Asmodee has kicked off its new financial year with another powerful quarter of growth, with the publishing and distribution giant’s net sales soaring 20.9% year-on-year to €422.1m.

TCG distribution remains the engine behind Asmodee’s ongoing growth, with trading card games responsible for more than two-thirds of that quarterly revenue, according to the company’s latest financial report.

But board games also put on a strong showing in the April to June quarter, the report shows, with net sales rising 16% year-on-year amid an ongoing recovery from volatility caused by last year’s US tariffs uncertainty.

Much of that increase came via Asmodee’s distribution of titles from other publishers, with sales of its own published titles only growing 1.8% in the quarter.

That small rise marks a significant improvement for Asmodee’s own board game publishing operation, however, with sales of its published titles having fallen almost 10% in January to March compared to the prior year, and 12.7% in the all-important October to December period in 2025, which includes the run-in to Christmas.

Asmodee CEO Thomas Koegler said growth in US board game sales was driven by “the continued normalization of retailer inventory levels”, as well as “resilient” consumer demand for tabletop games and positive impact of its own commercial and marketing initiatives.

That improvement comes after Asmodee repeatedly highlighted retailer inventory reductions and cautious purchasing behaviour – particularly in the US – through much of the past year, as store owners tried their best to navigate rising prices, unpredictable shipping rates and other fallout from the US tariffs.

During Asmodee’s earnings presentation last November, Koegler said US consumers were delaying purchases amid economic uncertainty and favouring lower-priced products, while retailers were pushing Christmas merchandising later into the year.

Three months later, the company reported US quarterly sales had slumped 23%, attributing much of the decline to retailers reducing purchases and ongoing inventory adjustments despite stable consumer sell-through.

Some of those pressures now appear to be easing, although Asmodee’s own US sales were down almost 9.4% year-on-year in April to June – a situation Koegler said was partly caused by the timing of its most recent Star Wars Unlimited release affecting year-on-year comparisons.

Speaking more generally about Asmodee’s board game sales, he said its evergreen franchises such as Catan and Dobble/Spot-It! continued to perform well, and highlighted other new releases including dnup, The Lord of the Rings: Fate of the Fellowship and Cozy Stickerville as having contributed to growth.

He also added that ATM Gaming, which Asmodee bought in a €250m deal earlier this year, had delivered a strong performance across its social games portfolio, including Speed Bac/Quickstop and Pili Pili.

Koegler also highlighted the first Zombicide crowdfunding campaign under Asmodee ownership, which attracted more than 11,000 backers and raised over €3m, describing it as an early success for its expanding crowdfunding strategy.

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Frosted Games, the German-language publisher of titles including Too Many Bones and Endeavor: Deep Sea, has brought in board game industry veteran Michael Kränzle to lead its marketing operations – and hired a board game podcaster as its sales head.

Kränzle has a storied history within the German tabletop market, having previously spent more than a decade working in editorial and marketing for Pegasus Spiele, followed by another five leading marketing efforts at HeidelBÄR Games.

He replaces Jörg Hopfengarten, who has left Frosted to become project director for fair management at Spiel Essen.

Frosted Games CEO Benjamin Schönheiter, who worked with Kränzle at Pegasus Spiele in the early 2010s, told BoardGameWire, “I know Michael from way back in the day at Pegasus Spiele – and I was always impressed with his ability to create a strong brand awareness both offline and online.

“I want him to bring that same drive and success to Frosted Games to help us build on our twice in a row nomination (and our previous win) at the Kennerspiel des Jahres this year.

“We are still only a small publisher, and not known to many players. And there is none better to change that.”

Frosted launched in 2015 with the announcement it would publish a board games advent calendar, with each door revealing a different small expansion for a popular hobby board or card game.

The company has since grown to become a significant publisher of German language board games, including last year’s Kennerspiel des Jahres winner Endeavor: Deep Sea and big name titles such as Andromeda’s Edge and The Elder Scrolls: Betrayal of the Second Era.

Frosted is in line for a potential second Kennerspiel des Jahres win in a row this year as the publisher of Reiner Knizia’s tile-laying title Rebirth.

Alongside Kränzle’s arrival Frosted has also appointed Dennis Oettershagen as sales manager – a figure best known in German board game circles as a host of the Board Game Theory podcast.

He joins Frosted from barefoot shoe manufacturer Wildling, and previously spent more than a decade working for furniture giant IKEA.

Schönheiter said, “While Frosted Games wants to have a much stronger and better retail presence and experience – we are very much focused on a tight relationship with our players.

“…Dennis has exactly that experience from his previous job at Wildling shoes, a barefoot shoes pioneer. His main focus in 2026 will be to solidify our retail presence while overhauling our e-commerce platform and direct to consumer channels.”

