The SPIEL '26 Games Convention
at Essen / Germany

We will begin our SPIEL 26 report on Tuesday 20th of October!

And so, thirty years after our very first adventure at SPIEL, the time has come for another glorious quest – but first, let us return to the Broken Tankard Tavern, where two familiar heroes are preparing for their greatest adventure yet...

G@mebox Special: The Return of the Dragonslayers
- The Tri-Decade Triumph -

In the Broken Tankard Tavern, the candles burned bright,
As Basil the Bard raised his mug in delight.
“Three decades of SPIEL! By the gods, can it be?
And those two daft adventurers are still roaming free!”

Frank, Fairfolk Fletcher, restrung his old bow,
And packed thirty maps of the places to go.
Ralf, Reckless Runesmith, enchanted his blade,
Then accidentally set fire to the plans they had made.

With backpacks for treasures and purses of gold,
They prepared for new quests and adventures untold.
For dungeons were nothing, and dragons mere play,
Compared to the madness of SPIEL's opening day!

“Thirty years of triumph!” cried Basil with cheer,
“Of games, glorious blunders, and tankards of beer!
So onward to Essen, where new legends await,
And may fortune be kind — for our heroes run late!”

And thus, with a flourish, our champions depart,
With courage, confusion, and joy in their heart.
The Tri-Decade Triumph is ready to begin —
So just let the games and the chaos roll in!

3...

2...

1...

Lights on, Camera ready, Micro open...

"Full SPIEL ahead!"

Folks, here is Essen, the boardgaming capital of Germany !

Hello everybody, and a very warm welcome to our SPIEL 2026 report! It is almost unbelievable, but this year we are actually celebrating the 30th anniversary of our website! Thirty years! And here we are once again, getting ready to take you right into the halls of the world's greatest boardgames fair, right here in our hometown of Essen. As always, we hope that you will enjoy following our adventures just as much as we enjoy bringing you all the news and discoveries from the show!

Looking back, it has been quite a journey since I started Kulkmann's G@mebox at BOARDGAME.DE in 1996. The internet was still in its infancy, and things like bloggers, influencers or social media were virtually unheard of. Even reporting directly from a games convention to an international audience was rather unusual. In fact, I had already published my first game reviews and some impressions from SPIEL in 1996, although those earliest files have unfortunately been lost somewhere in the depths of time. As far as I remember, Kulkmann's G@mebox was one of the first websites to offer English-language coverage of SPIEL, and over the years our day-by-day reports became something of a trademark here at the G@mebox.

Things certainly were different in those early days. In 1997, I didn't even have a digital camera, so readers had to make do with my written impressions. This changed in 1998, when I was fortunate enough to borrow one of those early digital cameras. Compared to today's smartphones, that little device was a remarkable piece of technology, although perhaps not quite in the way one might expect. It could store just eight pictures before I had to connect it to a computer to transfer the images! Just imagine walking through the vast halls of SPIEL, trying to decide which eight things were worth taking a picture of. Quite a different experience from today's virtually unlimited digital photography! And if you are curious about those early days, just scroll down to the bottom of this page, where you will find links to our surviving convention reports, starting with 1997. The report from 1998 even includes those first digital photographs, offering a rather charming glimpse into the beginnings of our coverage.

But while quite a few things have changed over the past thirty years, it is my writing routine that has changed most dramatically in just the last 24 months. I still live about 500 metres from the convention halls, and my evenings are still largely devoted to these reports. For years, after a day of discovering games, talking to publishers and playing whatever I could get my hands on, I would hurry home, have a quick dinner with Nicole and sit down at my computer. And type. And type. And type some more. Quite often I would finally call it a night at two or three in the morning, only to get up a few hours later and head straight back into the halls. Sometimes I wonder how I managed to keep this up for so many years!

Well, I'll still be putting quite a few hours into each report, but artificial intelligence has made that work considerably easier. Instead of hunting down grammatical mistakes (mostly unsuccessfully), looking up English expressions or wrestling with awkward sentences, I can now discuss the wording with an AI assistant, polish my texts and even dictate my impressions straight into the computer! Better still, I have more time to organise my thoughts: Which games deserve a closer look? What made a particular encounter memorable? The experiences, opinions and stories remain entirely my own, of course, but it is much easier to turn them into something enjoyable to read. And hopefully, this means better reports without quite so many sleepless hours!

Mind you, some of my old habits are still very much alive, especially when it comes to preparation. I started reading the rulebooks for SPIEL 26 almost two months ago, while Nicole and I were enjoying our holidays in the Netherlands. I still want to arrive at my appointments with publishers well prepared, so we don't waste precious convention time on lengthy rules explanations. Instead, we can dive straight into the games, discover their finer points and discuss the ideas behind them. That part of the work hasn't become any easier, and I wouldn't want to change it.

But enough of history and working methods! Or wait, there is one more story I simply cannot leave out, because the most important change in the history of Kulkmann's G@mebox actually had nothing to do with computers, digital cameras or artificial intelligence. It was something much more personal. Sometime in the early 2000s, I think around 2003, my old school friend Ralf Togler joined me here at the G@mebox. We had known each other since the fifth grade at school, and suddenly the little project I had started on my own became something we could share. Over the years, the G@mebox has also become an expression of a lifelong friendship, something I cherish very deeply. I am immensely grateful to have Ralf sharing this adventure with me.

Now, as much as I enjoy looking back on thirty years of the G@mebox, you, my dear readers, are here to discover new games! And, as tradition demands, we will start with a review of one of the hottest new releases at SPIEL. This particular game has a personal story behind it, because four or five months ago I learned that CZECH GAMES EDITION (CGE) was working on a new version of its popular Codenames series. It was to be called Codenames: Critical Role Adventures, and neither Nicole nor I had the slightest idea what Critical Role was supposed to be. So we turned to the internet to find out. And that little search proved rather more interesting than we had expected!

As we discovered, Critical Role was something of a phenomenon in its own right, originating from a group of professional voice actors playing Dungeons & Dragons together and growing into a whole fantasy universe. Their first campaign followed the adventures of a rather unusual group of heroes known as Vox Machina, whose exploits later became the basis for The Legend of Vox Machina, an animated series bringing their stories to the screen. And so we found ourselves following Vex'ahlia, Percy, Grog, Scanlan and their equally remarkable companions. This was exactly the kind of fantasy entertainment Nicole and I enjoy, and we quickly fell for the charming characters, their hilarious interactions and the unfolding story. During our aforementioned holidays in the Netherlands in September, we watched the entire series as far as it had been released, and now we are eagerly awaiting the fifth and final season! Naturally, this made Codenames: Critical Role Adventures even more intriguing. How could a word deduction game like Codenames possibly be combined with fantasy role-playing, character development and a story-driven campaign? When CZECH GAMES EDITION offered me an advance copy about ten days ago, I gladly accepted. Instead of waiting until SPIEL, Nicole and I spent the past weekend exploring the game, and this is what I would now like to tell you about!

Game review: Codenames: Critical Role Adventures - CGE (booth 3V400)

Few modern boardgames have achieved the almost universal recognition of Codenames, Vlaada Chvátil’s word-guessing game in which players try to identify the right words from a grid after receiving a single-word clue and a number. Considering the elegant simplicity of the original design, a Critical Role version might easily have been little more than a thematic reskin. However, Codenames: Critical Role Adventures, designed by Vlaada Chvátil and Felix Podlesny and published by CZECH GAMES EDITION, takes a considerably more ambitious route. The familiar mechanism of giving clues and finding matching words still forms the heart of the game, but around this foundation the designers have constructed a fully cooperative adventure with heroes, special abilities, missions, character development and even a campaign map. The result unmistakably remains Codenames, but at the same time it feels like something quite different.

The basic idea is quickly explained, especially for players already familiar with classic Codenames. One player takes the role of Game Master, or GM, and sees a hidden key card which tells him how the 21 words on the table are classified. He then gives the party a clue consisting of one word and one number, trying to guide them towards several matching words. The players discuss which cards might fit the clue and make their guesses, with correct choices bringing them closer to completing the mission while wrong guesses may cause damage or reduce the time still available. So, the familiar mental challenge remains fully intact: the GM tries to build connections between seemingly unrelated words, whereas the others try to understand just how far his chain of association was supposed to reach.

However, the decisive difference is that the players no longer simply point at a word. They control a party of three heroes from the Critical Role universe, and for every guess they also have to decide which character actually makes it. This sounds like a small change, but it transforms the word grid into something surprisingly close to an adventure gameboard. The heroes have individual abilities, and their position on the grid may matter when these powers are used. As a result, the players do not only discuss which word is the most likely answer, but also whether a specific hero should investigate it, whether an ability might reveal additional information beforehand, or whether it is better to keep another character available for a later guess. In this way, the familiar deduction game actually begins to develop tactical options.

A party consisting of Vex’ahlia, Percy and Grog demonstrates nicely how closely the abilities are connected with the personalities known from Critical Role. Vex is the tracker of the group, able to gain information about groups of connected words, and she is accompanied by Trinket, her loyal bear, who can help when the party wants to approach a particularly uncertain guess. Percy, being the group’s marksman, interacts with the grid at a distance and can use his position to gain additional deduction information. And Grog takes the expectedly less subtle approach: his abilities revolve around brute force, risk and dice rolls, making him well suited for moments when the party decides that caution has gone far enough. None of these powers replaces the actual word deduction, but they give the players additional information or possibilities which fit remarkably well with the characters themselves.

This interaction between heroes is probably one of the most interesting parts of Codenames: Critical Role Adventures. A good move may begin with one character uncovering a useful hint, followed by another using that information to make a safer or more effective guess. The players therefore start to think about their party almost as they would in a light adventure game, trying to find useful combinations between different abilities. Even the included d20 contributes to this feeling, because some hero abilities require dice rolls and character modifiers. Importantly, the dice does not determine whether an ordinary word guess is correct; deduction still remains at the center of the game. Instead, randomness enters through the special things the heroes try to achieve around this central mechanism.

The real adventure feeling becomes even stronger through the campaign structure. Codenames: Critical Role Adventures contains three campaigns taking the players through Tal’Dorei, Wildemount and Marquet, and the party chosen from the 7 included characters remains together from mission to mission. Successful adventures open the path towards new locations on the campaign map, while Experience gradually improves the heroes. New abilities become available, carrying capacity can increase and items can be gained and distributed among the party. Coins collected during the journey may be spent at shops, and equipment provides further possibilities for tailoring the group before the next mission. In this fashion a sequence of word puzzles starts to feel surprisingly much like an ongoing journey through Exandria.

Having now played an entire mini-campaign of six missions with my wife, I can confirm that this progression is considerably more than a decorative campaign structure. The difficulty increases noticeably from mission to mission, with increasingly tight limitations on the available rounds and additional mission-specific rules putting the party under considerable pressure. Especially during the later missions, the players would hardly stand a chance by relying on the GM's clues and their immediate guesses alone. Instead, the characters' special abilities become essential for uncovering additional information about words which are not even part of the current guessing attempt, gradually reducing uncertainty and preparing the ground for later moves. This effectively turns every mission into its own little puzzle, challenging the players to approach each new situation differently and adjust their strategy to the particular obstacles involved. The combination of increasingly demanding scenarios and steadily improving heroes works remarkably well, making the whole experience highly addictive. In fact, we found it so difficult to stop that we ended up playing all six missions over the last weekend.

Of course, this also means that Critical Role Adventures is considerably more elaborate than normal Codenames. The original game achieves much of its appeal through almost perfect simplicity, whereas this version adds hero sheets, character abilities, items, Experience, dice rolls and mission-specific rules. However, the additional complexity is very well controlled because much of it develops gradually over the campaign. The heroes begin with relatively few possibilities, and additional abilities are unlocked during play, so the players discover new options at roughly the same pace as their characters become more experienced. Importantly, this increasing complexity is matched by the growing difficulty of the missions, so newly acquired abilities do not merely make the game easier but become valuable tools for overcoming challenges which previously might have seemed almost impossible.

To my mind, this is where Codenames: Critical Role Adventures becomes considerably more than another licensed edition of a successful game. The core brilliance of Codenames has not disappeared: the GM still searches for that wonderfully ambiguous clue which somehow connects several cards, and the rest of the table still debates whether one particular word really can belong to it. But around this familiar puzzle a second layer has emerged. The players must now think about which character should act, when an ability should be used and how the strengths of the party can complement each other. Quite unexpectedly, a word-guessing game has gained genuine tactical possibilities without losing the deduction mechanism which made the original so successful.

For me, this makes Codenames: Critical Role Adventures a particularly charming crossover between two categories of games which normally remain strictly separate. Word games usually focus on communication and deduction, whereas campaign adventures thrive on heroes, abilities, equipment and a growing sense of progression. Here CZECH GAMES EDITION has managed to unite both sides in a rather charming way where neither feels merely decorative. Fans of Codenames get a completely new way to experience its popular mechanism, while fans of Critical Role receive more than familiar names and illustrations, because the personalities of the heroes actually influence how the party approaches the puzzle. It still is a game about finding the right words – only now those words may be tracked by Vex, targeted by Percy or tackled by Grog with rather more enthusiasm than caution. “How do you want to do this?”

Well, that was our first game review for SPIEL 2026! But while Nicole and I spent the weekend adventuring through the fantasy world of Exandria, Ralf has already managed to venture into the actual convention halls today – before the official opening, no less! And he brought back some pictures, too! How he managed that is a story best told by the man himself. So, over to you, Ralf!

Hello everyone, and a warm welcome from me too.

It’s convention time again already. It’s crazy how quickly the year has flown by! And it’s especially exciting that we’re celebrating our 30th anniversary this year … But we’ve kept going all these years, and that’s something I’m really proud of. These days, when I hear some influencer boasting about their five years’ experience in the board game scene, I can’t help but smile. But experience is not everything, of course.

Admittedly, we’re not the quickest anymore. We’re not always up to date with the very latest releases, either, and our website looks rather old-fashioned. We know all that. But I hope we can still give you a useful overview of the new releases at SPIEL. And there are plenty of them again this year: certainly more than 1,000, although we’ll have to wait until tomorrow’s press conference to find out the exact number.

And yet, here we are, 30 years later, still doing what we love: exploring the world of board games and sharing our discoveries with readers from all over the world. The scene has changed enormously since we started, but the excitement of discovering an unexpected gem among hundreds of new releases is still the same. And perhaps that is what matters most.

For me, though, the fair kicked off today already: as well as the radio interview – which Frank will be reporting on in detail – I was tasked today with setting up the new games at the novelty show for a publisher friend of mine. When you live in Essen, you naturally live near the exhibition halls, so over the years I’ve ended up helping out here and there over the years.

This year, Tobias Hall from All OR NONE GAMES asked me if I could set up his three new releases, as he himself isn’t arriving until tomorrow at midday – too late to set up the new games at the novelty show. I was happy to help, and I hope I did a good job there:

A positive side effect of helping out: I was able to try out one of the games in advance; the review will be coming in the next few days. Also, I got a ticket for the set-up. For the past few years, members of the press haven’t been allowed into the exhibition halls before the official start of the fair, but with this ticket I was able to take my first impressions from inside the holy halls here for you!

As you can see, people were still hard at work at many booths, but you could already clearly spot one or two important new releases, and some booths also seemed to be quite far along with their set-up:

There is something special about seeing the halls before the crowds arrive. For a brief moment, you can almost imagine what the place will look like once thousands of gamers fill the aisles, hunting for their next favourite game. Right now, though, it is all about boxes, half-finished booths, last-minute preparations and people working hard to make everything ready in time. The calm before the storm, if you like!

Of course, I was also able to greet the first familiar faces inside the halls. My first stop was FROSTED GAMES, where I met Dennis from the BGT – BoardGameTheory podcast. However, Dennis wasn’t there in his podcast role: since the beginning of this year, he has been in charge of marketing at FROSTED GAMES. He gave me a quick tour of the booth, and I have to say, I think we look pretty good behind the sales counter, don’t we? Admittedly, one or two games are still missing, but I know FROSTED GAMES has plenty of really cool new releases lined up for this year. We’ll take a closer look at them over the coming days.

I also got to catch up with some old friends at DRAGON DAWN GAMES: Ren and his wife Tiinaliisa, who have become dear friends over the years, were already hard at work setting up their booth for SPIEL. It never ceases to amaze me how such small publishers manage to set up their booths in a remarkably short time, often without any extra staff – it’s absolutely incredible what they achieve here.

But Ren had another surprise in store for me. His 15th Stamp, which I’ve already covered in detail here, is being released just in time for the fair. To mark the occasion, the game is now also being released with two promo cards (which are already included in the game box currently available), created to celebrate the 30th anniversary of Kulkmann’s G@mebox. What a surprise and how cool is that?

I’m sure this would be right up your street too, loyal readers. I’ll see if I can arrange something for you tomorrow – but I’ll leave that as a surprise for now!

And that’s all from me for today. Frank will tell you a bit more about today, but I’m off for now and I’m really looking forward to seeing what tomorrow has in store for us.

Best regards,

Ralf

Well, thank you, Ralf! Those first glimpses of the convention halls certainly make me wish the show would start already, and I must admit that those special anniversary cards for 15th Stamp are a wonderful surprise! But as Ralf already mentioned, we had another rather unusual appointment today, which took us away from the exhibition halls and into Essen's city centre. RADIO ESSEN, our local radio station, had invited us to its studios for an interview about the G@mebox and the long friendship behind it. Neither of us had quite expected that! But after a little consideration, we thought, well, why not? It certainly sounded like fun, so off we went!

We were welcomed by Julia Crüsemann, one of the presenters of RADIO ESSEN's morning show, who conducted a very nice and relaxed interview with us. She asked about our friendship, the beginnings of the G@mebox, our favourite games and quite a few other things. I must admit that it felt a little unusual to receive so much attention. After all, quite a few of my friends and colleagues at the office regard me as something of a gaming nerd, but Julia seemed genuinely impressed that we had kept the G@mebox going for thirty years, and that our friendship went back even further, all the way to our schooldays. A rather pleasant change of perspective, I must say!

By the way, Julia recorded the whole interview, which lasted something like 40 minutes, and RADIO ESSEN is planning to broadcast it in several instalments throughout Thursday, the first public opening day of SPIEL. So, if you cannot make it to Essen this year, or simply fancy listening to two crazy Germans talking about SPIEL and all the bliss of boardgaming, you might want to tune in! Of course, the programme is entirely in German, which may be a challenge for our international readers. But if your German is up to the task, this is your chance to listen to us instead of just reading our articles! And if you are curious about what Ralf and I sound like speaking English, you can also watch the videos we recorded during the COVID pandemic in 2020, which are still available here at the G@mebox. We certainly enjoyed the interview, and RADIO ESSEN is also planning to publish an article about our visit on its website. We will add a link here as soon as it becomes available.

And while we were talking, it made me think once again about what SPIEL is really about. The games themselves, of course! Discovering all those wonderful new titles is certainly a major part of the excitement. But over the years, so many encounters with publishers, game designers and fellow enthusiasts have turned into real friendships. For Ralf and me, SPIEL week has long been about meeting old friends, catching up, sharing a laugh and simply enjoying our time together. And perhaps that is the real magic of SPIEL. The games bring us together, but it is the people who make this week so very special!

And now, we'll leave the last words of today's report to Basil the Bard, our somewhat thirsty, AI-generated companion, who has already found his way to the gates of SPIEL!

The halls were still sleeping, their great doors shut tight,
When Basil climbed barrels, three tankards too light!
“By my beard and my belly! Old friends, gather near —
You've followed our stories year after year!

If you spot Frank and Ralf, give a wave and a shout,
They'd love to meet you — that's what SPIEL's all about!
What surprises await? Ha! My lips shall stay sealed —
Though another three pints might get secrets revealed!”

Just three pints later, the secret was out,
And Basil proclaimed with a jubilant shout:
“CGE has made agents — a birthday surprise!
It's Frank and it's Ralf, right before your eyes!
Two Codenames tiles for our thirtieth year —
A gift from our friends, so let's give them a cheer!”

Only a few will be with them at SPIEL,
So come say hello — that's the heart of the deal!
A little prize draw? Ha! All in good time —
I've run out of secrets, and nearly of rhyme!”
Now off to our beds, for the day's work is through,
Tomorrow's press conference — we'll be back here with you!

Hello again, everybody, and welcome back! Today is Wednesday, which means that SPIEL is finally getting underway with its traditional press conference and the New Games Show. However, this year there was a little change of scenery, because for the first time, both events were being held in the Grugahalle, a historic, listed event hall which is part of the MESSE ESSEN complex. I hadn't been inside for what must be twenty years or so, so it was rather nice to return for this occasion!

And what greeted me when I arrived at the Grugahalle shortly after 9:30 this morning? A queue of journalists stretching for what looked like a hundred metres, all waiting to get inside! Well, there you have it: SPIEL hasn't even opened its doors to the public yet, and the first queues are already forming!

Inside the Grugahalle, on the very floor where sports events and shows like Holiday on Ice usually take place and where crowds gather in front of a concert stage, a large section had been separated off with curtains to accommodate the press conference. It was already quite crowded when I arrived, but fortunately Ralf and I still managed to find ourselves a couple of seats. It is always rather impressive to see such a gathering of journalists, gaming enthusiasts, bloggers and influencers, all coming together for this one event. This is certainly a reminder of just how much attention SPIEL attracts these days!

As longtime readers of our reports will know, the SPIEL press conference is not so much about the games themselves, but rather about the convention as a whole. It is the place to learn how SPIEL is developing, what has changed since the previous year and which new features await visitors. And this year was no exception. Carol Rapp, Managing Director of MERZ VERLAG, and Robin de Cleur, Director of Communications, were once again our hosts for the press conference, and naturally they began with the facts and figures for SPIEL 2026.

And the figures are impressive indeed! No fewer than 1,885 new games have been announced for SPIEL 2026, with 1,023 of them being presented at the New Games Show, which we will be visiting immediately after the press conference. But the sheer size of the convention itself is perhaps even more remarkable. Last year, SPIEL occupied 77,500 square metres of exhibition space, and this year that figure has increased by another 4.8% to an astonishing 81,200 square metres! This also means that SPIEL has finally reached something of a physical limit, because for the first time in its history, all eight above-ground exhibition halls of MESSE ESSEN are occupied. There is still Hall 1A, an underground hall beneath Hall 1, but whether this could eventually be used to accommodate further expansion remains uncertain. So, after decades of almost continuous growth, the world's largest boardgames fair is actually beginning to run out of space!

The international character of SPIEL is equally impressive. This year, 997 exhibitors from 53 countries across five continents have come to Essen, leaving only Africa and Antarctica unrepresented. Germany still leads the field with 285 exhibitors, but the United States follows with 102, France with 54, China with 47 and Poland with 42. These figures clearly demonstrate how SPIEL has developed from its rather modest beginnings into a truly international gathering of the boardgaming world.

And, of course, all those games and exhibitors need an audience! Last year's SPIEL was completely sold out with 220,000 visitors, but the addition of Hall 8 has allowed the organisers to increase this year's maximum capacity to 230,000. That is actually the upper limit permitted under the venue's fire safety regulations, so simply selling more tickets isn't an option. And the demand certainly seems to be there: Thursday, Friday and Saturday are already completely sold out, with only some tickets remaining for Sunday. Quite an achievement, but it could be expected since the ticket sales developed similarly last year.

But the expansion of SPIEL is not the only change awaiting visitors this year. There are also a few organisational improvements, especially when it comes to handling the crowds in the mornings. For one thing, the aforementioned Hall 1A, located beneath Hall 1, will now serve as an indoor waiting area, accessible through the South Entrance. And with the weather forecast looking a bit unpleasant for the coming days, this might be particularly welcome! So, if you are planning to arrive early and don't fancy standing outside in the rain, Hall 1A may well be the place to go until the convention opens at 10 o'clock. In addition, the North Entrance (Nordeingang), leading directly into Hall 5 near Grugapark, will be opened during the busy morning hours to help distribute the incoming visitors more evenly. Certainly two sensible measures, considering the record crowds expected this year!

But there is also another interesting development: SPIEL is increasingly becoming an event for the whole city of Essen, rather than just something taking place inside the exhibition halls. Under the new programme ESSEN SPIELT!, several rather unusual locations have been chosen for special gaming evenings. This Wednesday evening, for example, there was an opportunity to play boardgames on the 22nd floor of Essen's City Hall, enjoying a spectacular view over the city. On Thursday, another gaming event will take place at the Red Dot Design Museum, located within the historic Zollverein coal mine complex in the north of Essen. And on Friday evening, the WEISSE FLOTTE will be taking boardgamers out onto Lake Baldeney aboard one of its excursion boats. Quite an interesting change of scenery for a gaming session! These special events have limited capacities, with places awarded through advance prize draws, but I rather like the idea of taking the spirit of SPIEL to such unusual places.

And there is another nice bonus for visitors who would like to discover a little more of Essen and its surroundings. Holders of a SPIEL ticket now can benefit from special offers and discounts at eleven participating attractions and businesses, ranging from cultural sights to other leisure activities. So, if you are spending a few days here and would like to see something beyond the convention halls, it might be worth taking a look at the official ESSEN SPIELT! programme for the complete list of offers and their conditions. After all, Essen has quite a few interesting places to discover, and it is rather nice to see the city welcoming boardgamers in this way!

And for those of you living in or around Essen, there is another date worth marking in your calendar: Sunday, November 8! On that day, the Ruhr Museum will be hosting a special gaming event called Game On: Eiszeit! at the UNESCO World Heritage Site Zollverein. Organised in cooperation with MERZ VERLAG and SPIEL Essen, the event will focus entirely on the Ice Age, with visitors invited to try out a variety of boardgames featuring mammoths, prehistoric hunters and other themes from our distant past. The occasion is connected with the museum's special exhibition überLeben in der Eiszeit, and admission to the gaming event even includes a visit to the exhibition itself.

Two particularly interesting questions came up towards the end of the press conference, both concerning the future of SPIEL. The first was about the exhibitors, especially the smaller publishers, now that the convention has reached the limits of the available exhibition space. Would this inevitably mean higher prices for booths? Fortunately, Carol Rapp reassured us that MERZ VERLAG intends to maintain its special pricing arrangements for small exhibitors. After all, much of SPIEL's charm comes from the incredible variety of publishers arriving from all over the world, including many small companies which might otherwise struggle to afford a booth. It was certainly good to hear that this diversity will remain an important priority for the organisers.

And the second question was one which those of us who call Essen home were particularly eager to hear answered. With SPIEL approaching the physical limits of the exhibition grounds, might the convention eventually have to move somewhere else? Fortunately, the answer was as short as it was reassuring: No, SPIEL is staying in Essen! And to underline that commitment, we were even given the dates for next year's convention. So, mark your calendars: SPIEL 2027 will take place from October 21 to 24, right here at MESSE ESSEN! Now that's certainly good news for everyone who has come to regard Essen as the home of the world's greatest boardgames fair!

Deutscher Spiele Preis

And, of course, the press conference wouldn't be complete without revealing the winners of the Deutscher Spiele Preis 2026! Unlike a jury award, the Deutscher Spiele Preis is decided by votes from the gaming public itself, making it a particularly interesting reflection of which games have captured the hearts of players over the past year. And here are this year's top three!

• 1. Artengarten by Mathias Wigge (FEUERLAND SPIELE)
• 2. Boss Fighters QR by Lukas Zach and Michael Palm (PEGASUS SPIELE)
• 3. Galactic Cruise by T. K. King, Dennis Northcott and Koltin Thomson (PD-VERLAG)

And the Deutscher Kinderspielepreis went to Toriki: Eine Insel voller Abenteuer by Wojciech Grajkowski (MIRAKULUS).

Congratulations to all the winners!

Before we leave the press conference behind and turn our attention to the new games, I'd like to stay with the subject of reporting for just another moment. This time, however, it's about our own work here at the G@mebox. Following yesterday's report, we received a rather interesting entry in our guestbook, congratulating us on our anniversary but also expressing serious reservations about my mentioned use of artificial intelligence. First of all, thank you for the congratulations and for taking the time to share your thoughts! I certainly respect that not everybody welcomes the increasing use of generative AI, but your comment gives me a good opportunity to clarify something which I may not have explained sufficiently yesterday.

For me, AI is first and foremost an editorial tool, not a replacement for an author. One of its greatest advantages is that I can actually dictate parts of my reports instead of typing everything myself. Mind you, this is hardly my first encounter with speech recognition! About 25 years ago, I already experimented with IBM's dictation software, and believe me, that was quite an experience! Unfortunately, I seemed to spend more time correcting the computer's misunderstandings than actually writing anything useful. Today's technology works considerably better, and after thirty years of typing these reports deep into the night, I think I can be forgiven for appreciating a little help. AI also allows me to improve my English, discuss the wording of difficult passages and polish my texts much more efficiently.

But there is one thing I want to make absolutely clear: It is still my words, my voice, my thoughts, and my evaluations of everything which I'm going to present. I do not allow AI to take over the writing or generate ready-made reviews on my behalf. The observations and opinions come from my own experiences, from studying the rules, playing the games and thinking carefully about their strengths and weaknesses. AI helps me express these thoughts more fluently, but it doesn't decide what I think about a game. This certainly isn't some kind of automated SPIEL blurb factory!

And there is another thing worth remembering. Ralf and I have been doing all this for thirty years, long before AI was even on the horizon. We don't receive any remuneration for our reports, and we certainly aren't running the G@mebox as some kind of commercial enterprise. This is our hobby, something we genuinely love doing, and we continue to invest a tremendous amount of time in producing detailed, accurate and independent reviews and SPIEL reports. After all these years, I sincerely hope that our readers know they can trust us in this respect. The tools may have changed, but our dedication to the games and to the quality of our reporting certainly hasn't.

So, once again, my thanks to the author of that guestbook entry. I genuinely appreciate the opportunity to explain our approach, and I certainly don't expect everyone to share my enthusiasm for these new possibilities. This isn't meant as an excuse, but simply as a clarification of how we work here at the G@mebox. And with that said, it's finally time to return to what has brought us all together in the first place: the games! Back at the Grugahalle, the press conference had come to an end, and suddenly the large curtain behind the rows of seats was drawn aside, revealing the entrance to the New Games Show. Quite literally, a whole world of new games was waiting behind the curtain! And who better to guide us into that world than Ralf? So, without further ado, I'll hand things over to him!

Hello everyone, welcome back to the first official day of the fair: Press Day!

For me, Wednesday is always a very special day at SPIEL and a great honour, as for many years now we have been among the privileged few invited to the press conference and the subsequent novelty show for the new games. And for the first time, this year’s event took place at the Grugahalle – a venue that played a very special role in my childhood. That’s because a lot was going on in this hall, e.g. every year shortly after Christmas, the ‘Holiday on Ice’ ice show was held here and I was there quite often with my parents; what’s more, during my youth, the TUSEM Essen handball team – a very successful team across Europe at the time – used to play here. And finally, it was the gateway to the GRUGA, that lovely, huge park which was an essential part of a lot of my weekends in my youth.

And so, on to the press conference – which, like the entire fair, was once again bigger, with more exhibitors and more members of the press than ever before. But before things got underway for me at that place, there was something quite different on the agenda: in the run-up to the fair, I’d received a few, but huge parcels from smaller publishers, and now I had to transport these parcels from my home to the fair. Let’s put it this way: there couldn’t have been many more parcels than that, otherwise I’d have had to make two trips:

So, I still had quite a bit to do before I could set off for the press conference; as a result, I only arrived at the hall at the very last minute, and after a quick chat, I left it to Frank to report to you about this press conference, including all the statistics and the winners of the DEUTSCHER SPIELEPREIS award. After all, he’d already got his notepad and pen out, so I was able to sit back and listen at my leisure.

After that I moved on to the novelty show, and my first stop was the ALBI stand (4D400), where I found two of the games that had been heavily hyped in the run-up to the SPIEL:

The first game I asked to have explained to me in a bit more detail was Prague Unseen, a title that had would have caught my attention without seeing the game. In this euro worker-placement-style game, the aim is to skilfully deploy various workers to achieve your objectives. Prague has, in fact, been flooded and now needs to be rebuilt. And so we deploye golems, robots and other races to tackle this huge task.

I was curious to find out what all this had to do with Prague and learnt that all these different races are linked to tales and mystical fairy tales from the Czech capital. In the game itself, your actions trigger several mini-games across the four districts of Prague, and ultimately you’re competing for influence, because Prague Unseen remains, after all, a competitive game. A title definitely worth keeping an eye on:

Night at the Zoo had also received high praise in the last couple of weeks. Unlike the previous title, however, this is a family game; ALBI describes the target audience as ‘Family +’. Basically, the story is that our animals have escaped from the zoo in the middle of the night: ‘Night at the Zoo’, as the name suggests. And now it’s our job to herd these individual animals back into the zoo, whilst taking into account each animal’s specific characteristics. This is because the animals move in very different ways along their way. A sloth, for example, can be moved one space and then goes back to sleep the following turn. A penguin, on the other hand, moves in a completely different way.

