Betrayal at House on the Hill quickly builds suspense and excitement as players explore a haunted mansion of their own design, encountering spirits and frightening omens that foretell their fate. With an estimated one hour playing time, Betrayal at House on the Hill is ideal for parties, family gatherings or casual fun with friends.

Betrayal at House on the Hill is a tile game that allows players to build their own haunted house room by room, tile by tile, creating a new thrilling game board every time. The game is designed for three to six people, each of whom plays one of six possible characters.

Secretly, one of the characters betrays the rest of the party, and the innocent members of the party must defeat the traitor in their midst before it’s too late! Betrayal at House on the Hill will appeal to any game player who enjoys a fun, suspenseful, and strategic game.

Betrayal at House on the Hill includes detailed game pieces, including character cards, pre-painted plastic figures, and special tokens, all of which help create a spooky atmosphere and streamline game play.

Target Ages: 12+
Expected Time: 60 Minutes
Complexity to learn: 6/10
From: Avion Hill

Betrayal Legacy marries the concept of Betrayal at House on the Hill — exploring a haunted mansion — with the permanency and multi-game storytelling exhibited by Daviau’s Risk Legacy and other legacy games that followed. Betrayal Legacy consists of a prologue and a thirteen-chapter story that takes place over decades. Players represent families, with specific members of a family participating in one story, then perhaps an older version of those characters (assuming they lived) or their descendants showing up in later stories.

Why would people keep exploring a haunted mansion for decade after decade, especially when horrible things happen there? Curiosity, I suppose, or perhaps an ignorant boldness that comes from the belief that we know better than those who have come before. Look at all that we’ve learned, marvel at the tools we have at hand! Surely we’ll all exit safely this time…

As with other Betrayal titles, the game is narratively-driven, with elements that record the history of your specific games. The tools mentioned earlier, for example, become attached to specific families. This isn’t just a bucket; it’s my bucket, the one my grandpappy used to feed his family’s pigs when he was a boy, and while you can certainly use that bucket, I know how to wield it best from the time he spent teaching me how to slop. Yes, it’s an heirloom bucket, and when kept in the family, I get a bonus for using it.

Target Ages: 7+
Expected Time: 45 to 90 Minutes
Complexity to learn: 4/10
From:Avalon Hill

Blood Bowl: Team Manager – The Card Game is a bone-breaking, breathtaking standalone card game of violence and outright cheating for two to four players. Chaos, Dwarf, Wood Elf, Human, Orc, and Skaven teams compete against each other over the course of a brutal season. Customize your team by drafting Star Players, hiring staff, upgrading facilities, and cheating like mad. Lead your gang of misfits and miscreants to glory over your rivals all to become Spike! Magazine’s Manager of the Year!

Once a manager has chosen one of the six teams, he has five weeks to groom them into the best in the league, culminating with the Blood Bowl tournament. He does this by competing at highlights, collecting payouts, upgrading his personnel, and drafting Star Players.

Managers begin the season with a starting team deck full of basic scrub players. These players are none too bright and have limited talents, but a clever manager can play to their strengths by carefully positioning them to excel on the pitch.

Is your team ready to compete against other teams in head-to-head highlights? Highlights are the randomly determined matchups over which players compete. The more highlights a team wins, the more it improves and the more fans it accumulates.

The season culminates with the Blood Bowl tournament. After the Blood Bowl, the season ends. Players then tally up their total fans and the manager with the most fans wins the game.

Target Ages: 14+
Expected Time: 60-120 Minutes
Complexity to learn:  4/10
From: Fantasy Flight Games

In an abandoned warehouse a gangster band is splitting its loot, but they can’t agree on the split! It’s time to let the guns talk and soon everyone is aiming at everyone. The richest surviving gangster wins the game!

Ca$h ‘n Guns helps you relive the best scenes of your favorite gangster movies. The goal is to have more money than anyone else after eight rounds while still being alive.

Each round, one player is the Boss, and he controls the pace of play. First, loot cards are revealed on the table to show what’s up for grabs. Next, players load their guns by secretly selecting either a “Bang!” or a “Click! Click!” card from their hand. The Boss counts to three, and on “Three” each player points his foam gun at someone else; due to his status, the Boss can tell one player who’s pointing a gun at him that he needs to point it in another direction. After a pause to observe threats and measure the seriousness in an opponent’s eyes, the Boss counts to three again and anyone who doesn’t want to risk getting shot can chicken out and remove themselves from the round.

