to track games?

Publisher Diary: Fadenfroh

Nebenerwerbsbauer — Sun, 04 Oct 2026 14:00:01 +0000

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 playtest together every week.

Could the story start in 2024 when Jordy Adan (Cartographers, Fliptoons) and Alex have their first playtest of their game together after working on it since 2019?

Maybe it starts already in 2015 when I sink my axe (rule) into the prototype that would later become the Kennerspiel des Jahres 2016 winning Isle of Skye, that Alex co-designed with Andreas Pelikan.

No matter where the story starts. It jumps right into action after my first playtest a week after I saw the game on Alex's table.

It's 11pm on a hot summer night a few days after I have seen the game for the first time. Most other designers had already left our weekly game design meeting. Alex and I sit down. He pulls out what can only be described as a creative collage of sleeves. The start player marker is missing; he improvises with a glue cap. Who needs a fancy prototype, sell sheet or pitch video, when the gameplay is awesome?

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Alexander Pfister and the glue cap in June 2025
Alex keeps the glue cap but I leave with the prototype in my backpack. Five days later the contract for the game is signed. Not offered, signed. It's true love at first play.

From now on Jordy, Alex and I meet for digital playtests at least once a week. The game is already done, but there is always room for pushing further. Meanwhile we start brainstorming. The designers would like to keep the historic theme based on the tapestry of Bayeux, but I have a clear vision.

Fadenfroh is a simple tile laying game (actually it´s cards) with an interactive selection mechanic and the ABCD scoring system many of us have fallen in love with. Given the commercial success and critical acclaim of the two “parent” games, Isle of Skye and Cartographers, I want to make sure that the game is as accessible as possible. Inviting new players into the hobby and showing them the beauty, elegance and finesse of modern board games is what we have tried since 1 More Time Games released Riftforce in 2020.

In its core Fadenfroh is an abstract game, but with a very thematic and fun mechanic, that allows players to circumvent the placement rules of the cards in the game. So it´s only logical that my thoughts drift towards Azul and Splendor, games that changed how I see abstract games. They don't have to be cold, black and white. It´s possible to develop and package a brutal and elegant game into a warm, beautiful and inviting product. Castle Combo and Faraway enter my mind from another angle, by showing how much gameplay you can pack in a small box while still keeping the playfulness and making sure that gaming stays affordable even in times of economic hardship.

Influenced by all those games, we discuss and try themes that support the mechanics and the reading of the game state, one of the most important things in any (tile laying) game. Julia Beutling joins the team as our illustrator soon after and makes sure that beauty and usability are always interwoven. Fadenfroh will be her first game we actually release, after being the third that she illustrated for 1 More Time Games, but that is a story for another day.

The first quotes from the factory land in my mailbox and solutions need to be found. How can we limit certain components to create room for the deluxe treatment I want the game to have? What should the glue cap from my first playtest become? Strom Manufacturing (you may know their excellent productions from Gloomhaven or most of CMYKs catalog) steps in and helps whenever I get lost in what's possible and what´s affordable.

How far can we go? Wolfgang Warsch one night puts his game Figment on the table. Now I know that I need the same chunky whiteboard tokens for our game. The central selection mechanic of Fadenfroh has so many “who blinks first” moments, which would profit from something to clinch to and nervously play with (like we all love to do it with poker chips or other heavy coins).

Click, Clack, Click, Clack. The tokens fill the room with their sound. While the production cost piles up on the other side of the scale. Deluxe components cost deluxe prices. Recent years have seen prices rise everywhere but we want the game to be affordable for as many people as possible. As a small indie publisher from Austria, we can't calculate with the economics of scale the big publishers can. We only have one wheel to adjust and it´s our own profit margin.

Running a company can be an awesome thing, but it also means that you need to take risks. Every big decision asks the question: Do I believe in this? Because how should anyone else believe in your games if you don't do it yourself? And as I mentioned above. This isn't a story about believing. It's about love.

Love is powerful. It lets you do the things you can tell stories about. It creates moments and connections. Love takes over the wheel and drives away from our profit margin directly into UV printed wooden discs you usually only see in crowdfunded games.

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From left to right: greyboard tokens (unknown), wooden discs (generic), greyboard tokens (Fadenfroh test), whiteboard tokens (Figment), UV printed 5mm wooden discs (Fadenfroh final)
But let's slow down. Until those wooden discs start competing against other materials we still need to figure out the theme. We discussed all kinds of settings, crafts, and arts. Some come with great titles attached, others just show the beauty of Austria, Germany, or Brazil, the three countries where Alex, Julia and Jordy are from.

Weeks pass by. Theme is not the only challenge. Fadenfroh is a very unusual tile laying game. Most other tile laying games that feature some kind of set collection, use 1-3 backgrounds with different icons that are unique to the background or all belong to one category. Alex and Jordy wanted more. They needed nine different icons in three categories, some extra icons and all of them should work on three different backgrounds while still being easy to distinguish (and looking beautiful).

What follows are weeks of sketches, sketches and more sketches. Right away Julia builds a test card display so that we can always look at all icons and backgrounds interacting with each other in the way players would see them in front of them. It only takes us 113 different versions of those displays until we are happy. Somewhere between all those versions we accept that the theme of threads, garments and stitching just makes the most sense.

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Three out of 113 different displays that Julia Beutling created
We try different approaches. Julia shows the wide range of styles she can excel in. For one version we combined three different techniques to “paint” on garments. I still remember the night when we finished it and I thought we finally nailed it. The following feedback proved me wrong. One of those moments where you have to accept the journey.

You fall down and you stand up again. Making games is hardly ever a linear process. You start somewhere. Then feedback and a lot of good and bad ideas happen. We listen and we learn. A few versions later we have picked the technique that most people can resonate with: Embroidery. The circle closes itself. From Bayeux over historic gardens through ([o]Top Secret - so we can maybe do a game with this theme in the future[/o]) to finally arrive at needle and thread again.

What did we lose on the way? A lot of historic ballast, horses, knights, kings and wars. Instead we found a small garden in the middle of summer. Full of dewy berries, cute animals and colorful flowers. Julia's mother Bettina, my business partner's mother-in-law Mika, and our graphic designer Andrea Kattnig (all three of them very versed in different arts and crafts connected to fabrics and fashion) make sure that we get things “right”. At least as right as you can be when putting a theme onto an abstract game. I am looking at you Mr. Thimble formally known as glue cap.

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Alexander Pfister and Mr. Thimble in September 2026
Throughout the art process I start thinking a lot about the highly complex and creative works of craftpersons that have been declared a past time, reduced to their function or seen as decorative without being real “art”. My grandmother comes to my mind as she used to be really talented with needle and thread. In the last years of her life she was still climbing mountains in the Austrian alps and creating bobbin laces: A form of textile art so complex that even a playthrough of the heaviest Pfister games seems like a stroll through a garden.

My family helps me to find some of her works and Julia manages to turn them into a small illustration for the side of the game box that now pays homage to my grandmother and all the other people who enrich our lives with their ~~craft~~ art.

There is so much more to say, but …

I lost the thread.

Hopefully, you got at least a small and very personal insight into how Fadenfroh came to be.

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Bobbin lace pattern by my grandmother

Designer Diary: From Spore to Underwood

Khoril — Sat, 03 Oct 2026 14:00:02 +0000

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 came alive. I knew there was potential, but I couldn’t find the right direction.

At the beginning of 2025, during the winter holidays, I decided to reach out to Andrea Mainini. We had known each other for years but had never designed a game together. With IDEAG—the annual gathering of Italian game designers in Parma—just around the corner, I proposed a challenge: build something playable in just a few days, and develop it live during the event.

Ambitious? Definitely. But Andrea said yes immediately.

After a few online discussions, we aligned on a rough direction. Then Andrea showed me his first prototype—and everything changed. Gone were the hex grids. In their place was a lush, organic vision: mushrooms, a modular board made of leaf-covered tiles, and polyomino pieces of different shapes and sizes. The game already had a strong visual identity and, more importantly, a soul.

It was the moment when the project stopped being an experiment and started becoming Underwood.

Two Days at IDEAG

At IDEAG, we dove in completely. For two intense days, we playtested constantly, with different player counts and a rotating cast of designers joining our table—sometimes late into the night.

One particularly important contribution came from Ignazio Panades, an expert in abstract games, whose insights helped us refine key aspects of the system. We’re truly grateful for his support, as well as for all the other designers who took the time to try the game and share their thoughts.

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The atmosphere was exactly what makes events like IDEAG special: open, collaborative, and full of creative energy.

The game evolved rapidly. We moved through many versions in quick succession:

- Simpler versions, focused on clarity

- More complex ones, exploring depth

- Calm and strategic builds

- Others where aggressive play made the experience surprisingly fierce

One of the biggest turning points in this phase came when we realized we had initially pushed the game too far in a very specific direction. Early versions were deliberately aggressive, built around powerful chain reactions that could dramatically shift the board in a single turn.

While some players found this approach exciting, others perceived it as too unpredictable to be truly enjoyable. This feedback led us to rethink the core structure of player actions.

We eventually developed a system based on two distinct actions, each with a limited impact. The key was introducing a cost tied to the height of the stack on which a player’s token was placed—naturally preventing overly powerful moves and keeping the game within a more manageable and readable space.

Each iteration taught us something. Each change brought us closer to understanding what the game wanted to be. And with every test, the feedback kept improving.

Over those two intense days at IDEAG, we went through no fewer than 15 significantly different versions of the game, gradually refining the design until we reached a balance capable of engaging both casual players and more dedicated abstract-game enthusiasts.

A Turning Point

Then something unexpected happened.

We had the chance to show the game to a publisher. They sat down, played a full game… and immediately asked for another. By the end of the second play, they were enthusiastic enough to take a copy of the prototype with them.
Although that collaboration didn’t move forward, it was a defining moment for us. It confirmed that the game wasn’t just working—it was resonating.

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Refining the Vision

After IDEAG, we continued developing the prototype. Our goal was to make the game accessible to a wider audience, without losing the depth and the identity we had built through those intense days of iteration.