All of this needs to be taken into account, because whoever has brought the most animals back to the zoo by the end of the game wins. Along the way, tiles are placed on the path to the zoo, and the more symbols you match by this placement, the more points and abilities you gain. In any case, this game looks really great too, and I could well imagine that it will appeal not only to families but also to many experienced gaming groups – let’s see if I can have the chace to go at it at the fair for more experience:

Another title that had already caught my eye in the run-up to the fair is Compress by OINK GAMES (6C310). The Japanese publisher is known for its tiny game boxes, which are always packed to the brim. Inside the box, you’ll usually find an entertaining game, often featuring surprisingly witty rules and ideas. The games are always very accessible and play very smoothly.

That seems to be a little different with Compress, because – if I’ve understood it correctly today – the game can actually give your brain a bit of a twist. The game consists solely of cards with the values 0 and 1. The aim is to remember the order in which the cards are played and, much like in the well-known children’s game ‘I’m packing my suitcase’, to recite the played cards in the correct order each round.

This may seem simple at the start of the game, as you begin with just one card. But on their turn, each player adds another card – provided, of course, that they have correctly recited the sequence beforehand. This is, of course, checked by turning over the next card from the discard pile each time a sequence is recited and comparing it with the recited sequence. The cards are then combined back into a pile in reverse order by turning them over, another card is added, and the next player must then recite the cards in reverse order.

It’s easy to imagine that you’ll quickly reach your limits here. Fortunately, you have eight cards of your own which you can lay out in front of you as a memory aid to somehow manage the sequence after all. But even then you’ll reach your limits – certainly by the eighth card at the latest. And that’s when the real highlight of the game begins, as you then have to use your eight cards to build your own memory aid. Creativity is key – for example, a 0 rotated by 45 degrees could stand for three zeros in the stack. Compress certainly sounds to be a lot of fun and will definitely be joining my collection:

Nearly every year, an old classic comes back at the novelty show. This year, for example, it was the 40th anniversary of Labyrinth, which prompted AWAKEN REALMS and RAVENSBURGER to release Labyrinth Chronicles. In this new edition, this all-time classic certainly looks the part, and I’d actually quite fancy playing the game of my youth again:

Incidentally, here at the novelty show, you can always get a good idea of the size of the exhibiting publisher. Whilst smaller publishers usually display their one or two new releases on a single table, the major publishers need far more space than that. ASMODEE (7E110), for example, regularly occupies an area equivalent to that of around twenty smaller publishers. Once again this year, there are so many new releases from ASMODEE coming out that even I’m struggling to decide which games I want to take a closer look at here. Two games have nevertheless made it onto my list: the two-player version of Citadels, Citadels – Duel, and the rather amusing-looking racing game Turbo-Flitzpiepen 2000. Tomorrow I’ll have the chance to have a closer look at the games, so here are just two quick photos:

The novelty show was divided between two floors, so there was much more space between the tables than in former years. I left the upper floor for a while and moved on to some very interesting founds to the lower floor:

IELLO (6F200) presented Fragments: Solara in this hall, a title which is being released simultaneously in German by PEGASUS. The game is the first in a whole series of narrative puzzle games which, whilst generally designed to be played just once by the same group of players, can – unlike, for example the EXIT series – be reset to their original state afterwards.

Each puzzle piece opens up decision paths for the players, characterised by symbols. The game is entirely cooperative, meaning that the players agree together which path they wish to take, select the corresponding symbol and then look in the booklet to find out what happens, what new items and possibilities are unlocked, and how the story unfolds. Bit by bit, they add further puzzle tiles to the unfolding landscape and progress through the story.

The game reminded me a little of 7th Continent, but Fragments: Solara is a much simpler game and is mainly meant to be entertaining. An interesting story unfolds, which I’ll be trying out with my wife over the next few weeks (provided I can get her excited about the game too). Solara is a straightforward title to start with; the upcoming ‘Fragments’ are likely to be more elaborate and also more challenging in terms of gameplay:

Something completely different awaited me just on the opposite of the table:

I was approached by Gabor Gödeny, the designer of a stunning-looking wooden board game, which immediately reminded me of my own early days at SPIEL in the 1980s. Back then, there were quite a few German board game publishers who brought out a fantastic new wooden game year after year.

And often, when my parents and I came home from the fair, we’d have one of these new releases with us. Many of these games are still in my or my parents’ game collection today. Back then, we used to play these games regularly at our family games evenings (I think they were always on Thursdays) and at the weekends. And most of these games involved balance, as you had to stack a wide variety of wooden shapes on top of one another without a single piece falling down.

Supera is another such balancing strategy game, which Gabor Gödeny brought to the fair this year in a small print run through his self-publishing label, MADEINART. Essentially, the aim of the game is to build a three-part tree that shares a common base; however, this base rests on only a small area of the table and therefore doesn’t look at all that stable.

Each team has a type of tree for their own, characterised by the different colours of the blocks. A dice then determines which piece must be placed on the tree next. The new piece must touch at least one other piece of the same tree type (i.e. the same colour). If this is no longer possible, or if the tree topples over when the piece is placed, the game is lost for that team.

Gabor is now looking for a larger publishing partner at the fair to release the game in larger quantities. So, if you’re interested in a game like this, do pop by the MADEINART booth (4F425) and show your interest, so that such a beautifully designed game can continue to find buyers in the years to come.

One thing I’ll definitely be taking a closer look at at the fair is the new release from BIBERSTEIN (4C215). The German publisher specialises in localising the fantastic titles from LOOPING GAMES 20th-century series in German. This year’s new release is 1902 Melies.

The game uses a worker-placement mechanism to recreate the making of the pioneering science-fiction film A Trip to the Moon. It certainly looks brilliant again – I love these big games in small boxes:

Incidentally, LOOPING GAMES itself is releasing the game 1953 Everest at SPIEL this year; I’ll definitely be taking a closer look at this one as well.

Just a quick side note at this moment. For years now, I’ve always bumped into the head of JMCREATIV, Jörg Meißner, at the novelty show; they were the first to bring out the crime games that are so popular these days, in which each player takes on a role, receives more and more information as the game progresses, and tries to uncover the other players’ secrets through skilful conversation. KRIMI total is the name of this game series, and here in Germany it’s often associated with cookery or cocktail evenings, where players meet in fancy dress to match their characters.

And for years I’ve been asking Jörg again and again when Krimi total will finally be available in English – after all, we run our website in English. And indeed, the time has now come: the first title of the series is being released in English, only as an app at the moment – but that’s a start. If that isn’t good news, I don’t know:

The hall of the novelty show was now less crowded, but there was still so much to see.

SKELLIG GAMES (3C300), for example, presented no fewer than four interesting new releases – particularly interesting as they are all in-house productions and not, as in previous years, localisations. Had I known this beforehand, I would have arranged my own appointment to take a closer look at the new releases. But I was still able to get a first impression today, and the first game wasn’t actually all that new to me, as I’d reported extensively on the prototype of Prestige during last year’s fair (see my report on this in the 2025 coverage).

It’s certainly always nice to see the final version of a game when you’ve already delved so deeply into a prototype. Here’s a picture of the final Prestige:

Two further themed games made a very interesting impression on me. The first is Go West, in which we settle the Wild West with a wide variety of buildings and factories. Each player starts in a different corner of the board and expands outwards from there.

However, some buildings can also be constructed directly adjacent to other players’ buildings, allowing you to expand further from there. Depending on where you place your building and which landscapes you cover in the process, you earn victory points, which you toss – in true Wild Western style – into a small safe.

A safe is a safe, and as such its contents remain secret until the end of the game; in other words, unless you have a very good memory, you’ll eventually lose track of which player has how many points.

The other game has a completely different theme; it’s all about pharmacies that have to prepare a wide variety of potions for patients. To do this, in each round, each player secretly chooses – without the other players knowing – at what time they want to be in which part of the game board.

In one area, there are ingredients; in another, staff is trained (as not every apprentice is immediately allowed to brew every potion); and finally, patients with their various illnesses and ailments are waiting – naturally, each one needs a different remedy, which has to be prepared.

If you arrive too late in the round at a particular part of the board, the action you want may no longer be available, which means you have to change your plans again. A brilliant theme, no doubt about it:

After these two thematical games, it was time for me for a card game. HUCH! (6B300) came in very handy, as I’d already spotted the game Fly away during my initial quick walk-through that I couldn’t quite make head nor tail of at first. The cards all simply show birds in different colours, and only a few of them had small symbols printed on them as well.

Fortunately, the designer of Fly away himself was at the stand and introduced me to the game. The aim is to form a bird formation. Now, a bird formation is, of course, a truly fascinating phenomenon. There seems to be a strict rule governing the formation, and the birds arrange themselves within it according to their experience.

And that is precisely our aim: to ensure that, by the end of the game, the right birds are in the correct positions within the formation. To do this, on each turn you take 1 to 3 adjacent birds from the display to complete your own flock. Scoring cards show us the best way to do this (in terms of the game), indicating which combinations yield the most points. Great graphics with a simple game mechanic – I’m keen to see how the game develops and have already snapped up a copy:

From one of the smallest games of this novelty show to one of the biggest games!

Cysmic by STAR REACH GAMES is a real monster game that would certainly be a highlight in any boardgame collection (provided you have the space for it). The game was funded via Gamefound and the English version has already been shipped to the backers. However, there are still a few copies available to buy. In any case, the whole project was apparently so successful that a second edition, including a German adaptation, is now ready to launch a new campaign.

I spoke today to one of the translators, a group that formed organically from within the fan community. It took over a year to translate the English version into German, with every word carefully considered back and forth until the right translation was finally found. A fantastic piece of work that is now set to be rewarded.

But what is the game actually about? The aim is to build a colony ship so that you can eventually leave the planet. The only problem is that the construction blueprints for the seven parts of the colony ship are held by the different factions – in other words, our opponents. And since we’re competing against one another, these blueprints aren’t, of course, revealed voluntarily.

So you have to exert influence over the others and engage in military skirmish. With that you can take hostages and then exchange them for the blueprints later in the game.

In any case, the game components are absolutely brilliant – just take a look at the sheer scale of the individual pieces:

There’s still so much to tell, but at some point today I’ll have to get to bed. So just a quick word about AMIGO, because a really great surprise awaits us here.

As you will know, AMIGO (7D110) specialises in small, fast-paced card games with great design and often quite innovative twists. This year, I was particularly taken with the game Fantastique. The highlight of the game are the cards themselves – they’re trapezium-shaped and form a fan. The aim is to collect matching cards and win medals. The game looks really brilliant, has an easy-to-learn scoring system and a short playing time of seven rounds or 25 minutes. Whether as a filler or a standalone family game, it’s sure to look great on any gaming table:

But now for the surprise: AMIGO also has a real classic which, like us, is celebrating its 30th anniversary this year. Namely, the great Wizard, the mother of all predicting the number of tricks-taking games. And AMIGO is, of course, marking this event with an exclusive anniversary edition of the all-time classic.

And it’s precisely one of these anniversary edition that we’ve received from the publisher for our prize draw to mark out our two anniversaries – so if that isn’t a good reason to leave a nice message in our guestbook (because that’s the only way you can win a prize).

Prize added for our prize draw

And with that wonderful note, I’ll sign off for today. Once again, it’s turned out to be much longer and much later than I’d planned. So hang in there, pop back tomorrow and enjoy our coverage!

Yours, Ralf

And with that, I'll take the microphone back from Ralf and continue with my own impressions of the New Games Show! Interestingly enough, my first encounter wasn't with a new game at all, but rather a reunion. At the booth of CZECH GAMES EDITION (Hall 3V400), I met Pavlina, and naturally this was a wonderful opportunity to thank her once again for those lovely special Codenames agent tiles featuring Ralf and me, which the publisher had created for our 30th anniversary. Certainly a very nice and personal way to begin my tour of the exhibition!

One of the biggest new releases at SPIEL 2026, and I mean that quite literally, is Kingdom Come: Deliverance – The Board Game by Tomáš Holek and Vlaada Chvátil, published by CZECH GAMES EDITION (Hall 3V400). Based on the popular video game, this massive adventure takes the players back to 15th-century Bohemia, where their characters can explore the medieval world, develop their skills, undertake quests and shape their own stories. There seems to be an enormous amount to discover and do in this game, and with its huge box and impressive collection of components, it certainly makes quite an impression! I'm already looking forward to meeting Pavlina again tomorrow, when I hope to learn a little more about what awaits us in medieval Bohemia.

On the other end of the complexity scale seems to be Drillers by Adam Španěl and Říman, another new release from CZECH GAMES EDITION. The game already created quite a buzz at Gen Con this summer, where it reportedly sold out, and its combination of digging for valuable minerals, upgrading equipment and managing limited resources certainly sounds like fun, especially when the players venture underground in their rather curious, homemade-looking drilling rigs! Definitely another title worth checking out!

Completing CZECH GAMES EDITION's excellent lineup this year is Lost Ruins of Arnak: Surprise Shipment. This unexpected final expansion should be a real treat for players who simply cannot get enough of Arnak, adding 50 new Item and Artifact cards, two new exploration sites and an updated site. Nothing dramatically different, but plenty of fresh discoveries for another expedition into the jungle!

Rather impressive is also this year's lineup from FROSTED GAMES (Hall 3G300). One game I've been eagerly awaiting ever since last year's SPIEL is Das Voynich-Mysterium by Dani Garcia, which takes the daring approach of turning the mysterious Voynich manuscript, a medieval book whose strange illustrations and unknown language have puzzled researchers for centuries, into a boardgame. Last year, Stefan Hestermeyer from FROSTED GAMES showed me a prototype, and I was immediately fascinated by the idea.

Another game which caught my eye was Tír na nÓg by Isaac Shalev and Jason Slingerland, taking players into the magical world of Irish mythology. This one looks rather unusual, especially because of its striking artwork and colourful cards, and its combination of card drafting and creating mythical sagas certainly sounds intriguing. Another promising candidate for a closer look during the next couple of days!

Of course, no SPIEL would be complete without me keeping an eye out for new Lord of the Rings games! And at the booth of ARES GAMES (Hall 3A115), I was delighted to hear that their two new additions to their War of the Ring line will be for sale here at the SPIEL. The first is War of the Ring: The Card Game – Hope and Despair, introducing a new type of Story cards inspired by important events from Tolkien's saga. The expansion can be used with the regular four-player game, but also supports the six-player version when combined with Fire and Swords. And solo players haven't been forgotten either!

The second expansion brings back some very old acquaintances! War of the Ring: Sieges of Middle-earth finally reintroduces siege engines to the second edition of the classic boardgame. Veterans of the first edition may remember the siege towers and catapults from the old Battles of the Third Age expansion, and now these impressive engines of war are returning with updated rules.

Another game which caught my eye while passing by was Greylune by William Attia, published by SORRY WE ARE FRENCH and presented at the booth of BLACKROCK GAMES (Hall 6K400). It looks like an interesting mixture of adventure and strategy, featuring rather cute wooden playing pieces and a colourful medieval fantasy setting. At first glance, it doesn't seem too daunting either, and since many of you know my soft spot for adventure games, I will probably return for a closer look during the next couple of days!

Quite the opposite on the complexity scale is Ashes & Amber by David Falla de Acebo from DAVID'S GAMES (Hall 4D125). My friend Dale Yu from THE OPINIONATED GAMERS drew my attention to this one, and he has already published his first SPIEL 2026 report. The game takes a rather unusual approach to civilization building, with players acquiring cards and arranging them into stacks representing cities, which develop and change throughout the different eras. This sounds like a clever and innovative mechanism, and I'll definitely be returning tomorrow to take a closer look!

Unfortunately, my longtime friend Ignacy Trzewiczek from PORTAL GAMES (Hall 3J120) had already told me before SPIEL that he wouldn't be able to attend this year due to health reasons. Ignacy, if you're reading this, I'm sending you all my very best wishes, and I certainly hope we'll meet again soon! However, Ignacy had kindly arranged for me to meet Rafał Szyma from his team at the New Games Show to give me a short demo game.

The game in question was Robo Run by Eryk Nowak, and when I first heard the title, I immediately thought of the good old RoboRally, with players programming their robots to move around a factory. Well, the robots and the factory are there, but otherwise the game takes a completely different approach! Robo Run is a cooperative game for two players, who must guide their robots through increasingly dangerous factories, avoiding traps, hostile machines and all sorts of other unpleasant surprises. The game contains five separate campaign books, each offering six missions. To escape, the players use a collection of double-sided action cards, choosing movements which may affect both their own robot and their partner's. And naturally, the challenges become increasingly tricky as the campaign progresses!

But here's the clever part: the two players aren't allowed to talk to each other during a mission! So, while there might be plenty to discuss about the weather or what to have for lunch, once the robots begin their escape, silence is the order of the day. Instead, the players must try to anticipate each other's intentions and trust that the right cards will be chosen at the right moment. I was amazed at how quickly the game drew me in during our demonstration. Certainly it is one of those charming little two-player games which might easily find their way into a visitor’s shopping bag before the convention is over, and for those interested in the German edition, copies are expected to become available at the booth of PEGASUS SPIELE (Hall 3M120) on Saturday!

KOSMOS (Hall 7E311) also presented a whole selection of new games, but the one which particularly caught my attention was Batman: Gotham City Crimes, presented by its designer Michael Menzel. Many of you will know Michael as the creator of The Legends of Andor, for which he designed both the game and its beautiful artwork. And with his latest creation, Michael has actually fulfilled a childhood dream: designing a game set in the DC universe! He told me how incredibly proud he was to see his own name on a game box alongside Batman and the famous DC logo. Unfortunately, he wasn't allowed to illustrate the characters himself, but he did create the gameboard, and of course the entire game design is his work. It was wonderful to see how much this project meant to him!

Batman: Gotham City Crimes is a cooperative adventure game in which the players take the roles of Batman, Batgirl, Batwoman and Nightwing, investigating crimes throughout Gotham City. The city itself is freely accessible, although the game isn't quite an open-world adventure, since the story unfolds over five different cases. However, the players won't know exactly what awaits them as they explore the streets and buildings, uncover clues and gradually discover which notorious villains are involved. And there's certainly no shortage of familiar faces from the Batman universe, including the Penguin, Bane and even more ambiguous characters such as Catwoman! The heroes move around Gotham using an interesting dice-allocation mechanism. Before taking their actions, the players must decide how many dice to assign to movement, fighting, investigating and other activities. Naturally, this requires some careful planning, because investing too few dice in an important action might leave a hero in serious trouble when the dice are finally rolled!

There are also some rather nice story elements. Investigations will lead the players to hidden passages in an adventure book, which can only be deciphered with a special red Bat-filter. Meanwhile, the heroes must deal not only with Gotham's criminals but also with the press, whose reporters are always eager to uncover their secret identities. Michael has even included alternative story passages for players who fail a mission and decide to give it another try, so repeating an adventure doesn't mean experiencing exactly the same events again. All this sounds like a rather entertaining mixture of detective work, superhero action and cooperative storytelling, and I certainly enjoyed listening to Michael explaining how everything fits together.

So many great-looking new games, and I had only seen half of the New Games Show! There was still another exhibition area waiting for me on the lower level of the Grugahalle. So, with plenty more games left to discover, it was time to head downstairs and continue my tour!

Downstairs, I came across a familiar sight: two years ago, my friends David Poluda and Maximilian Lichtner from TABLETOPPER GAMES (Hall 3R130) successfully introduced their first game, Under our Sun, a largely cooperative survival adventure set in a sun-scorched, post-apocalyptic world. Now they're finally presenting the first content pack for their game, adding new missions, cards and fresh challenges for the survivors. This is something I have been waiting for!

Something I absolutely hadn't expected to discover at the New Games Show was a boardgame adaptation of Ports of Call! Designed by Keld V. Rasmussen and presented by GAME INVENTORS (Hall 2E121), Ports of Call: The Board Game brings back a computer game which kept me glued to my PC for countless hours during my teenage years. And the funny thing is that it wasn't even an action game, but a rather serious shipping and trading simulation! The game is currently being prepared for a Kickstarter campaign, and I'm certainly curious to see how well those fond memories of the computer classic will translate to the gaming table!

Another game I've been looking forward to seeing ever since its crowdfunding campaign is Neon Hope by Dominik Schönleben and Francesco Grothe from HOPEFUL GAMES (Hall 4G200). This cooperative storytelling game takes players to a futuristic Berlin, where a seemingly utopian society is beginning to reveal some rather dystopian tendencies. With its branching storyline, narrative passages and difficult decisions, it sounds a little like T.I.M.E Stories, although the whole experience seems to be considerably more elaborate. Definitely another game I've been eager to discover in person!

Another unexpected discovery was Biblioclash by Juho Peuraniemi from A BIT NERD (Hall 6D108), a small Finnish deck-building game which successfully completed its crowdfunding campaign last year. Here, rival mages battle each other in a magical library, using spells, artifacts and minions to defeat their opponents. I hadn't heard of the game before, but its beautiful, hand-drawn illustrations and appealing fantasy theme immediately caught my eye. Definitely another addition for my list.

The lower level of the New Games Show was turning into a real treasure trove of unexpected discoveries! My next find was Time Walkers by Alexandre Aguilar and Benoît Turpin from SAND CASTLE GAMES (Hall 8B100), a two-player game in which two rival time-travel agencies compete to put history back on track. Their agents travel through four different eras, correcting anomalies in the timeline while trying to outwit the opposing agency. The subject has actually become something of a personal interest lately, because at the beginning of this year I started writing a time-travel novel myself. I'm currently working on the final revision of the manuscript, but that's quite another story. In any case, a boardgame about time travel certainly was bound to catch my attention!

And, of course, no visit to the New Games Show would be complete without stopping by CAPTAIN GAMES (Hall 3Q600)! This time, Gwendoline, daughter of my longtime friend Cédrick Caumont, was presenting their latest release, Tea & Rum by Fabien Gridel. The title certainly suggests a rather piratey affair, but underneath the theme lies an interesting worker-placement game in which players build their settlements, trade resources and compete for influence. Particularly intriguing is its unusual scoring system, with separate paths to victory, meaning that up to two players can actually emerge as winners!

But Gwendoline also had another very nice surprise waiting for me! To celebrate the 30th anniversary of our G@mebox, Cédrick had kindly arranged for a special promotional card, which I was seeing for the very first time here at the New Games Show. What a lovely gesture, and naturally this exclusive little anniversary present will also become part of our upcoming prize draw! Many thanks to Cédrick and the team at CAPTAIN GAMES for their wonderful support!

And finally, I also had the pleasure of catching up with my old friends Dale Yu and his brother Brian! Some of you may have noticed that our traditional Tuesday gaming night was missing from yesterday's report. Well, Dale had been travelling around Germany with his wife, so unfortunately we couldn't get together for our usual evening of games this year. It seems that our next gaming night will have to wait until SPIEL 2027! Nevertheless, it was wonderful to see Dale and Brian again, even if only for a little chat here at the New Games Show.

And with that, I think it's finally time to get some sleep! A long day has come to an end, and tomorrow the doors of SPIEL 2026 will open to the public. See you all tomorrow at SPIEL!

Hey everyone, the time has finally come. The day we’ve been waiting for, the day we’ve been longing for, the day we’ve been preparing for, and the day we’ve devoted so much of our free time to is here:

SPIEL’26 has finally opened its doors.

The first official day of the fair begins as it does every year: with traffic jams. Traffic jams from the south, traffic jams from the north, traffic jams from the east and west. Whether by car or by train, I don’t think there’s a single place in the world that wouldn’t reach its limits with such a mass of visitors. Fortunately, some of the roadworks around the exhibition centre were cleared (temporarily) at the last minute. And yet, some of you will certainly have taken a long time to finally arrive at the exhibition grounds. I spoke with a guy from the Netherlands who needed more than 5 hours this morning to come here by train and he is going home this evening again. Hopefully, he gets some sleep in the train.

I’ve allowed myself to arrive a bit later in recent years, thereby avoiding the worst of the traffic chaos. That’s why the journey was quite relaxed for me – a privilege when you live as close to the exhibition centre as I do. But when I entered the halls, everything felt like in former years. The atmosphere was back as well as the mascot of the SPIEL:

I was joined today by my younger son and my two nephews, whom I immediately took to the first free table we saw. None of the children had played Splendor before, so we were soon fully immersed in the game. Whilst SPIEL mainly showcases new games or new expansions, long-running games continue to find their audience, which I personally think is very good, because those older titles are still good and there are always players who attend the fair and haven’t heard about them.

It’s also great that here in Essen you have plenty of people to explain the games , and that was certainly the case here too, so I was able to sit back and relax whilst having a little chat with the person explaining the game about our board-game hobby. Despite that chat, I still managed to win the game, though it was to be the last one I won today.

After the match, we went our separate ways – that is, the children carried on through the large halls to meet my wife and my eldest son, whilst I headed to one of the many side events that have been taking place in the adjacent rooms of the exhibition centre for several years now. I always like to take this opportunity, as you’re exposed to quite a lot of noise in the large halls over time. But on my way, I spotted a funny vending machine at the ASMODEE booth – I wonder where it’ll end up after the fair?

Asmodee Press Event

ASMODEE, for example, invites the press into a large hall in the basement, where they can try out the publisher’s many new releases at their leisure whilst enjoying a light snack. As you can see, the atmosphere here is quite relaxed and you bump into plenty of old acquaintances, so it’s easy to find people to play with straight away.

Judging by the number of games on display here, it would have been possible to organise an event lasting several days on its own. However, together with my friend Lutz, whom I met here, I decided to focus on a few smaller games to get a brief overview.

First Impression: Citadels Duel – Asmodee (7A110)

We started with the new Citadels Duel, an accessible tile-laying game with some light bluffing elements. I must admit that I haven’t yet played the original Citadels, so unfortunately I can’t make a comparison.

In the two-player version, the ultimate aim is to own as many and as valuable buildings as possible in the city, which grows as the game progresses, by the end of the game. The game ends immediately once the city has reached a size of 4x4 buildings.

However, as the game progresses, buildings are not only constructed but can also change hands. To mark this, a building is simply turned from its light side to its dark side, so one player plays the white side and the other the black side.

At the heart of the game are nine unique cards featuring characters with numbers from 1 to 9. These cards are distributed to the players at the start of each round using a simple drafting mechanism. To begin with, each player receives four cards; they then give two of these to their opponent, and from the four cards they are left with, they set one aside. The cards are held hidden from the opponent.

The characters are then called out in order from 1 to 9. If a player has the corresponding character, their ability is carried out, after which the next character is called out. In principle, therefore, each player takes a turn three times per round; however, the character numbered 2 is an assassin who can remove another character from the game for that round. So, if a player has the assassin in their hand when she is called, they may name another character, and if that character is in play, they must leave the round.

Other characters allow the player to build new buildings from a display or to take over buildings in various ways. As well as money, there is also a character who requires influence in the King’s Council to carry out a takeover. This influence in the King’s Council is tracked on a small side board. The King’s Council is therefore quite important in the game; here too, the majorities are constantly shifting as a result of the various actions.

I really enjoyed Citadels – Duel. It’s not very difficult, as the rules are simple and the characters’ abilities are all clearly listed on the cards and very easy to grasp. But the game still satisfied me. It’s not a heavy brainer but a nice quick two player game. I think it would be nice if there were more character decks to add a bit more variety to the game after a few rounds, but I’m sure that ASMODEE is already working on an expansion.

First Impression: Turbo Flitzpiepen 2000 – Asmodee (7B211)

The next game we looked at was the exact opposite in terms of the number of players required. That’s because Turbo Flitzpiepen 2000 doesn’t actually need two players, but at least three. However, the more the better – I’d say four is the minimum, but the game is at its best with a full complement of seven players.

Turbo Flitzpiepen 2000 is a chaotic, lovingly designed racing game with a high element of chance. It doesn’t really fit in with the boardgames times we live in, and even the cover looks a bit old-fashioned, maybe 70ies or 80ies. But perhaps that’s precisely what gives it its charm; in any case, it’s been a huge hit for almost every player I met, and we had an absolute blast playing it here today too.

But what is the game actually about? Basically, each player has a character and moves them along a race track each turn by the number shown on the dice rolled. The first to cross the finish line gets 5 victory points, the second gets 2 victory points, and all other racers get 0 points.

We do this for a total of four times, with every second round taking place on a slightly modified race track, which does, after all, have a few special spaces that make you move forwards or backwards, or skip a turn (you’ve simply fallen over) when you land on them.

Sounds boring, doesn’t it? Yes, but that’s just how many games were in the 70s and 80s. So why did we have so much fun? Well, the secret lies in the individual characters’ traits and the humour these traits bring to the game.

Take, for example, the Slime, which makes all other players move just one step less than the dice show. Or the Giant Baby, which simply takes up so much space that any other character landing on the same square is forced to stop on the previous square. The Banana, on the other hand, makes other characters stumble when it’s overtaken, meaning they then need a whole turn to get back up on the same square.

As you can see, there’s a whole range of different things going on. And there are a lot of characters to discover. And yet the real fun begins when the different characters encounter one another and several of these special effects are triggered in a single move. That’s why it makes a lot of sense to play the game with higher player numbers.

The last game we had time to play here at the side event was the new standalone version of Forest Shuffle:

First Impression: Forest Shuffle - Smoky Mountain – Asmodee / Lookout (7C511)

I’ll just assume that you’ve already played Forest Shuffle or at least heard of it. So I won’t go into the basic mechanics now. Essentially, though, the aim is to use your cards to create your own little forest and then add all sorts of plants and animals to each tree on the right, left, top and bottom side; everything scores points in some way and can be linked together in one way or another. Of course it’s best to find useful combinations of the cards.

In the new standalone version Forest Shuffle – Smoky Mountain, the element of water comes into play; this can either be placed beneath a new tree by turning over a card from your hand, or it can be played as a separate card, such as a swamp card. New cards bearing a water symbol can then be placed next to these water cards. These are primarily fish cards, but there are also some insects and aquatic plants that can be placed at these spaces.

A tree with a water space can hold two such water cards; a special water space – which, incidentally, is placed vertical – can even hold four of these cards. Otherwise, there are of course plenty of other new cards and tree types with interesting new effects. A bald eagle, for which no fewer than three cards must be discarded, is worth either 10 victory points or even 30 if the player manages to incorporate at least five fish into their forest.

I must admit that I’m not a hardcore Forest Shuffle player up to now. But I’ve really taken a shine to this variant. So far, only the basic version of the game has found its way into my home, no expansion or other standalone variants, but I’ll probably head off tomorrow to buy this new version at the fair after all, I really loved it…

So many other games were on the tables, but they would have needed much more time, so I’ll leave you just with two games, namely Lightning Train and Circle of Conflict, that I really would have wanted to try:

Right, quite a bit of time had passed by now, and I really had to make an appearance amongst my family in those big halls again. So I said goodbye to Lutz and plunged into the crowd and the packed passages.

Dragon Dawn Games (5M515)

I finally found my family at booth of my friends at DRAGON DAWN PRODUCTIONS, booth 5M515. As you’ll recall, this is the publisher that created those fantastic bonus cards for their new card game 15th Stamp to mark our anniversary and immediately incorporated those cards into the game.

here I received two of the games personally from the author and publisher Ren Multamäki as a donation for our prize draw. And that’s not all. Ren also threw in the new release Beasts & Diplomacy for the prize draw as a bonus. I made sure the author joined me for a photo for this interesting game too. This are truly great news for you all, for all you have to do is simply leave a nice message in our guestbook and you’ll be in with a chance of winning one of the games or one of the special cards.

new prizes added for our prize draw

By the way, you can find reviews for both games, 15th Stamp and Beasts & Diplomacy in the boardgame session of our website.

Well, I’m pretty tired now after the first day of the fair. It was a brilliant day with lots of encounters, lovely people, wonderful games, conversations and new experiences. But now, I’m definitely done for the day – after all, I popped over to the BOARD&DICE booth party at the end of the fair, so I left the fair even after the official closing. But a beer was needed after all this effort.

I am pretty sure that Frank is by now as tired as I am, but he just told me that he is continuing his typing, so I'll leave you with him and his experiences on the first official day of SPIEL.

With the best regards, Ralf

Hello everybody!

Today the convention finally opened its doors to the public, and I must admit that I felt more than ready for it! Every year, the anticipation builds during the weeks leading up to SPIEL, and this time was certainly no exception. The more rulebooks I read and the more new releases I discovered while browsing the game lists on BoardGameGeek, the more eager I became to see and play everything for myself. And after yesterday's New Games Show, where so many promising titles were waiting to be discovered, I could hardly wait to get into the halls and actually start playing! So, early this morning, I made my way to MESSE ESSEN, determined to be among the first visitors entering the convention and to make the most of this opening day. At last, SPIEL 2026 was in full swing!

But before we head into the halls, let's not forget that we're celebrating the 30th anniversary of Kulkmann's G@mebox this year! And what better way to celebrate than with another little prize draw? As you have already seen in our previous reports, our friends at CZECH GAMES EDITION (CGE) have kindly created two special Codenames agent tiles featuring Ralf and myself, while Cédrick Caumont from CAPTAIN GAMES has surprised us with a lovely anniversary promo card of me as Lord Kulkmann for Tea & Rum. And these new additions actually complete a rather nice collection of G@mebox promotional stuff, because we still have two more little treasures from previous conventions: the Alicorn promo for Lost Ruins of Arnak and the special G@mebox Building for Above and Below!

