If you’re a fan of Light Speed: Arena (our 2025 Game of the Year), I’ve got some fun news for you! Tablescope, the publisher of the game, has declared Tuesday, September 22, “Space Banana Day.” From Tuesday on, if you put a banana—yes, a real banana—somewhere in the playing field, all yellow lasers will fire backwards instead.
I haven’t actually gotten to experience the wackiness for myself, but I’ve got some bananas ready for next Tuesday! As Tablescope put it, it’s the first tabletop expansion available in all supermarkets. If it goes well, they plan to add other common objects to the game in the future.
They’ve even included the Space Banana as a listing on the BoardGameGeek Essen preview list, so you can go vote for it—wouldn’t it be great if the most-wanted release of SPIEL ’26 was a banana?
In the meantime, US residents may have to wait a little longer for the Light Speed: Arena playmat (pictured above, with the banana). They had a very limited number shipped to the US and sent me one to try out, but they don’t have distribution set up for it yet and just sold them through a Google Doc order form. When they become more widely available, I’ll be sure to share the news.
The playmat provides a nice colorful starfield for the game, but more importantly it comes with two new asteroids that go with the playmat: Torus Arena and Billiards Arena. Torus Arena allows lasers that go off the edge of the play area to enter from the opposite side, Pac-Man-style. (They only pass through once.) Billiards Arena makes lasers bounce off the edge of the arena up to two times. And, yes, I have confirmed that you can use both at once, which means the edges of the mat act like a two-way mirror, splitting the beam into one that bounces back and one that jumps in from the other side—it’s chaotic but fun!
So: mark your calendars and hit up your local grocery for the new expansion to one of our favorite games!
Jonathan H. Liu
Jonathan H. Liu is a stay-at-home dad in Portland, Oregon, who loves to read, is always up for a board game, and has a bit of a Kickstarter habit. I can be reached at jonathan at geekdad dot com.