It was a careful balancing act: simplifying where necessary, but never at the cost of what made the game unique.

Finding the Right Home

In the summer of 2025, we presented Underwood to Reiner from dlp games. We had worked together before, and I had a strong feeling this game would speak to him.

After thorough testing, we reached an agreement.

Reiner and his team brought the game to the next level. Their development work refined and enriched the experience in meaningful ways. In particular, I really appreciate the addition of clearings and trees—elements that weren’t part of our original design. They expand the game’s possibilities and give it a broader, more dynamic feel.

Looking Back

Underwood is the result of a fast start, intense collaboration, and countless iterations. It grew from a stubborn mechanic into a living system, shaped by feedback, experimentation, and shared passion.

Like the forest it represents, it didn’t emerge all at once—but layer by layer, decision by decision, until it became something truly alive.

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Designer Diary: Triangulation

PeterCHayward — Fri, 02 Oct 2026 14:00:02 +0000

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 (without seeing the second word) make a guess.

Then, the other team sees the second word and makes a guess.

I am a huge fan of Decrypto. I’d consider it a perfect game, except it has one flaw: it’s a nightmare to teach. I’m always the one teaching games, which has given me SUCH an affection for games that make my life easier.

Decrypto, for all its brilliance, does the opposite. But you can see in the above my attempt to make an easier-to-teach Decrypto. I called it Hash, based on my limited understanding of cybersecurity.

The game didn’t work: ‘two clues to guess any word in the world’ is too much of a challenge, and the four-step process was far too much work for a party game. In trying to simplify Decrypto, I’d managed to make something even less intuitive. Impressive!

But there was something there. In one playtest, my friend Sean gave the perfect set of two clues:

—Tiny
—Arms

In isolation, neither of them mean anything, but together? Everyone immediately, correctly, guessed T. Rex. It was everything I wanted from the game—the idea was working, I just didn't know how to execute it.

But what if I could make that moment repeatable? I brought Hash out for my design group a few times before eventually joining my pile of ‘Cool idea, pity it doesn’t work’ ideas, like Future Traders or For Every Card, There Is A Season.

Years passed, until one day, the solution came to me:

Three.

The original idea relied on the opponent's team leader to choose which clue to give, so you couldn’t just write “Big scary dinosaur, you know the one, the first one you're thinking of” on one card and “Ignore this clue” on the other. In an attempt to solve the “wow that’s a lot of steps” problem, I’d tried skipping the selection phase, having the player just shuffle their two cards and reveal one.

Even with a 50/50 chance of revealing the ‘good’ clue, I found that players were happy to take that chance. The tricksy thing about players is that if you offer them a choice between ‘engaging with the game in a fun way’ and ‘winning’, they’ll almost always choose winning. Humans are just wired like that—not a criticism, just a fact.

90% of design fighting against this human impulse, and ensuring the engaging, fun way to play your game is also the winning path.

Two? People were happy to take a 50/50 cance. But three?

If you had to write three clues, then you could reveal two to the other team before your own team guesses, and your chance of randomly having the ‘one good clue’ be the last one given was only 33%—well below the threshold of “Oh I’ll just chance it”.

I threw some whiteboards in a bag, went to a playtest day, and four hours later, the game I’d been chasing for years was working.

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I’ve never had a game come together so quickly. Now, those four hours stood on the shoulders of three years of thinking about it, and I was extremely fortunate to spend those hours with several of the best designers I know. But even so: everything clicked so quickly, and it almost immediately became my favorite of my own designs.

]]>
(I knew I was onto something when I later showed the game to Alex Cutler, my frequent co-designer, and immediately after playing, he swore. A jealous “Damn you, this is perfect” is still the best design compliment I’ve ever received.)

For the first hour or two of playtesting, I was just throwing words out: “soap”, “apple”, “the Pope”. And I was lucky to be playtesting with Damon Stea, who spotted that round with "The Pope" as the answer was far more interesting than any of the clues that came before or after it.

What if all the words were proper nouns?

Not only did this improve the game (Design tip: try to improve your game) but it gave it a point of difference. Aside from Charades and similar games (Monikers, Time’s Up) I couldn’t think of any ‘guess the word’ games that only included proper nouns as the answers.

This made the development process so much more complicated (shoutout to John Brieger, Jeff Fraser, Breeze Grigas, and Joe Wiggins for the countless hours they’ve spent refining and playtesting the word list) but was absolutely worth it. In the final game, you draw a card with six options and choose one to clue each round.

A fun quirk of Triangulation is that you can’t work out the perfect set of clues and use them again if the word comes back around. If everyone knows them, the other team does too… and they get to guess first.

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My girlfriend loves horses, so I pitched Triangulation to Allplay with a horse theme (Triple Crown, you’re trying to communicate the name of the winning horse without anyone else realizing what you’re doing). I don’t think Joe has ever hated a theme so much, and my second pitch (Triple-Factor Authentication) wasn’t much better.

Instead, Joe hired the incomparable Kwanchai Moriya to bring it into a neon world of 80’s hackers instead. Getting to work with Kwanchai has been a decade-long aspiration come true.

There’s nothing else quite like Triangulation, and the design process is unlike anything I’ve worked on before. After three years with no progress, it fell into place in four hours, and it gives me hope that one day, I’ll wake up in the middle of the night and figure out the missing piece to make my other shelved games work. Maybe Future Traders has a future!

The Fugo love the Braided Skies of the Emerland and Smoky Mountains

boardgamersteph — Wed, 30 Sep 2026 16:00:02 +0000

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, a vibrant land known for its artistic and musical culture, and for its abundance of natural resources, including valuable gems mined from its many underground caverns. Tiny critters found here — mostly insects — are fastidious and clever Helpers, often assisting the larger critters in their work and in optimizing or bringing beauty to their cities and homes.

The jungles are vast and dense, and expeditions into the further realms of the land are undertaken often. There was once a mysterious civilization that dwelt here, long lost to history, but archaeological discoveries are beginning to shed a light on the ancients.

In Emerland, you send critter Workers to various locations on the board to gather resources. You use these resources to play cards face-up in front of you, forming your jungle city and helping you to score points. Each turn, you take one of 6 possible actions: Place a Worker (with or without Helpers), Place a Helper, Play a Card, Use an Artisan Card, Excavate with your Archaeologist or Prepare for Season.

]]>▪️ Stonemaier Games announced the release of their big Euro game Braided Skies to be available this November, from designer Dan Germain (Grand Central Skyport). This game plays 1-5 players and has a box playtime of 60-90 minutes. Sounds like we will expect to see more in this Smoking Bones universe!

From the newsletter:

In Braided Skies, you take on the role of an airship captain in the Shallows, seeking to build the greatest magical travel company in the Northlands. Your mission involves exploring land and sky for new wonders, upgrading your travel company operations, and picking up tourists—all while maintaining a steady supply of tapstones, the magical gems that fuel the Northlands. Accumulate fame to become the Commodore of the Clouds!

This is the first in a series of games set in the Smoking Bones universe created and illustrated by Andrew Bosley (Everdell, Tapestry, etc). Braided Skies is designed by Dan Germain.

]]>▪️ Forest Shuffle: Smoky Mountains from Lookout Games is coming out this October! From designer Kosch (Forest Shuffle). This is a new stand-alone game that uses most of the same mechanics you find in the other Forest Shuffle games, with an added river mechanic. If you thought the other Forest Shuffle games were gorgeous, you will not be disappointed with the Smoky Mountains foliage and wonderful art by Toni Llobet & Judit Piella. This game is played by 2-5 players in 60 minutes.

From BGG:

A new continent awaits in the Forest Shuffle universe: After exploring Central Europe in Forest Shuffle and the wilds of southern England in Forest Shuffle – Dartmoor, this new standalone game invites players on a journey to North America.

As the third standalone game in the Forest Shuffle series, Forest Shuffle - Smoky Mountains takes us to this popular North American National Park. Building on the familiar gameplay of the series, it introduces new species and clever twists in mechanics. This keeps the experience as fresh as the bubbling waters on the new terrain cards!
Here’s what Forest Shuffle – Smoky Mountains is all about:

New terrain types centered around water, playable on their own or tucked as universal waters under trees.
New synergies between flora and fauna, all revolving around the element of water
In addition to a variety of species around the water, the game is also home to various large animals, such as black bears or bobcats.

]]>▪️ Fugu debuts at Spiel from Helvetiq. From father and son designers Flavio Foches and Riccardo Foches, this is a small box card game for 1-4 players and plays in 25 minutes.

From BGG:

Bannerfish love sticking closely to their buddies. Pufferfish prefer their space. Keep bannerfish together and pufferfish apart! Octopus and coral also play an important role in your biome, so place them wisely to score more points. Score by building the best hand. But here’s the twist: everyone starts with face-down cards and must slot new cards into their hand in ascending order, revealing their strategy one card at a time.

1. Start with your cards face-down. Draw a card from the center.
2. Place it face-up in ascending order. Then reveal the adjacent card.
3. Keep your sea dwellers happy to win, but avoid penalties.

Who will dive the smartest and reel in the most points?

Designer Diary: Bake or Break

cafestorybook — Wed, 30 Sep 2026 14:00:01 +0000

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 different story.

]]> Inside Cafe Storybook
[heading]From Playing Games to Making One[/heading]
Outside of running the cafe, I like playing board games with my friends and going to board game events. After I opened the cafe, I started hosting board game events there as well. I wanted to create a place where people could meet, play together, and share that happy time around a table. I have always been drawn to cooperative games such as The Mind or The Crew. I like the feeling of having a shared mission, discussing what to do, and working things out together as a team.

But I also noticed that there weren't many cooperative games that captured the kind of chaotic teamwork I experienced in the cafe. That made me think 'What if I could turn that experience into a cooperative board game?'

]]> Hot Cakes made in Cafe Storybook
Have you ever played games like Overcooked? During the busy hours in that cafe, there never seems to be enough time for everyone to keep up with their own responsibilities. One person is preparing a drink. Someone else is making a cake. Suddenly, two people need the same ingredient. Someone forgets an order. And before you know it, everyone is moving in the same direction.

