I wanted to share with you all the story of the evolution of Forage - a puzzly roll-and-write game about foraging in the Pacific Northwest! Molly, Robb, and I have been designing and publishing games together for almost ten years and we wanted to share some of our process in working through the design and also the development that happens with the Flatout Games CoLab team that we founded!
Why design a game like Forage? What inspired us?
Our core design team (Molly Johnson, Robert Melvin, and Shawn Stankewich) really enjoy roll and write games. From playing a lot of Yahtzee as kids and getting pretty Ganz Schön Clever(Wolfgang Warsch) obsessed a few years ago, we typically play most roll and write games that come out. One game that really made an impression a few years ago was Silver and Gold (designed by Phil Walker-Harding). The game uses dry erase cards, which felt like a novel inclusion in the roll and write design space. So many roll and write games have sheets of paper which generally feel quite static. One of the fun things about card games is the combinatorial variety you get. Our team has always gravitated towards tableau-building games for this reason. One of our first designs, Point Salad, boiled tableau-building and drafting down to their essences, creating a super simple game that still feels new and different every time you play it. When we started working on a ‘writing-on-cards’ roll and write game, we had just finished making the two Cascadia: Rolling games (designed by Randy Flynn and developed by the Flatout Games CoLab team). Molly and I did a lot of development on that title and I designed aspects of the solo mode and one of the main maps for Cascadia: Rolling Hills. From that work, we had some leftover ideas that we thought might be fun to do in another game in the roll and write genre.
We are primarily based in the Pacific Northwest and are often thinking about games we can theme around this geographic area. The idea of using dice in a foraging game made sense based on the act of going out into the wilderness and trying to see what you can find. We had found the combination of mechanics and theme that we wanted to explore!
What is Forage?
Forage is a roll and write game with dry erase cards used to collect items and score prestige points on an ever-changing tableau. It is played over 13 rounds. At the start of each round you roll and sort the dice. All eight dice are rolled and arranged into groups: multiples on one side, all the singles on the other, and the Special Foraging Die in the basket in the centre. This die can be added to any of the actions. In addition, each round a Journey Tile is flipped over. Journey Tiles are ways to use your time (the currency in the game) to collect bonuses, pull off combos, or gain more points.
Forage - final game - a lot of evolution from initial concept!
Once the dice are rolled and sorted and the Journey Tile is revealed, players simultaneously choose which dice they will use that round to complete actions - earning them points and leading to sometimes very powerful combos. There is no limit to the number of players who can take each combination, so the game scales really well from 1-6 players and the simultaneous play helps keep the game moving at a good pace. Certain die combinations offer players certain actions with certain resources. Although sometimes an action may allow you to use more dice, those dice might not be quite what you need, so you have to balance getting more stuff with getting the stuff that will help you reach your goals. This leads to tense moments, especially since the game is only 13 rounds!
One unique aspect of the game is that the type of group of dice you choose dictates which actions you are able to perform.
Dice sorted and ready to be selected
In Forage, there are a lot of modular systems and moving parts. It certainly made it more of a challenge to balance and design because of the different permutations and combinations of different cards and bonuses that players can collect.
Many design challenges were hashed out through iteration and the killing of darlings.
Since the core system has so many moving parts, a lot of iteration happened throughout the design process.
The very first playtest of Forage - using standard D6 dice and some basic sheets for tracking
The earliest versions of the game used sheets instead of cards for many forms of tracking/progress in the game
The first prototype was one large map card, a larger version of what is now found only on the Exploration Cards, and a large inventory card which included what is now found on the Pantry Cards. There were still other goal cards, but there wasn’t a three-part system in place.
As the game evolved, the sheets got broken up into cards so that the tracking/progress space was more modular and dynamic
The design continued to evolve from larger cards and sheets to smaller cards in larger quantities
It took playtesting and development to create a balanced experience with multiple paths to victory. As mentioned before, the single sheet felt static and as we started to explore the different ‘mini-games’ we wanted players to be able to play with the dice, we realized that separating these onto their own cards and giving players a choice of which systems to engage with as the game evolved would be more interesting.
One happy accident from playtesting was that one night we accidentally played a few rounds with one more die than we had been previously. This ended up making resources a bit more abundant and it meant that you could complete cards more easily. The error ended up making a positive change, so we stuck with it.
We had a lot of debate about the core dice system and the different actions using different types of combinations of dice. This system as it stands, admittedly, takes some getting used to. After trying a version where any combination of dice could be used on any card type, it was clear that it didn’t quite have the same tension. In development we figured out how to use the game setup (largely the central basket card) to help reinforce the rules of the game. The way dice are allocated on the basket card acts a central player aid to remind players the types of actions that can be carried out on each type of card.