So, here's your chance to get your hands on these rather unusual anniversary souvenirs! We will be raffling off several complete sets of G@mebox promos, with each lucky winner receiving all the special items mentioned above. And all you need to do to participate is leave an entry in our SPIEL guestbook during this convention week or the following week. Of course, any contact details provided for the prize draw will only be used to notify the winners, and we won't contact anyone for any other purpose. So, feel free to leave us a little message, join in our anniversary celebrations and perhaps even win a rather special addition to your favourite games. Good luck to everybody, and thank you once again for thirty wonderful years!

Of course, the first two hours of my opening day were devoted to a little shopping! After all, there were quite a few games on my wish list which I wanted to pick up before they sold out, so I decided to get those purchases safely out of the way before settling down for some serious gaming. And during this little shopping spree, I encountered the first truly impressive queue of SPIEL 2026! In Hall 3, hundreds of eager boardgamers were waiting for their chance to purchase Queen Alice by Héctor Carrión Benavent and David Heras Pino from COMBO GAMES (Hall 3U210). Quite an astonishing sight, especially so early on the very first day of the convention! Apparently, Alice had already attracted quite a following before even stepping through the looking-glass!

By the time I had finished this first round of shopping, it was already noon, so I decided to make a quick trip home to drop off my purchases. Of course, I had every intention of discreetly sneaking this very, very modest collection of new games past Nicole and into our apartment, but unfortunately number of rather bulky shopping bags I was carrying made this plan somewhat difficult to put into practice! But seriously, Nicole is wonderfully supportive throughout the whole convention week, and since she is every bit as enthusiastic a gamer as I am, she naturally wanted to have a closer look at everything I had brought home. So we enjoyed a quick lunch together, accompanied by a thorough inspection of the latest additions to our collection. Quite a pleasant little intermission, actually! But with my shopping safely completed and the games delivered home, there was no reason to linger. I quickly headed back to the convention halls, because now it was finally time to get down to some serious gaming!

One game which had already caught my attention during my morning shopping round was Chronocritters by designer Tristan Geeraert. As you may remember from yesterday's report, I have developed quite an interest in time travel lately, not least because of my somewhat unexpected ambition to publish a science fiction novel one day. So a game dealing with time travel was naturally going to attract my attention, especially when it combined the subject with a rather charming collection of little critters! I decided that this would be the perfect starting point for my afternoon of gaming, and fortunately I was lucky enough to find a free seat at one of the demonstration tables. So, without further ado, I settled down to discover what this unusual game had to offer!

Introduction: Chronocritters – DELICIOUS GAMES (booth 4A210)

Chronocritters takes the players to the year 2562, where a cataclysmic event has begun tearing apart the fabric of time and space. Humanity has discovered an ancient intelligence whose lost knowledge might offer a way to stabilize reality, but restoring it requires the recovery of forgotten technologies scattered across different places and times. Fortunately, help comes from the Chronocritters, animals capable of constructing temporary portals through time. This rather quaint background may suggest something considerably lighter than the game actually is, because underneath the colorful animals lies one of the deepest Eurogames which I have encountered in recent years, combining worker placement, resource management, spatial dice manipulation and multiple interconnected scoring opportunities.

At its foundation, Chronocritters is a worker-placement game played over seven rounds. Each player begins with three Critters which are sent to action spaces, while a fourth Critter can be unlocked later and the existing Critters may be upgraded through three levels, making some actions increasingly effective. The available possibilities are broad: players collect resources, acquire artifact dice, improve their Critters, fulfil different kinds of Quests, work on the Dam, mine for resources or obtain additional bonuses and scoring tiles. In this respect the game reminded me quite strongly of PERRO LOKO GAMES' Phoenix: New Horizon, which I reviewed last year. Both games feature playing pieces which become more capable during play, personal development systems and a remarkable number of ways to generate points. Chronocritters certainly is not a copy of Phoenix, but both belong to that particular kind of Eurogame where almost every mechanism eventually reaches into two or three others.

The game's most characteristic mechanism is the large central disc, effectively a Time Wheel, which sits in the middle of the board. Its seven segments represent the seven rounds, distributed over four seasons, while one segment always marks the present. Only some actions are permanently available; many others belong to individual seasonal sectors and normally can be used only when the present has reached that part of the year. After every round the Time Wheel rotates to the next segment, and with this movement yesterday's opportunities disappear while new possibilities move into reach. Thus, time is not merely part of the background story but actually determines which parts of the action system are accessible.

And this is where the Chronocritters finally earn their name. By spending resources (a purple artifact die and Sand Time Particles), the players can open a temporary Time Portal to another segment of the wheel. The distance from the present determines how much Sand must be spent, while the value of the sacrificed die determines how long the portal remains stable. Once established, it gives its owner access to the seasonal actions and available dice of that earlier or later point in time. But at the end of every round all portals decay, eventually disappearing altogether. This creates a fascinating planning layer: a desirable action may technically belong several rounds in the future, but a player prepared to invest the necessary resources can reach forward and use it now, or return to an opportunity which everybody else has already left behind.

This temporal restriction gives the worker placement a rather unusual rhythm. Players are not merely asking which action they need, but also when it becomes available and whether creating a portal is worth the expense. It encourages long-term preparation, because resources collected during one season may be required for opportunities appearing much later. At the same time, the portals provide enough flexibility to pursue a strategy even when its next step belongs to another period. The Time Wheel therefore manages the rather impressive feat of restricting the players while simultaneously giving them tools to overcome these restrictions.

The second standout mechanism sits directly in front of every player: the Transmission Portal. At its centre lies a three-by-three grid which stores artifact dice of different colors and values acquired from the Time Wheel. These dice are not primarily rolled during play but become resources and puzzle pieces which can be collected, moved, exchanged or adjusted. Hard Disc Quests are attached to rows and columns of this grid and demand particular configurations: some require three dice whose values add up to a certain range, while others demand specific combinations of colors. Completing such a "Quest" therefore is not simply a matter of possessing the necessary resources somewhere in a personal supply; the right dice have to be arranged at the right positions inside the Transmission Portal.

This little grid develops into an intricate puzzle of its own. An action allows dice to be moved, swapped, recolored or adjusted in value, and clever manipulation may suddenly make several Quests possible in succession. Completed Hard Disc Quests can furthermore be connected with completed Docking Quests of the same color, providing another important source of Victory Points. Better still, accomplishing such connections earlier can be more valuable than waiting until later seasons. So, the Transmission Portal rewards players who manage to combine spatial planning, resource acquisition and timing, often creating satisfying combinations of actions and bonuses.

And there certainly is no shortage of alternative paths. Work on the Dam influences future player order and later scores majorities, energy can be collected to upgrade the Critters, the Peacock can be unlocked as an additional worker, and Mining provides income at the end of each season. Year Goals reward players who reach certain milestones, while special Docking tiles introduce still more immediate and endgame benefits. The challenge is not simply finding something useful to do, because there almost always is something, but determining which of these opportunities actually fits into the developing strategy. Especially interesting is the possibility of creating chains of progress, where an improvement in one area opens up valuable options elsewhere. This makes even relatively modest decisions potentially important in the long run.

All this also explains why Chronocritters should not be mistaken for a cute family game merely because its workers happen to be beavers, eagles, varans and peacocks. Mechanically these animals are essentially sophisticated worker pieces, and they could rather easily have been replaced by teams of human time travellers without changing much of the actual game. Admittedly, some of their abilities fit their animal identities rather nicely, especially when a beaver gets involved in constructing a Dam, but the connection remains relatively loose. In this respect the thematic implementation is slightly weaker than in last year's Natera: New Beginning, where the rise of intelligent animal tribes was reflected much more directly through territorial Authority, asymmetric tribal abilities and the rediscovery of human science. Players looking primarily for a strongly integrated animal theme probably will find Natera more satisfying, whereas the attraction of Chronocritters clearly lies elsewhere.

From what I could see, the sophistication of the design is considerable. Chronocritters feels like operating an elaborate machine whose individual gears gradually begin to mesh. Artifact dice serve several competing purposes, portals alter access to resources and actions, improved workers make certain opportunities more efficient, and developments made in one round may only reveal their full value several seasons later. This abundance of possibilities can be demanding, and I suspect that the first game will require considerable concentration, particularly when players are still trying to understand how all the different systems influence one another. However, I also think that this complexity has been put to good use, because experienced Eurogamers should find plenty of satisfaction in discovering combinations and refining their strategies.

All in all, Chronocritters is a game which should be judged less by the playful animals on its cover and more by the serious strategic machinery underneath. The background provides a serviceable explanation for time travel and portal building, but it is the design itself which really shines. The rotating Time Wheel introduces an unusual temporal dimension to worker placement, while the personal Transmission Portals turn supposedly simple dice into a demanding spatial and numerical puzzle. The wealth of strategic options places the game firmly in the territory of experienced Eurogamers, and I can easily imagine that mastering its many interactions will take several plays. It may wear a rather cute set of paws and feathers, but behind them ticks a remarkably intricate clockwork.

After my introduction to Chronocritters, I decided to take a little stroll around Hall 4, since I was there anyway. And one thing which certainly is difficult to overlook is the huge stage area, where the SPIEL.talks programme takes place throughout the convention. Here, visitors can enjoy all kinds of presentations, panel discussions and live events, with Friday's Educators Day and Sunday's Golden Demon awards ceremony being among the highlights. So, if you really fancy taking a little break from playing games, there is plenty to discover here as well! The complete schedule can be found on the official SPIEL website.

As it turned out, I didn't have to go very far for my next discovery either! While wandering through Hall 4, I came across the booth of HOPEFUL GAMES, where they were presenting Neon Hope, a game which had already caught my attention at yesterday's New Games Show. So why keep wandering around the convention when another interesting game was waiting almost right in front of me? I decided to make the most of the opportunity and stop for a closer look at this rather intriguing dystopian adventure game.

Introduction: Neon Hope – HOPEFUL GAMES (booth 4G200)

Designed by Francesco Grothe and Dominik Schönleben, Neon Hope takes the players into a near-future Berlin which stands somewhere between cyberpunk dystopia and solarpunk optimism. Powerful corporations have gained enormous influence, resources are running short and democratic society is under pressure, but the future has not yet been decided. This distinction gives the setting its particular flavor: instead of entering a world which has already succumbed completely to corporate rule or climate crisis, the players find themselves at a turning point where things still might develop in very different directions. The technology also feels deliberately close to the present day, with augmented reality, artificial intelligence and familiar digital services forming part of everyday life rather than becoming exotic science-fiction inventions.

The campaign A Better Humanity begins in Berlin when the characters are supposed to meet a friend at the Syphon, an electro club in the eastern part of the city. He works for Nubicon, a powerful international technology corporation which soon emerges as the principal adversary of the campaign. Its extensive surveillance network and corporate security apparatus make it clear that the players are dealing with an organization able to react directly to their investigations, while the exact purpose behind its activities remains something they have to uncover for themselves. Searching for their missing friend draws the group into this much larger affair, and from here the story develops over five connected episodes. In contrast to many scenario-based games, successes, failures and decisions are carried forward, so that the campaign gradually develops its own history instead of simply presenting a succession of unrelated missions.

The prevailing element of cooperative exploration may remind some players of SPACE COWBOYS' T.I.M.E Stories. In both games the players move between different locations, investigate people and places, collect information and slowly try to understand what actually is happening. However, Neon Hope seems to offer a more elaborate campaign structure and greater mechanical depth. Whereas a classic T.I.M.E Stories scenario essentially presents one self-contained mission, Neon Hope follows the same characters through a longer story. In addition, T.I.M.E Stories places most of its narrative directly onto the location cards, while here a storybook serves as the main narrative driver, providing introductions, branching passages and consequences which connect the individual episodes. The writing of the opening material has the feel of a contemporary science-fiction thriller, using dialogue and recognizable Berlin locations to make the futuristic setting feel surprisingly close to present-day reality.

Mechanically, each player controls one character and receives three actions per turn which can be used to move between locations or interact with the environment. The most important tasks are Investigation, gaining Support, Fighting and Hacking, and these possibilities already give a good impression of the different ways in which the characters can approach a situation, reminding me a bit of old point-and-click computer adventures. However, here the interactions carry consequences: Leads may reveal new information, Allies and other sources of Support can improve later actions, while Enemies and technological obstacles may have to be overcome before the group can progress. At the same time, Surveillance and encounter effects represent the opposition reacting to the players, so exploration never becomes a purely leisurely search through locations.

Actions usually are connected with attribute checks, and here the most distinctive mechanism of Neon Hope makes its entry: the Grid, a set of tokens which replaces the dice normally used for tests in many adventure games. A selection of positive and negative modifier tokens is distributed facedown across a four-by-four Grid, and whenever a character attempts an important task one of these modifiers is revealed and added to the relevant Attribute. The clever part is that revealed modifiers remain visible. Thus, the Grid gradually develops a kind of memory: if many negative results have already appeared, the remaining chances become more attractive, whereas a series of positive modifiers may indicate that trouble is still hidden underneath the unrevealed spaces.

To my mind this is a very elegant way of introducing uncertainty without leaving everything to a lucky or unlucky die roll. The players can use Action cards and Attribute Markers to strengthen an attempt, while some character abilities even allow them to interact with the Grid itself. As a result, risk becomes something which can be observed and to a certain degree managed. The players never know exactly what the next modifier will be, but they can judge whether the moment seems favorable and decide how many resources they are willing to invest before making the attempt. This gives even relatively straightforward actions a nice tactical edge.

Quite importantly, the cooperative element goes further than simply discussing what everybody should do. Characters in the same Setting can directly assist another player's task by contributing their own Attribute Markers, and additional effects can make such cooperation even more valuable. This means that the group may deliberately bring several characters together before attempting something important, deciding not only who should act but also who can provide the most useful support. In this fashion the characters actually work as a team on the mechanical level, rather than four individuals whose actions merely happen to contribute towards the same goal.

One pleasant surprise during the introduction was discovering how carefully Neon Hope has been adapted for solo play. Instead of controlling an entire party, a lone player handles just one character, who receives additional Action cards, an Ally and more Endurance. The Surveillance system also scales rather cleverly: since its basic increase depends on the number of characters, a solo investigator can take four rounds of three actions before generating the same basic Surveillance as four players in a single round. Other effects may influence this balance, of course, but I liked how carefully the designers have adjusted the pacing for different player counts.

Character development strengthens the campaign feeling further. Between episodes the characters improve their personal Action cards and gain access to better starting resources, while contacts and other advantages discovered during the story may continue to matter later. Development therefore is not simply a fixed increase of numbers, but gives the players some influence over how their characters grow. Combined with the tactical decisions during individual scenarios, this provides a considerable amount of freedom, allowing the protagonists to acquire different strengths and become better equipped for the challenges ahead.

Another thing which genuinely surprised me was the enormous variability of the campaign. Across its five episodes, A Better Humanity can reach no fewer than 33 different endings! Dominik Schönleben told me today that even after completing the entire campaign once or twice, players probably will have seen only a small portion of the available material. Decisions and failures can lead the story in very different directions, giving this narrative adventure an unusually high degree of replayability.

All this is especially impressive considering that HOPEFUL GAMES is a small independent publisher. Following its crowdfunding campaign, the team managed to release Neon Hope in both German and English, making the complete adventure accessible to international players as well. And the team already has more plans: another crowdfunding campaign is being prepared for an expansion set in London! So apparently, the future of humanity will not be decided in Berlin alone!

All in all, Neon Hope seems to offer considerably more than a story wrapped around a cooperative puzzle. Its exploration, character interaction and tactical mechanisms appear closely connected to the world they are supposed to represent. Surveillance makes the corporation feel increasingly attentive, support comes from people and places discovered during the investigation, and the Grid introduces an interesting element of uncertainty which players can gradually learn to read and influence. The extensive branching campaign is perhaps the game's greatest attraction, especially for players who enjoy discovering how their decisions influence a developing story. Today's introduction certainly left me with the impression that Neon Hope could offer many hours of fascinating adventures in a future which still might take a turn either towards corporate dystopia or something considerably more hopeful.

Francesco and Dominik

By now, Hall 4 was beginning to feel like my hall of fate on this Thursday afternoon! Somehow, almost every game which caught my interest this afternoon seemed to be waiting for me right here, and my next discovery was no exception. Apparently, fate had decided that there was little reason for me to explore the other halls just yet! This time I managed to find a seat at a table where Ashes & Amber was about to be played, and after seeing the game yesterday in the New Games Show, I was certainly eager to get my hands on some cards and see how things actually worked!

Playtesting Session: Ashes & Amber – DAVID'S GAMES (booth 4D125)

Civilization games usually encourage the comforting belief that every invention and every new building brings humanity another step forward. Ashes & Amber by David Falla de Acebo, published by DAVID'S GAMES, takes a rather different view. Here civilization consists of cities built from overlapping cards, elegant but fragile towers in which achievements, resources and dangers sit uncomfortably close together. Buildings and inventions do not simply join a growing collection of permanent advantages: their position within the players' cities matters, their usefulness changes, and sooner or later much of this carefully assembled civilization will burn. The challenge is to decide what must survive, what can be sacrificed and how something worthwhile might emerge from the ruins.

To understand this unusual approach, it helps to begin at the destination. Over five eras, from Prehistory to the Modern Era, the players try to accumulate Utopia symbols, each worth a point at the end. Many of these come on Utopia cards which must actually be placed in the players' cities. Thus, even victory points occupy space and need protection, because there are quite a few ways they can be lost again. Placing a new Utopia directly beside another causes one of them to collapse, making suitable accommodation an important consideration. Furthermore, accumulated Death cards remaining at the end cancel Utopias, so a successful civilization must both preserve its achievements and deal with the scars of its history.

But let's look at these cities in more detail. Cards are stacked with their lower edges visible, exposing resource symbols and protective abilities throughout the stack. New cards normally enter at the top or bottom, but only an uncovered Action card can be exhausted to use its special effects, usually once per era. These effects include drawing new cards, founding cities, rearranging existing cards, producing Utopias or removing Death. Covering a useful action therefore closes an opportunity, while uncovering another may open an entirely different one. More cities provide access to more actions, whereas taller cities offer a better selection of cards during income. However, both approaches have their disadvantages, particularly when disaster strikes.

The rhythm of play is straightforward. Each era begins with fresh cards and the revelation of its available Wonders, protective Resilience cards and, in the first four eras, its coming Catastrophe. Players then take turns either claiming a card from the shared display or performing up to two actions, such as playing or activating cards. When everybody has passed, the End-of-Era Catastrophe strikes, except in the final era. There is therefore time to prepare: the approaching disaster is visible throughout the era, turning survival into a problem of planning rather than an unpleasant surprise drawn after all decisions have been made.

A small example illustrates how much can happen within these simple rules. A player might place a card above the starting Fire card, activate its ability to found another city, and move that very card into the new stack. This uncovers Fire, which can now be activated to produce Ash. Together with an Engineering card already in a city, this Ash might be used to pay for a Resilience card which provides protection for the card below it when it is placed in a city. In just a few turns the player has expanded, reopened an earlier action and converted temporary resources into protection. Other developments require Food, Population, Culture or Science, providing a familiar connection with classic civilization games. However, these symbols are generally paid by discarding the cards bearing them from the cities, so that progress actually consumes parts of the civilization, potentially uncovering useful actions or dismantling carefully arranged structures.

This makes the order of the cards in each city much more than an organizational detail. A Resilience card protects the card immediately beneath it, even when itself covered, so tucking a valuable achievement underneath offers a sensible precaution. Some protective cards also have greater powers when exposed on top, potentially shielding whole cities at the cost of burning themselves. Wonders, meanwhile, provide ways to produce Utopias, but must remain accessible when their actions are needed. The players therefore constantly face uncomfortable decisions: should a precious card remain exposed for another activation, or would it be wiser to secure it beneath a protective layer before the next disaster?

The Catastrophes at the end of the first four eras make these questions wonderfully uncomfortable. Each Catastrophe introduces Death cards and burns specified parts of the players' civilizations, perhaps targeting their tallest cities, their outer cities or the city containing Amber. From the second era onwards, cards directly above or below Death are also threatened, making these unwelcome inhabitants resemble persistent infestations. Death itself survives burning and cannot be discarded as payment for new developments, so players must find ways to remove it or protect the neighbouring cards. One card especially worth protecting is Amber, which everybody has from the beginning: it provides extra cards during income and can help generate Utopias in the final era. Keeping it safe therefore preserves both present opportunities and future potential. However, even destruction can have its benefits, because ordinary cards which burn are replaced by Ash, a temporary resource which can help finance rebuilding. Ash disappears when its owner passes, so it must be used rather than hoarded. Sometimes allowing a less valuable part of a city to burn is therefore quite a reasonable investment in the future.

Here the title neatly captures the game's underlying philosophy: Ash represents impermanence and the possibilities emerging from destruction, whereas Amber stands for continuity and the value of preserving something through the ages. Shared objectives offer further rewards along the way, while competition for powerful cards ensures that the players cannot ignore what their neighbours are doing. With so many possible developments, the challenge lies in recognizing which parts of a civilization deserve lasting protection and which might serve a greater purpose by making way for something new.

To my mind, Ashes & Amber belongs to those games whose strategic implications cannot be fully appreciated from an initial explanation or even a first encounter with its mechanisms. Players will need to feel their way into its ingenious city system, discover useful combinations and refine them over several games. However, what I encountered during my playtesting session was something genuinely fresh and innovative: a civilization game in which development, expenditure, protection and destruction all operate through the same fragile stacks. I can particularly imagine seasoned gamers being fascinated by this unusual approach, because familiar strategies do not immediately provide a comfortable starting point. Building more is not automatically better, preserving everything is neither practical nor necessary, and even an earned victory point still needs somewhere safe to live. This is a remarkably clever concept, and one which I found thoroughly convincing.

The unusual artwork gives this passage through human history a fitting visual identity, while the extensive but thoughtfully organized iconography expresses the relationships between cards, cities and disasters. Further options include nineteen Tribes with distinct abilities and branching development choices, The Long Reach with indestructible Land cards on which to establish new cities, and The Remnants, which allows lost Amber to leave something useful behind and potentially be recovered. There is plenty here to explore once the basic mechanisms have settled. Successfully funded on Kickstarter, Ashes & Amber is a pleasing reminder that crowdfunding sometimes brings forward genuinely unexpected results. For David's one-person publishing venture, this is a truly impressive feat.

After this splendid playtesting session, my time in Hall 4 had finally come to an end! I decided to head over to Hall 3, which is home to quite a few publishers catering especially to dedicated hobby gamers. Entering the hall through the Galleria, I didn't have to walk very far before reaching the booth of my friends Maximilian Lichtner and David Poluda from TABLETOPPER GAMES. And since I was passing by anyway, this was the perfect opportunity to stop for a little chat and see how things were going!

Stop-Over: TABLETOPPER GAMES (booth 3R130)

And of course, they had come to SPIEL 26 to present something new. Max and David had the first new Content Pack for their excellent post-apocalyptic survival game Under our Sun waiting for me, and despite its rather modest size, this little package contains something fans have been eagerly awaiting: more adventures! In fact, Content Pack 01 adds seven new missions, together with additional cards and other material which considerably expands the possibilities of the original game. I also picked up an Upgrade Kit containing a revised rulebook, replacement cards and other updated components, bringing our first-edition copy up to the standard of the second edition and making it compatible with future expansions.

And fortunately, there is even more to come! Max told me that they are already planning another, considerably larger expansion, featuring new missions, map tiles, tokens and additional mechanisms. He couldn't yet give me a date for the next crowdfunding campaign, but it was wonderful to hear that they intend to continue developing the world of Under our Sun. Nicole and I are both great fans of the game, so I was particularly happy to learn that our adventures in its rather unforgiving post-apocalyptic wasteland are far from over!

And apparently, Max and David have no intention of slowing down when it comes to designing new games either! Max told me that they are currently developing Mind Extraction, an asymmetric two-player game in which one player attempts to invade the thoughts of the other. That certainly sounds like an intriguing premise, and from what Max was willing to reveal, there are some rather clever mechanisms involved as well. The project is still under development, so we'll have to see what eventually comes of it. But I'm certainly curious to discover what our two enthusiastic game designers from Munich will have up their sleeves for next year's SPIEL!

By now, the afternoon was drawing to a close, but I still had one particularly important visit ahead of me, and it was something I had been looking forward to all day! Fortunately, I didn't have to leave Hall 3, because my final destination was the booth of our friends at CZECH GAMES EDITION (CGE). Here I had not just one but two appointments waiting for me, both of which promised to be rather interesting!

Visiting CZECH GAMES EDITION (booth 3V400)

My first appointment was with Pavlina, CGE's press representative, whom I had already met during yesterday's New Games Show. This time we had arranged a closer look at Kingdom Come: Deliverance – The Board Game, one of the publisher's major new releases at this year's SPIEL. Having already admired the impressive presentation of the game yesterday, I was naturally eager to learn a little more about what actually happens when the players enter medieval Bohemia.

Kingdom Come: Deliverance – The Board Game is actually the biggest and most ambitious project CZECH GAMES EDITION has ever undertaken, and looking at the enormous box and its contents, I can certainly believe it. The game is based on the successful computer role-playing game developed by WARHORSE STUDIOS, another Czech company based in Prague. As Pavlína explained, the board game project brought together two rather remarkable designers: Tomáš Holek, whom players may know from SETI, and the almost legendary Vlaada Chvátil. Apparently, Tomáš initially worked on the project himself, but repeatedly sought advice from Vlaada, who eventually became so deeply involved that the two ended up designing the game together. And what they have created is quite an achievement! Kingdom Come: Deliverance takes the players into medieval Bohemia, where they have five days to develop their characters, explore the countryside and pursue their fortunes. Three major storylines, one associated with each of the cities on the game board, provide important opportunities for earning Victory Points. These may concern quite serious events, such as an outbreak of plague or a city under attack, and the players can contribute to resolving them. However, despite some opportunities to work towards common goals, this is ultimately a competitive game in which everybody tries to make the most of their own adventures.

And these adventures begin rather modestly, because the characters start as poor commoners, dressed in little more than rags and equipped with a simple dagger. Fortunately, there is plenty of room for improvement! Throughout the game the characters gain experience, learn new skills, acquire better clothing and weapons, and may eventually even afford a horse. At the heart of this development lies a rather elegant deck-building mechanism, because the players gradually improve their personal decks with Skill cards which are used for all kinds of checks, ranging from hunting and fighting to persuading other characters or attempting to steal something. The more suitable cards a character possesses, the better the chances of succeeding. However, what impressed me most during Pavlína's introduction was the sheer freedom of choice. The designers have made a considerable effort to recreate the open-world feeling of the original computer game. Characters can visit towns, purchase equipment, make friends with merchants and other inhabitants, encounter guards, travel along roads filled with unexpected events or discover numerous smaller quests. Even everyday necessities have their place: characters need food, which they can purchase or obtain through hunting. The possibilities almost resemble those of a role-playing game, although no actual role-playing is required.

And the remarkable thing is that all these elements seem to fit together rather naturally. Despite the considerable playing depth, I never had the impression that the game was unnecessarily complicated or that the different mechanisms were simply being piled on top of one another. Of course, there will be quite a bit to learn, but Vlaada Chvátil has a remarkable reputation for creating sophisticated games which remain accessible once their underlying systems become clear. Pavlína suggested that Nicole and I should approach the game step by step, initially concentrating on movement, character development and basic activities before tackling the major storylines. That sounds like a sensible plan, and one which I am certainly looking forward to trying. In fact, considering the astonishing wealth of possibilities, the beautiful presentation and the sheer amount of material included, Kingdom Come: Deliverance may well be the most ambitious adventure board game I have encountered so far. Our gaming table is definitely waiting for this one!

But the most unusual meeting of the day was still to come! After my introduction to Kingdom Come: Deliverance, I had the pleasure of sitting down with Felix Podlesny, the designer of Codenames: Critical Role Adventures, and Regina "Regi" Urazajeva, who was responsible for writing the stories of the game's three campaigns. As they explained, the project actually originated from encounters between members of the CZECH GAMES EDITION team and the original Critical Role cast at conventions in the United States. Apparently, both sides liked what the others were doing, and the idea of creating a game together was born. However, turning this idea into something playable proved surprisingly difficult. For more than a year CGE experimented with combining the familiar Codenames mechanism with elements such as dice rolls and skill checks, but somehow the project never really got off the ground.

Regi and Felix

And then Felix entered the picture! Rather amusingly, Felix actually works in CGE's IT department and had never designed a board game before, although becoming a designer had long been a secret dream of his. His suggestion was to stop thinking about merely expanding Codenames and instead transform it into a completely new experience. That apparently was exactly the inspiration the project needed! Suddenly, development gathered momentum, with characters moving around the familiar word grid, individual abilities and an adventure system gradually taking shape. More and more members of the CGE team volunteered to contribute because they were having so much fun, and within less than a year the game had progressed from this new concept to a finished product. Quite an achievement for a first-time designer, and as I already explained in Tuesday's review, I think Felix and his colleagues did a wonderful job!

Of course, I also asked whether the original Critical Role cast had commented on the finished game. Apparently, CGE had not yet received any feedback, not least because the cast is currently busy performing live adventures in front of enormous audiences. And speaking of enormous audiences, CGE had actually considered inviting some of them to SPIEL! However, when the idea was discussed with MERZ VERLAG, the organizers advised against it. Critical Role has become such a phenomenon that thousands of additional fans might have descended upon a single booth, creating considerable problems with crowds and security arrangements. In the end, CGE decided not to pursue the invitation. A bit of a pity, really, because meeting the Critical Role cast here in Essen would have been great fun. But I can certainly understand the concerns. Even Grog Strongjaw might have had trouble getting through those crowds!

Another interesting subject was the selection of playable characters. From the beginning, the team wanted to appeal to fans of all three major Critical Role campaigns, so the base game includes heroes from Vox Machina, the Mighty Nein and Bells Hells. But there certainly is room for more! Right here at SPIEL, CGE has released a small expansion introducing Keyleth, complete with additional themed word cards, Items and a character standee. All players need to do is download her character sheet from the internet. Naturally, I asked Felix whether further heroes were planned, and he confirmed that they are planning more additions. However, finding suitable abilities and balancing them is quite a challenge. Even Percy was included relatively late during development, because devising his ranged guessing ability required considerable effort. So we may have to be patient before more familiar faces join the party!

And the adventures themselves are far from over either! At the end of the campaign book, a QR code takes players to additional one-shot missions online, providing fresh challenges without having to repeat one of the three campaigns. CGE is also considering further campaign content and eventually wants to give fans the opportunity to create and share their own missions. So it seems that the publisher is once again following its familiar philosophy of supporting successful games well beyond their original release. After hearing all these stories and plans, I left the booth with an even greater appreciation of the work which went into Codenames: Critical Role Adventures, and quite a bit of anticipation for what might come next. My thanks to Felix and Regi for such an enjoyable conversation!

And with that, it's finally time to call it a night! After a wonderful but exhausting day at SPIEL, followed by several more hours of writing this report, I'm just about ready to fall asleep at my keyboard. But there's still so much to discover, and I'll be back in the halls tomorrow for another round of gaming adventures. So, good night everybody, and I hope to see you all back here tomorrow!

Friday, Day 2 of the show.

A warm welcome back to the madness at SPIEL!

It’s Friday, the second day of the fair, and another long day lies ahead of us. And off we go once more into the holy halls – what a joy to be back here again!

Just like yesterday, I took it a bit easier again this morning, which meant the initial rush before the fair was already over and, at least, getting into the fair went smoothly. Once inside, however, things looked a bit different…

I gave the shops a miss– there were long queues right from the morning. What on earth do people do with all the things they’ve bought all day long?

For me, however, the day began with a demo session of a game that will be available to back on Gamefound early next year. I’d already spotted the game at the new releases show and met the designer, Jordan Kouzmanoff, who convinced me to try our the game.

Playtesting Session: Grey Eminence – Heart of Europe – The Nestinars (2E450)

Grey Eminence – Heart of Europe is the title of the game. We find ourselves in the 14th century, in the heart of Europe, when the struggle for dominance in the Holy Roman Empire begins. Various principalities are competing for influence in order to take control of the country following the ruler’s death. As a history enthusiast, I have to say that the theme immediately grabbed my attention, so I signed up for one of the many demo sessions taking place here in Essen for this game.

The game itself is about exerting influence and gaining control over the individual provinces of the empire. Each player starts with a small principality and attempts to expand their influence across the empire from there. To this end, in each of the game’s seven rounds, we have two actions during which we can send our ambassadors to other provinces of the empire.

To do this, we first play a card from our hand and the symbol on the card determines which province we can send our ambassador to. It does not matter whether we already exert influence in that province, whether it is a province that no player has visited yet, or whether it is currently under an opponent’s influence. The only exception is if another ambassador has already been sent to that province; in that case, the player who was there before receives an additional influence token for their stock as compensation.