That feeling of “We are all trying to help, so why is everything becoming more chaotic?” became the starting point for Bake or Break. I wanted to make something inspired by that feeling, but not simply recreate it as a board game. I love the way those games turn simple kitchen tasks into complete chaos. But I didn't want to make a game about running a perfect cafe, I wanted to make a game about trying to run one together just like in my cafe.

[heading]Designing the Game[/heading]
At the start of the process I knew I wanted three things :

● First, it had to be cooperative.

● Second, it had to be easy enough for families and casual players to understand.

● And finally, it had to create the kind of funny chaos that happens when several people are trying to work together at the same time.

I wanted the chaos to come from communication and prediction instead. So I choose Simultaneous Action Selection which is simple and has an element of surprise. You can't see what the other players are choosing. You have to read the table, and sometimes you have to take a risk. That made the game much easier to play around a table while still creating the same feeling of a kitchen getting out of control.

]]> Early Sample Token
Everyone chooses an action secretly, and everyone reveals it at the same time. Just like in a cafe when preparing an order. Someone thinks I'm going to help the other person by preparing the ingredients in the last order. Another player thinks 'Someone probably needs to prepare ingredients, so I'll do it too.' And a third player has exactly the same thought.

Everyone reveals their cards. The three players end up choosing the same action. No one completed the order. “Wait, I thought you were doing it!” Suddenly everyone is laughing, and the kitchen is falling apart.

]]>Event Cards of Bake or Break
I also wanted the game to be accessible to children, but I didn't want adults to feel like they were playing a children's game. The solution was to make the rules easy but the decisions meaningful.

A child can understand 'I need to make a cake.' Experienced players can think 'If I choose this action, the other players might choose it too, so maybe I should do something else.' The same rule creates different levels of thinking depending on the player. It became a game that could be enjoyed by the whole family. Which was exactly what I wanted.

[heading]Making It Feel Like a Picture Book[/heading]
There was another part of the project that was very important to me. Since Cafe Storybook is an actual picture-book cafe, when I started thinking about the visual identity of Bake or Break, I wanted to bring the feeling of picture books into the game.

]]>COPECO's Book Display in Cafe Storybook
That's when I thought of COPECO. COPECO is a Japanese picturebook artist and illustrator who focuses on animals and food. She sometimes combines the two in playful and unexpected ways. Her art has a strong sense of childhood, with cute animal expressions and illustrations that seem to have their own little stories.

But there was also a more personal reason why I wanted to work with her. When I first started my Cafe, I launched a crowdfunding campaign to help open my cafe. COPECO supported that campaign, and we later organized a collaboration event together.

From the very beginning, one of the things I wanted to do with the cafe was to introduce Japanese creators and their work to people from around the world. So when I started imagining what Bake or Break could look like, COPECO's art was actually the first image that came to my mind. Her illustrations bring warmth and cuteness to the cafe, while the game mechanics create a little bit of chaos underneath that funny, cozy world.

I designed this game to look like a picture book
There is also a little story behind where the game might go next. COPECO loves Chinese food, which gave me an idea for a possible future expansion. Maybe one day, the kitchen won't just be making cakes. Maybe we'll be cooking something completely different. I already have some ideas brewing in my mind.

[heading]From a Cafe Experiment to a Real Game[/heading]
Bake or Break is my first original board game, and the process has been very different from simply designing something on paper. I started testing ideas with my family and friends, until the ideas matured. I made prototypes and played and tested them with customers, staff, designers, and other players who all became part of the development process.

]]>Bake or Break first design on paper
Every playtest taught me something, from beginners to experienced gamers. At first the rules made it really hard to complete even one order. Now, the final game is much simpler than my earliest prototypes. But I also think it is much closer to the original idea. Sometimes a rule looked incompleted, and sometimes removing a rule made the game much better.

]]>Playtesting the game with staff in Cafe Storybook
The title also came from the idea that the team can make or break everything. When everyone works together, the kitchen runs smoothly. When things go wrong, everything can quickly fall apart.

Can you communicate well enough to keep the cafe running?
Can you predict what your teammates are going to do?
Can you resist doing the same thing as everyone else?

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But maybe none of that is really important.
What matters is having fun with your team, laughing when everything goes wrong, and enjoying the chaos together. That is Bake or Break. A small cooperative game about cakes, teamwork, and the beautiful chaos that happens when everyone is trying to help.

I hope you'll enjoy stepping behind the counter of Cafe Storybook.

From the King of Siam via Afghanistan to Sweden and back to Berlin: Upland & Prairie

Peerchen — Tue, 29 Sep 2026 14:00:02 +0000

by Peer Sylvester

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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 The 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 four players it’s a partnership game’. Okay, so that was two sentences, but my point stands.

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In reality, these parallels are misleading, though not completely coincidental: In 2007, I designed King of Siam, which was later republished by Osprey as The King is Dead. Playing that game seemingly got Cole Wehrle thinking about designing his own games, the first of which to publish was Pax Pamir (2015). When Matilda Simonsson played Pax Pamir’s second edition (2019) she was inspired to create and publish Turncoats(2021). In turn I played Turncoats in 2022, and it inspired me to create ‘Debatable Lands’ (which has since become Upland & Prairie). So, in some sense Upland & Prairie is inspired by a string of games that trace all the way back to King of Siam!

One thing I particularly liked in Turncoats was its way of handling randomness, specifically the drawing of a marker from a bag. I took inspiration from that, but put a spin on it where you draw two markers and place one on the map as well as keeping a marker. The marker you keep is secret and that establishes the important bluffing element — you don’t know what the others are collecting or how many they have. This uncertainty is essential to the design.

The board took quite a few iterations, mainly because this style of game shouldn’t last too long, but it also needs the time to feel like you have developed the game state together. The objective is to link certain spots on the board with a chain of markers of the same colour. In a version where those spots are too far away, it becomes frustrating as players may keep on blocking. If they are too close, there is not much of a game. Building tension is important for the arc of the game and it should be possible to control the timing of the endgame a bit. So, the layout was important. However, the breakthrough idea was to add 3a marker to the bag that, when drawn, raises the capacity of all spaces. This creates structure and enables blocking early on, both of which build player commitments, but then the improving capacity of spaces unlocks the end game and a tense finish. For Osprey it was this improving capacity and absence of direct conflict that drew them towards the rewilding theme of Upland & Prairie.

The game also had some significant advantages over my other prototypes: It was really easy to make changes (because the components were basically just a few hexes with symbols and a bag of cubes) and it was quick to play. I was able to play a lot with my daughters (great for two and three-player tests) to get the exact cube count and distances of the board perfectly right. But the game was not yet quite where I wanted it — the randomness was stronger than the bluffing. The fix? Draw three markers from the bag instead of two: one for the board, one for the personal supply, and one back to the bag. This changed the dynamics of the probabilities once again, but it struck the right balance between tactical approaches and the whims of uncertainty.

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With the two and three-player game working well, it was time to think about four. I love partnership games, so it’s no surprise that for the four-player game I once again tried a partnerships mechanic! I just love the way you need to communicate with your partner through play. During the first four-player test game, my friend, Georgios Panagiotidis, mentioned that he had trouble getting information from his partner who kept most of their markers. We agreed that it would be against the spirit if teams just had a shared supply - and it would just play too much like two two-player games - so we came up with the rule: every time the improvement marker was drawn, you would simultaneously (and silently) exchange a marker with your partner. That can of course cause funny moments (especially when you exchange identical markers), but that’s a plus in my book.

I have to admit that I played this a lot before showing it to Osprey, perhaps the most I’ve ever played an unpublished design of mine. It helps that it’s so quick and easy to play, and whilst the description may sound The King is Dead-ish, it doesn’t play anything like it. The King is Dead is cerebral, whereas as in Upland & Prairie I’ve even managed to win by targeting one colour but not placing a single one of that colour on the board (and, because I let the others think I was backing a different colour, they did all the work for me)!

The team at Osprey must have thought something similar, since they were quick to take it and made a very pretty game out of my very abstract prototype.. Big shoutout to Hannah Cohen, who made it all look playful and gorgeous. I really enjoyed getting art updates on this one (and they include more player screens than strictly necessary, so Hannah can showcase her art). The only thing I kind of regret is that I couldn’t keep the original title, which was Debatable Lands. I understand it has a very specific meaning in the UK, so I understand the decision. Still, I like the tone of it and maybe I’ll make another game with that title someday…
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Behind the Hype: Rawan Anbar, Gigamic

whenindoubteatout — Mon, 28 Sep 2026 06:00:01 +0000

by Justin Bell

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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 the team’s upcoming SPIEL Essen release, Odysseus. Between a video call and some back-and-forth via e-mail, our condensed conversation is highlighted below. Enjoy!

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Justin Bell (JB): Hey hey, Rawan! Hope life in France is treating you well today. Let’s start with your time at Gigamic; how did you find this role, and were you always interested in doing marketing work in tabletop?

Rawan Anbar (RA): Hey Justin! The weather isn’t great in France today, but I’m doing very well. I found the role through LinkedIn. I had just graduated when I came across the job posting, so I decided to apply. The process moved very quickly: I had a video interview two days later, then they invited me for an in-person interview the following day. About a week later, I received the good news that I had been offered the position. I have now been at Gigamic for more than four years. To be honest, the board game industry was not originally part of my career plan, but I am really grateful that I had the opportunity to enter this world. It is such a fun and welcoming industry, full of passionate people. I have had the chance to meet wonderful people—publishers, content creators, retailers, and of course my own colleagues. It has been a really rewarding experience, and I’m very happy to be part of it.

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JB: Gigamic has been in business for almost 30 years, correct? As an established brand, I’m curious to understand Gigamic’s definition of its market as well as the ways that it markets products to that core market. Many of the Gigamic games I have reviewed over at Meeple Mountain have generally been quick, but outside of that, the broad themes vary quite a bit. How do you and the team define your core audience?