Everyone who’s pointing a gun at someone still in the round now reveals their card, and anyone who’s the target of a “Bang!” takes a wound marker and gets none of the available loot. Starting with the Boss, everyone still in the round takes one loot card at a time from the table — money, diamonds, paintings, the position of Boss, medical care (to remove a wound), or a new bullet (to add a “Bang!” card to your hand) — until everything has been claimed.

After eight rounds, the game ends. Whoever has the most diamonds receives a big bonus, and paintings score based on the number of them that you’ve collected. Whoever has the most valuable stash wins!

Target Ages: 10+
Expected Time: 30 Minutes
Complexity to Learn: 2/10
From:Repos Production

The forest is filled with all sorts of monsters. They watched and waited as you built your castle and trained your soldiers, but now they’ve gathered their army and are marching out of the woods. Can you work with your friends to defend your castle against the horde, or will the monsters tear down your walls and destroy the precious castle towers? You will all win or lose together, but in the end only one player will be declared the Master Slayer!

Castle Panic is a Fantasy themed, cooperative, light tactical wargame for 1 to 6 players ages 10 and up. Players must work together to defend their castle, in the center of the board, from monsters that attack out of the forest at the edges of the board. Players trade cards, hit and slay monsters, and plan tactics together to keep their castle towers intact. The players either win or lose together, but only the player with the most victory points is declared the Master Slayer. Players must balance the survival of the group with their own desire to win.

First game in the Panic series.

Target Ages: 8+
Expected Time: 30 Minutes
Complexity to Learn: 3/10
From:Fireside Games

 

On the 11th of July, 1899 at 10 a.m., the Union Pacific Express has left Folsom, New Mexico, with 47 passengers on board. After a few minutes, gunfire and hurrying footsteps on the roof can be heard. Heavily armed bandits have come to rob honest citizens of their wallets and jewels. Will they succeed in stealing the suitcase holding the Nice Valley Coal Company’s weekly pay, despite it having been placed under the supervision of Marshal Samuel Ford? Will these bandits hinder one another more than the Marshal since only the richest one of them can come out on top?

In Colt Express, you play a bandit robbing a train at the same time as other bandits, and your goal is to become the richest outlaw of the Old West. The game consists of five rounds, and each round has two phases:

  • Phase 1: Schemin’ Each player plays 2-5 action cards on a common pile, with the cards being face up or face down depending on the type of the round. Instead of playing a card, a player can draw three cards from her deck.
  • Phase 2: Stealin’ The action cards are carried out in the order they were played, with a player’s best laid plans possibly not panning out due to mistakes and oversights!

The game takes place in a 3D train in which the bandits can move from one car to another, run on the roof, punch the other bandits, shoot them, rob the passengers, or draw the Marshal out of position. The train has as many cars as the number of players, and each car is seeded with gems, bags of loot or suitcases at the start of play.

Each player starts a round with six cards in hand, with each card showing one of these actions. At the start of a round, a round card is revealed, showing how many cards will be played; whether they’ll be played face up or face down, or individually or in pairs; and what action will occur at the end of the round (e.g., all bandits on top of the train move to the engine). You can pick up loot, gems or suitcases only by playing a “steal” card when you’re in a train car that holds one of these items — but since everyone is planning to get these goods, you’ll need to move, punch and shoot to get others out of your way. You can punch someone only in the same car as you, and when you do, the other bandit drops one of the goods he’s collected and is knocked into an adjacent car.

Each player’s character has a special power, such as starting the round with an extra card, playing your first card face down, or pocketing a bag of loot when you punch someone instead of letting it hit the ground.

You can shoot someone in an adjacent car or (if you’re running on top of the train) anyone in sight, and when you do, you give that player one of your six bullet cards; that card gets shuffled in the opponent’s deck, possibly giving her a dead card in hand on a future turn and forcing her to draw instead of playing something. If the Marshal ends up in the same car as you, likely due to other bandits luring him through the train, he’ll be happy to give you a bullet, too.

At the end of the game, whoever fired the most bullets receives a $1,000 braggart bonus, and whoever bagged the richest haul wins!

Target Ages: 10+
Expected Time: 40 Minutes
Complexity to Learn: 4/10
From: Ludonaute

Target Ages: 14+
Expected Time: 45-60 Minutes
Complexity to Learn: 3/10
From: Cranio Creations

The second game in the Escape the Dark series, Escape the Dark Sector is a simple, sci-fi adventure game with a focus on atmosphere, storytelling and player cooperation – perfect for newcomers to tabletop gaming. It takes about 2 minutes to set up, lasts around 45 minutes, and no two games are ever the same.