Early prototype of the dice allocation and 'journeys' systems being tested
One of the biggest challenges in a game with simultaneous play is deciding when the game will ‘gate’ play so that all players need to ‘catch up’ to be at the same place in terms of completing each phase or round. The number of different phases in Forage fluctuated a bit before settling on a simple round structure where dice are rolled and tiles are flipped and there is a short resolution phase if an immediate Journey Tile action comes up, then players have the full round to make their decisions and pull off combos, etc. Then, to signify completion, everyone takes a card and plays it facedown in front of them. This helped to create a cue for when everyone at the table was ready to move on to the next phase.
Playtesting and refining the elements of the game
There was also a lot of balancing of numbers between all of the different scoring and bonus systems in the game. Because we had three distinctly different card types, a Journey system, and shared race goals that encourage players to complete certain things the fastest, there was a lot of work to find the right balance so that no one part of the system presented a dominant strategy or exploitable pattern of play. It was more challenging than some of our other games because despite being pretty simple, this game has a lot of moving parts, so getting them all to work together didn’t come immediately. Thankfully, the Flatout Games CoLab development team loves this kind of work and we were able to get things really balanced within a few months of weekly playtests.
Testing out the nearly final prototype copy with a quick solo game
What makes Forage unique?
We think Forage feels unique because of its weight class. Although pretty easy to teach, the game has a lot of thinkiness that you don’t always find in the lighter games of this genre. We also wanted to bring our own brand of design to the genre and we think this is a roll and write game that feels very ‘Flatout Games’ with many different scoring systems to entice you in different directions each time you play. The game serves up some big turns that allow you to use your resources to pull off very satisfying combos! Beth Sobel’s artwork also helps enhance the experience, making each card you collect feel like a thematic addition to your unique tableau. Forage is heavier than Qwixx or Ganz Schön Clever, but lighter than Three Sisters or Hadrian’s Wall, so we think it fits a really nice niche as a gateway to gateway plus game. As with all of our games, we tried to make a game that we love playing and is challenging for us, but has a really simple core so that new players can get up and playing in no time!
Thanks for reading and hope you get a chance to play Forage and see what you think of all of the interwoven systems, combos, and dynamic tableaus!
The team at Board gave us the chance to cover their initial push late last year, and now that the platform is pushing out a new game every month, it’s been much easier to get my kids to join me at the table to check out the new wares. (If you’ve never heard of Board or need a quick overview of its features, check out our product review of the Board electronic device.)
Now that Board is fully up and running, new games are coming to market every month. We asked the Board team if we could continue covering new content, and they have been kind enough to oblige. Luckily, I have two children (ages 12 and 9) who loved the initial batch of games and are constantly looking for new ways to engage with the platform.
Once a quarter, I’ll offer thoughts on the newest batch of releases—both community-designed games as well as centralized releases from the Board development team, using a review style similar to our regular Quick Peaks coverage. Enjoy! (All images here were provided by the Board marketing team.)
The Heist
After spending almost two months playing Board regularly on our living room table over the previous holiday season, the lack of new…
Exit: The Game has been synonymous with “escape room” in my circle, and though there are many similar contenders (just look at your local Walmart/Target games aisle!), Exit continues to be the gold standard for the experience.
Amazingly, so many can be cranked out so quickly with various themes and still keep the puzzles fresh. At least, I would assume so. I can’t say I’m an Exit die-hard; I’ve only played a few of them, so I can’t attest to every iteration’s uniqueness, but I’ve felt that each puzzle was wildly different from all the others I’ve played.
EXIT: The Game – The Circus Mystery has players solving a string of heists, with the common denominator being that a certain circus is in town. The components immediately jump out at you as you assemble a number of 3D trapeze artists, strange swords, and a foldable magician’s assistant. The premise sends players on a quest to explore the different circus performers’ wagons in hopes of solving the ultimate whodunnit.
Without going into spoilers, I had a great time with the puzzles. It follows the same formula of figuring out a three-digit code and then using a decoder wheel to search the answer deck and test your theories. Like past…
I’m not that crazy about polyomino games, but Rebuilding Chicago is the kind of thing I like—razor sharp. I think that that sharpness decreases at lower player counts, but at four players, our game was over in 20 minutes with a point spread of 50. The schtick of this one is that you can either lay the polyominos in your little city board or activate an event that affects everyone. So, you’re constantly seeing how little you can do to edge out opponents, and they’re doing the same with you. Multiple times during our game, an event resolution would result in someone scoring 15-20 points, with someone else getting nothing. It’s got an enormous amount of variability, and for my money, I’d happily polyomino Chicago any time.