RA: Gigamic has actually been creating games for more than 35 years. At our core, we are a family-oriented publisher: we aim to create games that bring people together, whatever their age or level of experience. Our catalogue is diverse. We do have some titles for more experienced players, but our main focus is on accessible family and party games. Akropolis, one of our flagship titles, is a good example: it offers meaningful strategic choices while remaining easy to learn and enjoyable for a wide range of players. We want to move away from the idea that board games are only for dedicated gamers. For us, games should be welcoming, social, and fun for everyone, from children and families to occasional players and more experienced board gamers.

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JB: Being a French company, it makes sense that Gigamic is pretty big in France, and I know your team’s presence at shows like Festival International des Jeux in Cannes is always going to be sizable. But outside of France, how does Gigamic market its catalog? I’m curious about Gigamic on the global stage.

RA: Internationally, we have a dedicated export team made up of three people: Thibaut, Pierre, and Benoît. They work closely with our distribution partners around the world, including in markets such as South Korea, Mexico, Japan, Germany, and many others. Their role is to build strong relationships with our distributors, introduce them to our new releases, and support them in bringing Gigamic games to local audiences. They regularly travel to meet partners in person and attend trade shows and more local events. Maintaining that human connection is particularly important to us. Every market has its own culture, players, and retail landscape, so working closely with local distributors helps us present the right games in the right way.

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JB: When you are not at shows, where are you based? So many of my tabletop connections work out of offices, but just as many work from home. What is your situation, and what do you prefer in terms of work environment?

RA: We are based in northern France, more specifically in Wimereux. One of Gigamic’s core values is maintaining a close, human, and family-like working environment. We are mainly office-based, although employees can work from home one day a week. This balance works well for us. Remote work provides flexibility, but being together in the office most of the time helps us maintain strong internal relationships, collaborate more easily, and work as a real team. In a creative industry like ours, informal conversations and a shared enthusiasm for games are also an important part of how we work.

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JB: In my “Behind the Hype” interview with Eveline, we talked a bit about crowdfunding…but it seems like Gigamic does not use the crowdfunding model for release, with all of your “homegrown” games going straight to retail. What is Gigamic’s stance on crowdfunding new titles?

RA: Gigamic’s main approach is to bring our games directly to retail through our established distribution network. We value the relationships we have built with retailers and distributors, and we want our games to be accessible to players through those channels. Crowdfunding can be a very useful model for certain types of projects, especially larger productions or games with a strong collector-focused audience. However, for Gigamic’s core catalogue, our focus is on developing games that can have a long life in retail and be easily available to a wide audience. We are always open to following changes in the market, but our priority remains creating accessible games and supporting our retail partners.

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JB: When you sent me a review copy of your upcoming SPIEL release Odysseus, I had to laugh, and everyone in my circles said the same thing when they saw the box: “it was pretty smart to release a game called Odysseus around the same time that The Odyssey hit theaters worldwide.”

So, there’s obviously a big marketing tie-in to the movie. As a marketing leader, that seems like an easy win. Was the game’s theme always tied to Odysseus, or was that just a lucky moment?

RA: The Odysseus theme was part of the game from the very beginning—it comes from the game’s own creative identity and mechanics. The timing with The Odyssey film is a very fortunate coincidence rather than an official tie-in. The film has created a broader cultural interest in the story and in Greek mythology, which makes this an exciting moment to introduce the game to players. It has also helped us from an SEO perspective: more people are currently searching for Odysseus, The Odyssey, and Greek mythology, which increases the game’s visibility online ahead of its release and helps new audiences discover it.

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JB: How are you marketing Odysseus to the strategy gamer channels and markets? What are you doing to help the title stand out?

RA: For Odysseus, we are building a multi-channel campaign designed to reach strategy gamers while also making the game visible to a wider board game audience. At the beginning of October, we are planning a contest and giveaway here on BoardGameGeek, which is an important platform for players looking for new strategy titles. We are also producing a trailer in both French and English to present the game’s universe, gameplay, and strategic depth to international audiences. We will support the launch with digital advertising across social media and relevant websites, as well as targeted communication through our press contacts and board game influencers. They will help introduce the game to their communities through previews, content, and coverage around the release. At SPIEL Essen, Odysseus will also have dedicated banners to make it more visible on-site. Our goal is to create visibility before the show, give players a clear idea of the experience the game offers, and make sure it stands out both online and on the convention floor.

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JB: What do you wish more players understood when it comes to the ways games are marketed and sold?

RA: I think I would like more players to understand that marketing a game is not just about making it visible—it is about helping the right people discover it and understand why it might be right for them. There are so many games released every year, so even a very good game needs a clear message. We have to explain the experience behind it: who it is for, how easy it is to learn, how it feels to play, and what makes it special. It is also a long-term process. A game does not become successful overnight just because of one post or one review. It takes communication, relationships with retailers and distributors, events, content creators, and, most importantly, positive experiences shared by players themselves. At Gigamic, we try to be honest and clear about what each game offers, so that players can find the games that genuinely match what they are looking for.

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JB: Although you seem to be pretty good at the abstract games you show me every year at conventions, I always wonder about how much time you spend playing games outside of your “day job.” So…do you play a lot of games? What are some of your favorites?

RA: Actually, I’m not a hardcore board gamer, and I think that gives me a valuable perspective in my role. It helps me look at our games with fresh eyes and better understand the experience of people who are not already deeply involved in the hobby. I play mainly to discover our games, prepare for events, practice explaining the rules, and develop communication plans. But outside of work, I don’t play board games very often at home. That said, two of my favourite games are Slide and Qawale. I really like games that are simple to understand but still offer meaningful choices and strategy.

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JB: Because you are Egyptian, I have to ask: do you still believe that Egypt was robbed during the match against Argentina in this summer's World Cup?

RA: I’m not the biggest football fan, but yes, unfortunately, I still think we were robbed! I remember you messaging me during the game, saying how well they were playing. In the end, it’s only a game, but I’m still very proud of the Egyptian team.

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A big thanks to Rawan and the team at Gigamic for a peek behind the curtain. To learn more about Gigamic and the current catalog, you can visit the team’s website at https://en.gigamic.com/.

Do you own or support the marketing function for a tabletop publisher? Let’s chat! I’m going to do interviews like this on marketing and other areas of the tabletop business from time to time, and I’m always interested in meeting more people. Just message me here on BGG and we’ll get to work. Thanks for reading!

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Designer Diary - Crossing Heroes

BGGCranioCreations — Sun, 27 Sep 2026 14:00:01 +0000

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 at the Festival International des Jeux in Cannes to discuss new game together. Having already worked on Odysseus, we wanted to explore another Greek hero and continue our journey through Greek mythology. After a short brainstorming session about games inspired by this universe (particularly The Oracle of Delphi by Stefan Feld) we settled on The Twelve Labors of Heracles.

From the very beginning, we agreed on one key aspect: completing a Labor would require players to hold the necessary Skills. And once a Trial had been completed, the card would be flipped to its reverse side, revealing a different illustration: we chose a black-and-white front for ongoing Trials, and a full-color back for completed Trials.

June 2025

June and July 2025 turned out to be incredibly intense months for the development of Crossing Heroes. In fact, the game reached something very close to its final form in just about a month!

Our first prototype featured:

- 4 Skills: Strength, Wisdom, Endurance, and Cunning. Luck wasn't there yet,probably because Heracles didn't rely on it very often!

- 5 Gods (Hades would later disappear) all of whom were required to complete Trials.

On your turn, you would take a Trial card and place it around your Hero, just like in the final version. Each Trial granted a reward, but at this stage players simply drew Skill cards into their hand and had to discard them to complete their Trials.

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The first Trial Cards

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The first Skill Cards
Players could also gain XP, represented by a track printed directly on the Hero card, located in the center of the 3×3 grid. Once the track reached its end, the Hero card was flipped over so progression could continue on the reverse side: not exactly the most ergonomic solution! You can also spot connection bonuses on these early Hero cards, although they disappeared only a few days later.

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The first Hero cards and their XP track
The first major issue quickly became obvious. Drawing Skill cards, managing your hand, and immediately discarding those cards to complete Trials simply wasn't much fun. It also made it difficult for opponents to follow what you were building, and gave the unpleasant feeling of constantly drawing and throwing away cards without any real sense of progression or long-term development.

Next, we completely reworked the role of the Gods. Instead of acting as a resource, they became tags attached to each Trial, opening up possibilities for collection and end-game scoring. We also introduced a second type of resource, rarer than Skills: Supports (represented by a star icon), divided into three categories: Naval, Military, and Human.

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Four Skills plus three different Supports... still too many icons!
We then realized that the theme itself was becoming too restrictive. Players had to select one of Heracles' Trials for each turn over the course of eight rounds, but since there are only twelve Labors, each one had to appear four times to support a five-player game. This made players no longer feel like they were facing unique challenges. Plus, this could result in players having to complete the same Trial twice, but it felt completely unthematic, and players could find themselves blocked if their remaining options became unavailable.

That was the moment when we had the idea that completely changed the project: instead of focusing exclusively on Heracles, why not embrace the entire world of Greek heroes?

Suddenly, everything became possible. We could follow Odysseus as he outwitted the Cyclops or resisted the Sirens, accompany Jason on the quest for the Golden Fleece, help Perseus defeat Medusa, relive Bellerophon's battle against the Chimera, or venture into the Labyrinth alongside Theseus. Overnight, we had dozens of iconic Trials to draw inspiration from.

This proved to be a decisive turning point for both game design and storytelling. However, researching thirty-six additional episodes of Greek mythology would simply have taken too long, so we kept the Labors repeated four times for now, to focus on refining the mechanics first.

Rethinking the Skill System

Now, we needed a better way to use Skills: we wanted them to become permanent elements of your Hero. That's when we came up with the idea of acquiring Skill cards and placing them around the Trial cards, allowing every Trial in the same row or column to benefit from them.

XP and gold, however, were still a real issue: XP never felt especially rewarding, while gold only helped players choose Skill cards or refill the market.

So we tried something else, coming up with Prosperity tiles, which could be bought with gold, and Zeus tiles, which were awarded to players who completed at least one Trial associated with each of the other four Greek Gods. But still, despite all our efforts, the game didn’t feel completely engaging.