Playing as the beleaguered crew of an impounded starship, players find themselves confined to the detention block of a vast space station. Using a variety of advanced gear and weaponry, they will embark on a desperate mission to find their ship and blast their way home.

Along the way, the crew will have to overcome a variety of dangers, traps, and terrors. From cyborg guards and faulty replicators to killer alien organisms, each challenge is represented by a large, beautifully illustrated chapter card.

As these immersive chapter cards are revealed one by one, the game takes on the form of a shared storybook experience, with the players making decisions about what to do each chapter before using a combination of dice and item cards to complete the task before them.

The goal of the game is to complete every chapter, and then defeat the final boss. To win, you must keep each member of the crew alive; if any player is killed, the game ends immediately!

Target Ages: 10+
Expected Time: 20-60 Minutes
Complexity to Learn: 4/10
From: Themeborne Ltd.

Gloomhaven is a game of Euro-inspired tactical combat in a persistent world of shifting motives. Players will take on the role of a wandering adventurer with their own special set of skills and their own reasons for traveling to this dark corner of the world. Players must work together out of necessity to clear out menacing dungeons and forgotten ruins. In the process, they will enhance their abilities with experience and loot, discover new locations to explore and plunder, and expand an ever-branching story fueled by the decisions they make.

This is a game with a persistent and changing world that is ideally played over many game sessions. After a scenario, players will make decisions on what to do, which will determine how the story continues, kind of like a “Choose Your Own Adventure” book. Playing through a scenario is a cooperative affair where players will fight against automated monsters using an innovative card system to determine the order of play and what a player does on their turn.

Each turn, a player chooses two cards to play out of their hand. The number on the top card determines their initiative for the round. Each card also has a top and bottom power, and when it is a player’s turn in the initiative order, they determine whether to use the top power of one card and the bottom power of the other, or vice-versa. Players must be careful, though, because over time they will permanently lose cards from their hands. If they take too long to clear a dungeon, they may end up exhausted and be forced to retreat.

Target Ages: 14+
Expected Time: 1 -2 Hours
Complexity to Learn: 8/10
From:Cephalofair Games

America in the 19th century: You are a rancher and repeatedly herd your cattle from Texas to Kansas City, where you send them off by train. This earns you money and victory points. Needless to say, each time you arrive in Kansas City, you want to have your most valuable cattle in tow. However, the “Great Western Trail” not only requires that you keep your herd in good shape, but also that you wisely use the various buildings along the trail. Also, it might be a good idea to hire capable staff: cowboys to improve your herd, craftsmen to build your very own buildings, or engineers for the important railroad line.

If you cleverly manage your herd and navigate the opportunities and pitfalls of Great Western Trail, you surely will gain the most victory points and win the game.

The second edition of Great Western Trail includes solitaire rules, making for a player count of 1-4.

Second Edition:
Remember the old days in the West? Well, the times they are a-changing’! From new solo opponent to incredible landscapes, you won’t know where to start. And there is a new herd of cows for you to sell!

Great Western Trail is the critically acclaimed game of cattle ranching by Alexander Pfister. Players attempt to wrangle their herd across the Midwest prairie and deliver it to Kansas City. But beware! Other cowboys are sharing the trail with you. We invite you to saddle up!

The changes in the Second edition:

  • Brand New Artwork by Chris Quilliams
  • Solo Mode: A New Challenger in the West
  • Dual-Layered Player Boards
  • Addition of a new breed of cows: The Simmental breed
  • Two new reversible buildings (#11 & 12)
  • Twelve Exchange Tokens, First introduced in the Rails of North Expansion, for more interaction with other players
  • Four new Master Tiles added for more strategy, replayability, and challenges

Target Ages: 12+
Expected Time: 75-150 Minutes
Complexity to Learn: 8/10
From:Arclight Games

Lobster Mobster – A game of ever-changing rules!

Find out who’s going to be ‘sleeping with the fishes’ and who will claw their way to the top in this family party game. Flip a card and do what it says, but watch out for Keep cards, which add new rules to the game. Break the rule

s by getting caught using your thumbs or checking your phone and you’ll face the Lobster Mobster! Roll the right combination to avoid taking a fishbone token. The first player to collect five fish-bone tokens ‘sleeps with the fishes’ and the game is over!

