by Gunho Kim

Where It Began

With Winterfall on the horizon, we wanted to take a moment to share how this expansion came to life. Honestly, we hadn’t planned on developing another expansion for Wondrous Creatures after Gargantuan Beasts. At least, that’s how we felt toward the end of 2024.

That started to change as we watched the game’s performance in the retail market. Wondrous Creatures climbed the BGG Hotness, sales were growing rapidly, and the response was strong not only in the US, but across other regions as well. Even though the game was still relatively new, players were already asking about the next expansion.

That was the turning point.

So in January 2025, we decided to start working on a new expansion.

Winterfall takes place several years after the events of the base game. As it turns out, Starbeak Island has a rather unusual climate. For years at a time, it enjoys mild, stable weather… and then, just as suddenly, everything changes. A brutal cold sets in. The terrain shifts. Auroras blaze across the sky. Strange phenomena begin to unfold.

And the Captains who once explored the island so comfortably now have to adapt to something entirely new.

Core Content #1: A Main Board That Changes

From the very beginning, one thing felt clear to us: the main board needed to feel more dynamic and interesting as the game progressed.

Placing a worker across two spaces and interacting with adjacent icons is what distinguishes Wondrous Creatures from other worker placement games. To build on this, the base game already introduces Habitat Tiles with various Special Effect icons as the game progresses. But players who replayed the game multiple times grew accustomed to these elements faster than we expected, which meant the worker placement began to feel somewhat predictable.

Since fresh, dynamic worker placement is such a core part of what makes Wondrous Creatures feel distinct, this was something our team kept coming back to during development. Very early on, we all agreed that the expansion should focus on bringing more variety and tension back into that experience.

So how could we make more things happen on the main board?

Our first idea was simply to expand the pool of Special Effect icons placed on the map during the game. But this approach quickly hit a wall. These icons are added permanently, and stacking strong abilities onto the map would clearly break the game’s balance. We realized the problem came from the permanence of these effects, and that led us to a key conclusion: we needed to add interesting effects that exist on the map only temporarily.

That’s how the central content of Winterfall, “Winterfall Events” and “Aurora Events,” was born.

As the game progresses, players reveal event cards and follow their instructions to place various tokens and tiles onto the main board. These can offer powerful one-time effects or impose new constraints.

As the map shifts, players are faced with more interesting decisions.
"Should I play this card now to power up my engine? Or is it better to use that strong effect on the map before another player gets to it?"

Throughout development, we tested an enormous variety of effects and constraints.The ones that made it into the final version became Aurora tiles, Blizzard tokens, and Snowflake tokens.

There were many other interesting ideas that didn’t make the cut. A new “Snowy Mountain” terrain that required flipping an egg to place a worker, a new resource called "Stardust" that could be collected to trigger various abilities, or an egg-tracking board that awarded bonus points for arranging eggs in specific patterns.

These ideas were promising at first, but fell short for various reasons. Sometimes the gameplay wasn’t as fun as we’d hoped, sometimes the balance suffered, and sometimes the rules became too complex. Some of these ideas were hard to let go of, and we may revisit them in a future expansion.

Core Content #2: A New Species — Spirits

The other major piece of new content in Winterfall is a brand-new creature species: Spirits.

Thematically, they're a mysterious species that only appears in winter, materializing on Starbeak Island as the cold sets in. Since Winterfall is the first major expansion for Wondrous Creatures, we felt that adding a new species was essential, and we started exploring them early on.

Before the idea of placing tokens and tiles on the main board had taken shape, the core concept for the Spirits was player interaction.

Their early abilities referenced the score markers of other players, with effects that triggered when you had the lowest score or the highest score. These created new ways to play, whether that meant racing ahead or deliberately staying behind.

These ideas were interesting, but their viability depended too heavily on circumstances and on what other players were doing. In some situations, reaching first place was effectively impossible. In others, falling to last place was so easy that the condition stopped feeling meaningful.

We went through several rounds of revision trying to make this work, but in the end, we decided to move in a different direction.

Once the idea of placing tokens and tiles on the map became the core of the expansion, the Spirits’ abilities shifted toward interacting with those tokens. Spirits gain benefits by removing tokens placed by Winterfall Events or by placing new ones themselves.

That doesn’t mean the early concepts focused on player interaction disappeared entirely. Cards 149 and 160 still carry traces of those original ideas, allowing players to use another player’s Recharge or Energy cards. In the original version, the player whose card was used would gain Victory Points as a reward. Later, to better fit the new token interaction concept, this was changed so that the card owner gains Snowflake tokens instead.

Cards #149 (Gruagail) and #160 (Titanorak) — the surviving traces of our early "player interaction" concept.

Why Winter?

In board game design, mechanisms are often completed first, with the theme developed afterward. In such cases, considerable effort is required to closely connect the two. Winterfall followed a slightly different process.

As mentioned earlier, the direction of a dynamically changing main board was clear from the beginning, and this naturally led us to the idea of shifting weather. From there, the concept of a fantasy winter filled with unusual weather phenomena emerged.

We did, however, consider other themes as well.

One was a rainforest setting, where dense vegetation spreads across the map. Another was an eclipse setting, where a prolonged solar eclipse brings darkness and mysterious events.

Rainforest theme — an early visual mockup we made to test the look and feel.

Eclipse theme — another early mockup we explored before settling on winter.
The rainforest theme was appealing because it allowed for a wide variety of plant life. However, its overall color palette would have been heavily green, making it too similar to the base game. As this is a major expansion, we wanted to create a more distinct visual shift.