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new versions of the Hero boards, along with the first prosperity tiles (later became items) and the Zeus tiles (later removed)
In just one month, the effort we poured in this project, as well as the results we got, were absolutely staggering.
The major changes that emerged during this incredibly creative period include:

- We removed Supports altogether and introduced a fifth Skill: Luck, which, after all, proved quite useful to many Greek heroes!
- We removed the XP system, replacing it with a much simpler personal scoring objective worth 2 Victory Points for each Skill symbol of the indicated type.
- We introduced the concept of Kleos (Glory), initially represented by a lyre and later replaced by a column. We decided to place these symbols would provide players with an exponential scoring, creating an interesting push-your-luck decision.
- We replaced the Prosperity tiles with 12 thematic Items that would have an actual function.

Thanks to some of them, some Trials would now double their Victory Points if you possessed the corresponding Item. Others, instead, focused on combo scoring. This allowed us to completely remove the Zeus tiles.

July 2025 Version

By mid-July 2025, this version of the game was essentially complete.

We let it rest over the summer before presenting it in autumn. By then Matthieu Verdier and Simone Lucianiwere already collaborating on Minikin City, and Simone's interest in a similarly-scoped game got our game in front of the Cranio Creations team. The reception was very positive: the game was seen as already solid, needing only minor work: four extra Items for better availability and variety in 4-5 player games have been added and a few Trial cards for more variety and small balance tweaks have been reworked.

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July 2025 version of the game
Bringing the World of Greek Heroes to life

The editorial work that followed was simply exceptional.
We immediately fell in love with Arianna Santini's art direction, beautifully inspired by the imagery of ancient Greek pottery, as well as Lorenzo Colangeli's illustrations, which brought each Trial to life with remarkable personality.

When you finally get your copy of the game, we encourage you to look only at the front of each Trial card before playing. Then, when you successfully complete a Trial and flip it over, you'll discover its title along with the stunning foil treatment applied to the illustration. For a brief moment, you'll feel just like one of the legendary heroes of Greek mythology.

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One last trial...

We hope you'll enjoy discovering Crossing Heroes as much as we enjoyed creating it. Plus, as you play, we hope you'll notice all the little thematic details hidden throughout the game, from the illustrations to the Skills required to overcome each Trial. After all, defeating the Nemean Lion demands tremendous Strength!

And remember, completed Trial is another step toward earning your own Kleos, the everlasting glory sought by every Greek hero.
We hope your journey through these myths will be just as memorable as ours was while bringing them to life.

Johannes & Mathieu

Designer Diary - Oil Rock

BGGCranioCreations — Sat, 26 Sep 2026 14:00:02 +0000

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 genuine teamwork with Studiogiochi, Simone Luciani of Cranio Creations, Andrea Chiarvesio, and their playtesting groups.

What follows is an honest account of that journey, detailing what I designed, how collaboration shaped it, and how every contribution improved the game. I am extremely proud of the result and grateful to everyone who worked with me to achieve it.

The Spark: Edwin Drake and the Black Gold Rush

Titusville, Pennsylvania, 1859. Edwin Drake, a railroad worker with no technical training, drills the first oil well in American history. This sets in motion a revolutionary transformation of the global economy.

I discovered his story while searching for an authentic and dramatically intense setting for a new game. Mid-19th-century Pennsylvania: a land of ambition, vision, and unbridled competition where market rules did not yet exist, seemed to me the ideal location for a true black gold, rush fueled by the risks and aspirations of entrepreneurs and pioneers alike.
This is where the idea for Oil Rock originated.

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My Creative Process
As a designer, I take a "primarily mental" approach. Much of the design process takes place inside my head rather than on paper or a screen. This is precisely how Oil Rock came to be.

My process consists of three phases. First come notes as prompts (~20%), which are scattered and chaotic jottings that trigger my thoughts rather than documenting them. Next is pure mental development (~50%), the heart of the work, in which the game shapes up in my mind until it takes precise form, even before prototyping. Finally, there's digital prototyping (~30%), which is more like transcription than exploration for me. That is how a game moves from my mind to the screen, where the final touches and corrections emerge.

Oil Rock fully reflects this process. From the initial idea to the first digital version, it took about three months: not because of haste, but because it is the result of a process that takes place quietly yet continuously, even before the first pixel appears on the screen.

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Starting from Actions: Building the Game from the Ground Up

In thematic games, I believe the result should be a system in which every action is consistent with the theme and mechanically connected to one another. In Oil Rock, for example, there are no "neutral" actions; every choice ripples through the entire structure of the game. When designing Oil Rock, I therefore began by defining which actions made thematic sense and linking them organically to one another.

This led to actions such as drilling wells, extracting oil, building and upgrading refineries, moving across the territory via the railroad network, building offices, and exploiting patents.

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The Heart of the Game: Reputation and Characters
The mechanic I’m most proud of ties the Reputation track to the Characters' evolution. I believe it best captures the spirit of the era that the game aims to represent.

The Reputation track has seven colored sections. A player’s position on the track determines turn order (the player with the highest reputation plays last) enhances their Character (gradually strengthening its special ability), and contributes to earning Victory Points, with bonuses for reaching the most advanced spaces.

This threefold function creates constant tension, as every step forward is both an advantage and a risk. Similarly, during the 19th-century oil rush, a person’s reputation was as valuable as an oil well: being too visible could make you a target.

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Characters amplify this dynamic. Each one provides a starting-round income and has a special ability that grows as the player advances along the Reputation track. This ability is limited at the start but becomes a formidable weapon in the final stages.

Once a character reaches the final section of the track, it stops providing income and instead offers a better conversion of remaining resources at the end of the game. This shifts the strategic focus in the closing stages.

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Extra Focus: The Six Historical Characters
One of the greatest joys of designing Oil Rock was conducting historical research on its Characters. I sought out real-life figures who played a decisive role in the first oil rush, not just the most famous names, but also lesser-known figures whose stories struck a chord with me during my research.

I had two selection criteria: the characters' stories had to be interesting and authentic, and their historical roles had to translate into game mechanics that were consistent with their real-life identities. I didn’t want decorative characters; I wanted each card to tell a true story through a genuine mechanic.

In addition, I conducted historical research to select each character. I also wanted to seek out lesser-known figures whose stories had resonated with me during my research. I didn’t want decorative characters; I wanted each card to tell a true story through authentic mechanics.

Characters playable in the game are:

Edwin Drake
"Colonel Drake" is the central figure in this story. On August 27, 1859, he successfully drilled an oil well for the first time in Titusville, Pennsylvania, using a technique inspired by water well drilling methods. Although he never patented his method and died in poverty, his innovation changed the course of global energy history. In the game, Drake is the drilling expert. His special ability allows him to purchase drills at lower prices, eventually earning him additional Victory Points without having to pay for equipment in the later stages.

George Bissell
Bissell, considered the father of the modern oil industry, was the first to realize that oil could be extracted from the ground and refined on a large scale to produce kerosene. He financed Drake’s drilling in Titusville in 1859. In the game, Bissell's entrepreneurial vision translates into the ability to build offices in any city. These offices offer increasing discounts that, in later stages, make construction completely free and profitable.

Ignacy Łukasiewicz
Łukasiewicz is the most unusual character in the game, in my opinion, and one of the most fascinating. A Polish pharmacist and chemist, he invented the first modern kerosene lamp in 1853 and founded the world’s first oil mine in Bóbrka the following year. He introduced kerosene street lighting and built the first refinery in 1856. In the game, he is the only character with a unique mechanic: the Energy reminder. This allows him to convert oil into energy and upgrade refineries in a way that is unavailable to other players.

Cornelius Vanderbilt
The great transportation magnate first built his empire with steamboats, then with railroads. This made it possible to transport Pennsylvania oil on a large scale to major industrial centers. In the game, Vanderbilt is the locomotive master. His special ability allows him to make free "jumps" of any distance, earning increasing bonuses from the destination city. These bonuses range from reduced coal costs to additional Victory Points in the later stages.

John D. Rockfeller
The founder of the Standard Oil Company controlled up to 90% of oil refining and distribution in the United States. In the game, his power centers on refineries. Before the refining phase, he can purchase new refineries and receive an increasing quantity of additional barrels of oil in return: a significant advantage that grows even more substantial in the final stages.

Andrew Carnegie
Carnegie, a Scottish-born entrepreneur who became a naturalized American citizen, is known for founding the Carnegie Steel Company. His company revolutionized steel production, paving the way for the expansion of America’s railroad and oil infrastructure. He donated nearly 90% of his fortune to educational and cultural causes. In the game, his power is tied to turbines. After the extraction phase, he can purchase turbines in exchange for colored barrels of oil, a combination whose value increases as his reputation grows.

The Evolution of the Action Selection System
Of all the elements, the system for selecting and resolving actions has evolved the most during development. In the original version, the board was already diamond-shaped, but the system was different. Players pre-positioned their pieces in stacks within the four sections. Then, actions were resolved based on their reputation. This system was tactically interesting because everyone could see each other’s “bets”, but the order depended only on reputation, creating tension between positioning and execution.

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When Studiogiochi analyzed the prototype, it became clear that the system was not compatible with the diamond-shaped board, resulting in excessive complexity. They therefore proposed a simpler circular wheel that would maintain rotation from one round to the next while making it easier to choose actions.

The Evolution of Wells, Refineries and Turbines
Thanks to the collaboration with Studiogiochi and Cranio Creations, other key elements underwent profound transformations during development.

- Oil wells: Originally, they were buildings that could be constructed progressively. Plus, the drills beneath them provided additional bonuses during extraction. This system was thematically faithful to historical reality but proved too complex without adding meaningful decisions. Thus, they became pre-printed zones, and the role of the drills was clarified: each active drill produces one barrel of the well’s color. This may seem like a loss, but it is actually a gain because every remaining decision carries more weight.