Schönheiter added, “In general, I want to keep doing in 2026 what we have always been doing – creating and delivering phenomenal games with partners around the world.

“Our tag line is ‘We love games’. What seems like a foregone conclusion in an industry mainly driven by the hearts and souls of players that create games, it was nevertheless important to me to make that statement.

“And I want Frosted Games to publish games we love, not games that ‘just sell well’. And I want to keep investing in every single game, to give it the attention it needs and deserves always as a first thought – as a dedication, not a business model first.

“And I think that I have a great team that lets me achieve this goal, and I can see that the industry appreciates this as well.”

Titles set for release by Frosted this year include the German language version of Entropy, designed by Tommaso Battista, Simone Luciani and Nestore Mangone.

Last summer BoardGameWire reported that Frosted had signed a deal with industry heavyweight Asmodee to expand its distribution across Germany, Austria and Switzerland.

That deal came just over a year after Frosted ended its years-long distribution deal with Germany’s Pegasus Spiele, saying at the time that as a niche publisher of small print runs, “the wholesale route was no longer financially viable without either drastically increasing the prices of our games or making massive cuts somewhere in the production chain”.

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The Isle of Cats designer Frank West has unveiled a new game set in the same universe as his bestselling polyomino-puzzle title, saying the project was shaped by lessons learned from more than a million recorded plays of the original.

The Isle of Penguins, which launches on Kickstarter on July 7, sees players rescuing the sea birds from melting ice floes and fitting them onto uniquely shaped rafts, in an experience West says is faster and more accessible than The Isle of Cats while retaining its strategic depth.

West, who runs publisher The City of Games, told BoardGameWire The Isle of Cats had now surpassed 250,000 physical sales since it was released in 2019 – a figure that rises to almost half a million when including spin-offs The Isle of Cats: Explore & Draw, The Isle of Cats Duel and digital versions of the game.

He said the design for The Isle of Penguins emerged after six years of analysing data from digital versions of The Isle of Cats, as well as player feedback from across Kickstarter and YouTube video comments, social media discussions and BoardGameGeek reviews.

That data amounts to more than one million plays across the digital versions the game – information West says he has used to create a game that plays 20% to 30% faster than The Isle of Cats standard mode, while also giving players more to do.

He told BoardGameWire, “I think my main takeaway was that The Isle of Cats is a great game that is loved by a lot of people – It didn’t need fixing. But, there are things that could make the game more accessible to some people. I wanted to design a game to sit alongside The Isle of Cats, rather than replace it.”

West said major changes include a new selection system which allows for simultaneous play, most scoring happening during the game rather than at the end, and a drastic shift to the complexity of the polyominoes themselves.

He said, “One of the unique parts of The Isle of Cats when it was released was the complexity of the cat tiles themselves. They use less common shapes and can be very tricky to place, which is great.

“However, some players struggle to flip tiles in their head or visualise how something might fit, and the complex shapes in The Isle of Cats made this challenging for them. This was a key part of the game, and I spent many years working out how to flip the experience.

“In The Isle of Penguins, every penguin tile is a square or a rectangle. These are the simplest shapes, and much easier for people to visualise and rotate in their heads.

“But the raft board you are placing them on is far more chaotic, with many restrictive areas, which makes finding the right place to put a tile just as hard.

“Effectively, this flips ‘hard shapes and a simple board’ into ‘easy shapes and a complex board’.”

He added, “I have been thinking about a lot of these things for a long time, but when I managed to flip the polyomino experience with the raft board, and found a way to make simultaneous play work, I realised I had something exciting.”

West said that streamlining of the game allows players to do more in less time, without reducing decision making – and added that the title would retain Isle of Cats’ inclusion of both a family mode and standard mode, in addition to a new expert mode for the new game.

He said, “This keeps the entry point of the game as friendly as possible, while offering something more to veterans of The Isle of Cats looking for a step up.

“It was important not to assume that just because someone has been playing games for years, they would now want something more complicated. But I also wanted to make sure there was something there for those who did want it.”

West confirmed to BoardGameWire that the new game would be illustrated by The Isle of Cats artist Dragolisco, saying, “I wanted to ensure The Isle of Penguins looked familiar to those who loved The Isle of Cats, and I think he is a great artist. He did a fantastic job!”

The original Isle of Cats Kickstarter campaign raised more than £460,000 from over 8,100 backers in 2019, and was followed by a £1m-plus campaign for the base game and several expansions in 2021, which was backed by over 12,000 people.

A co-op spin-off title, Race to the Raft, picked up almost £350,000 a year later.

The Isle of Penguins is set to launch on Kickstarter on July 7.

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