Target Ages: 8+
Expected Time: ?
Complexity to Learn: ?
From: Ginger Fox

Marrying Mr. Darcy is a role-playing game where players are one of the female characters from Jane Austen’s novel Pride and Prejudice. Players work to improve themselves and become more desirable as potential wives for the available Suitors. The ladies do this by attending Events and improving their Characters, but advantage can be gained by the use of Cunning. All of their efforts are in hopes of securing the husband that will make them the most satisfied character at the end of the game.

Game play is divided into two stages: the initial Courtship Stage and the concluding Proposal Stage.

The Courtship Stage is when players try to improve their Heroine’s chances of happiness by earning points playing Character Cards, and acquiring or playing Cunning Cards. Character Points help you to attract Suitors, and also count toward your total number of Character points at the end of the game.Cunning Points do not count towards your building your Character. However, the Heroine who has acquired the most Cunning will be the first player to enter the Proposal Stage later in the game, putting her at a significant advantage.

The Proposal Stage begins when Event Cards have been played. In this stage, players will roll to see which Suitor proposes to them, decide if they will marry them, and calculate their final score.

Target Ages: 13+
Expected Time: 30-60 ~Minutes
Complexity to Learn: 3/10
From: Erika Svanoe

In Mice and Mystics, players take on the roles of those still loyal to the king – but to escape the clutches of Vanestra, they have been turned into mice! Play as cunning field mice who must race through a castle now twenty times larger than before. The castle would be a dangerous place with Vanestra’s minions in control, but now countless other terrors also await heroes who are but the size of figs. Play as nimble Prince Collin and fence your way past your foes, or try Nez Bellows, the burly smith. Confound your foes as the wizened old mouse Maginos, or protect your companions as Tilda, the castle’s former healer. Every player will have a vital role in the quest to warn the king, and it will take careful planning to find Vanestra’s weakness and defeat her.

Mice and Mystics is a cooperative adventure game in which the players work together to save an imperiled kingdom. They will face countless adversaries such as rats, cockroaches, and spiders, and of course the greatest of all horrors: the castle’s housecat, Brodie. Mice and Mystics is a boldly innovative game that thrusts players into an ever-changing, interactive environment, and features a rich storyline that the players help create as they play the game. The Cheese System allows players to hoard the crumbs of precious cheese they find on their journey, and use it to bolster their mice with grandiose new abilities and overcome seemingly insurmountable odds.

Mice and Mystics will provide any group of friends with an unforgettable adventure they will be talking about for years to come – assuming they can all squeak by…

Target Ages: 7+
Expected Time: 60-90 Minutes
Complexity to Learn: 6/10
From: Plaid Hat Games

In the 1920s, Mr. MacDowell, a gifted astrologer, immediately detected a supernatural being upon entering his new house in Scotland. He gathered eminent mediums of his time for an extraordinary séance, and they have seven hours to make contact with the ghost and investigate any clues that it can provide to unlock an old mystery.

Unable to talk, the amnesiac ghost communicates with the mediums through visions, which are represented in the game by illustrated cards. The mediums must decipher the images to help the ghost remember how he was murdered: Who did the crime? Where did it take place? Which weapon caused the death? The more the mediums cooperate and guess well, the easier it is to catch the right culprit.

In Mysterium, a reworking of the game system present in Tajemnicze Domostwo, one player takes the role of ghost while everyone else represents a medium. To solve the crime, the ghost must first recall (with the aid of the mediums) all of the suspects present on the night of the murder. A number of suspect, location and murder weapon cards are placed on the table, and the ghost randomly assigns one of each of these in secret to a medium.

Each hour (i.e., game turn), the ghost hands one or more vision cards face up to each medium, refilling their hand to seven each time they share vision cards. These vision cards present dreamlike images to the mediums, with each medium first needing to deduce which suspect corresponds to the vision cards received. Once the ghost has handed cards to the final medium, they start a two-minute sandtimer. Once a medium has placed their token on a suspect, they may also place clairvoyancy tokens on the guesses made by other mediums to show whether they agree or disagree with those guesses.

After time runs out, the ghost reveals to each medium whether the guesses were correct or not. Mediums who guessed correctly move on to guess the location of the crime (and then the murder weapon), while those who didn’t keep their vision cards and receive new ones next hour corresponding to the same suspect. Once a medium has correctly guessed the suspect, location and weapon, they move their token to the epilogue board and receive one clairvoyancy point for each hour remaining on the clock. They can still use their remaining clairvoyancy tokens to score additional points.

If one or more mediums fail to identify their proper suspect, location and weapon before the end of the seventh hour, then the ghost has failed and dissipates, leaving the mystery unsolved. If, however, they have all succeeded, then the ghost has recovered enough of its memory to identify the culprit.