Each card also has an effect that can be carried out afterwards. For example, you can lay claim to a province, which is indicated by a claim marker. Such a marker is a prerequisite for being able to exert military or political influence in an opponent’s provinces without being excommunicated, which would otherwise have negative consequences. Remember, we are in the 14th century.

Other cards allow us to recruit armies, exert influence and power over the province, and perform many other unique actions. Our starting cards are still quite weak, but at the end of each round we can acquire new cards from a display, which then become significantly stronger. New cards always go into our discard pile first – a typical deck-building mechanism – but the cards from the discard pile are not shuffled when they come back to play as in many other games; they are simply turned over when the draw pile is exhausted, so it’s much more predictable which cards you will get in the next round..

Card effects and the deck-building are therefore a core element of the game. However, the province itself also allows us to carry out a further action, at least if we don’t want to use the action of a building in the province, provided that a building has already been constructed there.

As well as the cards themselves, the use of influence markers is quite interesting in the game, as they are required for a wide variety of actions. For example, when you take control of a province, you first send one such influence marker to that province (provided you have one in your supply). This represents control that is not yet secure; only through further actions and the exercise of control in a subsequent round is this influence marker replaced by an influence disc, which signifies stronger, more secure control over the province.

However, influence markers must also be used when armies are to be formed or divided. To do this, they are placed on the neutral army tiles; naturally, we must first have such an influence marker available for this purpose.

Once all players have finally placed their ambassadors in the provinces, armies are moved across the board. These armies also exert influence over a province, and if that influence is subsequently greater than that of an opponent, the province can be taken over by the stronger opponent. However, a battle ensues if, at any point, two opposing armies face each other in the same province. To battle, both players involved in the conflict can play a combat card to increase the strength of their army and trigger certain special effects.

After a brief period of getting used to the game, we quickly got into the swing of things, though we did have to ask several times how exactly a particular effect should be handled, due to the wide variety of special effects on the cards. After about two hours, we’d completed just under three rounds – roughly half the game. That might sound like a long time, but the time flew by, and I didn’t feel like I had any downtime whilst my opponents were taking their turns, as it was often my turn quite quickly again.

The demo session of Grey Eminence – Heart of Europa has therefore convinced me that the Gamefound campaign will sure to be a huge success. Interest is clearly already massive, as evidenced by the fact that all seats at all six demo tables were filled again immediately after we finished the games. The playing time is listed as 180 minutes, and the game can be played with 1–5 players. I can’t yet say how well that works, but I found our four-player game very enjoyable and almost ideal concerning the number of players. You should definitely keep an eye on the crowdfunding campaign if you’re in that boardgame genre; this looks like it will become a rather interesting, asymmetrical engine-building game. Well done, Jordan!

Now that was a promising start to the day; I’d actually already ticked off my daily target. Or had I? OK, I’ve now had a closer look at about 40 games, had a go at them, had them explained to me, and reported on the one or other in more detail. Well, that’s leaves it only to approximately 1840 new games left!!!

After a moment’s thought, no, I won’t manage to take a look at all the other new games, let alone get to grips with them, let alone tell you about them. The days are definitely over when we managed to include at least 10 per cent (which was actually our aim for a long time) of the new releases for you in our coverage. But that’s just the way it is; we can’t change it anyway, so we’re not giving up – we’ll simply report on the things we particularly enjoyed during our tour at SPIEL.

Another thing I always enjoy whilst wandering around the exhibition halls is the many side attractions, be it a particularly elaborately decorated booth, the extra-large miniatures, or even board games so lavish that I really wouldn’t know how to explain their purchase and storage to my wife. Here are a few examples:

My wander through the halls eventually led me to CRANIO CREATIONS; the Italian publisher has long been one of my regular stops, as I know I will always find the one or other great games there:

Introduction: Oil Rock – Cranio Creations (3T400)

In Oil Rock by Marco Piola Caselli, we take the role of an up-and-coming oil company during the American oil boom. Drill baby, drill, as a well-known president is saying. But, in the game, it is not enough simply to erect as many drilling rigs as possible and extract oil. Rather, we must effectively coordinate the various divisions of our company to make oil extraction as efficient a business as possible.

At the heart of the game is an action wheel, where we place our workers to select our actions. Similar to the recent Rats of Wistar from the same publisher, this action wheel has a flexible structure, meaning it is slightly different in every game and is turned further each round to modify the actions. In principle, it is possible in this game to select actions that our opponents have already taken, but this comes at a cost and requires therefore careful consideration.

On our own player boards, we build drilling rigs and invest in our refineries; on the main board, we construct offices along the railway network. Added to this are plenty of details such as turbines that boost the efficiency of adjacent refineries, as well as various improvements and patents that allow us to further develop our company. It is always important to strike a balance between oil production and the next production steps: after all, production alone is of little use to us in the game if we cannot process our oil efficiently and transport it to our customers. And so we continue to expand our economic position in many fields in the game.

Oil Rock is played over four rounds, during which we expand our available options step by step. Especially the development of the leader of our company seem to be particularly interesting to me. A spiral-bound notepad is used for this purpose and every time you are allowed to flip a side on the character pad, it unlocks further traits and possibilities for the us.

Oil Rock made a very good impression on me after the presentation. I would have liked to give it a try, but the tables were constantly fully packed and I unfortunately did not have the time wo wait. Admittedly, the combination of an action wheel, an economic production chain, the expansion of one’s own company and character development isn’t something we have never seen before. But overall, the game seems very well thought out, and I’ve certainly never seen the development of the leadership character using a spiral-bound notebook like this before.

Oil Rock is one of the more challenging strategy games, in which individual decisions need to be well co-ordinated. I’m curious to see whether the game can live up to its thematic ambitions in terms of gameplay; the presentation here in Essen was certainly quite impressive, and the game has already won several awards in Italy. So stay tuned, I will soon have a closer look at the game.

Another, much simpler game from the Italian publisher immediately caught my eye. Sometimes, just a glance at the cards is enough to make you curious about a new game.

Introduction: Crossing Heroes – Cranio Creations (3T400)

Lorenzo Colangeli’s illustrations draw on the world of Greek mythology and lend the cards a character all of their own, which is given an extra special touch by the gold foil finish on each card. Fantastic, isn’t it.

Thematically, the authors take us on a journey through the world of Greek heroes, but the story is relatively unimportant to the gameplay itself. To pass the various trials in form of cards, we simply have to match the right colours and symbols with our skill cards in the same row or column. That sounds quite straightforward at first, but it does require some forward planning.

At the heart of the game is a 3×3 grid, with your hero card in the centre. In the eight surrounding squares, you gradually place trial cards form the display that require specific abilities, given in form of colours and symbols. You gain these skills from the display too and place them around the 3x3 grid above, below or to a side of the column or row. The key feature here is the requirements of the trial cards must be met by the skill cards in the same row or column (summation of symbols on different skill cards are allowed). So we must not only pay attention to which abilities we are currently lacking, but also consider how to use them as efficiently as possible for further rounds.

A game lasts a total of eight rounds, because we take one trial card every round, which – together with our hero – will end in the 3x3 grid. In the end, only the successfully completed trials count as victory points,

An easy-to-learn game with superbly illustrated cards. A particular highlight is that the cards are only turned over to reveal the gold-foil side once the trials have been passed, at which point they count as victory points. So, if we manage to pass a trial, we turn the card over and are then rewarded with the golden reverse side. This isn’t just visually appealing; it also fits in with the theme of the heroes: what starts as an unresolved challenge becomes a completed adventure that enhances our hero’s fame.

Crossing Heroes thus combines an accessible card and tile-laying game with a thoroughly engaging puzzle game. The challenge lies in organising your own skills in such a way that they support as many trials as possible. Whether the combination of tactical planning and lovingly designed cards offers enough variety in the long term remains to be seen with regular play. In any case, the visuals have already completely won me over to the game.

I wouldn’t want to leave out something else entirely different from CRANIO CREATIONS. Orcs up is certainly not a game for connoisseurs or experts. But it shows once again just how diverse publishers can be, as this game promises plenty of fun for families with children and groups of adults who are young at heart.

The aim of the game is to place your own orcs as high up as possible on a sloping board, whereby you must always place a new building block and one of your own orcs on your turn. However, special abilities do occasionally allow you to let a block slide down the sloping surface from the top, thereby triggering a small chain reaction. Orcs up is definitely something I’ll give a go at my next boardgame night – after all, there’s still a bit of a child in every adult…

And with this I will leave you for today with Frank. I heard it is Lady Day, so let’s see what he has found today.

See you all again tomorrow!

Indeed it’s Ladies’ Day!

Welcome back, everybody! Long-time readers of our SPIEL reports will probably have noticed that we're celebrating this little tradition two days earlier than usual. Normally, Sunday is the day when my wife Nicole joins me for a trip through the convention halls, but this year she simply couldn't wait that long! And believe me, when SPIEL is approaching, Nicole can be every bit as excited about the new games as I am. So we decided to bring our traditional Ladies' Day forward to Friday, and here we are!

For those of you who aren't familiar with this tradition, Ladies' Day means that my prepared schedule of games takes a back seat. Instead, Nicole and I simply wander through the halls together, with my wife having the final say on where we stop and which games we try. And I must admit that I always look forward to discovering what she comes up with! Although our tastes in games are often quite similar, Nicole has an extraordinary talent for spotting charming little titles which I might otherwise have walked straight past. Sometimes these are wonderfully cute games, sometimes rather unusual creations a little off the beaten track, and occasionally something completely unexpected. That's precisely what makes Ladies' Day so enjoyable for me: I never quite know where we'll end up or what we'll be playing next!

And so, without any particularly ambitious plans for the day, Nicole and I arrived at MESSE ESSEN at around half past ten this morning. By then the biggest rush at the entrances was already over, so we could make our way into the exhibition halls without much trouble. Now all that remained was to find out which games would catch Nicole's eye first. And knowing my wife, I was fairly certain that we wouldn't have to wait very long!

And indeed, we had barely passed the third booth after entering Hall 8 when Nicole spotted a game which immediately caught her attention: Tiny Toe Beans: Ultimate Mischief. Now, knowing how fond my wife is of cats, this wasn't exactly the biggest surprise of the day! So we stopped at the booth of COZY GAMES STUDIO and settled down for our first game of Ladies' Day.

Gaming Session: Tiny Toe Beans: Ultimate Mischief – COZY GAMES STUDIO (booth 8D235)

Designed by Marco Zannini, Tiny Toe Beans: Ultimate Mischief is a delightfully cheeky little game in which the players become cats exploring a house and causing as much trouble as possible. The house is assembled from facedown Room cards, which are gradually revealed as the cats move around. Each turn, the players roll a special die to determine their movement and may play up to two cards, either performing mischievous activities in particular rooms to earn Victory Points or playing pranks on their feline competitors. But there is a catch: making mischief also generates Chaos tokens, and these attract the attention of the Human, who moves towards the rooms where the greatest disturbances have occurred. Getting caught can cost precious points, so a successful cat needs to know when to cause trouble and when to make a discreet exit!

And naturally, the cats aren't particularly considerate towards one another either! Apart from playing pranks on their feline competitors, clever players can manipulate the distribution of Chaos tokens and potentially lure the Human towards another cat. After all, why should one cat suffer the consequences of its mischief when there is a perfectly innocent rival nearby who could take the blame? This rather mischievous interaction fits the theme beautifully. The cats are essentially competing to be the naughtiest animal in the house, knocking things over, creating little disasters and occasionally getting each other into trouble, while the poor Human has the rather thankless task of cleaning up the mess! The colourful illustrations and cute cat figures make the whole affair wonderfully appealing, while the changing layout of the house and the different Mischief and Prank cards provide plenty of variety. Certainly a lovely little discovery to begin Ladies' Day, and a game which seems almost tailor-made to catch Nicole's attention!

Our next stop took us to Hall 7, where we actually ran into Batman himself at the booth of KOSMOS (7E311)! Of course, the occasion was the presentation of Batman: Gotham City Crimes by Michael Menzel, a game which had already caught my attention during Wednesday's New Games Show. And as it turned out, Nicole was every bit as fascinated by the game as I had been! The combination of cooperative detective work, familiar characters from the Batman universe and Michael's beautiful game design immediately appealed to her. So I think it's safe to say that Batman: Gotham City Crimes will be making its way onto our gaming table within the next few weeks.

Continuing our way through Hall 7, Nicole and I suddenly ran into Ralf, who had also decided to avoid the morning queues and had arrived at the convention a little later than usual. He was already on his way to his first scheduled gaming appointments of the day, so we walked together for a while, making our way through the enormous demonstration areas of ASMODEE, which seemed to occupy almost as much space as a football pitch! But soon it was time to part ways again, and Nicole and I continued drifting rather leisurely through the halls.

From Hall 7, Nicole and I continued into Hall 6, where we found another game which looked interesting enough for a little stop: Toshi: Die blühende Stadt by Friedemann Friese, published by ARSEDITION. This time we were heading to Japan, where the players compete to build prosperous little towns.

Gaming Session: Toshi – ARSEDITION (booth 6A200)

Toshi is a rather easygoing city-building game in which every player has a personal six-by-six grid to fill with different buildings. The clever thing is that everybody acts on the same dice roll: two dice determine a coordinate, and all players check the corresponding space in their own city. If a building is already there, it may generate income or trigger another effect; otherwise, a new building can be constructed by paying its cost. The active player chooses first, while the others may then construct buildings of different categories. Houses, shops, farms and factories form an interconnected economic system, with some buildings producing money depending on how many others of a particular type have been constructed. At the end, the richest player wins, but every empty space in the city costs five coins, so filling up the grid is just as important as developing a profitable economy. Since everybody participates in every dice roll, the game moves along at a pleasantly brisk pace, with hardly any downtime.

During our gaming session, however, the whole affair felt a little more random than I had expected. Our game explainer had left out the Special Buildings, probably to keep things simple, but I suspect that these might actually add an important strategic dimension. Each player may construct only one of these powerful buildings, and choosing the right one could considerably influence the development of a city. Without them, the Horse Stables seemed particularly attractive. They cost nothing to build, and whenever their coordinate is rolled again, they allow the player to construct another building anywhere on the grid. By concentrating on Stables, it was surprisingly easy to fill up a city rather quickly, even without generating much income. Checking the Special Buildings tonight in the rules, I do not think that this approach would work against a more carefully developed economy, especially when the Special Buildings are included. However, Nicole and I both enjoyed the relaxed pace and the simple dynamics of the shared dice mechanism, so Toshi certainly deserves another try with the complete rules!

Leaving Hall 6 behind, Nicole and I continued into Hall 5, but apparently Japan wasn't quite ready to let us go! Our next stop was at the booth of JAPANIME GAMES, where a rather charming wooden gameboard immediately caught our attention.

The game was called Sushi Boat, and its unusual presentation reminded me a little of the much older Niagara. However, instead of pushing river tiles along a stream, here the players push little plates of sushi along a beautifully crafted wooden track, recreating the experience of a Japanese kaiten-zushi restaurant, where delicious little dishes travel past the guests on a conveyor belt. And since Nicole and I both enjoy Asian food, we certainly couldn't resist giving this one a try!

Gaming Session: Sushi Boat – JAPANIME GAMES (booth 5H600)

Designed by Dario Massarenti and Francesco Testini, Sushi Boat is essentially a charming little set-collection game with a rather unusual physical mechanism. At the beginning of each turn, new sushi plates are pushed onto the wooden track, gradually moving the other dishes along until some eventually fall off the end. The active player then places a pawn at one of the available spaces and performs two actions, usually collecting sushi, earning money or making use of the restaurant staff and special Side Dish cards. The collected plates are stacked in front of the player, and here a little planning comes in: consecutive plates of the same colour earn points, but collecting as many different kinds of sushi as possible is equally important. Since the order of the plates cannot be changed afterwards, deciding which delicious morsel to grab next isn't always quite as straightforward as it seems!

There are also occasional Wasabi Challenges in which everybody tries to predict the colours of two hidden plates on the track, and the restaurant staff provides some useful opportunities to manipulate the dishes or acquire additional ones. However, the real attraction of Sushi Boat certainly is its presentation. Watching the colourful sushi plates being pushed along the wooden track is great fun, and the whole affair has that wonderfully tactile quality which made Niagara so memorable. Of course, underneath the charming appearance there is still a proper little game of timing, collecting and making the best of the opportunities passing by. But sometimes a game doesn't need to be terribly complicated to be enjoyable, and Sushi Boat certainly made for another delightful stop on our Ladies' Day tour!

All this talk about sushi had definitely made us hungry! So Nicole and I decided that it was time for a late lunch break and headed outside to the food court, where we treated ourselves to some delicious wraps from one of the food trucks. Afterwards, however, it was time to interrupt our Ladies' Day adventures for about an hour, because I actually had my only scheduled playtesting appointment of the day coming up. So Nicole and I decided to go our separate ways for a little while, agreeing to meet again at the booth of DMZ GAMES afterwards. And this gave me the perfect opportunity to take care of a little errand before heading to my appointment. Something which Nicole doesn't know about yet! So, dear readers, I have a little secret to share with you. But Nicole, if you're reading this: please don't click on the following link! This part of today's report comes with a hazard warning!

TOP SECRET – A little surprise for Nicole! (Click here, but NOT you, Nicole!)

One of the things which make SPIEL so charming is the possibility of discovering games which nobody would ever have expected to find. And one such unusual little treasure had caught my attention on Wednesday at the New Games Show: The Travels of Isabella Lucy Bird, a Japanese game by Isao Mukai, published by DOTAKUSHA (ENGAMES booth 2B400). The game follows the historical journey of British explorer Isabella Bird, who travelled through Japan in 1878, making her way from Tokyo towards Hokkaido. It is a rather charming roll-and-write game in which the players use dice to collect resources, travel between Japanese towns and complete entries in their personal travel journals. The players can follow Isabella's historical route or choose their own paths through Japan, gradually creating a record of their adventures.

Now, since Nicole is currently learning Japanese, I thought that this rather unusual game would make a particularly fitting little present for her. And so, before heading to my playtesting appointment, I took the opportunity to purchase a copy! I rather like the idea of combining our shared enthusiasm for boardgames with Nicole's interest in Japan (as some of today’s games also show), and I'm looking forward to surprising her with it. But for the moment, the game remains my little secret and is stowed away for Christmas.

With my little secret purchase safely taken care of, it was time to hurry to my scheduled appointment. And this would take me into a rather different world, because instead of peaceful travels through nineteenth-century Japan, I was about to enter a magical library where powerful mages were preparing to settle their differences in a decidedly less peaceful fashion! The game was called Biblioclash, and I was curious to see what its unusual approach to deckbuilding had to offer.

Playtesting Session: Biblioclash – A BIT NERD OY (booth 6D108)

A magical library sounds like a place for quiet study, but the apprentices in Biblioclash have rather different ideas about putting their knowledge to use. Fireballs, summoned creatures and protective spells turn the accumulated wisdom of its shelves into the weapons of a magical duel. Created by Finnish designer Juho Peuraniemi and published by A BIT NERD, the game combines developing a personal deck with a direct confrontation between rival mages. The aim is straightforward: reduce the opposing Mage's Health to zero. Today I had the opportunity to face Juho across the table, and what pleasantly surprised me was just how quickly the game gets moving. A few purchases, the first improvements to the deck, and already the spells are flying!

Each player chooses a Mage with a particular elemental affinity and a special ability, then prepares a personal Library from which cards can be purchased during play. This is an important distinction: the players develop their decks from their own supplies rather than competing over a shared market. A Library consists of nine piles, normally containing up to two cards each, with only the top card available for purchase. For the first games, recommended selections provide a ready-made Library for each Mage. The actual starting deck is much smaller: six Books of Wisdom, a Gem of Orbs and the modest Tiny Spark spell give everybody the same eight basic cards with which to begin.

The distinction between Wisdom and Orbs is central to developing this collection. Wisdom, principally generated by Books, pays for new cards, which usually enter the discard pile and become available after reshuffling. Orbs are the energy needed to cast spells once they reach the hand. They can be stored as tokens on the Mage or suitable Equipment until needed, subject to the cards' storage capacities. Unspent Wisdom disappears at the end of the turn, whereas Orbs remain available. Purchasing an impressive spell is therefore only part of the preparation: the deck must also provide enough energy to use it. During a turn, players can freely combine playing cards, making purchases and using abilities, so getting these different elements to support each other quickly becomes the main challenge.

Already the eight-card starting deck provides a small but rather effective twist. Many familiar deckbuilders begin with ten cards, neatly supplying two hands of five before the first reshuffle. Here, with hands normally replenished to five, that reshuffle arrives sooner, giving newly purchased cards a chance to appear earlier. Two fewer cards might sound like a minor adjustment, but the difference can be felt: an early purchase can begin contributing almost immediately, making the opening feel responsive and purposeful. In my game this accelerated development did not produce an obvious imbalance. Instead, both players could get their first improvements working quickly, bringing the interesting decisions forward.

I played Hestia, the fire Mage, against the nature-oriented Zhuge, and initially concentrated on strengthening my purchasing power and improving my supply of Orbs before adding more substantial spells. The characters encourage different approaches without requiring entirely different rules. Hestia rewards casting several spells within a single Clash by increasing her Strike Power, whereas Zhuge makes protective Shields more effective and has a starting Library suited to generating Wisdom. Minions and Equipment add further possibilities: summoned creatures remain in play until defeated, while an equipped Staff can provide lasting benefits and additional room for stored Orbs. Thus, the growing deck also helps quickly to establish a more capable Mage on the table, especially if the players make use of cards which allow them to archive (remove) inefficient starting cards.

However, the heart of Biblioclash is the confrontation itself. When a player strikes, a Clash begins, allowing the opponent to answer with spells of his own. The players take alternating opportunities to add spells and suitable card effects, building their respective Strike Power. An opponent who overtakes the attack does more than defend: suddenly the original attacker must respond or suffer the consequences himself. When one side can no longer match the other's power, the stronger side deals damage equal to its accumulated Strike Power, subject to protective effects. A tied Clash can end without either side hitting. This makes an attack a commitment whose outcome depends on what both players are prepared to invest, with the initiative potentially changing hands several times.

There are some pleasing subtleties within this exchange. Certain Gems can supply additional Orbs during a Clash, making another spell affordable just when a Mage appears to have exhausted his resources. Furthermore, losing spells may provide special Dispelled effects, often reducing the damage which gets through. Winning the comparison therefore does not always mean landing an unhindered blow. Damage can also be directed at opposing Minions, creating a choice between weakening the Mage and removing a troublesome creature. These possibilities give the fighting more texture without turning every exchange into a lengthy rules exercise.

Another particularly welcome decision supports this whole system: players may retain cards in hand at the end of their turns. Unwanted cards can be discarded, but a useful spell need not be thrown away simply because its best moment has not yet arrived. Afterwards, the hand is replenished to five, so keeping cards means drawing fewer replacements. This creates a worthwhile choice between looking for fresh options and preserving a promising combination. A spell held back might provide the missing element of a stronger attack next turn, or the answer to an opponent's impending assault. Combined with stored Orbs, this gives the players a real opportunity to prepare, making the exchanges feel more deliberate than simply playing whatever the latest hand happens to contain.

To my mind, this combination of speed and control is the game's strongest feature. Our confrontation developed quickly and remained challenging, without either Mage taking over too easily. There was still the uncertainty inherent in drawing cards, but the fighting did not feel arbitrary: purchases, retained spells and carefully accumulated Orbs all helped to shape the available responses. The clear terminology and accessible structure made it easy to concentrate on these decisions from the outset. The game asks players to learn how to use their cards together, but getting to that enjoyable part requires remarkably little preparation.

There is also room to experiment beyond the recommended Libraries. Players can construct their own selections and include cards belonging to another element, although in the standard Constructed format such a pile may contain only one card. The Hidden format adds a different kind of uncertainty by placing concealed cards beneath the visible purchase options, revealing them as the cards above are acquired. These possibilities already offer some variation, although the selection in the starter set naturally limits how far Library construction can go. The starter box also supports three players, with larger free-for-all and team games possible using an additional copy.

The expansions announced for next year are particularly interesting in this respect. More cards for each Mage should considerably broaden the scope for creating different Libraries, allowing players to explore new combinations and refine their preferred approaches. This brings some of the appeal of constructing decks in a collectible card game to a deckbuilder with an immediately approachable starting point. The current game already delivers an enjoyable duel; a growing selection of cards could give that solid foundation even more staying power. For a first design, Biblioclash is an impressive achievement, and I came away rather enthusiastic about its future. It gets the mages developing quickly, gives both players a say in the fighting, and makes the prospect of returning with a slightly different Library very tempting indeed.

After my magical duel with Juho at Biblioclash, it was time to return to Ladies' Day! Nicole and I had agreed to meet again at the booth of DMZ GAMES after going our separate ways for about an hour, and so we were soon reunited and ready for our next game together. This time I had actually chosen our destination, because Nicole and I are both rather fond of the old Arkham Horror games, and Lovecraftian horror has always been a favourite theme during our gaming evenings. So I had suggested that we should take a closer look at Last Relic of R'lyeh, a two-player game set in the sinister world of the Cthulhu Mythos. Two years ago, the small Spanish publisher DMZ GAMES had already surprised us with Harmony, a remarkably substantial game hiding inside a rather modest little box, and their latest release looked every bit as intriguing. Fortunately, Nicole seemed quite happy with my choice, and so we settled down for another proper playtesting session. Little did I know just how dangerous an opponent my dear wife was about to become!

Playtesting Session: Last Relic of R'lyeh – DMZ GAMES (booth 3T100)

Dark cults, forbidden knowledge and ancient beings waiting beyond the boundaries of human understanding have always been central elements of H. P. Lovecraft's unsettling world of cosmic horror. And there probably is no better place to look for such horrors than R’lyeh, the legendary sunken city associated with Cthulhu, where an ancient evil awaits its return. Designed by Pau Carles, The Last Relic of R’lyeh turns this ominous background into an asymmetric duel between two players. One takes control of a sinister Cult attempting to gather the Relics necessary to awaken a Great Old One, while the other becomes an Adventurer trying to uncover the Cult's activities and prevent the ritual. Naturally, Nicole decided to take command of the forces of darkness, leaving me with the somewhat thankless task of saving humanity!

Unlike the cooperative Harmony, this new game is a contest of deduction, bluffing and tactical cardplay, supported by a light deckbuilding mechanism. The setting is certainly familiar to fans of Lovecraftian horror, but the very different possibilities available to both opponents make their confrontation particularly interesting.

The central battlefield consists of three Locations placed between the players. At the beginning, the Cult player draws four Location cards, secretly chooses three and places them facedown, while the Adventurer positions her figure at one of these mysterious sites. Only the Cult knows what is hidden beneath the cards, including which Relics can be obtained there. The Cult can deploy followers of the dark sect at the different Locations, where they generate Ritual Marks. Once enough Marks have been accumulated at a particular Location, the Cult claims its rewards, including any Relics which have not already been stolen. The Location then leaves the game and is replaced with another facedown card chosen by the Cult. However, the Adventurer certainly is not condemned to watching this buildup helplessly. She moves between the Locations, gathers Clues, investigates suspicious activities and may attack the Cultists directly. By spending Clues she can reveal Locations, making the Cult's ritual more difficult, or eventually steal their Relics. This creates a charming tactical contest, because the Cult knows where the most valuable prizes are hidden and can deliberately mislead the opponent, whereas the Adventurer must decide where to investigate and which activities appear most threatening.

Most of these activities are handled through cards. Both players begin with personal decks containing different actions, which allow them to gather Funds, place Ritual Marks or Clues, attack opponents and manipulate the progress of their investigations. Some effects are immediate, others remain active for a round, while deployed Cultists may provide additional possibilities. Quite cleverly, both players can improve their decks by purchasing Reinforcement cards from a common market. Every Reinforcement has two different orientations, one showing its abilities for the Cult and the other those available to the Adventurer. Regardless of who purchases the card, it enters that player's deck and will be used in the orientation appropriate to their faction. Consequently, a card which provides a valuable ability for the Cult may offer something completely different to the Adventurer. This adds an interesting consideration to purchasing decisions, because players must not only evaluate the usefulness of a card for themselves, but also whether it might become particularly dangerous in the hands of the opponent. Thus, deckbuilding itself becomes another battleground, quite independent of the struggle over the Locations.

The asymmetric nature of the game also becomes visible through its unusual victory conditions. The Cult wins by obtaining the six Relics required to awaken its chosen Great Old One, whose identity initially remains secret from the Adventurer. However, the Cult may also achieve victory by defeating its opponent, and here The Last Relic of R’lyeh introduces a particularly fitting distinction between physical and mental damage. The Adventurer can suffer both Wounds and Madness, and accumulating five tokens of either type means immediate defeat. Alternatively, a combination of seven damage tokens is equally fatal, regardless of how many are Wounds or Madness. This is a wonderfully appropriate implementation of Lovecraftian horror, where learning too much about the hidden world sometimes can be nearly as dangerous as confronting its inhabitants.

On the other hand, the Adventurer has two very different ways of stopping the Cult. Stealing four different Relics is enough to disrupt the dark ritual permanently, but there is also the possibility of exposing the Cult to the public. Here the Alert Board comes into play, recording the Exposure generated by the Cult's activities. The more Cultists remain deployed at the Locations, the more attention their activities attract, and excessive Exposure eventually increases the Cult's Notoriety. Whereas Exposure is reset after every round, Notoriety represents the lasting consequences of suspicious activities, and if it reaches the end of its track the Cult is unmasked and must abandon its plans. This creates another particularly nice thematic connection, because expanding the Cult's network increases its ability to collect Relics, but at the same time makes it increasingly difficult to remain unnoticed. The Cult therefore must balance the desire to accelerate its preparations against the danger of attracting too much public attention, while the Adventurer can deliberately increase that pressure instead of concentrating exclusively on stealing Relics.

All this creates a lively back-and-forth struggle in which neither player can afford to concentrate exclusively on a single objective. Even a seemingly promising position may change quickly when the opponent discovers a useful card combination or begins pursuing another route towards victory. And believe me, playing the Adventurer against Nicole's rather determined Cult was quite an experience! While I was desperately trying to uncover her sinister activities and prevent the awakening of an ancient evil, she seemed increasingly interested in making sure that my poor investigator wouldn't survive the experience in the first place. Apparently, she had decided that eliminating the opposition was considerably more convenient than completing a complicated summoning ritual!

To my mind, The Last Relic of R’lyeh demonstrates once again how successfully DMZ GAMES manages to combine relatively simple mechanisms into a surprisingly substantial playing experience. A handful of cards, a few Locations and some carefully chosen resource tracks are sufficient to create a complete contest with deckbuilding, tactical decisions, hidden information and several meaningful ways to win. Better still, the Lovecraftian background is reflected convincingly through the mechanisms themselves: the Cult operates in secrecy, growing influence creates dangerous public attention, and the Adventurer's investigations expose her to both physical injury and madness. This gives the whole affair a surprisingly cinematic quality, with the forces of darkness moving closer to their dreadful objective while a lone investigator desperately searches for the means to stop them.

Of course, nobody should expect a sprawling adventure or an elaborate narrative campaign, but for a compact two-player cardgame the thematic density is quite impressive. And in our game, Nicole ultimately demonstrated just how dangerous the Cult can be, inflicting so much damage on my unfortunate Adventurer that she won without even having to complete her ritual. Apparently, saving humanity is rather difficult when one's own wife is in charge of the forces of darkness! Nevertheless, we both thoroughly enjoyed our encounter with The Last Relic of R’lyeh, and after Harmony in 2024, DMZ GAMES has once again proved that a truly entertaining adventure does not necessarily need a large box. Sometimes a pocketful of cards is quite enough to threaten the fate of humanity.

By now, the afternoon was drawing to a close, and our rather exciting encounter with the forces of darkness at DMZ GAMES marked the end of our gaming sessions for this Ladies' Day. However, there was still one particularly nice meeting waiting for us on our way out! We made one final stop at the booth of MIGHTY BOARDS, and this visit actually brought back some wonderful memories from last year's SPIEL.

Stop-Over: MIGHTY BOARDS (booth 3M300)

Some of you may remember Yotei, the delightful little Japanese town-building game which I discovered at SPIEL 2025. Back then, the game was presented by the small Japanese company KUMAGERA SEISAKU, and I had the pleasure of getting to know Maria Kato, whose beautiful artwork contributes so much to the game's charm. Over the course of the convention, I followed with great interest how warmly Yotei was received by the visitors, and after SPIEL we actually stayed in touch. Maria and I exchanged quite a few messages, including some thoughts about how the game might find its way into larger-scale production and international distribution. So you can imagine how delighted I was to discover that MIGHTY BOARDS had now taken Yotei into its portfolio! Seeing this lovely creation return to Essen with the support of an established international publisher was wonderful, and I was genuinely happy that the little game from Hokkaido had taken such an important step forward.

