It’s a bit of a slow news week as publishers, designers, and distributors all gear up for Essen Spiel, but here is the board game (and board game-related!) news that caught our attention for the week ending October 18, 2019.
Gaming News
- As is our tradition around here, we have our list of 13 Ghoulish Games for Your Halloween Game Night.
- The Herb Witches, the first expansion to Quacks of Quedlinburg, is available now from Amazon and your local game store. The expansion adds a fifth player, along with a new herb, extra-large pumpkins, and a few other things to add some new excitement to an already pretty great game. You can take a look at the rulebook on North Star Game’s website.
- Exploding Kittens, Inc., the company behind the eponymous game, has received a $30M investment that will allow them to “develop new games, grow its team, expand IPs, take control of production and distribution, and build community,” according to TabletopWire.
- Sit Down Games has a slew of new releases for Essen, including Hidden Roles, a small expansion for Magic Maze, Magic Maze on Mars, which we covered here recently, House Flippers, Palm Reader, Space Bowl, and Wormland. All of these titles are available for preorder now to be picked up at Essen, and should be in stores soon.
- The Op is bringing another family party game to Target. In Match-O-Rama, 4–8 players try to guess what others will say to given categories, but the twist with this one is that players are guessing which other players sitting near them will have the same answer. The game is currently available exclusively at Target.
- Board Game Atlas has acquired pricing site Boardgameprices.com.
- You might OD on cute after playing Jellybean Games’ new Hidden Panda game, a social deduction game about passing around baby pandas. The game is now available for preorder.
- Ars Technica has a post ranking every Ticket to Ride map. I disagree with a lot of their choices—I’d definitely rank Africa dead last on the list, since it’s a game we disliked so much we didn’t even keep it—but it’s a cool overview of the entire (current) TTR world.
- R&R Games has released Hanabi Deluxe II. The tile-based take on the Spiel des Jahres winner includes the Master Artisan expansion.
- Horrified, a very fun game from Ravensburger that I reviewed earlier this year, has ended its Target-exclusive run and is now available wherever you buy games.
GeekDad and GeekMom Reviews
Here are the games we’ve reviewed this week:
- Elizabeth MacAndrew: reviewed Cheeky Butts.
- Michael Pistiolas reviewed Zoowaboo.
- Robin Brooks reviewed Block Happy.
- Jonathan Liu reviewed Tiny Epic Dinosaurs (our featured image for the week), The Zorro Dice Game, and FlickFleet.
What We’re Playing
Finally, here’s what the GeekDads played this week:
- Michael J. played Ex Libris.
- Robin Brooks played Wildlands and Block Happy.
- Jonathan Liu played Dust in the Wings, Ecos: First Continent, Mooncake Master, Paleolithic, Planetoid, Silver & Gold, SlipStrike, Unlock! Expedition: Challenger, Wayfinders, and The Zorro Dice Game.
