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It's been another busy week of board game news, with new announcements coming from the likes of Bezier Games, River Horse Games and Catan. We begin however with what could possibly be the biggest board game every made....
World in Flames is back to break your table and your calendar
World in Flames: Collector’s edition comes with a lot of boards, and we don’t mean fold out cardboard. There are four large maps on hard boards, which cover 83cm by 57.4cm each, plus three mini boards, and if you think putting ,4cm is sad, it’s important because the producers of this version want to claim the world record for largest commercial board game. Basically, it’s ideal to be played on your patio…
…except gameplay is so massive you’ll be out there till it rains. Okay, there is an hour long warm up game, but the Global War scenario is estimated at 150 hours. The Kickstarter has done very well, as everyone with plenty of free space joins in, and the whole game to the UK from the Aussie studio is a bit over a hundred, although you might want the deluxe edition instead.
And let’s face it, if you’re playing a 2.27 square foot game over 150 hours, you might as well deluxe it.
Manhattan gets a re-skin
Manhattan won the Spiel des Jahres for Andreas Seyfarth, a man better known for making Puerto Rico a few years later. The original game was about placing blocks to build your own versions of Manhattan’s skyscrapers, with only the top piece claiming the building, and buildings leading into victory points.
Mandoo Games is producing a 2017 re-skin which leaves the gameplay alone but turns Manhattan into a world of brightly coloured towers, i.e. a tropical island and not the real Manhattan Island. As a game it’s not one for wherever cats are lurking, and will be out at Essen.
Bezier Games to back to the were-beasts for new game
Bezier Games really like were-creatures. Yes, creatures, not just wolves, as their new game Werebeasts is full of different types. We’ve been promised werekittens, werewolves and… err… a banana?
It’s an evolution of their social deduction game built around auctions: players bid with food for cards and have to complete matching sets, but if you can guess what someone else is collecting you can evict them from the game.
Action is swift and short, so no one gets bored, and Werebeasts has zoomed past its Kickstarter target and is doing well.
Bezier Games to back to the were-beasts for new game
Bezier Games really like were-creatures. Yes, creatures, not just wolves, as their new game Werebeasts is full of different types. We’ve been promised werekittens, werewolves and… err… a banana?
It’s an evolution of their social deduction game built around auctions: players bid with food for cards and have to complete matching sets, but if you can guess what someone else is collecting you can evict them from the game.Action is swift and short, so no one gets bored, and Werebeasts has zoomed past its Kickstarter target and is doing well.
Is Star Frontiers coming back from the 1980's?
Stranger Things is one of the most visible parts of the ‘stuff from the 80s coming back’ trend, as there’s been a whole raft of nostalgia heavy looks back to the strangest of decades. Now eagle eyed gamers have noticed the US Patent and Trademark Office is considering an application from Evil Hat Productions to gain the Star Frontiers trademark.
Star Frontiers came out in 1982 from TSR, i.e. yet another TSR game that wasn’t as famous as D&D, and then went to Wizards of the Coast, but the trademark lapsed a while ago and… welcome Evil Hat.
It was a sci-fi game illustrated in that tremendous TSR art that crossed all weird borders, but there’s no clue at all what a modern Star Frontiers will look like, if there’s any connection at all.
Catan will be coming to VR
Is Virtual Reality still a thing? That’s probably unfair, but your scribe has lived through the second attempt at VR with the sensation that people are trying too hard to sell us on something that isn’t going to happen. For instance, Experiment 7 have teamed with Klaus Teuber and Asmodee to produce a VR Catan and… I mean… what really is the point?
Teuber is a fan of the experience, as he said: “The first time I saw Catan on the Magic Table, I was fascinated by what VR has to offer… The game I made in our living room with my family 25 years ago in virtual reality? It’s incredible. I never imagined actually stepping into the world of Catan when we first started making cut-outs and dreaming about exploring new lands.”
The release date is Christmas, and here’s a video that explains precisely nothing.
Teuber is a fan of the experience, as he said: “The first time I saw Catan on the Magic Table, I was fascinated by what VR has to offer… The game I made in our living room with my family 25 years ago in virtual reality? It’s incredible. I never imagined actually stepping into the world of Catan when we first started making cut-outs and dreaming about exploring new lands.”
The release date is Christmas, and here’s a video that explains precisely nothing.
The Dark Crystal is coming in board game form
River Horse Games are following up their Labyrinth board game with another excursion into the world of fantasy puppets: Jim Henson’s The Dark Crystal Board Game, aka the one with the scary bird creatures.
Yep, two to four players can divide themselves between the Gelfings or the awesome Skeksis and, well, do some fantasy stuff. There are four miniatures in the basic set, and it’ll be out later this year. If you haven’t seen Dark Crystal, you really, really must.
Raxxon gets a non viral release date
There’s every chance you’ve heard of Raxxon, a game set in the zombie fuelled universe of Dead of Winter, where you’re trying to rescue survivors from a collapsing city. Plaid Hat, the company behind it, used a viral marketing technique to fuel interest by being almost literally viral: you had to get invited by someone else who’d got a copy. Cue pandemonium.
However, the end of the game is in sight and you can stop faffing about on social media and just actually buy it in October 2017. Raxxon also comes with two new cards for Dead of Winter.