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Published — 17. Juni 2026 BoardGameGeek News | BoardGameGeek

Party Crashers? No Worry! These New Games Handle 6+ Players!

by Steph Hodge

How about some games that will play with a higher player count? Here are a whole bunch of releases coming soon that will handle 6 or more players!

[imageid=9389228 medium rep]▪️ Synapses Games announced Medium: The Hand of Fate to be released Q3 2026. This will be able to combine with any previous Medium game you currently have. This game handles 2-8 players and is designed by Danielle Deley (Medium, That Old Wallpaper) and Nathan Thornton (Green Team Wins, Medium, That Old Wallpaper). This is a new standalone title.

From the announcement:
In Medium: The Hand of Fate, players team up in rotating pairs, each playing a word card and then attempting to say the exact same connecting word out loud, together, at the same time. Two optional modules — ESP cards and the new Prediction system — add layers of strategy, while a dedicated 2-player cooperative mode pits players against the mysterious Madame Fortuna. The game is also fully compatible with all other Medium titles.



▪️ Pandasaurus Games just announced Moustache. Originally published by Lumberjacks Studio in 2025. Now Pandasaurus is bringing us this team-based trick-taking game for 3-6 players. Look for this game at the end of August 2026.

From the newsletter:
In Moustache, you and your fellow players are a cast of gloriously mustachioed animals competing across four chaotic rounds of shifting alliances and evolving rules. Each round, fate assigns your teammates and introduces a new twist to the game. The result is a game that's equal parts charming and cutthroat, with enough chaos to keep everyone at the table guessing.

Moustache is a team-based trick-taking game for 3–6 players that plays in about 20 minutes. Players follow suit to win tricks, with card strength determined first by color (green → pink → orange → blue) and then by value. But nothing stays simple for long! Each round, a new rule card is revealed and stacks onto the previous ones, reshaping how tricks are won and scored. Cards valued at 2 automatically win their trick. Joker cards (the unicorn, monkey, and pigeon) let smaller teams punch above their weight. After 4 rounds, the player with the most points on their trophy tokens wins! And since those tokens are drawn randomly and kept face down, the final score is a surprise right up to the end.



▪️ Gigamic announced a new edition of Panic Lab is set to be released at the end of June 2026. This game was originally released in 2012 and has seen many iterations over the years. It's real-time chaos is back and will host 2-10 players in about a 30-minute playtime!

From the newsletter:
The amoebas have escaped, and it's up to you to catch them! Track them down by rolling the four dice to determine which amoeba you are looking for, and which lab they escaped from.

That sounds easy, but they might change their patterns or colors if they pass through a mutation device. Amoebas can also escape through the air vents as they run away, popping up through the next air vent in the circle!

The first player to lay their hand on the correct amoeba card collects a token, and the first player to collect five tokens wins!

Can you match the correct amoeba before your opponents? Panic Lab is a must-have for people with cool heads, sharp eyes, and fast hands!


▪️ Shapely is a new party game from R&R Games for 3-6 players! Your goal is to arrange your shapes so that other players can guess your word. You can play in just 30 minutes. I believe it is already available.

From the newsletter:
In SHAPELY, players use abstract shapes to create fun images.

To Play: Each player begins with 4 random abstract shapes. The goal is to arrange them as a clue to your secret item.

Then everyone tries to guess the items from the images. (Don't fret... Players do not guess items out of thin air. They only need to pick items from a line-up)


▪️ Finally, we have Who's Next? from Don't Panic Games. A new musical party game for 3-7 players. This is a hand management card game.

From the newsletter:
in Who's Next, everyone takes on the role of a musician in a band trying to hold it together through a concert. Players pass the spotlight around the table by playing Musician cards in the right order, at the right time — while an oral countdown ticks down. Miss your cue, play out of turn, or freeze under pressure, and you earn a Wrong Note. The player with the fewest wrong notes when the music stops wins. What makes Who's Next? stand out is its progressive level system: the base game is learnable in minutes, but six escalating rule layers keep the challenge growing as players get comfortable. It works equally well with kids on a Friday night or with competitive adults who think they have great reflexes. Spoiler: they don't.