-Refineries: Originally, they were meant to be drawn from a shared board, a common display. However, this did not create meaningful interactions, only an extra step. Now, each player manages their own refineries, placing them in ascending order on a dedicated board. This made the game more compact and easier to follow.

-Turbines: They did not exist in the original version. Instead, there were warehouses with a different function. While working with Simone Luciani of Cranio Creations, these were reimagined as turbines: power-ups that amplify the bonuses of the neighboring refineries, adding an additional layer of strategy for players to consider.

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The Map: From Fixed Roads to Hexagonal Tiles
The other significant evolution in the game's structure concerns the map on which locomotives move, offices are built, and bonuses are earned. Originally, the territory was a pre-printed network with fixed connections between cities. This design was visually clear but lacked variety, as distances, routes, and costs remained identical in every game.

Thanks to Studiogiochi, however, the map has evolved into a system of twelve modular hexagonal tiles in three colors, each indicating a different level of cost and revenue. These tiles are arranged randomly in each game according to a pre-printed pattern, thus creating a different geography each time: movement strategies, office placement, and supply routes change accordingly from session to session.

To further refine the system, we have also introduced Railway Bonus Tokens, which provide permanent bonuses to players passing through each tile. These bonuses are always available and make every city significant. The territory is never neutral.

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Premio Archimede and the Meeting with Simone Luciani
Oil Rock was presented at the Premio Archimede awarding ceremony, Italy’s most important competition for unpublished board games.
The event was attended by leading figures in the industry. The game remained on the podium throughout the finals, confirming the effectiveness of its design.

However, the award held much greater significance: among the judges was Simone Luciani, one of Italy’s most internationally acclaimed designers of board games, including Tzolk’in, Barrage, Grand Austria Hotel, and Lorenzo il Magnifico. Recognizing the game’s potential, he brought it to Cranio Creations for publication, and from there, my prototype began its journey toward an international release.

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Teamwork: from development to publishing
Oil Rock, in its final form, is the result of genuine teamwork, with top-level professionals contributing to successive, complementary stages of the project.

- Studiogiochi: The first stage of development was carried out in collaboration with one of the most established game design studios in Italy. They resolved the issue of the diamond-shaped board by proposing a circular wheel, guided the simplification of the oil wells and transfer of the refineries to individual player boards, and refined the individual actions and bonuses together, giving each the right strategic weight.

- Simone Luciani & Cranio Creations: Luciani worked on several aspects simultaneously, including the actions on the wheel, the distribution of bonuses over time and the duration of the game, which was set at four rounds to ensure tension without slowing the pace. He also devised the turbines and Milestone tiles, variable round objectives that add variability and shared tension. They are simple in appearance, but require precise calibration.

Andrea Chiarvesio and the playtesters then took over. In the final phase, they systematically balanced the game by testing and measuring every path to victory (reputation, refineries, drills, consultants and territory) while relying on the mathematical balancing calculations that I had developed from the outset of the design process.

Oil Rock: The Game in its Final Form
As of now, Oil Rock 1864 is a board game for 2–4 players ages 14 and up. It takes 50–80 minutes to play. It is a heavy Euro game, featuring long-term management and planning, interconnected mechanics, and significant decisions every turn. Players assume the roles of ambitious pioneers during Pennsylvania’s first oil rush and lead one of six historical figures from that era. The goal is to build the most powerful oil empire by balancing extraction, refining, territorial expansion, and reputation management.

A game consists of four rounds, each of which is divided into nine sequential phases. These phases include spinning the action wheel, earning the Character income, extracting oil, refining, gaining Milestone bonuses, and determining the new turn order. Each round is a complete cycle of planning, execution, and consequences.

Oil Rock offers multiple paths to victory. Players can earn points from offices built in cities, the depth of active drills in each well, refineries on Side B with adjacent turbines, their final position on the Reputation track, and black Improvements if certain conditions are met. In the later stages, players can earn points from their Character. This variety ensures that every game can be won with different strategies and that no single tactic dominates.

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Designer Diary: Creating a unique twist on 'writing on cards' in Forage!

stankewich — Fri, 25 Sep 2026 14:00:02 +0000

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 we founded!

Why design a game like Forage? What inspired us?

Our core design team (Molly Johnson, Robert Melvin, and Shawn Stankewich) really enjoy roll and write games. From playing a lot of Yahtzee as kids and getting pretty Ganz Schön Clever(Wolfgang Warsch) obsessed a few years ago, we typically play most roll and write games that come out. One game that really made an impression a few years ago was Silver and Gold (designed by Phil Walker-Harding). The game uses dry erase cards, which felt like a novel inclusion in the roll and write design space. So many roll and write games have sheets of paper which generally feel quite static. One of the fun things about card games is the combinatorial variety you get. Our team has always gravitated towards tableau-building games for this reason. One of our first designs, Point Salad, boiled tableau-building and drafting down to their essences, creating a super simple game that still feels new and different every time you play it. When we started working on a ‘writing-on-cards’ roll and write game, we had just finished making the two Cascadia: Rolling games (designed by Randy Flynn and developed by the Flatout Games CoLab team). Molly and I did a lot of development on that title and I designed aspects of the solo mode and one of the main maps for Cascadia: Rolling Hills. From that work, we had some leftover ideas that we thought might be fun to do in another game in the roll and write genre.

We are primarily based in the Pacific Northwest and are often thinking about games we can theme around this geographic area. The idea of using dice in a foraging game made sense based on the act of going out into the wilderness and trying to see what you can find. We had found the combination of mechanics and theme that we wanted to explore!

What is Forage?

Forage is a roll and write game with dry erase cards used to collect items and score prestige points on an ever-changing tableau. It is played over 13 rounds. At the start of each round you roll and sort the dice. All eight dice are rolled and arranged into groups: multiples on one side, all the singles on the other, and the Special Foraging Die in the basket in the centre. This die can be added to any of the actions. In addition, each round a Journey Tile is flipped over. Journey Tiles are ways to use your time (the currency in the game) to collect bonuses, pull off combos, or gain more points.

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Forage - final game - a lot of evolution from initial concept!
Once the dice are rolled and sorted and the Journey Tile is revealed, players simultaneously choose which dice they will use that round to complete actions - earning them points and leading to sometimes very powerful combos. There is no limit to the number of players who can take each combination, so the game scales really well from 1-6 players and the simultaneous play helps keep the game moving at a good pace. Certain die combinations offer players certain actions with certain resources. Although sometimes an action may allow you to use more dice, those dice might not be quite what you need, so you have to balance getting more stuff with getting the stuff that will help you reach your goals. This leads to tense moments, especially since the game is only 13 rounds!

One unique aspect of the game is that the type of group of dice you choose dictates which actions you are able to perform.

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Dice sorted and ready to be selected
In Forage, there are a lot of modular systems and moving parts. It certainly made it more of a challenge to balance and design because of the different permutations and combinations of different cards and bonuses that players can collect.

Many design challenges were hashed out through iteration and the killing of darlings.

Since the core system has so many moving parts, a lot of iteration happened throughout the design process.

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The very first playtest of Forage - using standard D6 dice and some basic sheets for tracking
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The earliest versions of the game used sheets instead of cards for many forms of tracking/progress in the game
The first prototype was one large map card, a larger version of what is now found only on the Exploration Cards, and a large inventory card which included what is now found on the Pantry Cards. There were still other goal cards, but there wasn’t a three-part system in place.

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As the game evolved, the sheets got broken up into cards so that the tracking/progress space was more modular and dynamic
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The design continued to evolve from larger cards and sheets to smaller cards in larger quantities
It took playtesting and development to create a balanced experience with multiple paths to victory. As mentioned before, the single sheet felt static and as we started to explore the different ‘mini-games’ we wanted players to be able to play with the dice, we realized that separating these onto their own cards and giving players a choice of which systems to engage with as the game evolved would be more interesting.

One happy accident from playtesting was that one night we accidentally played a few rounds with one more die than we had been previously. This ended up making resources a bit more abundant and it meant that you could complete cards more easily. The error ended up making a positive change, so we stuck with it.

We had a lot of debate about the core dice system and the different actions using different types of combinations of dice. This system as it stands, admittedly, takes some getting used to. After trying a version where any combination of dice could be used on any card type, it was clear that it didn’t quite have the same tension. In development we figured out how to use the game setup (largely the central basket card) to help reinforce the rules of the game. The way dice are allocated on the basket card acts a central player aid to remind players the types of actions that can be carried out on each type of card.

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Early prototype of the dice allocation and 'journeys' systems being tested
One of the biggest challenges in a game with simultaneous play is deciding when the game will ‘gate’ play so that all players need to ‘catch up’ to be at the same place in terms of completing each phase or round. The number of different phases in Forage fluctuated a bit before settling on a simple round structure where dice are rolled and tiles are flipped and there is a short resolution phase if an immediate Journey Tile action comes up, then players have the full round to make their decisions and pull off combos, etc. Then, to signify completion, everyone takes a card and plays it facedown in front of them. This helped to create a cue for when everyone at the table was ready to move on to the next phase.

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Playtesting and refining the elements of the game
There was also a lot of balancing of numbers between all of the different scoring and bonus systems in the game. Because we had three distinctly different card types, a Journey system, and shared race goals that encourage players to complete certain things the fastest, there was a lot of work to find the right balance so that no one part of the system presented a dominant strategy or exploitable pattern of play. It was more challenging than some of our other games because despite being pretty simple, this game has a lot of moving parts, so getting them all to work together didn’t come immediately. Thankfully, the Flatout Games CoLab development team loves this kind of work and we were able to get things really balanced within a few months of weekly playtests.

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Testing out the nearly final prototype copy with a quick solo game
What makes Forage unique?

We think Forage feels unique because of its weight class. Although pretty easy to teach, the game has a lot of thinkiness that you don’t always find in the lighter games of this genre. We also wanted to bring our own brand of design to the genre and we think this is a roll and write game that feels very ‘Flatout Games’ with many different scoring systems to entice you in different directions each time you play. The game serves up some big turns that allow you to use your resources to pull off very satisfying combos! Beth Sobel’s artwork also helps enhance the experience, making each card you collect feel like a thematic addition to your unique tableau. Forage is heavier than Qwixx or Ganz Schön Clever, but lighter than Three Sisters or Hadrian’s Wall, so we think it fits a really nice niche as a gateway to gateway plus game. As with all of our games, we tried to make a game that we love playing and is challenging for us, but has a really simple core so that new players can get up and playing in no time!