Ease of entry? ★★★★☆ - The odd bump or two Would I play it again? ★★★★☆ - Would like to play it again
I don’t know about you, but I’m always rationalizing why I need to buy another board game. It’s even better when someone else does it for me, so I’m here to help you with that. If you’re not familiar with the term STEM, it stands for Science, Technology, Engineering, and Mathematics. Every toy store has […]
The first game by Shadowbourne Games, Oathsworn: Into the Deepwood, has become one of my favourite story-based adventure and combat games, so I was surprised to see their next game was a more traditional Euro-style area control and card management game, albeit with heavy theme, miniatures, and lots of colour. So much colour! Avalon: The Riven Veil is a little too colourful for my taste, so much so that sometimes the illustrations feel like they’re shouting while the text and icons struggle to be heard.
It’s an impressive game nonetheless which I’m sure will be very popular with those who love to get very deep into strategies and card play, but sadly it left me a bit cold. While I appreciated the systems – the variety of actions controlled by cards, paying for cards with other cards, placing settlements to anchor regions, the reset of the board each season of play, bidding for monster control, even the slightly arbitrary push-your-luck combat mini-game – I was left feeling that any theme could have been pasted on this one. When it boils down it’s dudes-on-a-map area control, which is not a favourite style of mine. And there are quite a lot of fiddly rules in the pretty rough rulebook. But I insist, in this case don’t let my personal opinion out you off: I can see a lot of people getting into this game and enjoying the many possibilities offered by the asymmetric factions.
It’s interesting to see Shadowbourne go in such a different direction for this second release, and I’m looking forward to seeing what they come up with next. In the meantime, here’s my rules summary and reference for Avalon: The Riven Veil.
Oh, and by the way, this is my 500th rules & reference. FIVE HUNDRED! It’s staggering to think I’ve made so many in the last 20 or so years, and nice to reach this significant milestone.
Starlight Quartet is a game from Hong Kong, designed by Hims Chu and
published by Capstone (Hong Kong). It is an abstract game for 2 to 4
players.
You start with nine empty tiles arranged in a 3x3 grid. Every player has his
own token colour. On your turn, you must place one of your tokens on a tile,
then move that tile somewhere else. To win, you need to
What a long day! Made up mostly of travel but I’m exhausted. We left my house this morning at 8:30am via an Uber to the airport where we made it through security and to our gate for a 10:15am flight from Indianapolis to Chicago where we transferred over with a 2-hour layover to a 1:30pm flight to Columbia, South Carolina.
We landed in Columbia at 4:30pm, grabbed our luggage and picked up our rental car to make the 35 minute drive to Camden, South Carolina on I-20.
We checked into the hotel and made our way over to the Camden Revolutionary War Visitor Center for the opening social event where we gathered with about 60 fellow wargamers who have all made the effort to travel here to play games over their weekend and also to tour the historic sites in and around Camden. If you didn’t know, Camden was pivotal to the story of the Southern Campaign during the American Revolutionary War with two battles fought within 6 miles of each other, bracketing the British occupation of the town. The Battle of Camden in 1780 was a decisive British victory that crushed the American Southern Army and brought disgrace to American General Horatio Gates. The Battle of Hobkirk’s Hill in 1781 was a British tactical victory that proved to be a strategic defeat.
Lord Charles Cornwallis’ Headquarters in Camden during the British occupation.
The British redoubt at Camden that has been restored.
We were able to catch up with lots of viewers of our videos and friends we have known for a long time as well as several designers, including Sam London and Justin Fassino. I also got a chance to chat with Gene Billingsley from GMT Games for about 30 minutes on a number of topics including gaming, publishing games, life and the event. I want to say that I took this opportunity to beg Gene to see about making a Deluxe Edition of Here I Stand as they have done with other games such as Combat Commander and For the People with new updated art, components and boards. He was not spilling any beans on the subject and wouldn’t give me an indication if it was either in the works or planned fur the future. Bummer but I made my pitch.
We then had a fantastic introduction on the event and the commemoration of America’s 250th Anniversary from Battles of the American Revolution Series designer Mark Miklos and Gene Billingsley. There were a lot of very touching and patriotic words spoken by these 2 and I truly felt great pride in our nation and the experiment that created it and has kept us strong these past 250 years.
We then were treated to a live artillery firing by local volunteers of a period 1-pounder and it was quite impressive. When it was fired, it was past sunset and quite dark and the explosion was quite impressive and very loud.
Here are 2 videos we took of the firing with one being in real speed and the other in slow motion.
That was our evening and I’m very excited for tomorrow as there is an opening ceremony at 8:30am followed by open gaming. Alexander and I will be playing Oriskany, which is a bonus game included in Newtown from the American Revolution Tri-Pack #2, followed by a 4-player game of Liberty or Death. The evening will conclude with a group dinner.