Party Crashers? No Worry! These New Games Handle Up To 6+ Players!

by Steph Hodge

How about some games that will play with a higher player count? Here are a whole bunch of releases coming soon that will handle up to 6 or more players!

[imageid=9389228 medium rep]▪️ Synapses Games announced Medium: The Hand of Fate to be released Q3 2026. This will be able to combine with any previous Medium game you currently have. This game handles 2-8 players and is designed by Danielle Deley (Medium, That Old Wallpaper) and Nathan Thornton (Green Team Wins, Medium, That Old Wallpaper). This is a new standalone title.

From the announcement:
In Medium: The Hand of Fate, players team up in rotating pairs, each playing a word card and then attempting to say the exact same connecting word out loud, together, at the same time. Two optional modules — ESP cards and the new Prediction system — add layers of strategy, while a dedicated 2-player cooperative mode pits players against the mysterious Madame Fortuna. The game is also fully compatible with all other Medium titles.



▪️ Pandasaurus Games just announced Moustache. Originally published by Lumberjacks Studio in 2025. Now Pandasaurus is bringing us this team-based trick-taking game for 3-6 players. Look for this game at the end of August 2026.

From the newsletter:
In Moustache, you and your fellow players are a cast of gloriously mustachioed animals competing across four chaotic rounds of shifting alliances and evolving rules. Each round, fate assigns your teammates and introduces a new twist to the game. The result is a game that's equal parts charming and cutthroat, with enough chaos to keep everyone at the table guessing.

Moustache is a team-based trick-taking game for 3–6 players that plays in about 20 minutes. Players follow suit to win tricks, with card strength determined first by color (green → pink → orange → blue) and then by value. But nothing stays simple for long! Each round, a new rule card is revealed and stacks onto the previous ones, reshaping how tricks are won and scored. Cards valued at 2 automatically win their trick. Joker cards (the unicorn, monkey, and pigeon) let smaller teams punch above their weight. After 4 rounds, the player with the most points on their trophy tokens wins! And since those tokens are drawn randomly and kept face down, the final score is a surprise right up to the end.



▪️ Gigamic announced a new edition of Panic Lab is set to be released at the end of June 2026. This game was originally released in 2012 and has seen many iterations over the years. It's real-time chaos is back and will host 2-10 players in about a 30-minute playtime!

From the newsletter:
The amoebas have escaped, and it's up to you to catch them! Track them down by rolling the four dice to determine which amoeba you are looking for, and which lab they escaped from.

That sounds easy, but they might change their patterns or colors if they pass through a mutation device. Amoebas can also escape through the air vents as they run away, popping up through the next air vent in the circle!

The first player to lay their hand on the correct amoeba card collects a token, and the first player to collect five tokens wins!

Can you match the correct amoeba before your opponents? Panic Lab is a must-have for people with cool heads, sharp eyes, and fast hands!


▪️ Shapely is a new party game from R&R Games for 3-6 players! Your goal is to arrange your shapes so that other players can guess your word. You can play in just 30 minutes. I believe it is already available.

From the newsletter:
In SHAPELY, players use abstract shapes to create fun images.

To Play: Each player begins with 4 random abstract shapes. The goal is to arrange them as a clue to your secret item.

Then everyone tries to guess the items from the images. (Don't fret... Players do not guess items out of thin air. They only need to pick items from a line-up)


▪️ Finally, we have Who's Next? from Don't Panic Games. A new musical party game for 3-7 players. This is a hand management card game.

From the newsletter:
in Who's Next, everyone takes on the role of a musician in a band trying to hold it together through a concert. Players pass the spotlight around the table by playing Musician cards in the right order, at the right time — while an oral countdown ticks down. Miss your cue, play out of turn, or freeze under pressure, and you earn a Wrong Note. The player with the fewest wrong notes when the music stops wins. What makes Who's Next? stand out is its progressive level system: the base game is learnable in minutes, but six escalating rule layers keep the challenge growing as players get comfortable. It works equally well with kids on a Friday night or with competitive adults who think they have great reflexes. Spoiler: they don't.