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Thanks for reading and hope you get a chance to play Forage and see what you think of all of the interwoven systems, combos, and dynamic tableaus!

Shawn

Forage Game Credits:
Publisher: Flatout Games
Designers: Molly Johnson, Robert Melvin, Shawn Stankewich
Illustration: Beth Sobel
Graphic Design: Dylan Mangini
Development: Joseph Z. Chen, Randy Flynn, Molly Johnson, Ashwin Kamath, Robert Melvin, Shawn Stankewich

The Phantom of the Opera saw that Hope and Despair was his Yin and Yang

boardgamersteph — Wed, 23 Sep 2026 16:00:02 +0000

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 concept of dualism in ancient Chinese philosophy, representing two opposite principles. Yin is the feminine while Yang is masculine, and this concept is embodied in all things around the world, such as winter and summer, male and female, and light and dark.

Yin Yang takes players back to ancient China during the Warring States period before the Common Era. At the time, China was divided into seven kingdoms, fighting each other constantly, and people were living in suffering. To pursue inner peace, every kind of fortune-telling method was then developed.

One of those fortune-telling methods involves taking a tortoise shell with copper coins inside, then shaking it to get indications based on which coins emerge and how they fall. This method is exactly what Yin Yang is based on. Players act as Taoist priests, traveling on an ancient Chinese map to retrieve the local specialty of different cities to unlock their own destiny. Additionally, players can also build temples in different cities to earn worship from seven kingdoms.

Includes Metal Coins and Metal Tortoise Shell!

]]>▪️ Ares Games announced the release of the new expansion War of the Ring: The Card Game – Hope and Despair to arrive this Q4. From designer Ian Brody (Quartermaster General), this expansion can be played with the other expansions or with just the base game alone, but you do need War of the Ring: The Card Game to play.

From the newsletter:

The new expansion introduces Story cards, a new type of faction card inspired by key moments from The Lord of the Rings trilogy, which add powerful new abilities, deck customization, and deeper tactical choices to the game. Along with the expansion, a new accessory will arrive: six Deluxe Playmats featuring iconic characters and Middle-earth locations, designed to enhance every game with dedicated card layouts and stunning artwork by John Howe.

Drawing on Tolkien's rich lore and the emotional depth of Middle-earth, the Story cards introduced by Hope and Despair represent the natural and supernatural forces that shape the fate of its peoples, offering new strategic options, greater replayability, and additional content, making every adventure in Middle-earth even more immersive. Unlike other faction cards, Story cards are played only to Reserve and remain there for the rest of the round, providing unique effects that can influence the course of the game. The expansion also includes additional cards for the Northmen, Easterling, and Ruffian factions introduced in the Fire and Swords expansion, for use in scenarios featuring those factions, dedicated Shadow Bot cards for solo and cooperative play, Story tokens, and rules for integrating the new mechanics.

]]>▪️ The Phantom of the Opera from Korea Boardgames and now being released in the US by 25th Century Games at Barnes & Noble. From designer Geonil (Jekyll vs. Hyde, The Yellow House). This is a new 2-player trick-taking game. One player plays as the Phantom and one plays as Christine in just 15 minutes. The Music of the Night will have to be your favorite songs from the musical.

From BGG:

Classic literature meets modern tabletop gaming in The Phantom of the Opera. Inspired by Gaston Leroux's timeless novel, players take on the roles of the Phantom and Christine in a strategic duel where every card played influences the unfolding performance. The Phantom and Christine compete over twenty tense tricks, with every victory or defeat influencing the progress of the Phantom's haunting composition. Its unique blend of thematic storytelling and strategic trick-taking makes it such a standout 2-player game.

Take Center Stage in 3 Easy Steps:

1) Set the stage: Exchange a card with your opponent, choose the Number on the Seal, and prepare for a dramatic duel of wits.

2) Compose the melody: Play tricks to advance the Phantom's musical masterpiece. Win black notes and lose white notes at just the right moment to keep the score moving forward.

3) Win the game: Complete the music sheet before the end of the second round to claim victory as the Phantom or as Christine. Disrupt the performance and prevent the masterpiece from ever being finished.

]]>▪️ Golfie from Unigoat Edition is coming out this month and was announced by Hachette Boardgames USA. From designer Jimmy Dorion, this is a reimplementation of Golfie. This is a quick 25-minute card game for 1-8 players.

From the newsletter:

Golfie has players managing their own golf course to score as few points as possible!

Golfie is a card game that's easy to learn and perfect for the entire family, even if they never hit the green in real life! Each player tries to complete the course in as few strokes as possible. The mechanics are simple, fast, and fun: play your cards simultaneously, reveal or move your actions, and manage your game with a touch of strategy… and a lot of good humor.

Each player must take action on the 9 cards on his or her course in order to avoid scoring points. For a 9-hole, the game is played in 28 actions. Each action is determined by the 28 shuffled action cards. Take a swing and maneuver your cards to have the best golfing terrain!

▪️ While mentioning Hachette Boardgames USA, I wanted to also point you to their huge warehouse sale happening now with tons of games marked way down. Hachette Warehouse Sale

Designer Diary: Power Vacuum

kalebwf — Wed, 23 Sep 2026 14:00:02 +0000

by Kaleb Wentzel-Fisher

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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 months later we had a successful crowdfunding campaign. For all the work you put into something, even if the thing fails, the “work” is never lost - and that’s really the lesson I learned during this process.
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With the retail edition of Power Vacuum coming out this fall from 25th Century Games, I thought it would be a good time to revist the making of my debut game.

The Back Story

I had been working on an overly complicated crime game (Crime Spree) for about four years. I saw the light at the end of the tunnel. The game was done, I had advertised, got my email list, spent thousands of euros, and launched a Kickstarter. I was close to funding but pulled the plug last minute, afraid to have only sold a handful of copies while the rest would live on in a storage unit somewhere. I was bummed out but decided to take the advice that all other designers had already told me - start on something small.

I decided to use just a deck of playing cards and a handful of pieces giving myself some restrictions. I have a background in filmmaking and was inspired by Dogma 95, a film movement where filmmakers have strict constraints on what they can use to make their film. I was tooling around with a stock market trading game while on a bike trip through Denmark with my brother when I was reminded of something.

A few weeks before my buddy Mal (designer of Roll Camera!) had me playtest a game he was working on inspired by the 2017 film The Death of Stalin. He wanted a quick card game of shifting alliances that felt like backroom politics. He loves puns and wanted to call it “Power Vacuum”, making the characters soviet appliances all vying for power after the supreme vacuum had died. As designers do, he was also struggling on getting the game to work and had shelved the idea. After a failed playtest together on June 13th, he mentioned that if I could ever crack the game he would sign it. On August 28th I sent him this.

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Mal was pretty surprised after a few TTS sessions. He said, “Why don’t you come down to Ravensburg, we can climb a mountain, play some board games, and play Power Vacuum in person." I’m pretty sure that’s when I convinced him to sign the game.

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The Initial Design

I had been implementing trick-taking as a base for my stock trading game and it hit me… instead of investing in “companies,” why not invest in other players? Secret agenda? Shifting alliances? I had the workings of Power Vacuum.

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The initial game was nearly identical to Power Vacuum as it is today with a few small tweaks and one big component that went through many iterations. That component is now the power board at the center of the game.

It started as a deck of cards (because of my self-imposed restriction of just using a deck of cards). When a player played the lowest card in a trick (regardless of suit) they would take the action on the top card of the deck. The options included things like “move a power from you to another player” or “move a power from another player to another player”. It worked really well because players were familiar with the different cards and they only got recycled when they got used up. You could try to remember what had already been used to plan for future turns. But this also lacked a bit of agency by the players. Even when you had the low card to do something, the deck might not be offering the action you wanted to take. It was time for some experimentation.

Playtesting

I was feeling great about Power Vacuum. After years of slogging through my other game, I finally had a game that worked and people had a lot of fun playing. Like I said before, the deck felt a bit stale and it was when we played a game with our friend Kevin Privalle (co-designer of Almighty) that he suggested using dice instead of cards. It was much more unpredictable but I added a catch that a player had the choice of re-rolling the dice - it gave you a bit more agency. Do I keep the power transfer the same way this round or roll the dice and see what happens?

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The game worked great. We got to make some cool dice and people enjoyed the unpredictable nature of the rolls. We kept this aspect of the design the same for a while we tended to other small tweaks. I came up with the idea of a hidden suit that was a “trump killer”: Spies. This helped both in offsetting a trump-heavy hand but also made the game more thematic. The fact that we had the suits visible on the backs of the cards made it an easy addition. There were “Spies hiding in plain sight!” We ended up with a small distribution of them, and only middle cards (3-6) to not make them overpowered, just one per suit.

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Mal and I would play a two player version of the game almost every morning online over coffee. It was great exercise to play the game over and over again to find the weak points. He would give me pointers on what was working well and areas to improve. I’d go back, tweak, and redesign a few things and we would play again and again. These were things like hand size, initial power per character, etc. We worked out the system for revealing your agenda early and scoring more points or keeping it hidden and going for a risky reveal instead. It was really important that we always kept the theme in mind. But we also had days where we strayed pretty far out just because we could. There was even an area control idea that got tossed around at one point.

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The Art

The artwork came together quite quickly too - this was at the same time as all of our play-testing (as you can see in the images). Things were moving really fast and SPIEL Essen was right around the corner. Mal wanted to preview Power Vacuum but wanted the game to be presentable and on brand. Keen Bean Studio is largely identified through Mal’s artwork. We began sending inspiration images back and forth. Here's what he had to say about it.