Mediums then group their suspect, location and weapon cards on the table and place a number by each group. The ghost then selects one group, places the matching culprit number face down on the epilogue board, picks three vision cards — one for the suspect, one for the location, and one for the weapon — then shuffles these cards. Players who have achieved few clairvoyancy points flip over one vision card at random, then secretly vote on which suspect they think is guilty; players with more points then flip over a second vision card and vote; then those with the most points see the final card and vote.

If a majority of the mediums have identified the proper suspect, with ties being broken by the vote of the most clairvoyant medium, then the killer has been identified and the ghost can now rest peacefully. If not, well, perhaps you can try again…

Target Ages: 10+
Expected Time: 42 Minutes
Complexity to Learn: 4/10
From: Libellud

Welcome to Mysterium Park!
Its cotton candies, its circus, its dark secrets…

The park’s former director has disappeared, but the investigation came to nothing. Since that night, weird things are happening on the fairground. As psychics, you’re convinced that a ghost haunts this carnival… You’re now intent on giving it a chance to reveal the truth.

In this cooperative stand-alone game, the ghost sends visions with illustrated cards. The psychics try to interpret them in order to rule out certain suspects and locations. Then, they’ll seize their only chance to piece together what happened to the director. You have only six nights before the carnival leaves town… Open your minds and find the truth!

Set in the lights of a 1950’s US fairground, Mysterium Park shares the same core mechanism with the famous award-winning game it reimplements, though bringing a different approach: it is smaller and faster, thanks to very quick setup and simplified rules.

Mysterium is a milestone in immersive and eye-catching experiences close to role-playing; with Mysterium Park, you can enjoy the heart of it in a more condensed way.

Target Ages: 10+
Expected Time: 30-40 Minutes
Complexity to Learn: 4/10
From:Libellud

Face off in the ultimate Pop! battle

In the Funkoverse Strategy Game, you combine your favorite characters and go head-to-head in four exciting game scenarios. Use your characters’ unique abilities to gain points and achieve victory!

Each turn, you select one of your characters and perform two actions. Each character has access to basic actions like moving and challenges as well as several unique abilities that may be performed only by spending ability tokens. Funkoverse uses an innovative “cooldown” system — the more powerful the ability, the longer it will take for the ability token to become available again — so players have to spend their ability tokens wisely. Each character in Funkoverse is unique, so players are encouraged to try out different combinations of characters and items in order to discover their favorite synergies and powerful strategies for all four game scenarios.

As of launch, the Funkoverse Strategy Game consists of four-character sets and two-character sets. Every four-character and two-character set is playable as a standalone game and comes with exclusive Funko Pop! Figures that aren’t available anywhere else, a double-sided board, tokens, cards, an item, and dice. Sets may be combined with one another, allowing players the freedom to play how they like!

Target Ages: 10+
Expected Time: 20-60 Minutes
Complexity to Learn: 6/10
From: Funko Games

Ra is an auction and set-collection game with an Ancient Egyptian theme. Each turn players are able to purchase lots of tiles with their bidding tiles (suns). Once a player has used up his or her suns, the other players continue until they do likewise, which may set up a situation with a single uncontested player bidding on tiles before the end of the round occurs. Tension builds because the round may end before all players have had a chance to win their three lots for the epoch. The various tiles either give immediate points, prevent negative points for not having certain types at the end of the round (epoch), or give points after the final round. The game lasts for three “epochs” (rounds). The game offers a short learning curve, and experienced players find it both fast-moving and a quick play.

From the Box:
The game spans 1500 years of Egyptian history in less than an hour!
The players seek to expand their power and fame and there are many ways to accomplish this: Influencing Pharaohs, Building monuments, Farming on the Nile, Paying homage to the Gods, Advancing the technology and culture of the people. Ra is an auction and set collecting game where players may choose to take risks for great rewards or… And all this is for the glory of the Sun God Ra!

Target Ages: 12+
Expected Time: 45-60 Minutes
Complexity to Learn: 5/10
From: Ravensburger

Raiders of the North Sea is set in the central years of the Viking Age. As Viking warriors, players seek to impress the Chieftain by raiding unsuspecting settlements. To do so, players need to assemble a crew, collect provisions, and journey north to plunder gold, iron and livestock. Glory can be found in battle, even at the hands of the Valkyrie, so gather your warriors because it’s raiding season!