This weekend, just a few days before yesterday’s Braided Skies reveal, Stonemaier Games hosted its 13th annual Design Day. On Sunday, the Design Day itself featured designers, playtesters, and gamers from St. Louis and around the country for 12+ hours of playtesting and gaming at Pieces Board Game Bar and Cafe.
The purpose of Design Day is to bring together designers, playtesters, and content creators to give and receive feedback on game prototypes, expand their network within the gaming community, and learn from clever mechanisms in published games. If you’d like to know details about how the day is structured, you can read about previous Design Days here, here, here,here, here, here, here, here, here, here, and here.
Why We Run This Event
On paper, the event doesn’t make much sense. We’re not promoting anything. There’s really no focus on Stonemaier Games at all. To put it simply, Design Day is just something we like doing.
We like doing it for the designers, the playtesters and gamers, and the content creators. The creative energy is palpable and inspiring, and it seems to be a worthwhile, joyous experience for attendees. I’m also on the lookout for future Stonemaier products (so far we’ve published four games that appeared at Design Day), but I’m mostly just trying to be helpful to other creators and maybe help them find the right publisher.
How Does Design Day Work?
We opened most ticket sales in the spring to past attendees (around 80 tickets), then sold the remaining 30 tickets to people who signed up for a back-in-stock notification (you can use this year’s listing to get a notification for 2027). We added a few extra people this year, though there are space and noise limitations we are mindful of. We charged $45-55 per ticket, which accounts for about 40% of the total food/beverage/space cost for the day (Stonemaier covers the rest).
Joe sent an email each month containing new information and an actionable step for attendees. The most complicated step is creating the calendar of events, which requires us to consider game length, player count, table size, etc.
We share and participate in casual, optional activities on Saturday. People travel great distances to Design Day, so we try to offer a full weekend of activities for those who want it. One local attendee, Melissa, is always very kind to open up her home for a gaming evening, and some attendees visit friends or sightsee in St. Louis. It’s also become a tradition to introduce attendees to disc golf; this year around 30 people participated on a hot afternoon at Crestwood Park. Designer Ben Rosset also ran a Q&A about game design and manufacturing in the morning, and Paul Salomon (Gamehead Games) ran a playtesting event on Saturday evening.
Pieces Board Game Bar and Cafe provided the space, food, and drinks (and access to their huge game collection). This was our second year at Pieces’ new, bigger location, and it’s still great! The tables are much more spread out, and nearly every table is wheelchair accessible. Pieces serves their delicious homemade cookies throughout the day, and attendees optionally enjoyed their delicious gaming-themed mocktails and cocktails. Pieces has its busiest day on Saturday (and Saturday is a very busy day in that area of St. Louis), hence why Design Day is on Sunday. We use a buffet format for meals: Bagels and muffins for breakfast, poke bowls for lunch, and a nacho bar for dinner. There are veggies and gluten-free options at every meal.
The schedule of the day is preset. People sign up for tables in advance (we guarantee that each designer who signs up in advance will get to playtest their game at least twice, and we ask designers to share rulebooks in advance for attendees to peruse). It’s very structured. We never interrupt the day with announcements, and every game ran on schedule. Attendees were also flexible for games that ended early or when the designers didn’t show up–they simply picked another game to play.
A mix of unsigned prototypes, to-be-published/crowdfunded prototypes, and a few published games were played, with the intent being that each can inform the experiences of the other. There’s this great mindset of talking about game design from all angles throughout the day.
Playtesters optionally filled out a short form (created by Hilda Vazquez) after each playtest to give to the designer.
I spent most of the day observing various games, checking in with designers and playtesters, and trying to have a few minutes of quality time with each attendee.
How Were the Games?
I truly am inspired and awestruck by the creativity, innovation, and vulnerability of the designers at this event. Everyone puts a lot of work into these games, and I loved listening to the constructive interactions between designers and playtesters.
Design Day isn’t a competition, but as a way of helping designers see how far along their games are, we ask attendees to rate each game on a 1-6 scale indicating how close a game is to being publishable.