And even better, Maria herself was back in Essen! Nicole and I were delighted to meet her, and we had a really happy reunion. But the nicest part of the story is still to come, because tomorrow evening Maria and a friend of hers will actually be visiting us at home for dinner! I'm looking forward to that enormously, and I suspect it will become the absolute highlight of this year's SPIEL for Nicole and me. After all, as much as we love discovering new games, the convention has always been about something more than cardboard, cards and colourful little playing pieces. It's about meeting people, making friends and sometimes discovering that a shared enthusiasm for games can bring together people from opposite sides of the world.

And with that, our traditional Ladies' Day finally came to an end. Once again, Nicole had led me to some delightful discoveries, we had enjoyed plenty of gaming together, and I couldn't have wished for a nicer day at SPIEL. But wait a moment! Apparently, this year's Ladies' Day isn't quite over yet! After we returned home, Nicole took another look at the MERZ VERLAG website and discovered that there were still a few tickets available for Sunday. And what did she do? She promptly bought another one! So, much to my delight, Nicole will be joining me again on Sunday, and it looks as if Ladies' Day 2026 is actually going to have a second part! What a wonderful surprise, and certainly not something I'm going to complain about!

So Part II of Ladies’ Day will follow on Sunday. For now, it's time to give my rather tired feet a well-deserved rest and call it a night. Thank you for joining us on our adventures today, everybody! Good night, and I hope to see you all back here tomorrow!

Important notice: in the night from Saturday 24th to Sunday 25th of October Daylight saving time ends in Germany. This means that all clocks will be turned back from 3 AM to 2 AM. If you don’t remember this, you will be at the SPIEL a full hour too early!!!

Hey, hey, back again and still healthy and still alive.

In fact, every morning I find myself wondering what sort of state I’ll wake up in. This year, I’ve actually been feeling quite good in the mornings. This is probably because this year I’ve set myself the goal of closing my laptop by midnight at the latest and putting off until tomorrow whatever I haven’t managed to finish. Of course, that’ll only work until today – tomorrow is already the last day of the fair, and then I’ll have to tell you all about everything I’ve experienced over the past few days that I haven’t told you about yet. At least, I feel obliged to do so.

Well, enough of these thoughts. Let’s get back to SPIEL and see what was on my agenda today. First of all, I tried out the new North Entrance for the very first time. This entrance allows access to the fair from the rear and was opened by Messe Essen for the first time this year to ease the pressure on the other two main entrances. It’s opposite the lovely Grugapark, a local park with lot of flowers and huge lawn areas. In this park I practically spent my entire youth, especially at the weekends. Lovely view, isn’t it?

When I arrived at the entrance, it was completely empty and I could immediately walk into the convention halls. But that was one hour after the opening. Ren from DRAGON DAWN PRODUCTION has his booth directly next to this entrance and he told me that it took 45 minutes to get all waiting visitors in after the opening this day, although most of them rushed inside. Perhaps Messe Essen should have stationed security guards like that at this place?

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I had not really a plan for this morning, but when I walked past the booth of CORAX GAMES, I saw a large crowd of people waiting to try out Trash Poker explained by the two authors. The game was set up on several tables at the booth and seemed to be very popular, as every time I walked past the, all the tables were full.

Fortunately, I’d already had the chance to play a few games in the run-up to the fair, so I can give you a bit more of an insight into what the game is actually about:

Playtesting Session: Trash Poker – Corax Games (2E430)

We have often seen that a successful video game has, after some time, been turned into a board game. As a rule, a fundamental game mechanic first had to be devised for this, as it was primarily the game’s setting, characters and storyline that created a link between the two genres.

However, I have rarely come across a case where a – essentially quite analogue – game mechanic from a digital game has made its way into the world of board games, or in this instance, card games. But that is more or less what happened with Frank Noack. As head of Corax Games, he was in a position to turn his enthusiasm for the digital indie hit Balatro into a physical card game. Rather than simply trying to recreate the original, however, he and designer Rico Besteher developed their own take on the idea. The result is Trash Poker, a deck-building game that takes the familiar mechanism of poker and adds a whole lot of opportunities to bend the rules while changing the deck.

I must admit that I’ve never played Balatro before and, in fact, only came across the game via Trash Poker, which apparently runs very well on a smartphone too. So, unfortunately, I can’t really make a comparison. So I’ll start by explaining what this is actually all about:

At setup, each player gets their own same poker deck, marked with a small symbol in a corner. That’s important because during the game cards will change their owners and there are possibilities to score cards from your opponents in your deck at the end of the game.

The basic mechanism seems familiar enough, as the name suggests, it’s Poker time. So, over the course of eight rounds, we draw seven (or more) cards each round and choose five of them to play as our poker hand. The strongest hand wins the round and earns victory points. We find many familiar hands like a pair, three or four of a kind, as well as a straight and a full house, can be found in this game. But as you always play five cards (even if you only have three of a kind, the mechanisms are slightly changed. So, you have a flush, when all cards are of the same suit and this counts additional to any other figure you have played.

Now, what happens with the rest of your hand. That’s the interesting part of the game, because with this the deck-building begins. The twist is that the two cards (or more with later upgrades) are for offer at the end of the round. The player with the weakest hand gets first pick from the other players' stakes, giving even a lost round an interesting consequence beyond simply missing out on the reward. But, what’s still more interesting than the other player cards are two special cards that come into game every round in the offering phase. And these cards are much stronger as they change the normal deck you know enormously. For example, you find a card that stands for 5,6,7 simultaneously, making it much easier to form a straight. Or a double ace, quite a stronge card indeed.

Moreover, most cards you take have a bonus, so you can achieve upgrades or remove cards from your deck that are going to your personal trash pile. Upgrades for example can make combinations more powerful, so you might win with a pair over three of a kind of one of your opponent. Or they will let you draw more cards at the start of a round or combine two suits for fulfilling the flush requirements.

Cards can also be removed from your deck at the end of each round. But trash in Trash Poker is by no means garbage. Most cards contribute to your victory points when they are cleverly played to the trash, so you’ll get victory points for each combination of 3 and 4 in your trash for example.

So, winning poker hands is only part of the game. The real fun comes from gradually changing our deck. We might start with a conventional poker deck, but as the game progresses, we can increasingly optimise it to our own plans. It doesn't really feel like playing poker in the traditional sense, although the essential elements are still there. The effects make everything much more chaotic, but in an entertaining way. Rather than simply hoping to draw a good hand, we gradually shape our deck and create new possibilities.

There is, however, one potential drawback. Once we have removed a number of cards from our deck, the hands we play will become rather similar, as the same combinations tend to occur more frequently. This might become repetitive for some players. Personally, I didn't find it too problematic. A game is relatively quick to play, and the next one offers the opportunity to try a different strategy and develop the deck in another direction. The upgrades and special cards give us plenty of reasons to experiment rather than simply repeating the same approach.

And there is one more interesting detail: there is a special deck of mighty jokers and every time a player reaches a specific amount of victory points new cards from this special joker deck are added to the normal joker deck you use. So with every new game, the cards in this deck become stronger and there are new strategies to find.

Trash Poker is a fun combination of familiar poker hands and deck manipulation. Its appeal lies in the way we can gradually change our deck, improve our options and discover unexpected combinations. As said, the results can be chaotic, but that is very much part of the experience. If you like experimenting with cards and finding clever ways to bend familiar rules, Trash Poker is well worth a look.

My next stop was at ARES GAMES, where, naturally, there was plenty of news about *War of the Ring* once again. Firstly, there’s the new expansion Hope and Despair for the card game, which introduces a new type of card: the story card. These story cards represent significant events from the history of The Lord of the Rings and therefore have a much greater impact on players’ decks than before. I’m certainly curious to see how these cards can be incorporated into the game. It was frustrating for the publisher, however, that the factory initially printed around 200 decks of cards that were too small, but had already packed them into the game boxes for Essen and sealed them before this was noticed. Although subsequent production runs for Essen were not affected, the factory had lost track of which game boxes contained the undersized cards; as a result, every buyer here in Essen has now been given a second deck of cards in the correct size upon purchase.

An expansion, Siege of Middle-earth, has also been released for the major game War of the Ring; this will probably be the last one. It allows players to re-enact the great siege battles of the strongholds of the Free Peoples.

Several new standalone games for Mega Empires were presented here in Essen for a demo: Mega Empires – The far east – North, Mega Empires – The far east – South and Mega Empires – Silk Road. I was told that they are working on rules that all those editions can be combined, so that in the end it will be possible to play Mega Empires with up to 30 people. What a challenge!

Let’s now take a closer look at a game that isn’t quite so complex:

Introduction: Viking Route – Ares Games (3A115)

In Viking Route, the journey is the destination. After all, we find ourselves on a Viking ship and, within the game, practise a method of navigation that is – for a board game – rather unusual. In various scenarios, we must set sail to, for example, find magical stones or defeat dangerous creatures. The ultimate goal is to prevent Ragnarök. What is particularly unusual is the way the ship moves, as we must influence its course using magnets.

For this, a compass is placed on a map, which shows the current orientation of our ship. Four game pieces can now be positioned along the edge or at specific points in the centre of the game board as the game progresses. These game pieces are equipped with magnets that influence the compass from the outside. Depending on how they are positioned in relation to the compass, they either attract or repel its needle. We are allowed to place the game pieces in specific positions around the board and may also adjust their orientation in order to influence the compass for our own purposes.

The direction of the needle then determines which way our ship is moving. So we don’t steer directly towards our destination, but have to use the forces of the magnets to set the desired course. This makes navigation the biggest challenge in the game.

However, navigation is only part of what we do. The three-dimensional ship is divided into different sections, in which we can carry out various actions. For example, we can set sail, stow supplies and materials, or attack enemies with the cannon.

Viking Route is campaign game comprising several scenarios that become more difficult as the game progresses, culminating in the final battle against Loki to prevent the end of the world.

I’m curious to see how the unusual navigation system works out at the gaming table. The idea of influencing a ship’s course using magnetic forces is certainly original and sets the game apart from many other co-operative adventure games. The game certainly looks great on the table, and navigating with the magnets definitely promises a gaming experience unlike anything I’ve seen before. In terms of difficulty, however, I think it’s not strictly a family game, but is much more aimed at more experienced players.

ARES GAMES is one of the publishers that is always offereing a sneak peek at the coming year in display cases at SPIEL. This year, that display case was more packed than it has been for a long time. In my point of view, there are especially three games on display lthat ook particularly promising, judging by graphics und first information: the first is a hidden-movement game featuring very different characters, each with their own special abilities, whilst the other two are narrative games with a macabre storyline. But look for yourselves:

By this time, as on many other days, long queues had formed in front of the stalls. Most of these booths nowadays only allow a certain number of visitors inside at the same time, which means long queues form in front of the booths. I find it amusing that, as a result, people are effectively queuing up to be locked into a cage, which then leads through a maze of games and finally ends at the cashing machines. Woe betide anyone who turns up there empty-handed. Probably no one does, though – after all, many visitors had already spent so much time queuing that they simply can’t bring themselves to leave empty-handed. It would actually be worth doing a study on that.

Since we’re on the subject of studies already, I took the opportunity to take a little break from testing new games and having them explained to me. Since last year, the dedicated SPIEL.TALKS ON STAGE area has been hosting quite a lot of interesting talks on all board games related themes. Today, I was really keen to go and have a listen, as a friend of mine – an Instagrammer and scientist – was talking here about his PhD research:

Let’s play Mittelalter – SPIEL.talks on stage (4J115)

Yes, it’s true! You can write your doctoral thesis on board games. Dr Lukas Boch, also known to Instagram users as boardgame_historian, is a historian and boardgames researcher who wrote his doctoral thesis on the Middle Ages in modern board games.

In his fascinating talk, he began by explaining the difference between the real Middle Ages and what we know as history. The latter is, in fact, merely our present-day perspective on the past, and this is always significantly shaped by the spirit of the times. This is also evident in the relatively short history of modern boardgames.

Thus, our view of the Middle Ages in boardgames today is characterised both by a rather grim perspective, featuring numerous wars, the plague and cholera – as exemplified, for instance, in Zombicicide – Black Plague (even if zombies are also thrown into the mix here). Many other games, by contrast, emphasise a more romanticised view of the Middle Ages, expressed through flourishing landscapes, magnificent market squares and a rather peaceful, tranquil way of life.

However, our view of the Middle Ages is constantly changing, as is very well demonstrated by the well-known Settlers of Catan. Whilst the card knight appears rather grim in the first edition, it has been depicted in a friendlier light with each subsequent edition. And the portray of the Church is also changing. For instance, the cathedral from the first edition has been replaced, via a church in the 2016 edition, by a tax office in the latest edition. Well, at least the underlying purpose – namely, the collection of taxes – remains constant.

In any case, I found Luka’s today’s talk very interesting and enlightening, and the concept adopted by Messe Essen of providing a lecture area with excellent acoustic insulation alongside the main exhibition hall proved a great success, as evidenced by the full audience.

If you now want to learn more about the topic, you can have a look at the website of the LAGIP where Lukas is working. LAGIP stands for Bonn Lab for Analog Games and Imaginative Play and is an experimental Cultural Studies Laboratory at the University of Bonn (gamelab.uni-bonn.de).

After so much theory, I felt like playing a few lighter games, which I found at the 2TOMATOES GAMES stand after a short walk. Following on from last year’s successful La Cuenta, three new, smaller games made their way to Essen this year. Whilst Surfin’ Cats and Bonbon are more suited to beginners and families, the two-player game Himizu – which I’ll be focusing on below – does, by contrast, demands certain tactical understanding on the players. Unfortunately, I completely forgot to take any photos from the convention, so the photos are from my home, where I’d already had the chance to play a round of the game before the fair.

Playtesting Session: Himizu – 2Tomatoe Games (6B400)

In the two-player game Himizu, each player takes on the role of one of the two forces of nature: fire and water. The two opposing forces engage in a fierce battle for supremacy in a small forest, represented by a small board with a 5x5 grid. The title is made up of the Japanese names for the two elements.

Naturally, the fire player wants to set the forest alight further and further, eventually covering it entirely with burning or already charred terrain tiles; so if they manage to place all their fire tiles on the board before the end of the tenth round, they win the game.

The other player, who controls the water, tries to use the water to stop the flames from spreading. To do this, they must either hold out for ten rounds or remove all three flame figures – which the other player uses to move around the board – from the board. Both sides therefore have different objectives, making the game asymmetrical.

The water player also has a piece with which they move around the board. Three orthogonal moves are permitted per turn, and the fire player can divide these between the up to three flame figures, while the water player has only one piece.

As a fire figures moves forward, it leaves burned earth in its wake; a burning terrain tile is therefore placed on the square that the fire piece has just left. If, however, a burning terrain tile is already present there, it is flipped onto its charred side, making it more difficult for the water player to extinguish and thus remove it. With their water figure, the water player is no longer allowed to enter such a square. Burning terrain tiles, on the other hand, are returned to the fire player as soon as the water player moves their piece onto them. However, the water player also has ways of hindering the fire player’s movements, namely by creating puddles.

And that brings us to the unique abilities of these two forces of nature. To use them, we need power tokens; we start with three of them. Our special abilities cost us up to three power, with each of our own power tokens being worth 2 power. But here’s where an interesting twist comes into play: used tokens are passed to the opponent, where they are only worth one Power (after all, what use is water to the Fire player?). So, whoever gains an advantage through additional abilities simultaneously equips the other side with new options to activate their own abilities. It is wise to carefully weigh up when it is worth using an ability and when doing so might give your opponent too much room for manoeuvres.

With a playing time of around 20 minutes, Himizu is a comparatively compact game. However, the game’s modest set of components belies the fact that the different victory conditions and abilities are likely to require a fair amount of tactical planning. I found it particularly exciting that using power expands your own scope for action whilst simultaneously giving your opponent additional options for their next move: every advantage comes at a price, so to speak. A lovely, small game that’s easy to take with you wherever you go.

Last stop for me was at the booth of the wooden game I told you about the novelty show session:

Playtesting Session: Supera (4F425)

Supera is a wooden balancing strategy game as the designer calls it. The basic concept is that three trees are built up on the same shared structure. The trees are represented by three different coloured wooden pieces that are set aside and sorted for each player at the beginning of the game. Every player plays with one colour and is only allowed to play a piece when it is connected with another piece already established on the structure of the same colour.

There are only two problems: Firstly, the basic structure is simply placed only on one corner, which means it is already rather unstable on the table. In any case, as more and more wooden pieces are added to the structure, it eventually becomes difficult to keep everything balanced, and as soon as a player knocks parts of the structure over during their turn, they lose the game.

Secondly, you can’t, of course, choose which wooden piece to place next; this is decided by rolling a dice. And so, quite often, you have to attach pieces to the tree that, strictly speaking, can’t really be positioned there any more. But friction and a great deal of experience – as the designer’s son demonstrated to me today – make many things possible. In any case, I didn’t stand a chance against my opponent.

Interest was high, but unfortunately, the game is only available to try out as a demo here in Essen; only a few trial copies have changed hands. Otherwise, I’m sure many copies could have been sold – the game really looks the part on the gaming table.

But, good news, a Kickstarter campaign is planned for Supera for the start of next year. I always really enjoy balance games like this and I’ll definitely be keeping an eye on the game’s further development.

But, for now, let’s have a break, I’ll be back tomorrow with a last update from a fantastic SPIEL’26.

Hello again, everybody! And while Ralf is calling it a day, I'll take you back into the halls for my own Saturday adventures. This morning got off to a rather frosty start, although fortunately I am talking about my first destination rather than the weather! It was actually quite pleasant when I made my way to MESSE ESSEN, whereas now, as I am typing these lines, a storm is raging outside. Certainly a good evening to sit safely indoors and write about boardgames!

My first stop was the booth of FROSTED GAMES in Hall 3, where I had booked a demonstration table for a round of Tír na nÓg. I had already admired its colourful artwork at Wednesday's New Games Show, and its unusual approach to card drafting certainly sounded intriguing. So this was an appointment I had been looking forward to, and with a seat at the table secured, it was finally time to leave Essen behind for a little journey into the Celtic Otherworld!

Playtesting Session: Tír na nÓg - FROSTED GAMES (booth 3G300)

In Irish mythology, Tír na nÓg - the “Land of Youth” - is one of the best-known names for the Otherworld, a supernatural realm beyond ordinary human existence where youth, beauty and abundance endure and time follows rather different rules. Its most famous visitor is Oisín, the warrior-poet of the Fianna, who follows Niamh of the Golden Hair, an Otherworld woman who has fallen in love with him, across the western sea and eventually discovers that the years which seemed so brief in the Otherworld have passed very differently at home. Tír na nÓg, designed by Isaac Shalev and Jason Slingerland and published by GRAND GAMERS GUILD, takes this rich mythological idea and gives it a rather beautiful new angle: the players become Celtic Storytellers who cross into the Otherworld and return carrying fragments of extraordinary encounters, gradually weaving these memories into sagas which hopefully will be remembered long after their tellers are gone.

This storytelling idea is not merely decorative, because almost everything the players do can be understood as assembling the material for their own legend. At the centre of the table lies the Otherworld, represented by a grid of Encounter cards depicting creatures, places and personalities from a fantastical Celtic realm. Every player has three Storytellers, and during a special drafting procedure, the Journey Phase, these figures are placed one after another into the narrow spaces between two cards. A Storyteller therefore does not simply reserve a single Encounter, but establishes a claim on either of the two cards beside him. Only after everybody has placed all three figures does the actual drafting begin.

This drafting procedure is the central mechanism of Tír na nÓg, and it shows a certain degree of ingenuity since it is quite gamechanger in contrast with traditional drafting. As indicated, a Storyteller offers access to two tempting cards, but neither is necessarily safe: another player may have placed one of his own Storytellers beside the same Encounter and might take it first. Since cards are claimed in the reverse order of the players placing their Storytellers, the players have to evaluate not only which cards they would like to acquire, but which pair gives them the best alternatives if their preferred choice disappears. A particularly desirable card may attract attention from several directions, and a Storyteller can even end up with neither adjacent card remaining (giving the player at least a free choice of all remaining cards when the draft is over). Placement therefore becomes a small exercise in prediction and risk management before the actual draft has even started. This adds another thinking layer to a very familiar mechanism without ever feeling artificially constructed.

The cards brought back from the Otherworld are used to construct each player’s Saga, consisting of three horizontal rows. Every row is governed by a Geas, and this once again is a lovely thematic choice. In Irish tradition a geis or geas could be a binding prohibition or obligation whose observance carried great importance, and in the game the Geas cards similarly impose rules on how Encounter cards should be arranged and how their values will score at the end. The different Geasa therefore turn each row into its own small order and numerical puzzle, while connected regions of cards in the same colour provide an additional scoring possibility across the complete Saga.

However, the drafted Encounter does not have to be placed immediately. Every player begins the game with five cards already in hand, and whenever a Storyteller returns from the Otherworld the chosen Encounter is first added to this hand. The player then may place any card from his hand into the Saga. This small distinction considerably increases the strategic freedom of the game. A newly drafted card can be kept for later if its value, colour or special ability will fit more elegantly into a future position, while another card which has been waiting since an earlier round can finally be brought into the developing story. Thus, drafting does not simply dictate what must be played next; it enlarges a pool of narrative pieces from which the player can select the one that currently fits best.

Quite cleverly, this freedom becomes progressively tighter. At the end of every round one card is discarded from each player’s hand, so the initial reserve of five cards gradually shrinks during the five rounds. Early in the game there is considerable room to store useful Encounters and postpone difficult placement decisions, whereas towards the end the players increasingly have to work with what they have managed to preserve. This creates a pleasant arc without introducing any additional mechanism: the Saga begins with many possible directions, but slowly becomes more committed as its story approaches its conclusion.

Encounter cards themselves may provide still more possibilities because many carry special effects, allowing values or colours to change, cards to move or other parts of the Saga to be manipulated. These effects are particularly useful because the scoring puzzle asks the players to consider several things simultaneously: the requirements of each Geas, the numerical values within individual rows and the connected colour regions which spread horizontally and vertically across a player’s tableau. A card therefore rarely is simply “good” in isolation. Its real value depends on where it can be placed, what it connects to and whether another card already in hand might serve the same purpose more elegantly. This forms a rather pleasantly challenging puzzle.

The game also scales remarkably well because the Otherworld itself changes with the number of Storytellers taking part. Two players use a compact three-by-three arrangement with the centre left empty, whereas three, four and five players use increasingly wider grids of three-by-four, three-by-five and three-by-six cards. Since everybody still places three Storytellers, the amount of available space grows alongside the number of competing players without removing the central tension over desirable Encounters. With fewer players it becomes somewhat easier to read an opponent’s intentions, while a full group creates more contested cards and considerably more uncertainty about what will survive until a particular Storyteller returns home.

What fascinates me most about Tír na nÓg is how naturally all this fits together. Mechanically, the players are solving a fairly abstract tableau puzzle of numbers, colours, adjacency and conditional scoring. Yet the experience never feels disconnected from the theme. The shared grid really can be imagined as an Otherworld full of possible encounters, the Storytellers venture between them and return with just some of the tales they hoped to find, and the cards collected over five rounds gradually become an individual Saga shaped by its Geasa. The beautiful artwork reinforces this connection throughout, so that the final tableau does not merely look like the solution to a scoring puzzle but like an illustrated collection of strange adventures brought back from somewhere beyond the mortal world.

To my mind this makes Tír na nÓg a particularly fine example of something boardgames do not always achieve: abstraction and thematic richness working together instead of pulling in opposite directions. The underlying mechanisms remain clean and accessible, but the competitive drafting gives card selection an unusual tension, while the shrinking hand provides much more control over the Saga than a straightforward draft-and-place system would offer. Add the changing Geasa, special card effects and colour-region scoring, and there is enough variation and tactical depth to make every journey feel different. Yet all of this remains wrapped in a theme which is not merely attractive but genuinely appropriate. The Storytellers return from the Otherworld with fragments of wonders, dangers and encounters - and by arranging them carefully, the players quite literally turn those fragments into a legend of their own.

However, my journey through the Otherworld wasn't quite the end of my visit to FROSTED GAMES. I also took the opportunity to have a closer look at The Voynich Puzzle, which is available here in its German edition, Das Voynich-Mysterium. As mentioned in Wednesday's report, Stefan Hestermeyer had already shown me a prototype at last year's SPIEL, and I had been curious about the finished game ever since. Time to open a rather mysterious book!

Introduction: The Voynich Puzzle - FROSTED GAMES (booth 3G300)

Strange plants, mysterious bathing scenes, celestial diagrams and pages of writing which nobody has convincingly deciphered: the Voynich Manuscript certainly provides an intriguing starting point for a boardgame. Acquired by the bookseller Wilfrid Voynich in 1912 and now held at Yale University, this enigmatic illustrated volume has inspired countless attempts to explain its origins and meaning. Unfortunately, The Voynich Puzzle does not finally provide the key to understanding its contents. However, designer Dani Garcia has invested considerable ingenuity in another challenge: turning the investigation of this mysterious manuscript into a game. Originally published by SALT & PEPPER GAMES, it invites the players to develop possible interpretations, share discoveries and use the findings of their fellow researchers to advance their own understanding.

The gameboard draws on five subjects from the manuscript: Botany, Astrology, Baths, Writing and Recipes. These surround a central Puzzle where the players’ discoveries gradually come together. The aim is to accumulate the most Overall Knowledge, the game’s equivalent of victory points, through research during play and a final evaluation of the players’ achievements. However, choosing actions involves something rather more appropriate than selecting a card from an ordinary hand. Everybody receives a miniature manuscript, assembled by inserting ten randomly selected cards into a little book of transparent sleeves. Two cards belong to each of the five subjects, creating five double-page spreads through which the players browse in search of their next research opportunity.

On each turn, a player opens a different double-page of their book and performs the actions shown in the upper half of either its left or right page. The same spread cannot be used on consecutive turns, so even a particularly rewarding field of research requires an occasional change of subject. Each card has four steps of development, occupying the upper and lower halves of both sides. Progressing on a page means taking the card from its sleeve and rotating or flipping it, exposing improved actions and better scoring opportunities. These improvements depend on Research tokens positioned on the central Puzzle, which gives the investigations around the board a shared purpose. The little books therefore are much more than an attractive accessory: they form a developing selection of actions which the players gradually make more powerful.

The actions in these books allow the players to place and move their Leaves, Waterdrops, Stars and Text tokens on the gameboard. The chosen double-page spread directs their activities towards the corresponding subject, where placing or moving tokens can earn Knowledge and trigger additional effects. Some rewards also allow further placements or movements elsewhere, connecting one field of research with another. However, understanding how to make the most of these opportunities requires a closer look at the individual sections.

Note: I had to enhance the picture due to bad light conditions.

The subjects themselves work quite differently. In Botany, Leaves and Waterdrops travel upwards through a branching plant, collecting Knowledge and additional actions along the way. Occupied spaces are skipped, so other researchers' tokens can provide useful shortcuts towards distant rewards. Choosing a route therefore means weighing its benefits against the opportunities created by the other players, whose presence can sometimes be surprisingly helpful.

The Baths introduce a different kind of movement: placing a Waterdrop at a fountain pushes other tokens along the watercourses towards the pools, rewarding their owners as they move. A single placement can therefore help several players, making timing important: advancing one's own research may also give somebody else a very welcome push.

In Astrology, Stars and Text tokens are combined to complete constellations, earning Knowledge for their owners even when different players have contributed. Writing uses these same tokens differently: Texts are arranged in rows, while adding a Star activates the benefits of every Text in the chosen row, regardless of ownership. Across these sections, the fine coordination of rewards is impressive. Placements and movements repeatedly provide opportunities for additional actions elsewhere, allowing a carefully arranged turn to achieve considerably more than its initial placement suggests.

However, everybody has just four tokens of each type, so pursuing one opportunity can mean abandoning another. A token may need several turns to reach a valuable destination, while developments elsewhere tempt its owner to reclaim it for a different purpose. Sometimes leaving it in place is equally useful, simply because it blocks an opponent. Recipes make this balancing act especially clear: tokens placed here must be transferred from other sections rather than taken from the personal supply. They earn further rewards, but claiming these means giving up the old position. Moving a Star out of a constellation might therefore secure an attractive bonus while reopening a useful space for somebody else.

The central Puzzle then brings these investigations together, creating a shared arrangement which the players use to improve their books. Accumulating Knowledge in Botany, Astrology, Baths and Writing eventually requires players to share their findings by adding matching-colored pieces to this Puzzle, whereas Recipes contribute to these existing fields rather than having a Knowledge track of their own. Crucially, the growing Puzzle becomes available to everybody: a piece added to support one player's plans may also complete a useful arrangement for a rival.

Making use of these arrangements involves a separate set of Research tokens, which players place and move across the Puzzle through suitable actions. Each book page shows the same-color group size these tokens must reach in the Puzzle before the page can be improved. A page might, for example, require a token on a connected group of three Botany pieces. Once the requirement is met and the player has moved one of his Research tokens to that group, he returns the necessary tokens to his supply, earning points for their positions and upgrading the page. The shared Puzzle therefore provides the opportunities, while the Research tokens allow each player to turn them into personal progress. This brings the different mechanisms together rather neatly: research expands the Puzzle, the Puzzle enables improvements to the book, and the improved pages offer stronger actions and better final scoring opportunities.

For the final scoring it is worth looking at Garcia’s explanations of the ideas behind the individual sections. His notes describe how the plant illustrations suggested growth from roots towards flowers, how the celestial diagrams inspired the rotating Capricorn, and how the green water of the bathing scenes suggested algae represented by Leaves. Stars appearing beside the manuscript’s writing became the basis for the interaction between Stars and Texts. Most intriguingly, Recipes are imagined as possible instructions combining plants, water, seasonal information and written directions. These are inspirations rather than established explanations of the manuscript, but they give the mechanisms a coherent foundation. To my mind, they also help explain why understanding connections between subjects matters so much to the game.

That principle carries into the final scoring. A developed page rewards Knowledge in a specified field, which need not be the subject of the page itself: Astrology pages, for example, score Baths Knowledge. More advanced pages apply stronger multipliers to the scoring level reached in the relevant field, while Recipes pages offer a choice between two types of Knowledge. Consequently, improving actions and accumulating Knowledge must support each other; a highly developed book needs research which makes its scoring opportunities worthwhile. Research tokens remaining on the Puzzle provide an additional reward worth half their combined positional value. These points are added to those earned during play. Reaching 52 Overall Knowledge triggers the conclusion, with the current round completed and everybody receiving one further turn, but the final evaluation can still substantially change the outcome.

To my mind, The Voynich Puzzle manages something rather unusual: it feels abstract and thematic at the same time. Its decisions concern positions, movement, combinations and scoring conditions, yet the different mechanisms repeatedly draw attention back to the peculiar illustrations and possible connections within the real manuscript. This certainly is no easy beginners’ or family game. Learning how the sections work is only the beginning, because the real challenge lies in recognizing how their opportunities fit together, developing the appropriate pages and judging when to commit or reclaim the limited tokens. However, the result is a fascinating journey into a mysterious piece of history. Dani Garcia has created an intricate placement and scoring game whose subject and implementation both stand pleasantly outside the usual mainstream.

The German edition, published as Das Voynich-Mysterium by FROSTED GAMES, deserves a final mention for an improvement which makes this demanding network considerably easier to follow. Its additional Knowledge board provides separate tracks for the four fields, giving a clear overview of everybody’s progress. In the original English edition, all these markers share the main score track. It is a simple invention, but a particularly useful one in a game where the distinction between individual fields of Knowledge and the overall score matters so much. Stefan from FROSTED GAMES told me that owners of the English edition have been asking whether they can obtain this board separately, with some even considering buying the German edition at around €60 just to get it. That is quite a compliment to the editorial work behind this edition, and a lovely example of how much a thoughtful improvement can contribute to making an unusual game more accessible.

Apparently, I had become rather frozen in place this morning! But with such a broad selection of new games at FROSTED GAMES, there certainly were worse places to linger. Before moving on, I also wanted to take a closer look at Space Lab, a cute-looking tableau builder which had caught my attention for a rather unusual reason: each card has its own individual artwork. A lovely little detail, and the spatial puzzle underneath those charming pictures looked promising as well!

Introduction: Space Lab - FROSTED GAMES (booth 3G300)

Designed by Corentin Lebrat and Johannes Goupy, Space Lab invites the players to assemble their own little space laboratory, recruiting an international Crew of Pilots, Scientists, Doctors and Engineers to conduct ambitious research projects. The laboratory itself consists of three Modules, each with its own Mission and surrounded by spaces where the Crew cards can be placed. And here the game immediately reveals its main attraction: rather than simply collecting the most useful cards, the players have to decide how to arrange their specialists around the Modules, making the most of their individual abilities while fulfilling the requirements of the different Missions. All this is presented with some wonderfully charming illustrations, and quite remarkably, every one of the sixty Crew cards has its own individual artwork!

