Racing games seem to be having a bit of mo, don’t they? Last year gave us Magical Athlete and Hot Streak, which have both been commercial and critical darlings, and now, as we head into the winter of 2026, one of the buzziest games in the biz is Marceline Leiman’s Dino Racer. I guess three games isn’t exactly a deluge—this isn’t a Roll ’n Writes Are Everywhere situation—but the last great racing game before those that I can think of was 2022’s Heat: Pedal to the Metal.

And why shouldn’t they have a mo? Racing games are great. They tap into something primal. They provide an intuitive baseline that makes it easier for non-gamers to get into the game. They’re an immediate source of dopamine and adrenaline. They’re deeply social. They’re usually fairly quick. Other types of board games may offer a richer cognitive experience, but there’s no beating a great racing game for immediacy and fun. Bring them on, I say.

Dino Racer is a welcome addition to the canon, a phenomenal experience packed into a tiny little box. It takes less than a minute to teach, and less than a minute more to become thrilling. Five dinosaurs are set out on the table, with several columns extended out ahead of them. Cards are revealed…

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Totally Human, from designer Kasper Lapp and publisher Bitewing Games, is a bit of an odd one. The idea draws from the same well as A Fake Artist Goes to New York and The Chameleon, social deduction games that use a secondary activity to make people try to blend in or suss one another out. A Fake Artist has everyone add one line to a shared drawing, but the faker doesn’t know what the drawing is. The Chameleon uses a word game to similar effect. The first smart choice for both was the decision to center their games around activities that are already fun on their own. People love collaborative drawings and word association. For its central activity, Totally Human employs everyone’s favorite style of exam, the multiple choice question.

At the beginning of the game, which lasts a breezy 10-20 minutes at most, everyone is dealt three cards. For most players, these cards will be irrelevant. They only matter to you if you receive one or more of the cards that designate you as an alien. Once everyone has had a moment to look at their cards, the first of three multiple choice questions is revealed to the table. The questions themselves are benign, broad, uninteresting in the way that these sorts of games’s questions often are: “What…

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Jon said I’d probably like Fetz, because it’s a lying game. It is true that many of the games I design have some form of deceit. I like that kind of psychological play. I like having a bit of gaming the people in games and not only problem solving. Fetz is a game from Thailand and it is the best party game winner of the 2026 Thailand Board Game Awards.  The game

Whenever a game has a double-digit player count, there’s a 99.97% chance it involves social deduction. Now, I love social deduction games. They give you an excuse to break the social contract and lie to your friends and family, all in the name of fun. They’re also one of the few genres that let you discover just how good the people around you are at scheming and lying. Eventually, you start wondering if their name is even real. That said, I’m also kind of sick of every single large group game being dropped in the social deduction box.

Coalition: Council of the Republic sings a different tune here, focusing on negotiation rather than inevitable betrayal. Better yet, it’s team-based, with four teams competing for influence and potentially a few independents thrown in to make things even messier. Instead of simply figuring out who’s lying, you have to convince people to work with you, negotiate deals, cross your fingers while making promises, and figure out how long those lofty alliances will actually last. All of this in one hour.

Draft Laws, Not Friends

The story behind this is a little more complex than most. The country is suffering through political turmoil and demanding reform, so four teams are tasked with drafting new laws. Naturally, each team wants to push laws…

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You know you are on to something when your nine-year-old walks up to you, staring other activities he loves dead in the face, and says the following:

“Daddy, can we play Mind the Lines again?”

Didn’t want to grab the tablet. Had a chance to dive back into his room to do some afternoon reading. We had just finished building part of our LEGO Technic set—the orange Bugatti was almost done—and he considered doing some other LEGO building. But the boy turned all of those down to revisit Mind the Lines instead.

Apparently, the play we did the night before resonated.

That, in essence, is the review here. Across five plays, including three with my family, and across four different player counts (2, 3, 4, and 5 players), Mind the Lines was a winner across every play session.

Difficulty is the only question mark.

Non-Artists, Welcome

Mind the Lines is a four-round party game for 2-6 players that plays in about 20 minutes. Using a deck of cards with easy and hard challenge words, players are working together to get through the four rounds without hitting a word penalty threshold tied to the number of players, doubled when using more challenging words. That means in a four-player game, players…

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Yokai Hyakki Hakko is a game from… you guessed it… Japan! This is a small box card game about collecting monsters and ghouls from Japanese lore. There are eight types of monster cards. You will be collecting them. If you manage to collect all eight types, you win immediately. If no one manages that, the game ends when the deck runs out. You determine who wins by points. For

It's rare that something so dangerous can occur, such as reviewing a game in which you had no great interest and then discovering that there's a sequel. When I gave This Game Is Killer a review, I left with a mixture of emotions. Although Alien on Board had some interesting concepts, the confusing rules and the inconsistent gameplay prevented me from really enjoying it. The series is now returning with This Game Is Killer: Frozen Horror, switching from the confining hallways in a spaceship to a similarly pleasant setting: the frozen wasteland of Antarctica.