The eclipse theme conveyed a strong sense of mystery, even more so than winter in some respects. However, its darker palette felt too muted overall, and it did not support the concept of a dynamically changing map as effectively.

In the end, we returned to winter. Its cool blue tones create a clear contrast with the base game, and the concept of unusual weather provides a natural explanation for the changing board.

Closing Thoughts

Winterfall also includes a wide range of additional content, including new creature cards, new Captains, new Achievements, a new solo mode, and more.

As development progressed, the scope of the expansion continued to grow. While we initially planned to complete it in under six months, the mechanism design phase alone took eight months, extending from January through August. Including art and component design, the full development process took over a year.

It demanded more time and resources than we'd anticipated, but the result has been worth it.

Working on a large-scale expansion like Winterfall reminds us that expansion development demands just as much care and effort as creating an entirely new game, though the nature of the challenge is different.

When creating a new game, the core system must be built from the ground up, often involving long periods of uncertainty for us. With an expansion, the challenge lies in introducing new elements without compromising what already works, which naturally leaves less room for experimentation.

Even so, through continued discussion and iteration, solutions tend to emerge at unexpected moments. Which was true for Winterfall as well.

We don’t yet know whether Winterfall will be the last expansion for Wondrous Creatures, or simply the beginning of something more. The journey had its share of challenges, but seeing players explore and enjoy a world we poured so much care into has already made it incredibly rewarding for us. We’re deeply grateful to everyone who has joined us along the way, and we hope Winterfall brings many memorable moments to your table.

Silver Age Cartoons

I’m a sucker for an old-timey aesthetic, especially when it comes to cartoons. Growing up, my father showed me some of his favorites, like Popeye the Sailor Man and Woody Woodpecker. I think there’s still a real appetite for the animation style of yesteryear, especially in the modern age, as evidenced by the massive video game success of Cuphead and Mouse: P.I. for Hire.

The board game world is no stranger to this style either, with titles like Vagrantsong, Townsfolk Tussle, Vegetable Stock, Magical Athlete, and even the video game spinoff Cuphead: Fast Rolling Dice Game. Fliptoons from Thunderworks Games fits nicely into that ever-growing family, and I’ll always be drawn to every title in it.

Flip-Flip-Flipadelphia

Fliptoons is a fast-paced card-drafting game where the player who generates the most fame points after a final flip becomes the top toon.

Players start with identical decks of basic toons that are played one by one, creating a 3x2 grid of cards. Cards have various effects depending on their position, adjacency, game state, or other conditions in the grid, including other players’ grids. Some of these effects increase value, flip cards to void a previously played card, dismiss other cards, and so much more.

The post Fliptoons Game Review appeared first on Meeple Mountain.

A few years ago, while attending WBC, I had the chance to meet Wes Crawford who was demoing one of his new games called Engine Thieves: The Andrews Railroad Raid of 1862 from Compass Games. Wes is a great guy and this game is focused on a rarely, if ever, gamed historical subject in the 1862 Andrews Railroad Raid during the American Civil War. On April 12, 1862, the charismatic Union agent James Andrews and his band of raiders stole the train powered by the locomotive, “The General,” from under the noses of about 3,000 Confederate troops training at Big Shanty (Kennesaw), Georgia. Their risky mission was to cut telegraph wires, burn railroad bridges, and damage track between Atlanta and Chattanooga, thus severing communications, reinforcements, and supplies between the two cities. This was as Union General Mitchel advanced his forces upon Chattanooga with the aim of capturing it and splitting the Confederacy in two. The raiders needed to bluff their way through the Confederate railroad stations and even pass through Chattanooga to meet the advancing Union force in Bridgeport!

Engine Thieves covers this courageous Civil War raid. Play as the Union raiders in a solo game as you race against time, and the Confederate soldiers on your tail, to get to Bridgeport. With 2 players, one of you will play as the Confederates and try to stop your opponent from reaching Bridgeport or at least minimize their destructive sabotage. Follow the adventure and real path these raiders took on their daring ride north!

As the solo player in charge of Andrews and the Union raiders, you must accumulate at least 25 Victory Points by some combination of burning bridges, cutting telegraph wires, damaging track, bringing the stolen train to Bridgeport, and defeating Confederate units that get in your way, all while minimizing raider casualties. Reaching Bridgeport is a high priority since without that accomplishment, General Mitchel would likely call off his attack on Chattanooga. Mitchel might be otherwise unaware of the Raiders’ successes!

We published an interview with designer Wes Crawford on the blog and you can read that at the following link: https://theplayersaid.com/2025/03/25/interview-with-wes-crawford-designer-of-engine-thieves-the-great-locomotive-chase-of-the-1862-andrews-railroad-raid-from-compass-games-currently-on-kickstarter/

-Grant

The early morning mist hangs beneath a canopy of dark green waxy leaves, while distant calls echo through the jungle from animals who have lost their way. You're following their footprints until you eventually glimpse a tail disappearing into the undergrowth. Working together, you manage to rescue one animal after another, but the falling grains of sand remind you that time is against you. So off you go deeper into the Grab Bag: Jungle by Rob M Harper and Mike Harrison-Wood from Gibsons with art by Lauren Heywood-Law.

The post Grab Bag: Jungle (Saturday Review) appeared first on Tabletop Games Blog.