The basic turn structure is pleasantly straightforward. A player may reveal three Crew cards from the deck and take all those of one chosen colour, leaving the others in a shared display. Alternatively, all cards of one colour can be collected directly from this display, or the player may place Crew cards from their hand into the laboratory. Placing a card usually requires discarding other cards as payment, with costs ranging from zero to three cards. Interestingly, several Crew members may be added during the same turn, provided the player can afford them. However, anyone beginning a turn with five or more cards in hand must choose the placement action. Thus, collecting useful specialists is only half the challenge: the players must also decide when to commit them to their laboratories, and sometimes a particularly tempting collection of cards may force that decision sooner than expected.

And finding the right place for a Crew member is rather more important than it initially appears. Every laboratory has just ten positions, and once a card has been placed it cannot be moved or replaced. Each Module demands a particular combination of three Crew colours to complete its Mission, but the individual positions around the Modules may also provide additional benefits. Placing a more expensive Crew member above a Module, for example, can allow the player to draw several Project cards and keep one of them. Positions below a Module may grant bonuses when the specialisation of the Crew member matches the requirements of its Mission. Since some positions are shared by neighbouring Modules, a cleverly placed card may even contribute towards more than one objective. Consequently, the players constantly have to balance the immediate benefits of a placement against the long-term development of their laboratories.

There are some additional scoring considerations which make this little puzzle quite interesting. Completing a Mission rewards its owner with an Achievement tile, but the most valuable rewards go to those who finish first, creating a certain race between the players. Crew cards themselves may provide Victory Points depending on the number of particular specialists, colours or arrangements in the finished laboratory. Finally, the Projects introduce another opportunity for collecting points. These cards remain secret until the final scoring and reward particular combinations or achievements, sometimes becoming considerably more valuable when several matching Projects have been collected. This provides another reason to consider which Crew cards should occupy the limited spaces, because a placement which is useful for completing a Mission may not necessarily produce the best combination for final scoring.

The game ends when somebody fills all ten positions in their laboratory or completes all three Missions, with the other players receiving one final opportunity to add Crew cards before scoring. To my mind, Space Lab looks like a pleasantly approachable combination of card collecting and spatial planning, with enough interconnected scoring opportunities to reward some careful decisions. I particularly like how the limited space makes every placement meaningful without burdening the players with an overly complicated rules system. The charming individual illustrations give the growing laboratory plenty of character, while the changing Missions and Projects should ensure that the same arrangement will not always be the most profitable. This certainly looks like a delightful little game which might appeal to both casual players and more experienced gamers looking for an entertaining puzzle between heavier titles. And fortunately, building this particular space station doesn't require an entire evening!

Once somebody fills all ten card positions or completes all three Missions, the others have one final opportunity to play cards before the points for Crew cards, Mission rewards and Projects are counted. To my mind, this looks like a pleasantly approachable combination of card collecting and spatial planning. The individually illustrated cards give the growing laboratory plenty of character, while the limited space and competing Mission requirements should keep the decisions interesting. Certainly a charming little prospect for a trip into space which doesn't require an entire evening!

Note: I had to enhance the picture due to bad light conditions.

After this rather extended visit to FROSTED GAMES, it was finally time to get moving again! I still had a little time before my next scheduled playtesting session, so I decided to spend it roaming the halls and looking for another interesting discovery. My little tour took me over to Hall 2, where I stopped at the booth of LUDICATESSEN and found Player 12. A quick game of football certainly sounded like a pleasant change after Celtic legends, mysterious manuscripts and space laboratories, so I sat down for a little match!

Playtesting Session: Player 12 - LUDICATESSEN (booth 2C500)

Football is a game of tactics, skill and occasionally outrageous luck, so perhaps it is only fitting that Player 12 by Rafael Prado combines two rather different boardgame mechanisms to capture some of its excitement. Instead of trying to simulate a football match with complicated movement rules and player statistics, the game relies on a simple trick-taking mechanism supported by a few dice. The result is a cheerful little football game which squeezes ninety minutes of sporting drama into about fifteen minutes of playing time. And while nobody should expect a sophisticated football simulation, the idea works surprisingly well as a quick and entertaining diversion.

The game is played over two halves of ten tricks each, with two players competing directly or four players forming two teams. Every player receives ten cards, divided into three colours with different numerical values. The usual trick-taking principles apply: players must follow the leading colour if possible, and the highest eligible card wins, with black cards serving as trumps. However, winning a trick does not immediately score points. Instead, the winning team advances the football one position towards the opposing goal. Now the interesting part begins, because the players must decide whether to attempt a shot or keep playing cards in the hope of moving closer to the goal. Three different dice represent scoring probabilities of 25, 50 and 70 percent, depending on the position of the ball. The closer a team gets, the better its chances, although reaching the 70 percent position makes a shot mandatory. Naturally, the dice can produce considerably more than just goals and saves: the ball may hit the post, go out for a corner, or even result in a penalty.

What I particularly enjoyed during our two-player match was the pace at which the game developed. The ball seemed to be moving constantly back and forth between us, with possession changing rapidly and neither side being able to rely on keeping the initiative for very long. And despite the simple rules, there certainly are some possibilities for tactical play and even a little bluffing. Should a player attempt a shot with a relatively modest chance of success, or risk another trick in the hope of getting closer to the goal? Especially when the cards were running low, these decisions became wonderfully thematic, because sometimes it seemed wiser to take a chance while the opportunity was still there rather than wait for a perfect position which might never arrive. Rafael also told me that Player 12 can be played with two teams of two players, and I can easily imagine that this adds another interesting dimension to the traditional trick-taking mechanism. Reading the intentions of a teammate, coordinating the cards and trying to outwit the opposing pair should make the football feeling even stronger.

The penalties are another charming feature of Player 12. For these occasions the board is flipped over, and the players use little goal screens and figures to determine whether the goalkeeper can anticipate the direction of the shot. Both sides secretly choose one of three positions, and if the goalkeeper guesses correctly the shot is saved. Otherwise, the ball goes in. It is a wonderfully simple little guessing game, and especially when a match ends in a draw and must be decided through a penalty shootout, it adds a nice final moment of suspense.

Of course, luck plays a considerable role in Player 12, both through the distribution of cards and the dice which determine whether promising attacks actually produce goals. Even a carefully constructed advance can end in disappointment, while a rather desperate attempt may suddenly turn the match around. However, this unpredictability suits the subject remarkably well, and the game never pretends to be a serious tactical challenge. Instead, it offers a pleasantly accessible mixture of familiar cardplay, quick decisions and football excitement, with enough opportunities for cheering, groaning and perhaps a little friendly teasing between opponents. To my mind, Player 12 is exactly the kind of uncomplicated entertainment which works nicely between two larger games, and having experienced its lively back-and-forth rhythm, I would certainly be curious to try the four-player team variant as well. Its short playing time almost invites an immediate rematch. After all, even the losing team deserves another chance to demonstrate that the better side does not always win.

With my little football interlude completed, it was time to return to Hall 3, where I had an appointment with my longtime friend Cédrick Caumont at CAPTAIN GAMES. Cédrick had kindly reserved a seat for me at one of the tables where Tea & Rum was being played, so I could settle down straight away for my next playtesting session. After all, I had already admired the game at Wednesday's New Games Show, not least because of that rather special anniversary card featuring me as Lord Kulkmann! But now it was time to find out whether I had what it takes to become a Governor or a Pirate King.

Playtesting Session: Tea & Rum - CAPTAIN GAMES (booth 3Q600)

Designed by Fabien Gridel and published by CAPTAIN GAMES, Tea & Rum, takes the players to a Caribbean island where everybody harbors rather considerable ambitions. At the end of five rounds, victory goes to whoever succeeds in claiming one of the island’s two great titles: one player may become the new Governor, another the Pirate King - and somebody particularly successful might even claim both. This opposition between respectable colonial office and somewhat less respectable pirate royalty initially suggests two very different careers, but in practice all players are developing the same bustling island economy. They acquire Ships, hire Captains, construct Buildings, fulfill Contracts and trade goods, gradually turning a modest settlement into something considerably more prosperous. So, despite the pirate hats and cannons, Tea & Rum is much more concerned with successful entrepreneurship than with swashbuckling adventures on the high seas.

As indicated, the game runs over five rounds, and much of its economy is immediately recognizable. Population generates income, Ships can be purchased to bring new resources into the players’ Warehouses, and limited storage space gradually can be expanded. After the central Action Phase, the inhabitants of the island even express their current wishes concerning matters such as Hygiene, Security or Entertainment, rewarding those players whose investments best satisfy the demand of the round. Population then increases and the displays of Contracts and Captains are prepared for the next round. In this fashion the economy steadily grows, with money, resources and infrastructure feeding into each other.

Based on a worker placement mechanism, the actions available to the players form a rather straightforward economic toolbox. Players may construct Buildings, hire Captains, fulfill Contracts or Trade, and many Buildings and Captains provide immediate or permanent advantages which gradually improve the efficiency of an island economy. Contracts consume resources and reward Victory Points, while Captains may provide useful immediate bonuses and sometimes can be activated later for additional effects by supplying them with Cannons. Ships offer another way of converting money directly into combinations of resources, although each Ship can be claimed only once, creating a small race for useful opportunities. None of this reaches the strategic depth of the old thematic classic Puerto Rico, where role selection, colonial townbuilding and the production and trade of goods also were central elements, but still the combination of placing, trading, acquiring and building in Tea & Rum fits together very nicely and even gives the players some possibilities to develop their own little economic engines through some Building effects.

However, quite interesting actually is the game’s particular variation on worker placement. At the beginning of the game every player has one Worker on each of four Action boards, but the Workers do not simply block spaces in the usual fashion. During the odd-numbered rounds the players gradually remove their Workers, while during the even-numbered rounds they place them again. More importantly, the action available to a Worker depends on the total number of Workers currently present on that board - before removal or after placement. Thus, an action which looks particularly attractive at the beginning of a round may have changed considerably by the time a player finally uses it. Timing therefore becomes much more important than in classic open-or-blocked worker placement: the other players do not occupy and block desirable spaces, but actually change what a Worker will be able to accomplish.

I also like how the Trade action has been implemented, because it takes a very familiar resource exchange and presents it in a surprisingly thematic fashion. Goods which should be sold are placed on one side of a trading scale, purchases on the other, and money is added until both sides are balanced. Players can even place one type of resource on the raised part of the scale to improve its selling price or reduce its purchasing cost. Mechanically this remains easy to operate, but visually it conveys the idea of actual bargaining considerably better than simply consulting a price table. Together with the players’ Warehouses and incoming Ships, this anchors Tea & Rum firmly in trading and town management, and gives its rather light economic mechanisms a surprisingly tangible thematic presence.

The two possible careers finally enter the game through its unusual scoring system. Blue Victory Points represent prestige with the Crown and therefore lead towards becoming Governor, whereas Red Victory Points represent support among the People and determine the Pirate King. Both colors can be collected through different parts of the game. Contracts, for example, allow the player to choose whether their reward should be Red or Blue, while Buildings, Captains, the Reputation track and the round rewards provide further opportunities to increase one side or the other. Thus, there is no completely separate “pirate strategy” and “governor strategy”; both ambitions grow out of the same island economy, and the interesting question is how the resulting points are distributed.

There is one important asymmetry, however. Becoming Pirate King ultimately means having the strongest Red support, while aspiring Governors cannot merely depend on Blue support but must additionally prove their Allegiance to the Crown. As soon as a player reaches eight Blue Victory Points, all of their Victory Points disappear into their personal Chest and become hidden for the rest of the game. The player then chooses one of the available Allegiance cards and must fulfill its particular requirement in order to remain eligible for the Governor title. These tasks may demand a certain number or combination of Buildings, Contracts or Captains, a high position on Population or Reputation, or even a specific payment. Interestingly, choosing an Allegiance also awards some Red Victory Points, so formally declaring loyalty to the Crown does not automatically turn a player into a complete enemy of the People. Only players who have fulfilled their Allegiance can become Governor; if several qualify, their Blue Victory Points finally decide the race for office.

The disappearance of Victory Points into the Chests adds a nice element of uncertainty to the second half of the game. Before somebody reaches the threshold, everybody can see exactly how much support has been gathered, but afterwards opponents must start remembering or estimating how far the hidden totals may have developed. However, the players cannot simply throw themselves completely behind one of the two available careers. At the end of the game the difference between a player’s Red and Blue Victory Points may never exceed ten; any surplus beyond this limit is simply lost. This is an elegant restriction because it prevents somebody from ignoring one half of the political landscape and rushing blindly towards a single title. Even the final money reserves can secretly be exchanged for either color of Victory Point, so some uncertainty remains until the Chests finally are opened.

The result is a rather unusual endgame in which Tea & Rum can end with one or two winners. Among those who have fulfilled their Allegiance, the strongest candidate becomes Governor, while the player with the most Red Victory Points becomes Pirate King. These can be two different people, but one particularly talented merchant-politician-pirate may take both titles and leave everybody else wondering whether such concentration of power really was a good idea. The ten-point balancing rule is essential here, because it forces every player to keep both constituencies at least reasonably satisfied instead of simply sailing full speed towards one scoring color.

To my mind this dual scoring system is the element which gives Tea & Rum its strongest identity. The underlying resource management remains quite accessible, and the game certainly is lighter than the larger economic classics, but the changing worker-placement actions introduce considerably more timing and player interaction than the mechanisms initially suggest. This in turn calls for a certain light-footedness, because otherwise the game might lose much of its good pacing to planning and plotting. Fortunately, Tea & Rum actually positions itself as a highly entertaining game when played in this spirit, because competition remains lively on almost every level. Players vie for the most useful actions, attractive Ships, desirable Captains and Buildings, and ultimately for the two very different titles waiting at the end of the game. This constant competition goes hand in hand nicely with the lighter playing experience, giving the game a cheerful, bustling character without demanding the weight of a full economic simulation. The trading scales add thematic charm, Buildings and Captains allow some very light engine building, and the hidden Victory Points create just enough doubt about everybody’s true position. Most importantly, the title gets the tone exactly right: this is not primarily a tale of cutlasses, cannon smoke and buried treasure, but one of cargo, commerce and carefully cultivated influence. A shrewd Governor may therefore have surprisingly much in common with a Pirate King - especially when both know the value of a good barrel of rum.

However, my visit to CAPTAIN GAMES was far from over, because Cédrick had another rather special invitation for me: I was to join him and his team for lunch at the booth! Now, I have enjoyed quite a few lunch breaks during my many years at SPIEL, but what happened next was something I had never experienced before.

A very special Lunch Break - CAPTAIN GAMES (booth 3Q600)

When lunchtime came, Cédrick's sister and a friend of hers arrived at the booth, bringing a little cart loaded with pasta salad, sandwiches and homemade tiramisu for the whole CAPTAIN GAMES crew! Believe it or not, they had actually prepared lunch for everybody and brought the whole meal right into the convention halls. Quite an astonishing sight, and certainly a rather different approach to convention catering!

As Cédrick explained, he wasn't particularly impressed by the quality of the food available at the convention, so his sister and her friend had taken matters into their own hands. And I must admit that their solution was considerably more appealing than anything I could have hoped to find on my own! The pasta salad was delicious, the sandwiches were excellent, and the homemade tiramisu was a wonderful way to finish the meal. I even received coffee and water. What else could I possibly wish for? To be quite honest, this was the best lunch I have ever had at SPIEL, and I was very happy to have been invited to share it!

But well, perhaps there was one more thing I could wish for: a new game or two! And apparently Cédrick had anticipated that as well, because he actually showed me two prototypes during our lunch break. One of them is still a secret, so I can only say that it involves shaking dice and some rather entertaining deduction. I certainly had fun with it, but for the moment I will have to leave you guessing about the rest!

The other prototype, however, is something I can already tell you about. It is called Flipoo, and Cédrick expects it to reach the shops in February or March 2027. The name is a little wordplay which gives a fairly clear hint about the game's rather earthy subject: dogs, their treasures and some less desirable things which they leave behind. Well, that certainly was an unusual discovery to make over a plate of homemade tiramisu!

Gaming session: Flipoo (prototype) - CAPTAIN GAMES (booth 3Q600)

At first glance, Flipoo looks like a very simple little memory game. Every player takes a different dog and receives a set of just six cards: two showing holes, two showing the dog's treasures and two showing its poo. These six cards are shuffled, and the players then take turns looking at the top card of their own little stack and placing it facedown somewhere on the table. Cards may overlap, so gradually the middle of the table turns into a rather untidy heap of canine activities. So far, so simple. But of course, placing all those cards is only the beginning!

Once all the cards have been placed, the players start collecting them again, trying to find as many Treasures as possible. Every Treasure of another dog is worth two Victory Points, own Treasures one Point, a Hole is worth nothing, and a Poo costs one point. So the players are not limited to collecting cards belonging to their own dog: another dog's treasure is every even more valuable! Remembering where one's own useful cards ended up therefore is a good starting point, but even more important is a good guessing talent where the other players might have places their dog’s Treasure.

However, there is a rather clever restriction when it comes to picking up a card: a card may only be taken if it is completely uncovered. Even the smallest overlap from another card makes it unavailable! Suddenly, remembering where a Treasure lies is only part of the challenge, because the card covering it may have to be removed first. The players must watch which cards are free, which ones might become available next and whether an apparently inviting card has perhaps been left exposed for a reason. A little bluffing and counter-bluffing soon enters the proceedings, with everybody trying to work out whether the next tempting opportunity really is a treasure or something considerably less pleasant.

And believe me, the whole affair was considerably more entertaining than these few cards might suggest! We played with five people, Cédrick, Lume, two other friends and myself, and this wonderfully simple idea produced a remarkably lively little game. Trying to recover the right cards while keeping track of the overlapping heap was great fun, especially when somebody else's choice suddenly made a promising card accessible. The cute artwork certainly helps, but what impressed me most was how much amusement and interaction came out of so few rules.

To my mind, Flipoo has the makings of a real hit for a broad audience. It is easy to explain, immediately inviting and combines familiar memory play with just enough bluffing and tactical timing to keep everybody interested. So don't let the modest collection of cards in these pictures deceive you: this was one of the most entertaining little surprises I have seen in years! I will certainly be looking forward to seeing the finished game next spring.

What a wonderful lunch break that had turned out to be! Delicious food, good company and two promising new games, all at the booth of a friend whom I am always happy to see. My thanks to Cédrick and Lume for such lovely hospitality! Eventually, however, it was time to say goodbye for the moment and head back into the halls. There was still plenty to discover, and after this rather enjoyable intermission I was ready to see what my next find would be!

I didn't have to walk very far for my next discovery, because the booth of ORIGAMES was only a short distance from CAPTAIN GAMES, still in Hall 3. Here I found Torii Valley, a beautifully illustrated game about painting Japanese landscapes. That certainly looked like a rather pleasant destination after our canine treasure hunt, so I stopped for another playtesting session. Time to exchange the dog's treasures for paintbrushes and see whether I could create something worth hanging on a wall!

Playtesting Session: Torii Valley - ORIGAMES (booth 3G400)

Torii Valley by Thomas Favrelière and Fabrice Maugé invites the players to become artists trying to capture the elusive beauty of a Japanese valley famous for the harmony of its landscapes. Bamboo groves, cherry blossoms, mountains, villages and water scenery gradually fill the players’ Paint boards, with colorful Torii gates scattered among the different Landscape tiles. The theme is deliberately peaceful and somewhat contemplative, but as so often with games about creating something beautiful, the tranquility on the table hides a rather competitive puzzle underneath. Every tile has to fit not only visually into the growing painting, but also into the scoring patterns which the artists are trying to complete.

The basic turn structure is wonderfully simple. Two circular wheels in the middle of the table hold the available Landscape tiles, and on a turn an Artist chooses one of the currently accessible tiles and adds it to his Paint board. However, only the two top tiles indicated by the arrows on a wheel are initially available, while further choices open up only whenever neighbouring spaces become empty. Thus, taking a tile does not merely improve the current player’s own painting, but may also expose a more attractive tile for the next Artist. Once a wheel is completely emptied it is refilled, so the display constantly changes and forces the players to look a bit ahead instead of simply grabbing the most useful tile which happens to be visible.

The selected tiles then have to be arranged on the personal Paint board, and here Torii Valley turns into a spatial puzzle. The painting grows from the bottom upwards, with tiles in higher rows requiring proper support from those underneath. In this fashion the composition slowly rises into a layered landscape, and because adjacent tiles of the same type form groups, every placement may influence several scoring possibilities at once. Quite charmingly, the game ends when one Artist reaches the highest row of his painting, so expansion itself also becomes a pacing mechanism: building quickly towards the top may bring the game to an early conclusion, whereas spending more turns improving lower areas may create a more profitable composition.

The scoring objectives are the main reason why these placement decisions remain interesting from one game to the next. At the beginning of a game one Objective card is chosen for each of the five Landscape types, and these cards can reward very different arrangements. A Water objective may ask for columns, Bamboo or Cherry Blossom may favor specific groups or patterns, while Villages and Mountains can score according to their position or surrounding tiles. As a result, the same tile may be attractive for completely different reasons depending on the current set of Objectives. This gives the otherwise very accessible placement system a nice amount of variability without burdening the players with additional rules.

In addition, the Torii gates themselves create another layer of collecting. Five different colors are distributed across the Landscape tiles, and at the end of the game the players score sets of differently colored Torii, with larger sets becoming increasingly valuable. This means that a tile which is only moderately useful for the landscape pattern still may become attractive because it completes a valuable group of gates. To my mind this works particularly well because it reinforces the theme rather than feeling like an unrelated bonus system: the paintings do not merely consist of forests, mountains and villages, but gradually become dotted with the characteristic gates which give Torii Valley its identity.

A few special possibilities add just enough tactical spice to prevent the game from becoming a purely solitary optimization exercise. Bamboo tiles may carry a Paintbrush, and claiming one temporarily gives its owner the possibility to ignore the normal restrictions of the wheels and take any Landscape tile. Even more interesting are the Seal tokens. By filling certain rows with three different Landscape types, an Artist can claim a matching Seal which offers a one-time special effect. Water, for example, allows two tiles on the same wheel to exchange positions, whereas the Mountain Seal can reserve a newly revealed tile for later use. Other Seals bend placement restrictions or offer a more unpredictable draw from the bag. These powers are not overwhelming, but they create some pleasant moments where careful timing can secure exactly the tile needed for a scoring plan. In this respect the game remains peaceful in appearance, but watching which tiles the others need and which possibilities a choice will open on the wheels can certainly influence the decision which Landscape should be taken next.

The artistic theme inevitably brings back memories of IELLO’s Kanagawa, where the players also create Japanese works of art, although the mechanical approach is quite different. In Kanagawa the players are students of Hokusai who draft Lesson cards and decide whether to use them for improving their Studio or extending their Print, whereas Torii Valley turns the creation itself into a more direct tile puzzle. In this respect it actually has a bit more in common with DV GAMES’ Koi, another visually serene game about arranging a Japanese landscape. However, while Koi derives much of its challenge from overlapping adjacency rules and rather demanding geometric goals, the scoring in Torii Valley is even more varied but, interestingly, somewhat easier to grasp. Each of the five Landscape types has one clearly visible Objective, complemented by the straightforward collection of differently colored Torii, so the players always know what they are trying to achieve even though several scoring considerations may influence every placement.

What I like about Torii Valley is how economically all these mechanisms fit together. The central action never becomes more complicated than taking one tile and placing it, yet the decision behind this action may involve the current Objectives, the Torii colors, the shape of the growing painting, the availability on both wheels and the intentions of the other Artists. The accessible rules therefore make the game easy to explain, while the changing combinations of Objectives give experienced players enough reasons to reconsider familiar placement patterns.

In the end, Torii Valley seems to achieve a rather pleasant balance between serenity and tactical competition. The visual idea of gradually assembling a layered Japanese landscape fits the theme beautifully, while the wheel mechanism makes tile selection more interesting than a simple open market. Add the changing Objectives, the collection of Torii sets and a handful of well-timed special powers, and the result is a light but certainly not thoughtless placement game.

As it turned out, Hall 3 also contained my final meeting of the day. At the booth of PLOTMAKER GAMES I met Asger Johansen and Snorre Krogh, the two creators behind the new Living Stories series. I had come across their concept during my preparations for SPIEL, and the idea of combining a proper dramatic story with an accessible cardgame had immediately caught my attention. So this was a meeting I had been looking forward to, and I was particularly curious to hear how they had approached three such different stories with one shared system!

Introduction: Living Stories - PLOTMAKER GAMES (booth 3D300)

Pulse – The Void – Dust Devils

PLOTMAKER GAMES approaches its new Living Stories line with an ambitious idea: boardgames should not merely use stories as decoration, but should be able to create something resembling the dramatic experience of watching a film together while the players themselves occupy the leading roles. Interestingly, the inspiration reaches back to T.I.M.E Stories, which showed designer Asger Bøving Broholt Johansen that a boardgame could tell an actual story rather than merely provide thematic flavor. However, the concept deliberately moves away from puzzles or heavily branching narratives. Instead, PLOTMAKER GAMES wants to use classical storytelling elements such as conflict, archetypes and emotions, supported by rules simple enough to disappear behind the developing drama.

The first three games built around this system - Dust Devils, Pulse and The Void - demonstrate rather nicely how far the same mechanical skeleton can be stretched without producing three versions of the same game. All three games share a very recognizable structure. Every player takes one of four predefined characters with an individual ability and a small deck of Action cards. A sequence of Story cards provides the dramatic situations, alternating major scenes with quieter Aftermaths. During the major scenes everybody chooses an Action card whose printed Power establishes a basic strength, resolves its immediate effect and then secretly commits a thematic resource to increase that Power. Once the bids are revealed, the resulting totals determine who receives the different rewards printed on the current Story card. One effect is that the characters are constantly ranked up and down in Status, and their placement there serves as a universal tie-breaker, while the other rewards and card effects constantly move resources between the players or influence later scenes. Mechanically this is a fairly straightforward mixture of card play, resource management, bluffing and hidden bidding - but the important trick is that every game renames and reshapes these resources to express something quite different.

This common framework is reinforced by two ways to play. Action Mode uses a randomly assembled sequence of major scenes and Aftermath cards and turns each game into a compact competitive experience of roughly half an hour. Cinema Mode, on the other hand, uses a curated sequence of cards which unfolds like a graphic novel, with the players reading scenes aloud and following a considerably longer dramatic arc. The underlying story does not branch endlessly according to player decisions; instead, player agency lies in what happens to the characters within that story - who gains or loses standing, which relationships develop and who emerges from crucial confrontations in the strongest position. Players who enjoy leaning into their roles certainly can do so, but the rules explicitly work just as well as a straightforward competitive cardgame. This dual identity is fundamental to the whole Living Stories concept: the same system should function both as a quick tactical game and as a much more cinematic shared narrative.

Dust Devils probably presents the core system in its purest form. The players become four outlaws in a Western tragedy about one last score, competing for Money and Fame while trying not to accumulate too much Damnation. Here the secret bidding resource is Grit, perfectly matching the familiar image of gunslingers staring each other down before somebody finally makes a move. The major Story cards consequently are called Conflicts, and their rewards repeatedly tempt the players with wealth, reputation or morally questionable advantages. At the end, the character burdened with the most Damnation is eliminated altogether before the remaining outlaws compare Victory Points from Money, Fame and Achievements. A special Hide and Reveal mechanism adds another touch of Western bravado, allowing players to conceal whether they actually committed a particular resource, while optional Showdown cards introduce personal dramatic moments during the final Conflict.

In Pulse the same basic engine suddenly becomes something much more social. Instead of outlaws, the players represent four members of a young grunge band, and the important currencies now are Sound, Swagger, Pain, Drive and - most unusually - Vibe. Drive replaces Grit as the hidden bidding resource during Spotlights, but Vibe represents the relationships between individual band members. Each character has room for Vibe towards every other member, and mutual affection can even become In Sync, creating additional benefits. After some of the quieter Aftermath scenes the whole band also performs a Band Step, where these relationships and the accumulated emotional state of the musicians influence new resources. Thus, where Dust Devils mainly turns the system into a contest of nerve and ambition, Pulse creates an interpersonal web in which the players simultaneously compete for success and depend upon the emotional chemistry of the group. In the final scoring, the musician with the least Sound drops out before Swagger, Vibe, Sound, Pain and Achievements decide the winner.

The Void makes the largest mechanical departure of the three. Its story follows four people aboard a Vassal-class beacon-retrieval ship, confronting crises while trying to keep the mission - and themselves - from falling apart. The familiar resources now become Resolve, Panic and Authority, with Authority functioning as the secret bid during Crises. However, the game adds a persistent spatial layer which neither of its siblings possesses. Five Sector cards represent important parts of the ship, and players place, upgrade and relocate Control tokens in these areas. Crises add Resolve and Panic to the sectors, and evaluations reward whoever has established the strongest Control while also threatening players who have neglected a section of the vessel. At the end, the character with the most Panic is eliminated before the survivors score Resolve, remaining Authority and control of the ship’s Sectors. What began as a relatively direct contest of cards and resources in Dust Devils has therefore become something surprisingly close to a compact area-control game, with decisions leaving a visible and persistent footprint on the table.

This distinction is probably the most fascinating aspect when comparing the three games directly. Dust Devils is the most immediate and confrontational, built around bluffing, Grit and the dangerous temptation to gain one more advantage before Damnation catches up. Pulse uses essentially the same contest structure but turns attention sideways towards the other players, because relationships between the musicians become resources in their own right. The Void, finally, directs attention outward towards the ship itself: players are no longer concerned only with what sits in their personal Stashes, but also with who controls which Sector and how the current Crisis changes the situation aboard. The same question - “How much of my limited bidding resource am I willing to commit to this scene?” - therefore feels like stubborn courage in one game, artistic determination in another and a struggle for authority aboard a failing spacecraft in the third.

The common Action-card system also benefits from this thematic adaptation. All three games use Action-cards with white effects which resolve when cards are played and black effects which usually trigger after the player has claimed a reward, but the surrounding vocabulary changes what these effects seem to mean. Stealing Money or forcing Damnation onto an outlaw feels suitably dirty in Dust Devils; manipulating Vibe, Swagger or Pain in Pulse can feel surprisingly personal; and adding, upgrading or relocating Control in The Void immediately changes the political geography aboard the ship. Character abilities strengthen this distinction further, ensuring that the four roles are not merely different portraits attached to identical decks.

Another clever commonality is the way the games handle different player counts. All three stories are fundamentally written around four characters, but if fewer humans participate, the empty roles become NPCs. These automated characters use simplified Action decks and fixed bidding values, participating in the same scenes without requiring a separate artificial-intelligence system of great complexity. This preserves the intended four-character dramatic structure even with two players or solo play, although I suspect that Living Stories reveals its full personality with several human players around the table. Bluffing, bargaining, reacting to an unexpected card and reading dramatic text aloud simply become more interesting when the other characters are controlled by actual people.

Of course, the similarity of the chassis also means that nobody should expect three completely unrelated game systems. Once one title is understood, the next can be learned very quickly: play a card, resolve its immediate effect, make a secret bid, compare Power, take rewards and then allow the consequences to shape whatever comes next. For some players this familiarity will be a considerable advantage, since the rules really do begin to disappear and allow attention to shift towards the characters and events. Others who approach all three purely as tactical cardgames may notice the common machinery more strongly. In particular, the dramatic effect depends to some degree on the willingness of the group to read the text, acknowledge what the resources actually represent and perhaps allow a little personality to creep into the decisions. The system never forces anybody to roleplay, but it certainly rewards players who meet it halfway.

And this brings me back to the central promise of Living Stories. To my mind, the concept looks particularly promising because PLOTMAKER GAMES has resisted the temptation simply to write three different stories on top of an identical cardgame. Dust Devils turns the engine into a Western contest of greed, nerve and moral decay; Pulse transforms it into a story about ambition, relationships and the fragile chemistry of a band; and The Void uses the same foundation for a tense struggle over control and survival aboard a spacecraft. This is probably the strongest argument for the whole series, because the stories do not merely change the pictures and nouns, but actually bend the shared mechanics towards different kinds of drama. Cinema Mode should strengthen this impression considerably, because its carefully arranged sequence of illustrated scenes turns individual confrontations into a continuous narrative with a distinct dramatic rhythm. The players may not be able to rewrite the underlying plot, but their decisions influence the fortunes and relationships of its protagonists, allowing them to experience something resembling an interactive movie without ever abandoning the familiar mechanisms of a competitive cardgame. If future Living Stories continue to do this, PLOTMAKER GAMES may indeed have found a very interesting middle ground between competitive cardgame and playable graphic novel - not quite roleplaying, not quite traditional narrative gaming, but something with a voice of its own.

Interview: Asger Johansen & Snorre Krogh - PLOTMAKER GAMES (booth 3D300)

After this closer look at the three games, I had a very enjoyable conversation with Asger and Snorre about their ambitions for Living Stories. What came across most strongly was how much they want the players to care about the characters. They want people to feel their way into these roles, become involved in their relationships and experience the story through the particular character they are playing. To my mind, this is precisely where the more elaborate Cinema Mode becomes especially interesting, because the continuing story gives the characters and their decisions considerably more emotional weight.

And apparently, the three games presented here are only the beginning! Asger and Snorre explained that they have found their system to be remarkably versatile, allowing small changes to create quite different kinds of experiences. Their next game is planned around a zombie story, and the same basic system can accommodate cards representing Locations and movement between them. So the characters will actually be able to move through the setting, opening up another way of connecting their actions to the developing story.