Based on this rating scale–basically, how close they are to being a successful publishable game–here are the top-rated games of Design Day 2026, with brief descriptions in the words of the designers:
Alchemists of Avalon by Tyson Gajewski (5.8): Mancala, resource manipulation, drafting, contracts
Among Mortals by Brendan Hansen (5.5): Card game with a shared board. Area Control, Hand Management, Variable Powers, Hidden Affinities
Puzzle Factory by Ben Rosset (5.5): Worker Placement, Puzzle-making, Partial Simultaneous Play
Moominos by Hilda Vazquez (5.4): Card/Tile drafting, Thinky-puzzle, Set Collection
Delvers of Deepgate by Clayton Smith (5.17): Tower Defense Dungeon Dive
The Royal Tent by Heather Dixon (5.17): Shared Engine Building, Rondel, Contract Fulfillment, Variable End-Game Trigger
Treat Street by Jacob Gentrup (5.11): Series of mini card games
Top Flight by Kyle Boyer (5.07): Push your luck racing
Aragonite by Wes Kendall (5.06): Pattern block-laying, trick-taking, bag-building, engine-building
Synchrony by Austin Bailey & Jason Jones (5.04): Ephemeral engine and tableau-building, asymmetric set collection, time-as-a-resource
Other games rated 5.00 on average were Dice Rogue (Joe Totherow), Franchise Wars (Pete Wissinger), Magic Tricks (Chris Porter), and Pips (Ben Morayta).
If publishers are curious to learn more about some of these games, I’m happy to talk to you about them and connect you to the designers (if they’re looking for a publisher)!
Next Year
If you want to attend Design Day next year, you can use this year’s listing to get a notification for 2027, and if there are any extra slots, we’ll likely announce them in our April e-newsletter.
Have you found value in running or attending events related to your industry? As alternatives to Design Day, there are Protospiel, Unpub, and other playtest events around the country, including some at Geekway to the West in St. Louis in May.
Huge demand for Asmodee‘s co-operative puzzle game Take Time has seen the publishing giant print more than 325,000 copies less than a year after release – outstripping even the company’s high expectations which surrounded its record-breaking launch.
Asmodee printed a massive 145,000 copies of Alexi Piovesan and Julien Prothière’s design for its worldwide launch last October, citing heavy enthusiasm from its distribution teams, board game media and pre-release playtesters.
Game line manager Auguste Lecoeur told BoardGameWire, “As soon as the game’s prototype was shown to us and signed, it became an internal priority, with resources and manpower being redirected from other projects to Take Time.
“Huge credit goes to everyone involved in the project for getting it done so quickly while maintaining such a high level of quality, especially considering that the game went through only around six months of visual development.
“When the game was first presented to Asmodee’s distribution units and partners, the enthusiasm was immediate as well, with Take Time being flagged as a key new release for Libellud.
“The same enthusiasm was shared by media outlets and players that were able to test the game prior to its release, so we had multiple positive signals ahead of launch.
“In that sense, we were definitely expecting a strong first print run, but you can never realistically expect to reach 145,000 copies. It was a very pleasant surprise and clearly exceeded our expectations, even though we were prepared for strong numbers.”
Every major reprint of the game since has topped 60,000 copies, Lecoeur said, with Asmodee currently planning another two to three global print runs of the same size each every year to keep up with demand.
Lecoeur said, “At this point, it is clear that Take Time won’t be a ‘one-hit wonder’, a game that enjoys a high initial print run but then quickly fades. Instead, the game is maintaining a strong sales pace and continues to perform well across markets.”
He added, “The game gained strong visibility and positive feedback at conventions such as Cannes’ FIJ and Spiel Essen, while also achieving higher-than-usual numbers online, thanks in part to its visual appeal and the buzz surrounding it.
“More broadly, the game was quickly validated by the core and specialist market, as well as by opinion leaders, critics and content creators within the board game community. It received strong critical acclaim – it is now ranked [in] the top 95 family games on BGG – and was nominated for multiple awards, which played a huge part in its success.
“Sure, we would have loved to win the As d’Or and Spiel des Jahres (who wouldn’t?), but I guess we’re being picky here!”
Success Story
Part of the game’s powerful performance has been down to it penetrating well beyond the specialist board games market, with Asmodee saying its distribution is now relatively evenly split between hobby stores, mass-market retailers and e-commerce.
Lecoeur said, “I’m convinced that this wouldn’t have been possible if the game hadn’t first been embraced by the core gaming community. Their strong support and enthusiasm for the game helped open the door to other distribution channels much more quickly.”
He added that part of Take Time’s wider appeal was down to the game’s compact size and “accessible price point”, as well as its “high level of replayability and substantial gameplay content”.
Those first two elements have become increasingly important amid ongoing financial strain for people in some of Asmodee’s core markets, such as France, Germany, the UK and US, with rising food and energy prices and ongoing economic uncertainty putting pressure on their purchases.
Take Time || Photo Credit: Asmodee
Other successful initiatives which helped boost Take Time’s appeal included what Lecoeur described as an “unusual” cardboard demo kit, with detachable cards and clocks, which could be ordered by distribution units to give players a taste of the game’s core mechanisms.
He said the kit “generated strong enthusiasm at launch”, but added that the format was not something which could be replicated for every one of its releases.