Or, to be even more specific, The Thing (or the sequel) for the movie crowd, or Who Goes There? for the book people. The foundations haven't changed much. You still need to survive, and the well-being of your neighboring players is not your concern. Instead of an Alien randomly attacking locations on the ship, a single player becomes the “horror” for the round, and whoever shares their location dies.

The Thing, Literally 

No, this is not a social deduction game. While your identity is kept secret, it is revealed at the end of the round. From there, the identity cards are shuffled and dealt out again. Apparently, in this universe, the “thing” temporarily…

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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…

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I picked up a review copy of the new word game Jibber Jabble during my visit to Gen Con 2026. After meeting the game’s designer, Carrie Sykes, at a pre-con media event organized by the publisher, I had the chance to demo the game later that weekend before getting Jibber Jabble in front of both my review crew, a group of six at a family beach vacation a couple days later, then a group of eight during one of my weekly gaming group nights.

Here’s the synopsis: it’s hard to beat the value proposition of a collaborative word association game that plays fast for an MSRP of $9. It doesn’t land on my personal Mount Everest of word games, but everyone who played it wanted their own copy.

We Need Some Clue Words for “Statue”

Jibber Jabble is a word association game that plays in about 20 minutes, maybe a bit more with more players. Across six turns, players provide clues for a word or term, helping the active player by giving them clues for the word they cannot see (yes, this is the format for games like Just One).

So, the active player flips a card towards everyone else, then the team picks a number, from…

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This game will probably always be called the mosquito game. This is a game from Taiwan, and players play the role of mosquito families trying to attack a sleeping guy and then escape without getting squashed. I certainly have not played any other game with this premise.  Everyone starts with the same set of cards with exactly the same distribution. The only

I’ve been struggling to poke holes in the design of the new game Size Wise, designed by Scott Brady and published by GameHead. And, here’s what I have got:

The people who made those old Tootsie Roll ads from the 1970s should feel burned that artist Serge Seidlitz made an owl for Size Wise’s box and tokens that looks a heck of a lot like the one who knows how many licks it takes to get to the Tootsie Roll center of a Tootsie Pop. Like, everyone of a certain age who has seen the rulebook and the tokens has commented that the owl looks exactly like the one from those old commercials! (I haven’t reached out to GameHead for comment…but, they know. I KNOW they know.)

Size Wise is a party game for 3-8 players that plays in about 20 minutes. I tried Size Wise three times at different player counts: four, seven, and eight players.

Everyone loved it.

Across a series of turns, players collectively flip a card from a deck, with six different items on each card numbered from 1-6. The backs of the cards are also numbered from 1-6, so when a player flips a card, they then look at the top card of the draw deck to see which number the table is forced…

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Trash Traders is a game from Hong Kong. You are raccoons. Now this is not a game about raccoons’ natural habitat or ecology or saving the planet. Instead it is about speculating in cryptocurrency and losing all your money. Raccoons love digging through trash so in this game you trade trash stocks. You win by having as little money left as possible.  This is a take that type card

Too Many Exits is a game from Korea. It is based on the horror movie trope of a bunch of teenagers being hunted down by a mad killer. Like the story about friends running away from a bear, you don't need to outrun the bear. You just need to outrun your friends. This is a single loser game. When one player gets killed, everyone else survives and wins.  Characters

Cooperative games where the players can't discuss strategy aren't anything new, but they only work if everyone figuratively signs the social contract to make it work. In Shape it, published by Randolph, players move cardboard shapes around the table in hopes of everybody seeing the same artistic vision. Without speaking about the look you're going for, this can be a Herculean feat. But does it shape up to be a game worth bringing to the table? Let's find out.

Shape It: Taking Shape

In Shape it, players move seven abstract shapes to communicate a concept listed on one of the Word cards laid out on the table. The trick is that all the words could be correct; it's a matter of unified consensus among the group. If everybody can collectively earn 5 cards for guessing the same Word card before flipping the third Life/Failure token, they win!

To set up the game, players arrange 7 shapes in a circle in the center of the playing area. Starting with the green deck, 5 Word cards are drawn and laid out to form the starting Word pool from which inspiration will be drawn.