Another idea they told me about concerns a small military unit of roughly twelve soldiers going on a mission. Here, the soldiers would each have their own character, while the players would control the group together. That certainly sounds like an interesting development from the four individual roles of the current games, and I would be very curious to see how they handle this larger shared cast. It was fascinating to hear how many possibilities they could already see in the system they have created!

However, there was one practical point which both of them stressed: they want to keep the basic composition of the game boxes. Two punchboard sheets and a set of cards should remain the foundation, even when new stories introduce different ideas. I rather like that approach. The challenge becomes finding new possibilities within a familiar collection of components, and the three current games already demonstrate how much can be achieved with some carefully chosen changes.

The reception here at SPIEL certainly seems encouraging as well. Asger and Snorre told me that they had sold out, and that publishers were showing considerable interest in the concept. Having heard more about their ideas, I can certainly understand the attraction! The combination of accessible cardplay, considerable story depth and the immersive experience offered by Cinema Mode has a lot of promise, especially with two creators who are so interested in bringing their characters to life. I left the booth with plenty to think about, and I am very curious to see where PLOTMAKER GAMES will take Living Stories next!

And with that, my final appointment in the halls was over, but the most pleasant part of this long SPIEL day was still ahead of us! As promised in yesterday's report, Maria and Huy were coming to our home for dinner. I met them at the booth of MIGHTY BOARDS, and together we walked the few metres from MESSE ESSEN to our flat. Fortunately, we made this little journey before the storm arrived, because it is still raging outside while I am typing these lines at 2:50 in the morning!

Nicole and I had been looking forward to this evening enormously, and it turned out to be every bit as lovely as we had hoped. We enjoyed a wonderful dinner together, and it was a pleasure to sit and talk with our friends. After all the bustle of the convention halls, this certainly was a rather nice way to continue our SPIEL adventures!

But Maria had brought a rather wonderful surprise with her: a book about the area around Mount Yōtei, the region in Hokkaido where they live and which provides the setting for Yotei. After dinner, she took us on a fascinating little virtual tour through its pages, explaining so many things about the places, the people living there, the landscape and the background of the game. What a lovely opportunity to discover the real region through the eyes of somebody who calls it home!

Looking at the map of Mount Yōtei and the surrounding villages, it was easy to understand how much of their home has found its way into Yotei. I had already admired the affection for the region which shines through the game, but hearing Maria explain its background over our own dining table made the connection even more personal. A wonderful little journey to Hokkaido, without even having to leave our flat!

It really was an amazing evening with our friends, and Nicole and I felt very happy and honoured to have Maria and Huy as our guests tonight. Moments like this are among the things which make SPIEL so special to us. A game discovered at a small Japanese booth can become the beginning of a friendship, and a year later we find ourselves sitting together at home, sharing dinner and stories. I can hardly imagine a nicer highlight for this year's convention!

And with that, it really is time to bring tonight's report to an end. I am getting very sleepy, and in a few minutes I will have the rather unusual pleasure of watching the clock jump backwards from three to two! An extra hour certainly sounds welcome, although I suspect my tired eyes are already rather firmly in favour of bedtime. But staying up a little later tonight was more than worth it after such a wonderful evening with Maria and Huy!

SPIEL is at its best when it allows us to meet such wonderful people!

And off we go!

It’s the last day of SPIEL’26, so out of bed, into the car and off into the thick of things! Although I must admit that this morning I made a little break from boardgames and spent just over an hour hitting a few balls on the tennis court instead. You’ve got to find a balance, after all, and besides, I did receive a present this morning: namely, the bonus of a whole hour. But right, let’s get going:

In recent years, Sunday at SPIEL was always a sort of family day, so the crowds shifted from the tables for frequent players to the family-orientated publishers. It was also noticeably quieter in the halls, presumably because many visitors had bought multi-day tickets and then didn’t come to the halls at all on Sunday – or, if they did, only briefly.

Well, those multi-day tickets are no longer available. Instead, everyone now has to buy a single ticket for each day. Presumably, this meant that it was just as busy today as on the previous days; it was just that the FOMO had subsided, meaning the queues outside some shops were now considerably shorter.

My first stop for today was at HORRIBLE GUILD, where a whole host of new releases awaited me.

Introduction: Drops of Evil – Horrible Guild (6B115)

In Drops of Evil, we take on the roles of witches who, in their laboratory – our personal game board – are tinkering with the most sinister potions possible. To do this, we must collect ingredients from a shared board and skilfully organise our own alchemy laboratory so that we can complete the potions according to the recipes

The game is divided into two phases. First, we send our familiars into the forest on the shared game board to collect ingredients. This involves a bit of a worker-placement mechanic. The various familiars – of which we have four different types at our disposal – enter the game from the forest at different points; snakes, for example, position themselves at the edge of the forest, whilst cats are already situated between two resource spaces, and toads can even cover four spaces. However, crows always land directly on a space containing a resource.

So, one after the other, we place all our familiars on the main game board. Then it’s time to collect resources: first, the crows clear the occupied spaces; next come the cats; then the toads; and finally, the snakes move through the rows next to where they’ve been positioned and collect all the resources still available in each row.

It’s clear that you can certainly put some thought into the positioning of your own familiars, at least if you actually want to collect the resources you’re after. This makes the planning interesting, as we not only have to consider which ingredients we need, but also how our decisions to send which familiar to which place in the forest will affect the rest of the collecting phase.

In the second phase, we take the ingredients we’ve collected to our very own Alchilab – a sort of alchemical laboratory – where we combine the individual ingredients. It’s not simply a matter of collecting as many ingredients as possible. What really counts is how we arrange them in the laboratory. This is because only one type of resource may be placed in each section of our Alchilab (with the exception of spiders, which act as a sort of a wild). If we manage to fill an entire column in our Alchilab with ingredients, we unlock bonuses. And we can receive support from assistants and various recipes. These open up further possibilities for improving our own mixtures and developing our strategy.

With a playing time of around 60 minutes, Drops of Evil remains within a manageable timeframe, although the various options for optimisation promise plenty of planning. The basic game mechanics are quite simple, but I was told that the game nevertheless requires a certain tactical flair. The publisher therefore specifies the target audience as family plus. I would expect that experienced gaming groups will also feel very much at home with the game. The dark, macabre illustrations certainly set the mood for Drops of Evil very well and make me want to get Drops of Evil onto my gaming table soon after the fair.

Naturally, I also took the opportunity during my visit to ask for one of those long-awaited games. I seem to recall first telling you about it three or four years ago, and I’ve provided a brief update every year since then. And indeed, the game’s development took around 3.5 years and, for long stretches, kept half the team permanently occupied. This was because everything had to be checked time and again; every branch and every possible deviation had to be thought through to rule out errors, and the story had to be pieced together so that all the loose plot threads would eventually come together again. We’re talking, of course, about…

The Queen’s Dilemma, the follow-up to the legendary The King’s Dilemma, which many of you – like me – probably had to put aside due to the Covid pandemic and which didn’t always find its way back onto the table afterwards. But now it’s here, and it’s said to be better, longer and more substantial than the original. The biggest difference for me, having not actually played the game yet, is that there’s a board featuring a map which not only illustrates where we are at any given moment, but which we actually interact with. What’s more, the game is now suitable for up to six players. Now that’s good news, isn’t it? And at HEIDELBÄR GAMES, who are co-distributing the game, they’d actually set up a demo game, so I can now share some first pictures with you:

From a 30-hour epic to a little real-time game. Because that, too, is what HORRIBLE GUILD is all about:

Introduction: Bag of Bugs – Horrible Guild (6B115)

Bag of Bugs is a small, real-time game in which players try to assemble the most valuable collection of coloured bugs. In each round, one player takes on the task of drawing bugs from a bag one by one. Meanwhile, the other players may choose one of the grab markers laid out on the table at any time. But you shouldn’t wait too long, because first come, first served. The problem is that you don’t yet know what else will be drawn from the bag.

Drawing ends when a certain number of bugs has been drawn – depending on the number of players – or when a second rock token is drawn from the bag. It is therefore never possible to predict exactly how many bugs will still be drawn. As soon as the drawing is over, we receive the number of bugs we have claimed with our choice. This follows the order of the grab markers, which are numbered from 1 to 5 for this purpose. The grab marker also determines how many of the drawn bugs we receive.

This varies considerably. For example, grab marker number 1 allows us to take one bug from the largest group of identical bugs. Grab marker 3, on the other hand, allows us to take two identical bugs (if available). In principle, the later your turn comes, the more bugs you are allowed to take. The only problem is: will these bugs still be available to choose at that time? And another detail should be kept in mind. The value of the bugs depends on how many of the same kind we have collected in the end. Up to 3 bugs the victory points are rising, but with 4 or more of the same kind you will earn 0 victory points.

With three to five players and a stated playing time of around 15 minutes, Bag of Bugs is clearly a game for in between. As a party game, the maximum number of players is perhaps a little too small, but as a nightcap or for a quick game in between, it’s almost ideal. In any case, I’ll be taking it along soon for my next boardgame night for exactly that purpose and I’m curious to see how my fellow players react to it.

Of course, the publisher has also brought out a new Similo – or rather, two new Similo: a Batman version and Wonders, which, for the first time, features only buildings as cards. There’s something for everyone, isn’t there? But Batman – how cool is that? And the illustrations are, once again, stunning – see for yourselves:

Whilst we’re on the subject of beautiful illustrations: I’ve loved painting miniatures myself. And if that’s your hobby, SPIEL is a brilliant fair for it too. Nearly half a hall was dedicated to the painting of small and larger miniatures.

With a wide range of brushes and all sorts of paints and special effects, there was something for everyone. Of course, there were also plenty of places where you could have a go at painting yourself, with queues – sometimes quite long ones – forming in front of the booths. But when I look over the shoulder of the one or other professionals, I’m not sure whether I shouldn’t just stick to my hobby. How on earth can anyone have such a steady hand and such a keen eye to bring out such fine details?

I then moved on to a little card game by ALL OR NONE GAMES, whom I’d helped set up the new news show, maybe you remember it. Now I wanted to try out their Essen new release for myself, and this is how it went:

Playtesting Session: Furruits – All Or None Games (3G400)

Fruit with fur? In Furruits, we certainly come across some rather unusual fruits, which we aim to collect and sell at the market for the highest possible profit. This card game combines set collection with a healthy dose of ‘push-your-luck’ mechanics. After all, anyone wishing to expand their collection must constantly ask themselves whether the risk of drawing another card is still worth it, or whether it would be better to secure their current haul in good time and thus pass for the round.

The focus is on the Furruits, which we collect over the course of a game simply by drawing the next card from the shared draw pile. But not every card is a win: bad apples can also turn up and seriously change our plans. Whoever draws a bad apple for the first time must, in fact, hand over half of the fruit they have collected so far. If you draw a second bad apple, you’re hit again – but your turn is then additionally over. So you shouldn’t get too greedy and should think carefully about when it’s better to stop. After all, every player has a protection card which they can use once during the entire game to negate the effect of a bad apple. But you need to think carefully about when to use it, well, it’s just one card for the entire game.

Once all players have passed, the collected fruit can be sold at the market. Each round, there are four market cards that determine the respective selling price of the various fruits. Eight different fruits can be sold again at a particularly high price; otherwise, you must ensure you have collected enough fruits that are available for sale in that round and that also fetch a high price. If, for example, a market card states that a banana is worth four gold, you receive four gold for every banana you have collected.

Around eight different cards add enough variety and can alter the course of the game. For example, there is an inflation card which increases the selling price of a specific market card by one. Other effects intervene directly in the gameplay: for instance, as a result, a card must be passed clockwise to the next player.

Furruits is played over three rounds. At the end, what counts is how much money we have earned by selling our fruit. The various elements are interlinked: each round, we must build up as large a collection as possible, take current market prices into account and, at the same time, keep an eye on the risk of losing part of our haul due to rotten apples.

The game thus combines an accessible collecting mechanic with a healthy dose of risk. Behind the cute fruit creatures lies a quick, light-hearted game in which greed and caution must be kept in balance.

After nearly four days now, you start to think you won’t experience any more surprises. Even though the trade fair is huge, at some point you feel you’ve already seen it all. It’s just typical sensory overload. Because, if you take a closer look, you realise that you’ve only really seen a tiny fraction of the fair.

Well, you’ve walked down almost every aisle by now, and you’ve bumped into many acquaintances, but you haven’t really taken much of it in properly. At some point, your brain gets so overloaded that I find myself wondering every now and then whether I’ve missed an appointment, taken photos of all the games I played, and, on top of that, reported on one or two interesting things about the fair itself. In fact, after a few late nights, I can’t sometimes even remember whether I’d already described a game I’d played or not.

But I always find it all the more lovely when, even on the fourth day, you still bump into old acquaintances by chance. That’s exactly what happened to me today with Michael Løhde Andersen, that gifted insect illustrator and game designer whom I first got to know through his Biotopia and who most recently published Blütenreich with KOSMOS.

Michael immediately and proudly presented his new project, Ladybird, from the new Danish publisher SKJALD, which I then asked him to explain to me in more detail:

Introduction: Ladybird – SKJALD (5G125)

Ladybird is a small, slightly tactical card-laying game in which players build up their own display of various ladybirds. The aim is not just to collect as many cards as possible, but above all to skilfully utilise the different developmental stages of the ladybirds to score as many points as possible.

The game is played over five summer days, comprising a total of 15 rounds. At the start of each round, all players simultaneously choose a card and turn it over. They then place it in their own display, which consists of five coloured columns. The cards depict different developmental stages of ladybirds – from egg, through larva and pupa, to the adult. Players who complete a full life cycle can increase the value of their collection.

A special feature is that the developmental stage of the card just played determines which card we may then select from the display; this is indicated on the respective card and corresponds to a more advanced stage of the ladybird, with the cycle starting again at the egg stage after the adult stage. The choice of card you play is therefore closely linked to the ladybirds available in the display.

As well as completing life cycles, there are other ways to score points. For instance, we can try to collect ladybirds of all five colours, feed specific species and thus fulfil additional objectives. Each round is played slightly differently; for example, aphids come into play, offering another way to score victory points.

Ladybird thus offers various ways to arrange your display to maximise your score. Which strategy works best depends largely on which cards are available, so you may need to adapt your strategy as the game progresses.

The game is designed for up to four players and even features a solo mode. The game promises light-hearted entertainment, which I’ll be taking a closer look at straight after the fair. The once again superb illustrations of the ladybirds and the other cards by Michael and two other illustrators have certainly won me over already.

Before I now finish this year’s daily reports, I can tell you that BOARD & DICE is continuing their deluxe version of their most successful games. Right after SPIEL a new campaign for a deluxe version of The Voyages of Marco Polo will be launched. I had a first glimpse on the new production, but there is still work in progress. But I can assure you that it will be gorgeous. In the meantime, I can only show you the box and tell you that this journey will continue next year.

Well, my friends, that brings my journey with you over the last five days to an end. It’s been a brilliant time, full of incredible experiences. I need to take a moment to wind down now, and over the next few weeks I’ll gradually have a look at what new games I brought back home.

So stay tuned and check regularly for our updates; I promise I’ll be a bit quicker with new reviews than in the last two years.

Now I’ll leave you to enjoy the final moments with Frank, and here’s one last farewell photo of the two of us with our fantastic special cards provided by CGE for Codenames. Don’t we just look stunning?

Yours, Ralf

Welcome back, everybody, for the final day of this year's SPIEL report! And today Nicole will be joining me again for Ladies' Day, Part II! As mentioned in Friday's report, my wife enjoyed our day together so much that she promptly bought another ticket for Sunday. It has been a long time since we last spent two days at SPIEL together, and I am absolutely delighted that we are doing so again this year. Discovering new games certainly is fun, but sharing these discoveries with Nicole makes the whole experience even nicer!

However, this morning I was getting a little head start. There was one particularly popular booth where I hoped to secure a seat before the crowds arrived, and my press pass allowed me to enter the halls before the doors opened to the public. So Nicole and I agreed to meet inside about an hour later, and I set off for the convention ahead of her. Last night's storm had left wonderfully refreshing air behind, and although it was rather cold outside, the sun was shining as I walked over to MESSE ESSEN. Certainly a lovely way to wake up after another short night!

Once inside, I headed straight into Hall 2 to the booth of GAME INVENTORS. Their forthcoming Ports of Call: The Board Game had already caught my attention at Wednesday's New Games Show, and the well-frequented booth had given me every reason to arrive early today. With Nicole due to join me later, this seemed the perfect opportunity to settle down for an introduction to a game which brought back quite a few memories from my home-computer days!

As I already mentioned on Wednesday, I was an avid player of Ports of Call back in my PC gaming days, so simply seeing that familiar title at the New Games Show had brought back some rather fond childhood memories. There was really no way I could leave SPIEL without taking a closer look at this unexpected return! Morten Skovhus of GAME INVENTORS welcomed me very warmly at the booth, and before long we were looking over the game together. Time to discover what had become of those cargo ships which had once occupied so many hours of my youth!

Introduction: Ports of Call - GAME INVENTORS (booth 2E121)

Some computer games have a rather special place in the memories of those who grew up with the early home computers, and for me Ports of Call certainly belongs to that category. Originally developed by Rolf-Dieter Klein and Martin Ulrich and released for the Commodore Amiga in the late 1980s, this shipping simulation achieved something quite remarkable: it kept teenagers glued to their monitors for hours, even though its central theme was hardly what one would normally associate with youthful excitement. Instead of fighting aliens or exploring dungeons, players spent their time purchasing cargo ships, accepting freight contracts, calculating operating costs and trying to build a profitable shipping company. I certainly spent an enormous amount of time doing exactly that, and to my mind Ports of Call was probably the most enthralling trading simulation of its generation, rivalled perhaps only by the immortal M.U.L.E., Hanse and Vermeer on the Commodore 64. Now, almost four decades later, designer Keld V. Rasmussen and publisher GAME INVENTORS are bringing this classic back in a rather unexpected form: Ports of Call: The Board Game.

Looking back, the secret of the original computer game was its successful combination of economic simulation and occasional moments of direct action. Players purchased ships, searched the world market for profitable freight contracts and tried to keep their companies financially afloat despite fuel consumption, maintenance, repairs and harbour charges. However, the game occasionally interrupted all this financial calculation with small action sequences. Players might have to steer a cargo vessel into harbour instead of paying for a tugboat, manoeuvre around dangerous obstacles or rescue shipwrecked sailors from a liferaft. These sequences were hardly sophisticated even by the standards of their time, but they provided an entertaining change of pace and made the ships feel like something more than numbers in an accounting program. Indeed, I still remember that bringing a reluctant freighter safely into harbour could be surprisingly satisfying, especially when the alternative was an expensive collision with the quay.

Of course, translating such a mixture into a boardgame requires some changes. Ports of Call: The Board Game retains the central idea of building a successful shipping company through international trade, but the little action sequences have disappeared altogether. Instead, the game concentrates on the economic and logistical aspects, while adding several mechanisms which did not exist in the Amiga original. Interestingly, the project initially started as an independent shipping game called Rederiet, but its obvious inspiration eventually led to an agreement with original co-creator Rolf-Dieter Klein, turning it into an official adaptation. The result is therefore not simply an attempt to reproduce the old computer program with cardboard components, but a new economic game designed to capture much of its character.

The players once again become shipping entrepreneurs, competing to establish the most valuable company over four fiscal years, each divided into four quarters. The gameboard shows fifteen ports connected by international shipping routes, and everybody begins with two cargo ships. Five different commodities are available: Wind Turbines, Steel, Oil, Wine and Electronics. Whereas the computer original concentrated on accepting freight charters and earning the agreed payment for transporting somebody else's cargo, here the players actually purchase containers of goods from a shared world market, transport them aboard their vessels and sell them at their destinations. The selling price depends on the current market value of the commodity and a bonus associated with the destination port, so choosing the right goods and trading routes remains the central challenge.

This shared market is represented by the Container Terminal, probably the most important new economic mechanism in the game. Every commodity has its own row of containers, with the current market price determined by their position within that row. When a player buys a container, it is removed from the end of the row, and the price for subsequent purchases increases. When new containers are produced, they enter from the opposite end and push the existing goods along, causing prices to fall. Thus, supply and demand become visible through a straightforward physical mechanism, without requiring complicated calculations. More importantly, everybody uses the same market, so the commercial activities of one company may directly influence the profitability of another player's plans. This creates a degree of economic interaction which goes considerably beyond operating individual shipping fleets.

The transportation of goods also requires some planning. Every ship has a limited cargo capacity, and its movement allowance depends on how heavily it is loaded. Normal movement does not consume Action Points, although additional movement can be purchased, while passages through the Panama and Suez Canals require payment. Consequently, shipping itself should remain relatively straightforward without demanding detailed fuel calculations for every voyage. However, the players still must organize their routes efficiently, especially when trying to complete Order cards. These require two different commodities to be delivered to a particular destination, increasing the company's value when fulfilled. Delivering both goods simultaneously aboard a large ship is particularly rewarding, but may require some additional preparation. Thus, players constantly must weigh straightforward commercial voyages against more elaborate deliveries which promise greater rewards.

However, transporting goods is not the only way of doing business. Players also can establish Factories in the different production regions and manufacture their own containers. These goods enter the shared market with an ownership marker, and when another player purchases them, the payment goes directly to the manufacturer instead of the Bank. A company therefore may earn money not only through shipping but also by supplying the very market on which its competitors depend. Production additionally advances a separate track which provides bonuses, including money, Action Points and increases in company value. To my mind this is a particularly interesting extension of the original computer game's economic system, because it introduces an additional business model and gives the players more opportunities to profit from each other's activities.

All these activities are governed by a limited supply of Action Points, with each player receiving one more Action Point than the number of ships in his fleet. Purchasing goods, building Factories, producing containers and obtaining Orders consume these points, whereas normal ship movement and selling cargo are free. This creates a recognizable rhythm of moving ships, buying and delivering goods, and investing the remaining actions in further expansion. At the end of every quarter a News card may introduce new economic or logistical challenges, while the annual accounts force everybody to confront the maintenance costs of their fleet. Large ships may offer excellent commercial opportunities, but they are also expensive to maintain, so expanding too quickly can become a dangerous strategy. Interestingly, the ultimate goal is not to accumulate the largest amount of money, but to achieve the highest Stock Exchange value of the company. Completing Orders, producing goods and claiming Achievements all contribute towards this, while money primarily serves as the means to finance further growth.

With all this economic machinery in place, one question certainly comes to mind: how smoothly will Ports of Call: The Board Game actually play? Computers have the enormous advantage of handling calculations and administrative details almost invisibly, something the Amiga original used extensively. The boardgame instead asks the players to move containers, track market prices, manage money and perform the annual accounting themselves. This inevitably creates more physical administration than simply clicking through the menus of a computer simulation, especially with four players. However, the mechanisms seem reasonably straightforward. Prices are displayed directly on the Container Terminal, ship movement follows a few simple rules, and the limited supply of Action Points should keep individual turns within manageable limits. The publisher estimates a playing time of 90 to 240 minutes, so this certainly is not intended to be a quick family trading game, but the rules suggest that much of this time will be devoted to actual commercial decisions rather than complicated calculations.

Interestingly, the boardgame also changes the character of player interaction. The original Ports of Call already allowed several shipping entrepreneurs to compete on the same computer, but much of the experience remained centred around operating individual fleets and watching their financial development. Here the competition becomes more tangible through the shared market, rival Factories and the changing availability and prices of goods. The News cards introduce a degree of unpredictability reminiscent of the maritime hazards of the Amiga game, but they replace direct action sequences with economic or logistical consequences. Thus, while some of the old game's immediate excitement has been lost, the boardgame seems designed to compensate through a more closely connected competition between shipping companies. This is quite a reasonable decision for a tabletop adaptation, even though I confess that I shall miss the occasional opportunity to drive a cargo vessel straight through a tight cluster of icebergs.

All in all, Ports of Call: The Board Game looks like a rather ambitious attempt to revive one of the most fascinating economic simulations of the early home-computer era. The designers have wisely concentrated on the central attraction of international shipping: making money through sensible investments, profitable cargo deliveries and the gradual expansion of a commercial empire. The shared Container Terminal and the addition of Factories promise considerably more economic interaction than the computer original, while the simplified movement system should prevent the transportation of goods from becoming unnecessarily cumbersome. My main reservation concerns the amount of manual administration, but the underlying procedures seem sufficiently accessible to keep this within reasonable limits. For those who remember spending entire afternoons transporting freight across the Amiga's oceans, the game certainly offers considerable nostalgic appeal, while players without such memories may discover an interesting economic game in its own right.

And as a rather quirky reminder of how far back this history reaches, I first encountered Ports of Call on the Commodore Amiga before later acquiring the DOS version. In these early days of the PC era we still relied on unusual sound accessories to compensate for missing audio hardware, and so my DOS copy of Ports of Call even came with a little sound accessory which I remember as the LifeSize Sound Enhancer. Appropriately enough for a game called Ports of Call, this device had its own port of call right at the backside of the PC: the 25-pin port which was usually used to connect a printer to the PC now allowed digitized sound to be reproduced without a dedicated sound card. Contemporary highlights like Leather Goddesses of Phobos 2 also used such technological curiosities, but luckily such things now belong to a computer age which seems almost as distant as the age of sailing ships.

As we continued talking, Morten told me a rather wonderful story about their collaboration with Rolf-Dieter Klein, one of the two creators of the original computer game. Sadly, Martin Ulrich passed away last year, but they had been able to contact Rolf-Dieter in Munich and arrange a visit to discuss their plans for the boardgame. They had expected to spend about two hours with him. Well, apparently there was rather more to talk about than anybody had anticipated, because those two hours eventually became nine! A short meeting had turned into an entire day devoted to Ports of Call.

And Rolf-Dieter certainly had not limited himself to giving the project a friendly nod of approval. He became thoroughly involved in the discussions, explored their ideas with them and contributed suggestions of his own. And when they finally brought the game to the table together, Rolf-Dieter himself emerged as the winner! Apparently, the creator of the original still knew a thing or two about running a successful shipping company.

I must admit that I found this story particularly lovely. Thirty-nine years after the original release in 1987, one of its creators was still enthusiastic enough to spend a whole day helping to shape its next incarnation. For somebody who remembers those long hours in front of the computer so fondly, there is something touching about that connection. Hearing how actively Rolf-Dieter had become involved certainly strengthened my impression that this adaptation is being developed with considerable affection for the spirit of the original game.

My thanks to Morten and game designer Keld V. Rasmussen for such a friendly welcome, an interesting introduction and this lovely glimpse behind the scenes! It was a pleasure to discover how they had approached bringing an old favourite to the gaming table, and naturally we could not finish our meeting without a photograph together.

And talking about setting sail, the Ports of Call: The Board Game crowdfunding campaign is currently running on Kickstarter! Interested shipping entrepreneurs can find out more about the project and its plans here: Ports of Call: The Board Game on Kickstarter. With my first port of call successfully completed, it was now time to meet up with Nicole and let Ladies' Day, Part II get properly underway!

A quick phone call soon established where I would find Nicole: she had already entered the halls and was over in Hall 7. We agreed to meet at the booth of CZECH GAMES EDITION, because there was a game my wife particularly wanted to try. So off I went to join her, and before turning our attention to the gaming tables, we took the opportunity to pose with our Codenames: Critical Role friends at the CGE booth. Reunited at last, and ready for Ladies' Day, Part II!

And Nicole had already chosen our first game together for the day: Drillers from CZECH GAMES EDITION! This certainly was a welcome choice for me, and after all those ships and containers, we were about to exchange the oceans for a rather unusual mine. Before long, we had found ourselves a place at the table and were ready to discover what these enterprising drillers had hidden beneath the surface.

Gaming session: Drillers - CZECH GAMES EDITION (booth 7E100)

Drillers by Adam Španěl and Říman belongs among the more easygoing strategy games of this year’s SPIEL 26 releases. In terms of playing depth and accessibility, CGE’s earlier Starship Captains comes to mind, but players familiar with that game or the publisher in general will know that even their more approachable designs usually have an interesting twist tucked beneath the bonnet.

In Drillers, the players are enterprising miners who have assembled their own mechs from assorted machinery, hoping to extract whatever a departed corporation left behind in a forgotten mine. They head underground in search of minerals, but the winner is the player who finishes with the most Victory Points. Minerals provide a substantial part of that score, whether already sold or still rattling around in the cargo hold, while excavated mine tiles, milestone awards and remaining credits contribute further points. Certain cards carry penalties, however, and getting caught underground when the mine finally collapses also costs points. A profitable shift therefore involves a little more than collecting whatever glitters.

The engine driving these expeditions is a straightforward deckbuilding system. Each player begins with a small personal deck of basic equipment cards and a Damage card, drawing a hand which provides the tools for operating the player’s drilling mech. The deck sits face up in a stand, with its top card visible only to its owner, providing a little advance information for planning. During a turn, cards power a sequence of mining operations; afterwards, played cards are discarded and three fresh cards are drawn in addition to any cards retained. Whenever the deck runs out, the discard pile is immediately shuffled to form a new deck, but buying better cards and removing unwanted ones gradually improves this repeating cycle. So, mining earns the money for better machinery in the form of cards, mech upgrades etc., and better machinery makes subsequent mining trips more productive. An expedition can stretch across several turns, with the mech remaining underground until its owner decides to head home.

Each card offers a choice between playing its main effect, generally spending fuel to generate movement, drilling power or another useful benefit, and using it to replenish the fuel tank. This creates the central dilemma in Drillers: a splendid drilling card may also supply the fuel needed to operate something else. Cards and effects can be combined freely, allowing a player to move, excavate, collect minerals and begin climbing home during the same turn. Basic mech functions also convert fuel directly into movement or drilling, although less efficiently than suitable cards. Unplayed cards can be saved for later, with one retained for free and each additional card costing a unit of fuel, and there is even an emergency option which produces fuel at the expense of adding a Damage card to the discard pile.

Putting this machinery to work, the mechs travel up and down the mine’s open floors, spending movement to change levels and drilling power to work the rock. Drilling has three principal uses: collecting an available mineral, excavating a corridor or breaking through a barrier to reach the next floor. Excavating earns the player a mine tile and releases the minerals pictured on it onto the corresponding floor. These do not immediately enter the excavator’s cargo hold: collecting them requires additional drilling power, and anything left lying around is available to the competition. Opening a deeper floor likewise creates opportunities for everybody.

Even the finest home-bolted contraption eventually needs to return to the surface. Ending the operations part of a turn there opens a shopping and servicing phase: minerals can be sold for credits, the fuel tank is completely refilled, and money can be invested in greater cargo capacity or a larger tank. Each player has an individual market where sold minerals remain on the dashboard and repeated sales of the same type become less profitable, so the players will need to find different colors of minerals to keep their operations profitable. Once a mineral’s column is full, further sales of that type of minerals can still be performed, but these minerals are sent into an overflow area, gradually shortening the progress track which determines the end of the game. A player can also make one repair during each surface visit, removing an unwanted card from the deck. This helps useful cards come around more frequently, and since many starting cards and Damage cards carry negative points, a little workshop attention improves both future performance and the eventual score.

The surface shops provide the other half of this deckbuilding process. Better drills, propulsion systems and useful gadgets make subsequent expeditions more productive, and newly purchased cards normally go straight onto the top of the deck. Since fresh cards are drawn at the end of the turn, new equipment can usually be put to work on the very next outing. Other purchases become permanent installations beside the dashboard, providing effects which can be used each turn without needing to be drawn from the deck. Drones offer another convenience, allowing a mineral to be sold or a card purchased without returning home. Once the surface business is finished, however, the next descent must wait until the following turn.

Down below, the mine has a few wrinkles of its own. Newly opened levels reveal Floor cards which remain active, adding local rewards or complications when players excavate, collect minerals or finish their operations there. A convenient resting place might make retaining cards easier, while another cavern changes the appeal of working on that particular floor. Some excavated mine tiles can also be flipped to gain immediate benefits, including batteries needed to purchase advanced equipment, but doing so reduces their final points value. Together with the race for milestone awards along the players’ progress tracks, these opportunities give players several reasons to reconsider where to work and when to invest in better machinery.

Those progress tracks also determine when the shift ends. Collected mine tiles gradually fill the available space, while minerals entering a player’s overflow area shorten it from the opposite direction. Once a player fills the track, the mine becomes unstable and the end is triggered. The responsible driller receives an impressive milestone bonus, while the other players immediately draw an additional card. After the triggering player finishes the current turn, everybody else gets one final turn before the collapse. Mechs still underground lose points according to their depth, so the closing stages require players to weigh another profitable action against the cost of failing to reach the surface.

Despite these considerations, Drillers plays in a quick and direct fashion. There are meaningful decisions about fuel, card combinations, equipment and the timing of a return journey, but the shared mine keeps attention firmly on opportunities as they arise. Minerals disappear, useful shop cards are purchased and opponents open routes which were unavailable a moment earlier. Especially with four players, an elaborately calculated plan may need considerable revision before its owner’s next turn. Much of the enjoyment comes from examining the current hand, spotting something profitable and persuading the machinery to stretch just far enough to reach it.