To impress the Chieftain, you need victory points (VPs), with those being acquired primarily by raiding settlements, taking plunder, and making offerings to the Chieftain. How you use your plunder is also vital to your success. Players take turns in clockwise order, and on a turn you place a worker and resolve its action, then pick up a different worker and resolve its action. Broadly speaking, those actions fall in one of two categories:

  • Work: Having a good crew and enough provisions are vital to successful raiding, so before making any raids, players need to do some work to prepare their crew and collect supplies. This is all done in the village at the bottom of the game board, with eight buildings offering various actions. You must first place your worker in an available building where no other worker is present, then pick up a different worker from a different building.
  • Raid: Once players have hired enough crew and collected provisions, you may choose to raid on your turn. To raid a settlement — whether a harbor, outpost, monastery or fortress — you need to meet three requirements: Having a large enough crew, having enough provisions (along with gold for monasteries and fortresses, and having a worker of the right color. Raiding offers various ways of scoring, such as military strength, plunder, and Valkyries, which is how grey and white workers enter the game.

The game ends when only one fortress raid remains, all Valkyrie have been removed, or all offerings have been made, then players tally their scores.

Target Ages: 12+
Expected Time: 60-80 Minutes
Complexity to Learn: 5/10
From: Garphill Games

The classic wargame Risk has been updated and revised for 2008. The graphics and components are brand new. Major and minor objectives have been added, along with cities and capitals, plus rewards for completing objectives.

The new version has a drastically changed victory condition: complete three objectives while controlling your capital. This shortens the game playing time to around 90 minutes.

There are three rule sets: Basic Training, Command Room and World Conquest. Basic Training is an introduction to the new Risk rules and includes a pre-existing setup for 3, 4 or 5 players. Command Room adds a randomized setup and rewards for achieving objectives. Both Basic Training and Command Room end when a player controls three objectives. World Conquest is an updated version of the classic Risk game of Global Domination: play continues

Target Ages: 10+
Expected Time: 90 Minutes
Complexity to Learn: 5/10
From: Hasbro

Imitating humans in constructing houses and large ships, tritons quickly became a trading folk, and their agricultural villages flourished on the riverbank of Ie. Triton merchants are known for being able to provide extremely rare goods, such as dried starlight kelp seeds from Ie’s riverbed. Humans are willing to pay great sums for them, giving the triton merchants the incentive to seek them out, extract and provide to the market.

A group of tritons, which the governing order calls “Separatists”, dissatisfied with the commercial policy of their fellow citizens, began protesting, sabotaging the merchants’ trade of the sacred to them, kelp seed. Of course, there are those who seek to take advantage of the whole situation and, in secrecy, exploit both sides for their own benefit…

Riverbed Hunt is a light strategy deduction board game for 3 to 9 players.

  • Randomly take the role of a Merchant, Separatist, or the Profiteer.
  • This secret role will define your gameplay.
  • During your turn, perform one of your three available actions.
  • Dive to explore river tiles.
  • Swim to move around the river board.
  • Coop or Uncover to reveal river tiles.
  • In addition, you may play an ability card from your hand, to enhance your strategies.
  • Bring items to the surface until one of the win conditions is met.
  • Reveal enough Kelps and the Merchants succeed in growing their trading business with the humans.
  • Reveal enough Logs and the Separatists succeed in blocking this trade!
  • If enough Coins are revealed, the Profiteer managed to deceive everyone about his intentions, for his own profit!

Target Ages: 10+
Expected Time: 20 – 45 Minutes
Complexity to learn: 3/10
From: Odd Statue Games

In Savannah Park, you each run your own wildlife park, and your goal is to group animals with their own kind — but everyone takes turns deciding what to move, so you might not be able to shuffle animals into the right spaces.

Each player starts the game with the same set of 33 unique animal tiles, with those tiles laid out at random in your personal wildlife park. Three bush-fire spaces and one rock space will remain unoccupied in your park for the entire game, and six tree spaces and four grass spaces are unoccupied at the start of play.

On a turn, you name a specific face-up tile that all players must pick up, flip face down, then move to a different empty space within their own park. Tiles that have been flipped cannot move again, and once all tiles have moved, the game ends with a scoring round. First, tiles adjacent to bush fires are removed if they depict as many animals as the number of fires (1, 2, or 3) on the bush-fire space. Score for each grass and tree uncovered on your board. Finally, score for each of the six animal species; the bigger the main herd of each of species and the more water holes it contains, the more points you score, e.g. a herd of five rhinos and three watering holes is worth (5×3) 15 points. The player with the most points wins.