Award nominations also helped drive sales, especially in Germany and France, which Lecoeur said had been two of the strongest markets for the game from day one.
He said Take Time’s Spiel des Jahres recommendation was followed by a higher-than-usual reprint demand from Germany of 30,000 copies – and added that the impact of other ‘smaller’ awards “should not be overlooked”.
Lecoeur also believes Take Time benefitted from the success of Libellud’s previous release Harmonies, which also picked up a Spiel des Jahres recommendation and the Swiss Gamers Award, as well as a Golden Geek – and was highlighted by Asmodee CEO Thomas Koegler as having had a strong launch.
Lecoeur said, “The fact that Libellud’s previous release, Harmonies, had been a hit certainly helped. It raised expectations around the studio’s next title and put the spotlight on its launch.
“It’s clear that each publisher develops its own reputation and ‘brand’ image based on its releases (among other things) and that this plays a significant role in the confidence they receive from retailers and, to some extent, from players.
“The success or failure of each release will inevitably have an impact on the games that follow, particularly when it comes to forecasts and initial orders.”
Time After Time
Asmodee is now beginning to turn Take Time into a wider product line, with debut expansion Mirage set for release next month, and the company having “many more ideas we’re currently working on for the range”.
Lecoeur said, “As soon as we received the first feedback on the game and it became clear that the launch was going to be massive, the first discussions about an expansion began in April 2025 with Alexi Piovesan and Julien Prothière, the game’s designers, to explore the possibilities for additional content.
Take Time: Mirage
“They worked on it and presented an iteration that led to a contract being signed in November 2025, as the first market feedback started coming in and multiple markets were selling out.
“However, this timeline was only possible because the designers were fully confident that the game offered enough design space to support an expansion, and because they presented an idea that genuinely excited the team, both mechanically and thematically.
“We’re not releasing expansions simply for the sake of releasing them or to get a marketing boost. If an expansion is published, it’s because we believe it genuinely adds something to the game and offers players a meaningful new experience.”
He added, “Mirage’s format also played an important role. It is a compact expansion, with a €7.99 MSRP, that introduces a new chapter while also adding a new gameplay twist that can be used to replay the entire base game in a different way.
“It isn’t a large expansion that takes up a significant amount of shelf space in stores or represents a massive financial commitment; instead, it is designed to complement the base game and extend the experience without overshadowing it. Its difficulty is also carefully tuned so that players can enjoy the expansion even if they haven’t finished the base game.
“Regarding expansions and product lines, there is a balance to strike between fully trusting your game and not overcommitting. You want to anticipate demand for expansions and reprints in order to avoid out-of-stock situations or a lack of releases and support that could hurt a game’s prospects in the medium to long-term.
“At the same time, a game needs to demonstrate commercial stability before being turned into a full-fledged product line and treated as such.
“It’s no secret that overproducing a game is one of the easiest ways for a publisher to get into financial trouble, and we’re doing our best to avoid that. We want to support successful games and build on their potential while remaining disciplined about production and inventory.”
A Board Game Arena version of the base game is also due for release in Q4 of this year.
There’s a level of chaos that appears when a player’s turn is up in the new word-association party game Mind Sweeper (2026, Floodgate).
You see, players are staring at a table that has like 50 small cardboard tokens scattered here and there, from easy visuals (like one of those Egyptian-style pyramids, or a sword, or an apple) to some that are a bit opaque, like a single exclamation point. The active player is dealt a card with six words, and separately a number token forcing the player to illustrate a specific word (using those tokens) over the next 60 seconds.
Get your team to guess what the word is, and you score the card. Players can shout anything as soon as the timer starts, adding to the chaos. If they don’t get the word in those 60 seconds, the active player flips the word card in view of all players, then the team gets 60 more seconds to guess which of the six words was the original answer.
Across 10 word cards, you’re looking at a 15-20 minute experience, in a cooperative, high-score challenge that pushes players to get as many of the 10 words right as they can.
The keys here is twofold. Each card’s clue words are…
Surplus of Sloths (2026, Weird Giraffe Games) isn’t bad.
It’s a card drafting game where players try to build a hand of ascending card runs across five different suits of sloths. A market wipe mechanic pushes one leftover market card into a “surplus net” after each round, and players can view and gauge whether it is worth trying to score a suit at the end of the game.
I just gave you 75% of the rules, and designer Charlie McCarron (Skyrockets, the Kites riff I quite enjoyed) has given us a game so quick that my 12-year-old and I played it twice within a 15-minute stretch. Even winning one of those two games didn’t impress the 12-year-old, who shrugged their shoulders before admitting that the game was “only OK” before heading off to their room.