To my mind, this easygoing rhythm is one of the game’s greatest strengths. The basic cycle of mining, selling and improving the mech clicks naturally, preparation is modest, and with willing fellow drillers the downtime remains low. There is satisfaction in returning with a profitable load, fitting a useful new contraption and heading down that old shaft with noticeably better prospects. Among modern strategy games which sometimes seem determined to turn every decision into an examination, Drillers offers simple but elegant fun, with enough clever machinery to keep experienced players interested. Nicole’s first choice had certainly given our second Ladies’ Day a very enjoyable start!

After returning from the depths of the mine, Nicole and I made our way into the next hall. In Hall 6 we stopped at the booth of RUNNER GAMES, where Granfondo caught our attention. It must have been more than ten years since we last played the cycling classic Um Reifenbreite together, but our enthusiasm for racing games has recently returned with Heat. So the sight of this colourful field of cyclists was certainly inviting! We decided to find out more and settled down for an introduction to the game.

Introduction: Granfondo: Tempo, Taktik, Kettenfett - RUNNER GAMES (booth 6C108)

A cycling race is a rather peculiar contest. Rivals help each other, the best position may be behind somebody else, and the strongest legs are of little use if their owner attacks at the wrong moment. Granfondo: Tempo, Taktik, Kettenfett by Ralf Vanpey tries to capture these considerations with a pleasing mixture of tactics and sporting mischief. Its colourful field immediately brings Um Reifenbreite to mind, Rob Bontenbal's JUMBO classic which won the Spiel des Jahres back in 1992.

Both games put the whole team at the centre of the race. In Um Reifenbreite, every player manages four riders through dice rolls, carefully rationed Energy cards and opportunities to follow another cyclist's slipstream. Granfondo gives each manager three specialists: a Sprinter, a Climber and a Rouleur, the team's all-rounder. Each has a separate deck of twenty Race cards, and the team's combined finishing results determine the winner. Players replenish the riders' hands and secretly assign their cards, then move the cyclists in racing order, starting at the front. Revealed card values determine movement, with straight and diagonal routes offering opportunities to find a favourable position.

Once the race is underway, riders can sprint by combining two or three cards, although deductions reduce the total, with Sprinters receiving more favourable treatment. However, played cards never return to the deck. Every acceleration consumes resources which may be needed later, making pacing a concern throughout the race. In addition, drawing still brings uncertainty, but useful cards can be saved for the right moment. Rolling even allows a rider to advance one space without spending a card outside the climbs.

The specialists become particularly noticeable in the mountains, where Climbers can cover up to five spaces per turn, Rouleurs four and Sprinters only three. Descents provide bonuses, outer curves impose penalties, and rough surfaces can reduce Performance after a die check. A rider’s performance also determines his/her hand limit, ranging from two to five cards, so struggling cyclists also have fewer choices. Fortunately, ending a move exactly on a Feed Zone raises Performance, so stopping a little earlier sometimes may be more attractive than squeezing every last space from a card.

Teamwork offers another opportunity to improve a rider's condition. If the cards played by all three teammates share a cycling symbol, one rider gains a Performance point. A slightly slower move might complete this match and improve a teammate's future options. I rather like how this connects the three riders without requiring them to remain in a little procession throughout the race.

Slipstreaming also changes. In Um Reifenbreite, following cyclists can copy the leading rider's movement instead of rolling themselves, potentially pulling a whole line along. Here, ending a move exactly two spaces behind another rider grants one additional space, closing the gap. It is a smaller advantage which rewards positioning while keeping individual cards important. Adjacent teammates can also exchange positions freely, helping managers arrange their riders for the next opportunity.

Among the optional Pro rules, the Belgian Rotation takes cooperation further. Three connected riders agree to work together, with followers committing cards worth at least the leader's chosen value. The leader advances with a three-space bonus, the others form a line behind him, and he rotates to the rear, recovering a Performance point. This gives the manoeuvre an immediate reward, but since rival riders can participate, this also creates a wonderful dilemma: how much help should a competitor receive if that also keeps the chasing pack behind?

With the right group, I can easily imagine some entertaining discussions. A manager stranded behind the leaders might welcome a cooperative chase, while somebody whose Climber is already escaping could be rather less enthusiastic. Even within a breakaway, should that helpful rival Sprinter really be delivered so comfortably to the final straight? Temporary agreements and suspiciously generous offers arise naturally from the positions on the board.

Cooperation is only one response to the neighbours. Optional Position Battles allow riders to challenge adjacent opponents, with Fate cards deciding whether they exchange places. Low cards can cause crashes, potentially bringing down following cyclists as well. Whereas occupied spaces can completely obstruct movement in Um Reifenbreite, Granfondo allows riders to pass through them and concentrates confrontation on the spaces where they end their moves.

Sporting misconduct survives as well. Instead of hanging onto the chase car, as permitted by an optional rule in the older game, Granfondo’s riders have Doping cards which can be discarded and replaced or used. However, the leading finishers face Doping Control, and a forbidden card discovered among a drawn sample of their played cards means disqualification.

When riders cross the finish line, all movement for the round is completed before their places are assigned, with distance beyond the line settling their order; moving first therefore does not automatically secure the best result. Riders still on the course continue racing. Finishing positions earn points which are combined into a team total, with optional intermediate scoring providing further opportunities. So, allowing two teammates to disappear into the scenery while the star pursues glory can be rather expensive.

In comparison to Um Reifenbreite, the additional possibilities in Granfondo do not feel like a substantial increase in complexity. Much of the tactical detail fits naturally into choosing cards and finding a line through the pack. Pro rules can be introduced separately, individual rider abilities add variety, and three courses offer different lengths and demands. Automa riders can also fill unused teams in solo games or races with two or three players, providing more competition when fewer managers are available. That seems particularly welcome to get a fuller field with more wheels to follow and more opponents to squeeze past.

For me, Granfondo takes the approach represented by Um Reifenbreite to a modern, more consistent level. Finite decks make endurance matter throughout, Performance links condition with available choices, and the specialists give each team distinct strengths. The charming illustrated landscape and colourful male and female cyclists keep everything inviting, while Rotations and Position Battles offer plenty of sporting drama. Saving strength, taking food and negotiating a breakaway all have an understandable purpose. The old classic certainly understood the appeal of team tactics, and this engaging new interpretation of the theme scores with fresh ideas which generate additional momentum.

It was a pleasure to meet designer Ralf Vanpey and discover more about his approach to cycling races. After such a long break from Um Reifenbreite, Nicole and I certainly had plenty of reasons to take another look at this sporting theme, and this colorful peloton certainly has earned its place at our gaming table!

By now, Nicole and I were ready for a little lunch break, and conveniently enough, one of the food courtyards was just outside the door near the RUNNER GAMES booth. With the sun still shining, it seemed the perfect opportunity to step outside and enjoy some fresh air. We treated ourselves to two rather well-prepared wraps, and I must say that we were pleasantly surprised by their quality. The wonderful food prepared by Cédrick’s sister yesterday still takes first place, of course, but today’s lunch certainly was enjoyable! In general, I have been hearing quite favourable comments about the food trucks serving SPIEL these days, and our own little stop gave us good reason to agree.

With our appetites satisfied and our gaming energies restored, Nicole and I headed back inside and made our way into Hall 2. There, the colourful banner at the booth of GOOD GAMES PUBLISHING caught Nicole’s attention. Something about the appearance and setting of Skyward Republic reminded her of Ryan Laukat’s City of Iron, and that certainly was enough to make her curious. Perhaps we could find a place to take a closer look?

Our timing could hardly have been better: just as we arrived, a table became available! We quickly took our seats, ready to discover whether this inviting city among the clouds would prove as interesting as it looked. From underground mining to cycle racing and now airborne city building, Nicole’s choices were certainly giving our second Ladies’ Day a rather varied itinerary!

Gaming session: Skyward Republic - GOOD GAMES PUBLISHING (booth 2D530)

The floating city of Skyward Republic has become a thriving metropolis where humans and robots live and work together. Having declared their independence, its inhabitants now want to construct a new district celebrating the achievements of their airborne society. Designed by Brendan Evans, the game puts the players in charge of developing their own sections of this city. The cogs and airships might suggest steampunk, but the bright colours and optimistic atmosphere give the game a distinctly solarpunk character. In addition, the illustrations create a light, inviting appearance which fits its rather accessible approach to building a city among the clouds.

Each player develops an individual airspace, placing Buildings and adding Extensions while collecting Vehicles and Critters which bring further benefits. The aim is to earn the most Victory Points from this growing collection and from the support of influential Benefactors. Most of the cards needed for these plans come from a shared display, but acquiring them involves an unusual drafting mechanism. At the beginning of every round, two-card piles are placed face up in the centre, one pile per player. Two further cards are dealt face down beside each player, remaining unknown until revealed.

On a turn, a player can either reveal one of these face-down cards and add it to any available pile, or take an entire face-up pile and leave the draft. Choosing a pile also means revealing any remaining face-down cards beside that player and distributing them among the piles left for the others. Thus, the display gradually develops as the players make their decisions, with the remaining piles gaining cards and potentially becoming considerably more attractive. The last player to choose also receives a cog and becomes the Warden, taking the first turn in the building phase which follows.

I particularly like the tension created by this procedure. A small pile may already contain exactly the Building and resource card needed for a useful development, making an early choice attractive. Waiting offers the prospect of a larger selection, but another player may take the desired pile first. Furthermore, adding a card means deciding which combination should become more tempting, including combinations which a rival might appreciate considerably more. Even an early departure influences the choices left to the others through the cards still to be revealed. There is a pleasing feeling of accumulating value on the table, with every addition giving the players another reason to reconsider whether to wait or commit.

The different card types give these choices their purpose. Faction cards supply resources and are discarded to pay the matching symbols on Buildings and Extensions. Cogs act as wild resources, helping to cover missing symbols, and three unwanted cards can be discarded to gain one. Vehicles and Critters enter the airspace immediately and for free when acquired, resolving their effects and changing the player's score. Most Critters initially cost points, but offer abilities or later scoring opportunities which can make them worthwhile. A useful pile therefore needs to be judged by how its contents support the player's existing cards and plans.

During the Launch phase, players normally construct one Building each, attach any number of Extensions they can afford and use available card abilities. Buildings form a compact arrangement of two rows with up to four cards each, and their positions matter because various effects reward particular neighbours. A Building might generate cogs when something suitable is launched beside it, while another offers points for a particular arrangement. Extensions add their own points, but also contribute faction symbols and increase a Building's height. These changes can improve scoring opportunities or help meet a Benefactor's requirements, giving an existing Building several possibilities for further development.

Benefactors provide an additional direction for these construction plans. At the end of each round, players may use one of their limited claim tokens to approach a Benefactor whose required faction symbols appear on their Buildings and Extensions. These symbols are assessed across the airspace, so they provide a continuing benefit after the original construction costs have been paid. Claiming a Benefactor with no tokens on it earns its points and resolves its special ability; later claimants can still use the ability, but receive no points. Benefactors held in hand can also be brought into play this way, becoming available to the other players afterwards. There is therefore a worthwhile race to develop the right combination of symbols before somebody else secures the reward.

What I also like is the degree of interaction between the players. Competition for suitable draft piles already makes everybody's intentions relevant, while certain card effects provide opportunities to gain a small advantage directly. The Bower Bird, for example, takes a cog from a rival who has more than its owner. Other effects can collect cogs from several opponents, making the timing of their use quite useful for financing another development. Conversely, some inexpensive cards offer attractive points while giving benefits to the other players. Their apparent efficiency must therefore be weighed against the help they provide elsewhere. These exchanges give the game a welcome competitive edge without making the overall experience feel excessively destructive.

The game ends after the round in which a player reaches eight Buildings, with everybody completing the remaining phases. Final scoring adds the conditional bonuses on cards and points for remaining cogs to the points already earned during play. Filling the airspace quickly therefore does not automatically secure victory: Extensions, Critters and Benefactors may make a smaller collection considerably more valuable. Since unspent cogs also score, there is a further decision about how much to invest in one last improvement.

Despite these considerations, Skyward Republic plays in a pleasantly fluent fashion. Drafting, construction and claiming Benefactors follow a clear sequence, and the iconography makes it reasonably easy to distinguish immediate effects, continuing abilities and final scoring opportunities. The interesting decisions concern which cards to combine, where to place them and when to claim a promising pile. The light visual presentation helps as well, keeping the growing city readable and giving its machinery, airships and feathered inhabitants a coherent setting.

To my mind, this makes Skyward Republic a rather well-constructed cardgame. The growing draft piles give card selection a distinctive tension, while the Buildings and Extensions offer enough connections to reward thoughtful development. Just as pleasingly, the other players remain involved through shared opportunities, Benefactor races and occasional exchanges of resources. I find that balance particularly appealing: there is room to pursue a personal plan, but good decisions still depend on what is happening around the table. Combined with its clear presentation and inviting solarpunk setting, the result offers an accessible and engaging mix of drafting and city building.

So Nicole’s interest in Skyward Republic had certainly led us to a worthwhile stop! We bagged the game, and afterwards it was time to continue our discoveries back at ground level.

Continuing our tour, Nicole and I decided to head back into Hall 3, which we had not managed to explore fully on Friday. There we came across the booth of SKYTEAR GAMES and another rather tempting discovery: Dicequest. A fantasy adventure built around assembling useful dice pools and finding ways to improve their results certainly sounded like something we would enjoy! Unfortunately, we were unable to join a game, although we would gladly have taken the opportunity. However, we did manage to get an introduction, giving us a closer look at what these adventuring parties were up to.

Introduction: Dicequest - SKYTEAR GAMES (booth 3P111)

Dicequest, designed by Jochen Eisenhuth and published by SKYTEAR GAMES, sends the players into the fantasy world of Olan Taa, where adventuring parties complete Quests and face the major challenges along their Adventure Path. Like larger adventure games such as Massive Darkness 2 or Valheim, the players assemble increasingly powerful dice pools by recruiting Heroes and equipping them with Items. However, Dicequest strips away most of the surrounding exploration and dungeon mechanisms, concentrating on the entertaining core of building a party, gathering the right dice and throwing them at increasingly demanding challenges.

The game lasts nine rounds, with the winner determined by Victory Points. Every turn follows three phases: first some Gold is collected, then the Tavern allows players to recruit Heroes, equip Items or graduate party members, and finally a Quest is attempted. Each party holds no more than three Heroes, so recruiting a promising newcomer may require finding room first.

Every Quest specifies how many Heroes must be sent, which symbols are needed, what wounds the party may suffer and which rewards await. The chosen Heroes contribute the colored dice shown on their cards, while equipped Items may add more. All dice are rolled together, and the resulting Swords, Arrows, Wands and other symbols are compared with the requirements. Rerolls, Hero abilities, Items and Runes offer ways to improve disappointing results. Meeting all requirements completes the Quest, usually bringing Gold, Items, Victory Points or an upgrade for a participating Hero. Party composition therefore becomes the central challenge: different classes supply different dice, and a suitable recruit or piece of equipment can make particular symbols considerably easier to generate.

The Heroes themselves also become a resource. Quests inflict Light or Deadly Wounds, with Shields from the dice result preventing some damage. A Hero who accumulates two Light Wounds or suffers a single Deadly Wound is defeated and leaves the party, even if the Quest otherwise succeeds. Victory can therefore come at a considerable price, particularly when an experienced adventurer is lost.

Keeping Heroes alive certainly has advantages. Apprentices can be upgraded to their Expert side, gaining abilities which make the party more reliable and flexible, while Legendary Heroes become available later. Yet Expert and Legendary Heroes may also be deliberately graduated. This preserves their Victory Points in the Achievement area and frees a party slot, but removes their dice and abilities from active service. Players must weigh the benefits of retaining a proven adventurer against the opportunity to secure those points and recruit somebody new.

The Adventure Path gives these decisions a light narrative framework. During most rounds, players choose from the available Quests, but rounds three, six and nine feature mandatory Adventures for all sufficiently large parties. These use the same dice mechanism, although successful players also compare specified symbols rolled beyond the minimum requirements. This Adventure Score determines who receives the better rewards, creating a direct competition between the parties. After the first two Adventures, new Quests and additional Tavern actions become available, with Legendary Heroes entering during Act III. The progression gives the nine rounds the feeling of a small journey without requiring a full campaign.

Interaction also comes from competing for the Heroes and Quests on the shared board, while some Items contain effects aimed directly at opponents. These fit the game's lighter, somewhat mischievous character, but can be removed if the group prefers a less confrontational experience. A cooperative variant instead introduces Threat cards and tokens, with excess dice symbols helping to clear dangers from the Adventures. Failed Adventures increase the pressure on the final confrontation, and victory requires overcoming the Act III Adventure with every player meeting an individual Victory Point target. This gives the group a common challenge while retaining the individual parties.

From this introduction, Dicequest looks like an easygoing strategic dice game rather than something with the depth of Monster Lands. Its appeal lies in improving a party, finding useful combinations between Heroes and Items, and seeing how that preparation fares when the dice hit the table. There seems to be enough optimization to reward careful choices, while randomness and the turnover of Heroes should keep proceedings lively. Players inclined to nurture individual characters can even pursue the additional challenge of keeping a trusted group active from the opening rounds to the final Adventure. As a brisk mixture of party building, tactical dice manipulation and occasional heroic casualties, Dicequest certainly offers a promising approach to fantasy adventuring.

It was a pity that Nicole and I could not put those combinations to the test ourselves, because this mixture of adventuring and finding ways to coax the right results from a handful of dice had certainly caught our interest. Still, the introduction had given us a good idea of what to expect, and we left the booth with another game we would be keen to explore further.

Continuing to roam Hall 3, Nicole soon found another game for us at the booth of PENDRAGON GAME STUDIO. This time, a small board and a handful of pieces promised a rather different challenge: Shijin, a cool-looking strategy game which seemed just right for a short gaming intermission. A table was available, so we took our seats for a little contest of positioning and outmanoeuvring each other!

Gaming Session: Shijin - PENDRAGON GAME STUDIO (booth 3K300)

Some games require very little explanation before the players can begin discovering how much there is to understand. Today's game of Shijin with Nicole certainly belonged in this category. Designed by Morgan Guillet, this abstract positioning game gives its contest a Japanese setting: four celestial Guardians compete to become the divine protector of the newborn imperial heir. Dragon, Tiger, Tortoise and Bird bring their own abilities to a compact duel in which careful positioning and anticipating the opponent's intentions quickly become essential.

The playing area is a board of just five by five spaces, with each player controlling one Guardian and four Seal tokens. Victory comes immediately when all four of a player's Seals occupy spaces adjacent to the opposing Guardian, with diagonal spaces counting as well. Several suggested starting arrangements provide different openings, and placing the pieces already requires some thought about how the resulting formation might develop.

On a turn, a player normally moves either their Guardian or one of their Seals to an adjacent empty space. However, a Seal beside its own Guardian becomes reinforced, gaining considerably more influence over the board. Instead of moving normally, it can exchange places with another adjacent piece, or take that piece’s place and push it one space farther along the same direction, provided the destination is empty. These manoeuvres can affect opposing Seals and even the opposing Guardian, making the relationship between a Guardian and its supporting pieces the central element of the game. A player may not immediately reverse the opponent’s preceding move.

This creates an interesting tension. Keeping the Guardian close gives the Seals greater flexibility, helping them rearrange pieces and interfere with the opponent's formation. Sending those same Seals towards the opposing Guardian brings victory closer, but may leave them without that support. Meanwhile, an apparently useful advance can open an opportunity elsewhere, especially when a push or exchange suddenly changes which pieces stand beside a Guardian. With only one action available each turn, preparing an attack also gives the opponent time to recognise the danger and respond. The individual moves remain simple; judging their consequences is considerably more demanding.

The Guardians' special powers add another consideration. Bringing all four Seals beside their own Guardian allows it to reach Transcendence, preparing its particular ability for use on a later turn. The Bird, for example, can exchange positions with one of its Seals anywhere on the board, while the Tortoise can protect all its pieces from being moved during the opponent's next turn. Using an ability spends this prepared state, so gathering the Seals together can become a worthwhile investment in a future tactical opportunity. It also gives the four Guardians different possibilities which deserve exploration over several games.

To my mind, today's session provided a promising introduction to a game which clearly benefits from repeated play. The basic mechanism is easy to understand, and the small number of pieces keeps the position readable, yet recognising a strong formation or preparing a useful sequence requires experience. I would particularly like to explore how the different Guardian abilities influence that developing understanding. Shijin has the appealing quality of making another game feel worthwhile: the rules are already familiar, leaving more attention available for discovering what can actually be achieved with them.

For our final gaming session in the halls, Nicole had a particular request: could we go over to PORTAL GAMES and have a look at Robo Run? She had read about it in my report on Wednesday and was curious to try it herself. Well, naturally I was not going to refuse my wife’s wish! So we headed over to Ignacy Trzewiczek’s booth, where we were lucky enough to find a free table. With this being a cooperative game for two players, it seemed a particularly fitting way to finish our second Ladies’ Day together.

Gaming Session: Robo Run – PORTAL GAMES (booth 3J120)

As readers of Wednesday’s report may remember, my meeting with Rafał Szyma at the New Games Show introduced me to a rather charming pair of fugitives. Robo Run by Eryk Nowak sends two players into a factory whose robots have developed the unfortunate habit of thinking for themselves. Naturally, management disapproves. Escape seems advisable, and the factory setting immediately brought the good old RoboRally to mind. However, these robots have considerably different plans: they intend to leave together, and apparently somebody forgot to install their conversation modules.

The movement system revolves around just six double-sided Action cards, with three placed in each player’s stand. Sitting opposite each other, the players see different sides of the same cards, and on a turn the active player chooses any visible card from either stand. Its instructions are resolved in order, potentially moving the active player’s robots, the partner’s robots and particular groups of hostile machines. Thus, a promising move towards the exit may also move a companion or security robots. Reading the first useful arrow and ignoring the rest is an excellent way to become spare parts.

This creates a delightful little puzzle in which the entire factory must be considered. Sometimes moving a guard out of the way matters more than making immediate progress, while a card’s usefulness also depends on which player uses it. Between rounds, the played cards return showing their opposite faces, an Event moves hostile robots and reinforcements arrive. The factory certainly does not become more welcoming with time! All friendly robots must escape within four rounds, and losing even one ends the attempt.

And all this must be achieved without discussing the plan! A BEEP token offers a small concession, allowing a player to mark a card which they would like their partner to leave for them, while a shared PASS token permits one change in the alternating turn order each round. Otherwise, the players must work out what their companion might be preparing from the cards and the situation on the board. To my mind, this is where Robo Run becomes particularly entertaining. Spotting a useful opportunity is satisfying; realizing that the other player has understood it and quietly prepared the necessary opening is even better. Both players remain involved, and the silence gives their successful cooperation a wonderfully conspiratorial quality, while the fact that both players know and use different sides of the same cards is bound to create trouble.

The five campaign books provide plenty of different workplaces from which to resign. Each contains five regular scenarios and an optional expert challenge, introducing elements such as lifts, lasers, movable keys, production lines and buttons which require simultaneous occupation. Experience unlocks abilities which remain available through the campaign, while collected energy powers useful tricks such as reversing a movement or stopping before a disastrous collision. Equipment adds further possibilities. This gives the scenarios more variety than merely finding another route across a differently arranged factory floor. Individual scenarios can also be played independently in around 20–25 minutes, making another attempt—or another factory—a very tempting proposition.

The comparison with RoboRally is particularly revealing. There, players program five commands in advance and then watch their robots execute them, with conveyor belts, lasers and other robots interfering along the way. An unexpected push can turn the remaining commands into a carefully programmed demonstration of everything that should have been avoided. It was a clever idea, and certainly produced memorable moments, but I always found that the resulting frustration could outlast the joke. Robo Run allows a fresh decision with each card, and its shorter scenarios give mistakes a much more manageable lifespan. The danger remains, but overcoming it is a shared achievement rather than something another player has deliberately made more difficult.

For me, Robo Run actually solves many of the problems which I always had with RoboRally: shorter duration, less lingering frustration, more varied scenario challenges and cooperation which makes both players care about every move. That is quite a claim considering how often the older game still holds its rank as a timeless classic. In its time, RoboRally certainly deserved its reputation, but these new arrivals offer exactly the sort of lively, clever two-player cooperative experience which I find much more inviting today. A few cards, two thinking machines and an escape plan which neither player can explain: there is a surprising amount of fun in this unauthorized outbreak of teamwork.

Naturally, Nicole and I did not play through the whole campaign here at SPIEL, but the entrance hurdle for my wife proved just as low as it had been for me at the New Games Show. With only a brief explanation needed, the robots can be heading for the exit almost as soon as both players have sat down. The prohibition on discussing plans might suggest a rather silent exercise, but the moans, groans and relieved little noises once a player has made a choice give the proceedings plenty of interactive entertainment value. Apparently, even robots have ways of expressing their opinion about a colleague’s handiwork! These shared reactions add considerably to the fun of trying to understand each other’s intentions, and Robo Run quickly worked its charm on both of us. Nicole and I are eagerly looking forward to continuing our escape after SPIEL!

And with that, our gaming day in the convention halls really had come to an end. What a lovely second Ladies’ Day this had been! Nicole had once again led us to a wonderfully varied selection of games, and I could hardly have wished for a nicer way to spend the final day of SPIEL with her. Before heading home, we made one more little tour through the halls to say goodbye to Maria, Huy and a few other friends. These farewells always make the end of SPIEL feel rather more final, but it was lovely to see everybody once more before we left. Then it really was time to make our way home and enjoy something substantial to eat.

But wait, dear readers, our gaming adventures were not quite over yet! After we had eaten, it was still only about five o’clock, and Nicole had another suggestion. Should we take a closer look at Weirdwood Manor, one of the games I had carried home from SPIEL? Entering our dining room, which also serves as our gaming room, we were greeted by the rather impressive stacks of new games accumulated during this year’s convention. As I picked out the box, I could not help thinking that it would certainly take Nicole and me quite some time to dig our way through this collection!

Weirdwood Manor certainly was a substantial choice for the end of such a busy day. However, I had already played it online and had been quite taken by it—otherwise, this would hardly have been the right choice for a game after a SPIEL day! With that preparation behind us, we settled down at our own gaming table and entered Weirdwood Manor.

Gaming Session: Weirdwood Manor - GRIMSPIRE (booth 2E440)

Our destination was Weirdwood Manor, a magical mansion standing between the human world and the realm of the Fae. Designed by Mike Cassie and originally published by GREYRIDGE GAMES, this cooperative adventure casts the players as Wardens defending Lady Weirdwood's home against an invading Fae Monster and its Clockwork Scarabs. Defeating the intruder requires developing the Wardens' abilities while keeping the Manor operational, but the building itself presents an unusual complication: its corridors constantly change as time passes.

The spectacular circular gameboard contains three concentric areas connected by two rotating corridor rings. These also serve as the clock, measuring twelve days and four times of day. Each turn requires an Action card to be placed in an empty Time of Day slot on the player's board, advancing time to a matching position and changing the corridor arrangement. Choosing a card therefore means considering both its actions and the routes which will remain accessible afterwards. Another player's turn can interrupt a promising plan, although discussion and some forward planning help. These interruptions occasionally can be frustrating, particularly when a route closes just before a planned move. Coordinating successive turns therefore matters as much as finding a strong combination on a personal board. Certain abilities even manipulate time, but once the twelfth day passes, the Manor is lost.

The actions themselves are familiar: move, fight, gather resources and use the rooms' special abilities. A single Move action allows travel along connected corridors, although enemies interrupt the journey, while combat uses dice showing Hits and Blocks. Individual Action decks distinguish the Wardens, and matching symbols on previously played cards provide useful bonuses until those cards are cleared. After each Warden's turn, a Monster card advances time again and resolves the opponent's response. Resetting the played Action cards also brings a Scarab phase where these little pests roam the Manor, so refreshing the available options has consequences. This gives the game a straightforward foundation, but the characters initially have little chance against the Monster. They must gather Mîn (Mana) and Knowledge, recruit Companions, forge additional combat dice and spend Experience on three development tracks to improve their prospects. Additional dice can favour balanced results, stronger attacks or better defence, allowing players to develop their combat capabilities.

As these improvements accumulate, the adventure gradually becomes a more elaborate brainteaser. An Action card might provide movement to a useful room, whose reward supplies the resources for a character Power, while a Companion contributes another ability. Card bonuses and Warden Tactics offer further possibilities. Finding the right sequence can turn a modest beginning into a surprisingly productive turn. To my mind, this gradual growth is one of the game's greatest strengths: the players discover its complexity through developing their characters, with new combinations becoming possible as their understanding of the game grows. Deciding where to invest resources remains important throughout. Better combat abilities prepare a Warden for the final confrontation, while other improvements help with gathering supplies or dealing with the Scarabs. There is rarely enough time to develop everything.

In our session, this also indicated that the game knows how to avoid the familiar alpha-player problem. Between individual Powers, Companions, card effects and the changing corridors, keeping track of every character's possibilities would have been quite demanding. We could discuss our priorities and coordinate our efforts, but working out a particular Warden's best sequence largely remained the responsibility of the player controlling that character. Cooperation left room for individual decisions.

The Clockwork Scarabs prevent the Wardens from concentrating entirely on their development. These pests periodically appear and spread through the Manor, interrupting movement and blocking room actions. When several gather in a room, they can cause Blight, disabling its special action until the room is restored. Against the introductory Monster, the Chaos Ogre, too much Blight also means defeat. Clearing Scarabs and repairing rooms therefore compete with the preparations for the final confrontation. There is a satisfying tension between keeping the building usable and acquiring enough strength to defeat its unwelcome guest.

Meanwhile, the Monster acts through its own deck, moving, attacking and gaining Powers as the clock advances. Three adversaries provide different challenges: the Chaos Ogre threatens Lady Weirdwood and can be weakened by damaging particular body parts, the Mîn Wraith drains her Life Force, and Therus the Dark Mage attempts to corrupt her. Each must be reduced to zero Health before time runs out or the Monster achieves its own objective. Simply surviving the Scarabs will achieve little without a plan for taking down the main opponent.

Interestingly, our adventure became slightly more manageable as our Wardens developed. The early turns felt particularly precious, but improved abilities and useful Companions gradually gave us more control. Our final confrontation with the Chaos Ogre, the easiest of the three Monsters, went rather smoothly, helped by some fortunate dice rolls. I did not find this anticlimactic: the demanding preparation had paid off, and the game reached a satisfying conclusion. Some adventures prolong their final battle beyond the point of enjoyment; here, becoming strong enough to win felt like the reward for everything that had come before.

I had read the rules before SPIEL and found them easier to follow than their substantial length might suggest. Careful attention to the wording usually resolves the few minor ambiguities, although I would have preferred a conventional A4 rulebook to the large square format. For all the special abilities and individual exceptions, the actual flow of play is considerably more approachable than the volume of rules initially suggests. GRIMSPIRE's German translation also deserves praise: during this session, we encountered neither translation-related confusion nor missing rules. The presentation is impressive, particularly in the Deluxe edition, and the rotating rings worked without problems. Their movement gives the richly illustrated mansion a convincing sense of shifting, magical architecture.

For me, Weirdwood Manor combines a distinctive setting with rewarding tactical development. Its basic turn structure remains manageable while the Wardens acquire increasingly interesting combinations, and the Scarabs ensure that preparing for the Monster never becomes a solitary exercise in improving statistics. Different adversaries promise further variety. This evening's session offered an engaging cooperative struggle in which character development, coordination and the changing building all contributed to a well-earned victory.

And now, dear readers, it really is time to bring this year’s SPIEL adventures to a close. This has been another long day, but also a thoroughly enjoyable and exciting one, and our late afternoon at Weirdwood Manor provided a fitting finale. From the convention tables to our own gaming room, sharing all these discoveries with Nicole has made this final day particularly special.

Looking back over the last four days and the New Games Show, I certainly feel that this has been a very good SPIEL. I still find it difficult to imagine more than 1,800 new games arriving in a single year! Finding a path through that enormous selection becomes more challenging every time, and even with careful preparation, there are always far more interesting titles than anybody could hope to explore. As you have seen, our own choices were once again entirely subjective: games we thought we might enjoy, things which caught our attention and unexpected discoveries made along the way. Nevertheless, I hope that between us we have once again brought you an interesting and varied selection from this year’s show.

For us, knowing that you were following our journeys through the halls has once again been a great part of the enjoyment. Thank you for coming along, sharing our discoveries, sending greetings in our guestbook and celebrating thirty years of G@mebox with us! Looking at it that way, this has been a rather wonderful thirtieth birthday party, with good friends, plenty of encounters and certainly no shortage of games. We hope you have enjoyed the show as much as we have.

Until we meet here again for SPIEL 2027, stay healthy, enjoy your games and take good care of yourselves!

All the best,
Frank and Nicole

And Yuki! (I just discovered him when I formatted the photo)