Savannah Park includes a solo mode, a set-up variant that allows you to place the bush fires and trees where you wish, and a scoring variant that rewards you for bumping a lion out of the animals’ way.

Target Ages: 8+
Expected Time: 20-40 Minutes
Complexity to Learn: 4/10
From: Deep Print Games

At the edge of our solar system, a dark planet may lurk. In 2015, astronomers estimated a large distant planet could explain the unique orbits of dwarf planets and other objects. Since then, astronomers have been scanning the sky, hoping to find this planet.

In The Search for Planet X, players take on the role of astronomers who use observations and logical deductions to search for this hypothetical planet. Each game, the companion app randomly selects an arrangement of objects and a location for Planet X following predefined logic rules.

Each round, as the earth travels around the sun, players use the app to perform scans and attend conferences. As they gain information about the location of the objects, they mark that information on their deduction sheets. As players learn the locations of the various objects, they can start publishing theories, which is how players score points.

As more and more objects are found, players narrow down the possible locations for Planet X. Once a player believes they know its location and the objects on either side of it, they use the app to conduct a search. The game ends when a player successfully locates Planet X, and all players have a final chance to score some additional points.

The Search for Planet X captures the thrill of discovery, the puzzle-y nature of astronomical investigation, and the competition inherent in the scientific process. Can you be the first to find Planet X?

Target Ages: 13+
Expected Time: 60-75 Minutes
Complexity to Learn: 6/10
From: Foxtrot Games

The night is still, cloudless and dark. An oasis of interstellar magic lies beyond the stratosphere: countless stars, burning comets, planets, ivory moons, nebulae, and perhaps even a beastly black hole or two. It’s all up there for the finding. At the Royal Hinterland Observatory, endless elaborate sky formations are within reach of discovery — but you have to lay claim before your fellow astronomers nab the glory for themselves. StarFall is a clever game of wits, bidding, and quick thinking in which the aim is to obtain the most impressive portfolio of cosmic curiosities.

Target Ages: 13+
Expected Time: 30 Minutes
Complexity to learn: 4/10
From: IDW Games

Welcome aboard and congrats on the promotion! Your “new” starship is ready to embark on its first big voyage. Just scrape off some of the rust, and she’ll do fine. And that crew? Might look a little green around the edges, but they’re your crew now. Make us proud.

The stars are calling…and adventure awaits!

As newly promoted Starship Captains, players are in command of their first starship and hungry to prove themselves in a galaxy full of space pirates, grumpy old androids, ancient artifacts, and interplanetary adventures.

In this 1-4 player Eurostyle game, which mixes action selection and engine building, you’ll manage a diverse crew of cadets, ensigns, androids, and officers — each with different special roles and capabilities. By earning medals, you can promote and train your crew for even greater effectiveness. Similarly, you can upgrade your ship with powerful engine building technology for maximum synergy.

What will you do with this enhanced crew and ship? Explore an ever-shifting galaxy full of dangerous pirates and interplanetary missions in order to boost your reputation with three distinct galactic factions for bountiful rewards.

Do you have what it takes to deftly command your crew and become the best captain in the cosmos? We’ll see!

Target Ages: 12+
Expected Time: 40-100 Minutes
Complexity to learn: 5/10
From: Czech Games Edition

Stuffed Fables is an unusual adventure game in which players take on the roles of brave stuffies seeking to save the child they love from a scheming, evil mastermind. Make daring melee attacks, leap across conveyor belts, or even steer a racing wagon down a peril-filled hill. The game delivers a thrilling narrative driven by player choices. Players explore a world of wonder and danger, unlocking curious discoveries. The chapters of Stuffed Fables explore the many milestones of a child’s life, creating a memorable tale ideal for families, as well as groups of adults who haven’t forgotten their childlike sense of wonder.

Stuffed Fables is the first “AdventureBook Game”, a new product line from Plaid Hat Games in which all of the action takes place in the unique storybook — a book that acts as your rules reference, story guide, and game board, all in one! Each adventure in the game takes place over several pages of the immersive AdventureBook. The book opens flat onto the table to reveal a colorful map or other illustration central to playing the game, with choices, story, and special rules on the opposite page.

On their turn, a player draws five dice from the bag. The colors of the dice drawn determine the types of actions and options available to the player. White dice can re-stuff stuffies injured in battle. Red dice perform melee attacks while green dice perform ranged attacks. Yellow dice search while blue dice are used for special actions and purple dice can be used as any color. Most dice can always find a strategic use, including moving, using items, or contributing to group tasks. Players can store dice for later, combine dice for stronger actions, or use them one-at-a-time for multiple activations. As turns go by, black dice are also drawn, and after enough appear, minions emerge or attack, and the dice bag is reset!