You’re right; that’s not an endorsement. My review crew joined me for a four-player game the following day, and the winner of that game also shrugged their shoulders and landed in the same rating range I landed on for this review.
Surplus of Sloths isn’t bad because its scoring mechanic is interesting. In an ideal world, you want to build up a run of three, four, maybe even five low cards of…
One of my favorite things about the games released under Carla and Nick Kopp’s Weird Giraffe banner: the games are often legitimately weird.
Here’s what I mean. I was explaining the rules to my wife and nine-year-old for our first play of Effervescent (a Carla design currently on crowdfunding, set for release in 2027), and when I tried to explain the main concept of placing sea-based creature tiles in such a way that the tail of a newly-placed tile must touch the head of a previously-placed animal tile, my wife openly balked.
“So, like, this way?” She used a large whale tile as an example.
“Well, sort of,” I began. “Each tile has a head area, a distinct tail point…then, every other part of the tile is a ‘side.’”
“Seems kind of weird,” she said. And our first play went that way, as players took tiles in one of three sizes to create scoring patterns that would trigger with a mix of scoring sequences, tied to “Drift” cards and Harmony cards, the latter of which were established before the game as public milestones that are always available to score.
Turns are simple. Place a tile, and if a placed tile meets a Drift card scoring condition, a player puts…
A fog lingers over our tree, and we are lost in our home. We need to set out and place the last lantern to fend off the fog. *Pause for dramatic effect* *Crickets chirp* *sighs* Last Lantern is a cooperative game with points of limited communication for two to four players that plays in about […]
Financially-troubled board game publisher CMON has secured a $19m injection of new capital as it battles to turn around years of heavy losses and dwindling cash reserves – which had left it with just $368,000 in bank and cash balances at the start of August.
But CMON’s balance sheet remained under pressure at the end of June, with $7.34m more in short-term liabilities than short-term assets, up from $6.89m at the end of 2025.
A significant part of CMON’s liabilities relates to eight crowdfunded games whose campaigns raised $14m from backers, but which the company has yet to deliver – including DC Super Heroes United, which raised more than $4.4m, and DCeased, which brought in over $2.5m.
DC Super Heroes United, designed by Andrea Chiarvesio || Crowdfunding image
CMON’s directors in its H1 report that the liabilities position had caused the company’s directors to give “careful consideration to the future liquidity and performance of the group and its available sources of financing in assessing whether the group will have sufficient financial resources to continue as a going concern”.
The directors added that they believed CMON would be be able to continue operating – but central to that assessment was the success of the planned share sale, which was designed to raise up to HK$150.5m, or about $19m.
Existing shareholders agreed to buy just 7.76% of the new shares offered to them by the August deadline, leaving CMON looking to raise more than $17.5m from other investors through the rights issue – a figure approaching 2.5-times the valuation of the entire company implied by its last share sale in February this year.
But the company has now revealed that placing agent Yuen Meta managed to sell every remaining share on offer, giving the business the full $19m it had been seeking – a significant mark of belief in the beleagured business.
That capital injection is more than 50-times CMON cash balance from early August, and almost double the $9.9m in revenue CMON generated across the whole of last year, although it pales in comparison to the $37m to $45m revenues it posted each year between 2021 and 2024.
CMON said it plans to use 40% of the newly-raised money to fund its day-to-day operations across the next 12 months, including staff costs, royalties, shipping and distribution, professional fees and other administrative and operating expenses.
Of that slice, about 30% – which works out to $2.28m – was set to go towards staff costs including salaries, bonuses and allowances, 30% towards selling and distribution expenses, and 35% towards general administrative and operating expenses, including its sales operation, utilities, insurance, government registration and filing fees, listing fee, repairs and maintenance. The the final 5% was earmarked for paying professional fees
That news could provide some relief to the tens of thousands of backers still waiting for their games via CMON’s heavily-delayed crowdfunding campaigns – although the publisher has not specified exactly how much of the capital will be used to deliver the overdue titles, or whether the capital is enough to ensure all eight will be fulfilled.
Zombicide: White Death
CMON has not completed fulfillment of a crowdfunding project since Zombicide: White Death in mid-2025, but did manage to deliver pre-orders for Cthulhu: Dark Providence, Marvel United: Witching Hour and Dune: Desert War in the first half of this year.