Every round, players may move a single shape. Pieces can be placed on top of other pieces or rotated around, but pieces that are underneath other pieces are…

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War of Beauty is a game from Taiwan, and it is a party game about palace drama, i.e. how the concubines of the emperor fight for power and influence. One of the designers is Kevin Tsai (蔡康永), a popular TV show host. When I saw the components of the game, I was intrigued and very keen to give it a go. If you like this kind of Chinese TV drama about politicking at the palace, you will get a real

I don’t feel entirely ready to talk about Suppose. I’ve played it the appropriate number of times (three or four), with different numbers of people (three or four), but I can’t seem to form an opinion of it. I’d spend more time with the game, but deadlines are what they are and here we stand on the precipice of a review in which the reviewer is uncertain. Maybe that’s a good thing.

Suppose, published in the U.S. by New Mill Industries, is a trick-taking game designed by Akinori Hagiwara. It is part of that strange subset of trick-taking games called may-follow, in which following the led suit is entirely optional. Here, that’s born out of necessity; you don’t know what most of your cards are.

During setup, each player is dealt a hand of cards. There is now careful—nay, meticulous—work to be done. First, if this is your first time playing, you have to gawk at H.B. Tyson’s gorgeous art. These wonderful surrealist concoctions have yet to go without comment in any of the games I’ve played. Once you’re done with the gawking, no rush, arrange the cards by suit, with the suits in whatever order you want. Within each suit, arrange the cards from highest to lowest.

There are a few games that incorporate these steps, minus the…

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Witch Hunt 1649 is a bit of an unusual subject for Meeple Mountain. It is more of an educational game than anything else, which makes sense coming from Central Michigan University Press. This is not a game most are going to sit down and play with their families, nor is it likely to come up at a hobbyist night. Like Dan Bullock’s The Gods Will Have Blood, Witch Hunt 1649 is more concerned with creating a specific and rich emotion than it is with creating opportunities for decision making or laughs.

Martha McGill’s design is set during an outbreak of witchcraft accusations that plagued Scotland in the mid 17th century. Each player is a member of the community, and on every turn, some variety of misfortune befalls you. Your life is unpleasant, difficult, and neither McGill nor the event deck wants you to forget it. Even when things go well, they don’t. Your livestock have fared unusually well during a recent disease outbreak? Congratulations, people now suspect you of witchcraft. This is a game in which a lucky turn is one where it’s raining out and you decide to stay home.

After resolving an…

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Shady Lady is yet another game by Kaya Miyano I have played this year. This is a very Japanese style game - minimalistic but clever. It has a juicy element of trying to read your opponents and sometimes cunningly misleading them. You have a hand of three cards. There are only two types of sets in this game, three cards of the same value, or three cards in sequence. Cards are numbered 1 to 4,

Devir sent a copy of their new party game, One Round?, and I’ll admit that the first pass of the rules didn’t get me all hot and bothered.

In fact, even when I taught the game to three different groups over the course of a week, all of those players also looked at me suspiciously as I finished the teach. “Another word game, eh?” was the response of my wife; One Round? didn’t look like much when I whipped it out for these audiences.

But across three plays (at two, three, and four players), I’m surprised to say that One Round? earned its street cred thanks to a setup that differentiates itself just enough from some of the heavyweights in the genre. If you can find a copy for the right price, I highly recommend adding this to your party game collection.

It’s So Just a Single-Clue Code Word Game

There’s no getting around it: the word association game space is really jammed right now.

If you’ve been in “The Hobby” for the last 10+ years, you’ve already got copies of some, if not all, of the following games in your house: Codenames, So Clover, Just One, Wavelength, Letter Jam, Decrypto, Phantom…

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It’s Sort of Like…

The majority of my friends are non-gamers. While we do all kinds of other hobby activities together, gaming simply isn’t one of them. I stopped bringing games to gatherings a long time ago because we all know they won’t get played, and that’s okay. The key to a balanced social life is knowing which friends are good for which activities.

Every so often, though, I’ll get my hands on a party game that’s easy to teach, accommodates a large group, and requires very little rules explanation. This, I CAN get my friends to play. It helps if I describe it as “kind of like Cards Against Humanity,” which usually earns a few oohs and ahhs of recognition.

Party Stories

Wing It! follows the pattern of many other party games, using preprinted prompts and cards to create some sort of offering for a judge to award points to. I can’t say whether Apples to Apples was the first game to popularize this system, but there are plenty of structurally similar titles out there. Just check the game aisle at your local Walmart or Target.

Here, players become improv-driven storytellers. One player acts as the judge and reads a scenario aloud, while everyone else must tell a…

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