Players can encourage each other by sharing dice or their precious stuffing. In addition to fighting minions, each page of the storybook offers numerous points of interest, charming characters to interact or trade with, as well as many unusual challenges. And each page is but one chapter that folds into a branching, overarching story with a multitude of items and a special discovery deck full of surprises.

Target Ages: 7+
Expected Time: 60-90 Minutes
Complexity to learn: 5/10
From: Plaid Hat Games

The T.I.M.E Agency protects humanity by preventing temporal faults and paradoxes from threatening the fabric of our universe. As temporal agents, you and your team will be sent into the bodies of beings from different worlds or realities to successfully complete the missions given to you. Failure is impossible, as you will be able to go back in time as many times as required.

T.I.M.E Stories is a narrative game, a game of “decksploration”. Each player is free to give their character as deep a “role” as they want, in order to live through a story, as much in the game as around the table. But it’s also a board game with rules which allow for reflection and optimization.

At the beginning of the game, the players are at their home base and receive their mission briefing. The object is then to complete it in as few attempts as possible. The actions and movements of the players will use Temporal Units (TU), the quantity of which depend on the scenario and the number of players. Each attempt is called a “run”; one run equals the use of all of the Temporal Units at the players’ disposal. When the TU reach zero, the agents are recalled to the agency, and restart the scenario from the beginning, armed with their experience. The object of the game is to make the perfect run, while solving all of the puzzles and overcoming all of a scenario’s obstacles.

You usually take possession of local hosts to navigate in a given environment, but who knows what you’ll have to do to succeed? Roam a med-fan city, looking for the dungeon where the Syaan king is hiding? Survive in the Antarctic while enormous creatures lurk beneath the surface of the ice? Solve a puzzle in an early 20th century asylum? That is all possible, and you might even have to jump from one host to another, or play against your fellow agents from time to time.

The base box contains the entirety of the T.I.M.E Stories system and allows players to play all of the scenarios, the first of which — Asylum — is included. During a scenario, which consists of a deck of 120+ cards, each player explores cards, presented most often in the form of a panorama. Access to some cards require the possession of the proper item or items, while others present surprises, enemies, riddles, clues, and other dangers. An insert allows players to “save” the game at any point, to play over multiple sessions, just like in a video game. This way, it’s possible to pause your ongoing game by preserving the state of the receptacles, the remaining TU, the discovered clues, etc.

Target Ages: 12+
Expected Time: 90 Minutes
Complexity to learn: 5/10
From: Space Cowboys

Timeline is a card game where each card depicts a historical event, invention or discovery on both sides, with the year in which that event occurred, invention or discovery was made on only one side. Players take turns placing a card from their hand in a row on the table. After placing the card, the player reveals the date on it. If the card was placed correctly with the date in chronological order with all other cards on the table, the card stays in place; otherwise the card is removed from play and the player takes another card from the deck.

The first player to get rid of all his cards by placing them correctly wins. If multiple players go out in the same round, then everyone else is eliminated from play and each of those players are dealt one more card for another round of play. If only one player has no cards after a bonus round, he wins; otherwise play continues until a single player goes out.

Target Ages: 8+
Expected Time: 15 Minutes
Complexity to learn: 2/10
From:Asmodee

Recruit a Party. Kill the Monsters. Take Their Stuff!

Tomb pits opponents against one another in a game of monsters, traps, treasures, and spells. Attempts to capture the dungeon crawl experience without hours of preparation. Assemble a crack squad of adventurers and enter the fabled Goldenaxe Catacombs in search of glory and hidden treasure. With Tomb’s unique set-up and character recruitment, you’ll never play the same game twice.

Target Ages: 12+
Expected Time: 60 Minutes
Complexity to learn: 5/10
From: Alderac Entertainment Group

 

Wordsmithery is dead easy. Guess the meaning of word. All 700 of our words are exactly the kind of words that you pretend to understand…when you don’t. Words like egregious, phalanx and salubrious. Don’t worry. You get three possible – and fun – definitions to choose from. First to ten points wins. Over to you.

Game for 2 players or teams. On each turn a player draws a word, reads it to their opponent, and the opponent attempts to guess the meaning from three options. Each correct guess is two points, first one to ten wins.

Target Ages: 7+
Expected Time: 20 Minutes
Complexity to learn: 2/10
From: Clarendon Games

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