Latest delivery estimate (as of September 24, 2026)
Mordred
$669,976
5,687
July 2023
August 2024
Q4 2026
Masters of the Universe: The Board Game – Clash for Eternia
$719,664
4,182
January 2024
November 2024
Q1 2027
DCeased
$2,564,789
12,787
December 2023
April 2025
Q1 2027
DC Super Heroes United
$4,478,989
14,040
August 2024
August 2025
Q1 2027
God of War
$832,945
4,388
May 2024
June 2025
Q2 2027
Massive Darkness: Dungeons of Shadowreach
$2,854,553
9,842
February 2025
March 2026
Q3 2027
A Song of Ice & Fire: Tactics
$1,886,509
6,406
February 2024
February 2025
Q3 2027
Degenesis: Clan Wars
$339,742
1,232
June 2024
July 2025
n/a
Total Dollars
$14,347,167
About 20% of CMON’s newly-raised capital is earmarked for repaying debts and other outstanding liabilities, including $2.46m owed to a CMON director and $385,000 of unsecured advances from employees, as well as outstanding production, shipping, royalty and other operating costs.
CMON has slated 25% of the new money for expansion in existing and new markets, including strengthening the company’s presence in Europe through marketing and potential attendance at events including Spiel Essen and Cannes, as well as targeting growth in Japan and the Philippines.
The company added that it plans to put 15% of the new capital towards potential acquisitions as part of a push into digital gaming, although said it had not yet identified any targets.
CMON said it intends to look for between one and three businesses, primarily in Asia-Pacific, valued at between about $1.3m and $2.5m each, which could help it develop digital adaptations of its existing games, companion apps and other digitally-enabled features.
The publisher stressed that it intends to retain physical tabletop games as its core business, with the digital push designed to complement rather than replace them.
CMON’s capital raise has also radically reshaped the ownership of the company, with chairman and CEO Ng Chern Ann ceasing to be the largest shareholder after his overall stake was diluted down from about 20% to just over 5%.
The capital raise has made investor Yip Ka Ki Cherry CMON’s largest disclosed shareholder with a roughly 19% stake, personally and via her investment holding company Legend One.
Yip was already an investor in CMON before the rights issue, with a stake of about 4.8%. Her other previous investments through Legend One include Japanese entertainment business TryHard Holdings.
CMON has also strengthened its board following the capital raise, appointing two new independent non-executive directors – veteran financial management, corporate governance and audit executive Chan Ka Kit, and corporate communications, marketing and investor relations specialist Claire Luk.
If you have been following our blog for a while now, you know of my affinity for the history of the American Revolutionary War. I am a proud American, believe deeply in the principles of our land and the Constitution that governs it and am grateful to God every single day that our country was successful in our fight for its freedom in order to create a better society and to assist all peoples with protecting their “unalienable rights” endowed by a Creator, which include “Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness”. I enjoy playing wargames on the American Revolutionary War and very much enjoy learning about the history and its key battles. There are many out there that feel the same as I do and they have designed lots of these type of games and with 2026 being our 250th Anniversary of the Declaration of Independence, there are events that are planned to celebrate it.
One of which is an event put on by GMT Games and Mark Miklos called Gaming the American Revolution – Camden 250 being held in Camden, South Carolina September 24-27th. The event includes 3 days of gaming centered on American Revolutionary Wargames produced and published by GMT Games but also includes several events, gatherings and historic tours of the Camden Battlefield.
We are attending and at the time of the posting of this are already on a flight on our way to Columbia, South Carolina via a short stop in Chicago, Illinois. We are very much looking forward to the event and have plans to play at least 2 games from the Battles of the American Revolution Tri-Pack II including Newtown and Oriskany, as well as any other opportunity that presents itself. We also are going to participate in the various tours of the Camden Revolutionary War Visitor Center and nearby battlefield and also plan to drive to a few others sites on our way home to the airport namely Waxhaws and Cowpens.
At the end of each day, I will be putting together a short summary of what we did that day at the convention. I would like to keep this to just a few paragraphs with several pictures to give you an idea of the games we played that day, people we talked with and other activities we participated in. We will still work on doing multiple videos as well that will be released on the YouTube Channel over the next few months but this written coverage will supplement the videos. This summary will most likely not be posted until near midnight EST each night so you might be checking it out the next morning which is fine.
Finally, if you are at the event please feel free to find us and say hello. I believe that we are very friendly and accessible and love to make connections with our fans and followers. In fact, we have TPA buttons and stickers to give away so just ask. We also would like to take a picture with you so we can document it in our writings.
Please check back each day for a summary of the days exploits. Thanks for following along.
Because this is a wargaming blog, I am going to share below some of our content we have made regarding AmRev War games for your review:
Enchanted Ivy Designer: Sarah Joshua Publisher: Allplay Players: 1 Age: 10+ Time: 15 minutes Played with review copy provided by publisher Take on the role of Ivy, the courageous new owner of a magical inn. Build your bewitching … Continue reading →
AnmeldenBoard Game Beat LLC | W. Eric Martin
BoardGameGeek News | BoardGameGeek
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Meeple Mountain | The summit of board gaming
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