Designer Diary: boop. Shuffle

Von: ia2ca
17. Juni 2026 um 17:50

by Scott Brady

Three years later and I am no better at keeping ongoing notes about my design journey than I was when I penned the Designer Diary for boop. I usually become so focused on my projects that I’ve never found space to step back and write down what works and what doesn’t. Sadly, many of those processes will never be known and I know I’m the one to blame.

I am immensely proud of what we (Smirk & Dagger and I) have accomplished with the release of boop.and its subsequent releases, Boooop. and boop the Halls! With each new edition I wanted to make sure to give the consumers something more than just a cool skin. Each game needed to offer something new and different. Making changes to the tight, elegant gameplay of the original proved much harder than I anticipated. In the end, the right solution for both versions was to introduce unique rule-changing characters and items that supplemented gameplay and didn’t change the core.

Progression of the Brand

We have been discussing the future of the boop. line for some time, wondering if it should ever expand beyond being a true combinatorial abstract game. So far, we had followed the same pattern and still have one more unannounced entry coming in 2027! Don’t worry, it’s not another holiday-themed version. And the gameplay is my personal favorite of the series! I cannot wait to tell the world more!

Conception

In the meantime, I began thinking about how the boop. experience might be utilized in other game types, either by theme or mechanic. I’ve often heard stories about how people made bags for their copies of boop. to make it more portable. I began playing around with the idea of playing cards and what I would need to do to make an official travel version.


It would have been easy enough to just make a 1:1 conversion of boop. into cards with no rule changes. Basically, just a component twist. This would have been the exact opposite of my philosophy above where I wanted it to be more than just a reskin. The game needed to stand on its own with something unique. That’s when the idea hit me – you could play each other’s felines!

How the Game Grew

The cool thing about using cards is you get to shuffle a deck. No longer do you have a choice of what to play, you must play the card drawn. Not only did this mean you didn’t know if you were going to play a cat or kitten, because all the cards are shuffled into one deck (instead of player decks), it meant you could end up playing a cat or kitten of your opponent’s!

Hence the final name – boop. Shuffle!

Talk about an instant strategy change! The mechanics remained the same, but the thought of leaving behind one of your opponent’s cards instead of your own changed the game quite a bit. I also envisioned the bed to be virtual, allowing for play on any surface.


The edges of the bed would shift as the play area filled with cats. I felt this simple change with the deck of cards and virtual bed was the right thing to show to Smirk & Dagger for consideration.

They liked it…kinda…

Rejection?

They agreed it was a great interpretation of the original game, but they wanted more. Their vision of a card game version was less focused towards a classic abstract, but one that had more surprises and thematic elements. I admitted I could see that too.


As any great partner, they came up with several ideas which we ended up working together on implementing. There are wild cards that can be used by either player. Actions on certain kittens and cats you might recognize from boop the Halls! And then there was the blankie…

In what I will call the cutest mechanic to ever be in a board game, boop. Shuffle includes a blanket card. When drawn, you place it on top of any kitten or cat on the bed. While napping under the blankie, they don’t exist in the playfield. In order to count them towards a 3-in-a-row they must be uncovered! The blanket can be booped like any other item. When they are booped onto another cat, they now nap! If they are booped into an open space, the blankie is removed from the board and put into the discard pile.

Cutbacks

All of a sudden we have a lot more chaos happening with the blanket, action cards, wild cats and a virtual bed. Maybe a little too much overhead for the market we’re targeting, so we elected to remove the virtual bed, relegating those rules to an “advanced version” in the back of the rulebook.


Instead, we include neoprene bed skirts to define the board edges. These also roll up nice and tight to remain portable without adding too much cost to the product. In the end we were able to offer this new boop. experience for half of the retail price of the original game!

Release

boop. Shuffle had an official release date in the US of May 1 and you can already find it on the shelves at your favorite local game store and Barnes & Noble. Smirk & Dagger offers it directly on their website and will have copies available at Origins Game Fair, Gen Con and PAX Unplugged. I’ll be in attendance as well if you would like me to teach it to you myself!

Scott Brady
❌