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Mal: I started Keen Bean Studio fully intending to design, illustrate and publish all my own games. But as Kaleb mentioned, although I came up with the concept for Power Vacuum, I couldn't manage to crack the game itself, and shelved it. I was simultaneously in the middle of a protracted, years-long struggle with the design for my forthcoming game Almighty, so I was thrilled when Kaleb approached me with Power Vacuum. Having a smaller game to illustrate and publish while wrestling with Almighty's design was just the thing that could tide me over. Thanks again, Kaleb, you saved Keen Bean Studio!

Power Vacuum also arrived at an opportune moment with regard to my company's brand. My two previous published games were Itchy Feet and Roll Camera!, both populated with my trademark "bean-people", one of which adorns the Keen Bean Studio logo itself. Almighty would also utilize bean-people. This was quickly becoming my "thing." But what if, in the future, I didn't want to draw lumpy little bean-people? I needed a project to throw people for a loop, to prove that I wasn't quite so predictable, and buy myself some future wiggle room. Power Vacuum, with its anthropomorphic kitchen appliances draped in totalitarianism, was the perfect chance to escape the pigeonhole.

Being a trick-taking card game, my first attempt at Power Vacuum's artwork was quite abstract. I tried to evoke the classic card game aesthetic, using decorative designs and simple imagery to convey big ideas. This was a failure.

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These images just didn't have any life, and I was bored even making them. I quickly understood why: my background is as a filmmaker and web comic artist. These are two mediums that rely on single-image scenes, storyboards, or panels. One image at a time used to tell a story. That is where I am more equipped to imbue an image with life. Power Vacuum's cards would need to each be a little self-contained scene.

This was also a chance to use the medium of board games to say something about the disturbing and unwelcome rise of fascist sympathies and populist strongmen, both abroad and at home. But I didn't want to make a somber, on the nose game - I was inspired by the 2017 film The Death of Stalin to use satire as my weapon instead. This was around when Vladimir Putin was furiously trying to squash the internet meme of him all dolled up, and I realized that the weakest point in a strongman's armor is that they have a terrible sense of humor about themselves. This was the key to Power Vacuum's theme.

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Still, making fascism funny is a fine line to walk. One wrong piece of art could sour the entire thing as tasteless and insensitive. So I needed a few guidelines for myself.

First, I didn't want to draw guns. This is a general rule for which even today I make only the rarest exceptions. I didn't really want to depict direct violence at all; I would much rather imply it. This is anyway a much more powerful visual device than the depiction of actual violence, which tends to have a desensitizing effect. So it meant I had to think outside the box a little bit. What is deadly to a kitchen appliance? Water! This provided almost endless opportunities to mix menace with absurdist humor.

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My second guideline was that I would try to blur historical and political lines as much as possible. Power Vacuum is not "Soviet Russia with Toasters;" that would have been too reductive. Rather, I pulled inspiration from iron-fisted regimes across time and geography, from the USSR and Nazi Germany to Maoist China, military juntas and guerillas of Central and South America, and of course the rampant political, military and economic overreach of the USA through recent decades. It was important to me that Power Vacuum did not target a specific group or ideology, but instead the general tendency of those with power to think they're better than everyone else. There's as much Dr. Strangelove as The Great Dictator in Power Vacuum's DNA.

Third, I quickly realized that although direct puns like Money Laundering and Drill Sergeant were home runs, some of the most delightful and funny illustrations came out of simply exploring the logical implications of this nonsensical world I had created. This led to some of my personal favorite illustrations like the printer handing out flyers, the paper shredders, and the phone tapper. It's just a fun world to try to imagine.

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This would come later, but I would be remiss if I didn't mention that I had a ton of community input on the artwork and subject matter. During the Kickstarter campaign I invited backers to contribute their ideas for card art to this spreadsheet. I'm a big fan of sourcing concepts from the crowd, and it's thanks to the backers that we got cards like the hot air orator and the ballot blender.

One last thing I'll mention about the art is the color scheme. Because my first game Itchy Feet was based on my web comic of the same name, the card artwork has a lot of white. And because I wanted my followup Roll Camera! to resemble Itchy Feet as an attempt to win over some of Itchy Feet's audience, Roll Camera!'s art also has a lot of white, for which it did receive some not-unfair criticism. With Power Vacuum, I wanted colors. Knowing we'd have five suits, I picked five tones from authoritarian imagery that would be clearly distinct (red, black, off-white, yellow, and sickly green) and challenged myself to illustrate the entire game using only those colors.
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I broke the rule in a few places, but even so, the end result is a game that has a very stark, disciplined, strictly unified aesthetic across all its components. This was a powerful lesson in art direction: less is more.

The Final Stretch

Kaleb: We had made it to SPIEL Essen and Power Vacuum was now in the eye of the public for the first time. We were getting great feedback and players of all ages were enjoying the game. It was also great to just sit back and watch people play. This is also incredibly helpful as a designer. You see when folks are engaged, tuned out, looking at their phones or having a blast. Overall people were excited and the plan was to run a Kickstarter in just a few months and have it ready for the following SPIEL.

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It was just a couple of months before the launch of the kickstarter when Mal suggested that we try and get Cole and Drew Wehrle in on a playtest. Mal had met Cole at SXSW in Austin the year before where Cole had offered to play and give feedback on works in progress we might have . I was pretty stoked when they agreed to free up some time for us. They both enjoyed the game, but Cole pointed out that at times it felt like treading water, something I had noticed in some playtests but passed over due to the fact it just didn’t happen so often.

(I think) he meant that when the dice were rolled (or kept the same), the power could just go back and forth. I transfer it one way, you transfer it right back, again and again. It didn't always happen, but when it did, the game fell into a loop. We were at a bit of a crossroads; the game was nearly done but we had this lingering feedback from one of our favorite designers. Do we accept the game as is? It’s fun and only in rare cases it can be a bit of a dud? Or should we challenge ourselves to push it further?

We decided to push it further.

The Power Board

I went back to the drawing board and thought of all the ways power could flow back and forth between players. Cole had suggested implementing some sort of cable/microchip to keep things feeling more thematic than dice. I came up with a bunch of boards and the idea was to move the characters around, connecting them via circuits.

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None of these really worked and they felt about as random as the dice. There was just too much going on and too much to think about with all the different connections. And that's when it clicked - simplify it. I can’t give this advice enough; so many designers will come up with whole new systems to fix issues in games and I learned right then and there that sometimes the best way is to just strip it back.

One cable and one move.

By getting rid of all the mess and reducing it to one cable, and specifically the timing of when you move that cable, made all the difference. We hit up Cole and Drew to play one more time and just after a few minutes they said, “no notes.” We of course continued playtesting, but the new system felt so good we knew we had found what was missing. With the Kickstarter just a few months out we needed to design the board, find some cool components, and make a solo version.

We kicked around a lot of visual ideas for the power board, but one reference just kept coming back up and that was the war room in Dr. Strangelove. The absurdity in the film is something we also wanted to come across in the game. The joke that always gets me in that scene was when a fight breaks out and Peter Sellers yells "You can't fight in here, this is the war room!"

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The Score Track

Who would have thought that making a score tracker could be so much fun? And just how much room there is for improvement in this space? We wanted something that was easy to see and manage but we didn’t want yet another boring run-of-the-mill score tracker. We wanted something unique and thematic that had table presence. One idea was to make a large pop-up Soviet staircase, where players moved up while scoring. Mal prototyped one out of cardboard that was pretty amazing.

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While in SPIEL Essen I found a small meeple-like player piece that had a post that you could stack little rings on. I think both Mal and I looked at each other at the same time and thought “stackable scoring statues”. We workshopped it a bit and came up with making swappable statue pieces that counted as 10s so that when you hit 40 points you had a complete statue made up of 4 pieces. It was hilarious and super fun to work on. Getting the scale right was a challenge but having a 3D printer helped a ton.

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The Solo Mode

Yes, it’s true that many publishers will demand a solo version of a game and many of these solo versions feel very tacked-on. I knew from the start Mal needed a solo version and in a weird way the solo game sort of fell into my lap. There aren’t a lot of solo trick-takers due to the fact it’s hard to get a bot opponent to play the right suit at the right time. But we had visible suits on the back and this was key.

It wasn’t enough to have the bots play the right suit; rather they needed to know what to prioritize when it came to moving power. That was easy too, just play with open agendas. I started with a single bot player but it felt stale and automated. You could tell what the bot would do and it felt like randomly flipping over cards. It was when we added a second bot the game really opened up. With open agendas the bots had something to shoot for, and by creating a flowchart of how the power should flow, they began battling the player and themselves.

When a bot manipulates the control board, it first tries to transfer power toward its own agenda, then against the player’s agenda, then against the other bot's agenda. Modifying difficulty was also really easy because of the open agendas. You adjust how much you and either bot can win each round. In this way a player could start playing the bots against each other in a very similar way to a game with real opponents. This was so important for me personally as so many solo games kind of feel like flipping a coin. There were now some good decisions and risks to take.

The Finish Line

We had made it to the Kickstarter and were blown away by the response. I couldn’t believe how much we accomplished in such a short amount of time. From the conception of the game to a physical copy in a customer’s hands was just over a year. It was really one of the most amazing artistic projects I have ever worked on and I owe a huge debt of gratitude to Mal. It's rare you get to work with someone who just gets it.

The biggest advice I can give is to just work on stuff; it’s never a waste of time even if the thing goes nowhere. You’ll find a use for what you learned somewhere else down the road, good or bad. I hear all the time from designers that say trying to work on some big unmanageable game at the beginning was a mistake and that you should start small, which I agree with to a point. I just find it funny that so many designers actually started on some big unmanageable game and had to learn the hard way. Maybe it’s a necessary step?

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Mal (postscript): at the 2025 UK Games Expo, I ran into Cole and Drew again, and I thanked them for their role in Power Vacuum's success. The game had been a smash on Kickstarter, reviewers like Shut Up & Sit Down were having a great time with it, and I wondered aloud: why? Why was Power Vacuum doing so well, right when the market was being flooded with trick-taking games?

"Most trick-takers aren't about anything," Cole replied. "Power Vacuum is about something."

Which is maybe my favorite one-line review of anything I've ever made.