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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Tomáš Holek’s space exploration eurogame SETI has surged past 100,000 copies sold, following a triumphant 2025 in which it cleaned up across a string of major board game awards.

SETI publisher Czech Games Edition told BoardGameWire it had ordered bigger than usual, more frequent print runs than it initially planned for the Spiel 2024 release, after the title picked up early widespread praise from reviewers and impressed visitors at gaming conventions across last year.

That swell of interest translated to a rash of awards, including heavy game of the year and best thematic game in the Golden Geeks – voted on by BoardGameGeek users – and a trio of wins at last year’s Dice Tower Awards, where it was named game of the year and best strategy game, while designer Tomáš Holek was named best new designer.

CGE said, “We knew the game was good. But the reality has definitely exceeded our expectations.”

It added that the speed at which SETI became popular was comparable to its 2020 release and fellow multi-award winner Lost Ruins of Arnak, with SETI’s sales numbers “much higher than for our other recent heavy game releases” such as the well-received Kutná Hora and Deal With the Devil.

Asked whether the high-profile awards success across 2025 was a big contributor to SETI’s sales performance, a CGE spokesperson said, “This is very hard to evaluate, especially with the number of awards SETI has won.

“There probably wasn’t a noticeable bump thanks to a particular award, but they definitely help bring more eyes to the game. Awards like Golden Geek or The Dice Tower Awards help guide the community to what games are worth checking out, and that leads to increased sales.

“But oftentimes, those awards come when the game is already popular. There might be more noticeable bumps in region-based awards, though, as we’ve seen with Kutná Hora: The City of Silver after winning the French As d’Or.”

SETI’s rapid success is striking following a year which has seen many publishers pivoting to smaller box titles over more heavyweight designs, as a response to economic factors such as US tariff volatility, as well as gamers having less money to spend due to inflation and general cost of living struggles.

CGE told BoardGameWire the colossal success of its 2015 release Codenames had been critical in putting the Prague-headquartered publisher in a financial position where it can take a chance on heavy titles like SETI from previously unpublished designers.

Codenames had sold more than 16 million copies as of May last year, has been translated into more than 45 languages, and has just undergone a relaunch with new art, packaging, a re-tuned word selection and simplified rulebook, with CGE looking to keep the evergreen title flying off shop shelves.

The CGE spokesperson said, “We can now experiment more than in the past. However, we’ve also made quite smart decisions overall and chose really strong titles recently (Arnak, SETI) – and we’ve built a really strong position on the market throughout the years.”

They continued, “SETI’s success is a combination of theme, art, and game design. When we showed the game at UK Games Expo, people geeked out seeing various projects.

“That’s where a good part of SETI’s success lies – the inspiration in real science and space exploration. It’s hard to find a chunky space-themed game that would be more grounded in reality, while also being visually stunning.

“The beautiful art is not only on the box, but also on the board, cards, and other components. On top of that, the innovative spinning board always manages to draw attention.”

They added that they believed the game “scratched an itch” for fans of successful games like Terraforming Mars, providing a heavy strategy title with gameplay that “can be explained in a digestible manner, making the game quite accessible”.

They added, “Players also often think about how they’ll approach it differently when they play again. Because of this, SETI gets to the table more often than some heavier titles. Players feel like there are truly more ways to explore the galaxy.

“When the game is played more often, it reaches more people, and it gets organic lift through discussions on forums, groups, etc. This also leads to more favorable reviews and posts on BGG, where SETI has quickly climbed the charts over the last year.”

SETI is currently ranked in 16th place across all of the board games on BGG, ahead of perennial and long-time successes such as 7 Wonders Duel, Concordia and Root.

The title is CGE’s highest-ranked game, above Through the Ages: A New Story of Civilization (18th), Lost Ruins of Arnak (30th) and Codenames (162nd, although it is ranked 6th in the party games sub-category).

CGE’s 2026 release slate revealed to date includes Drillers, from first-time designer Roman Bednář and Project L co-creator Adam Španěl, as well as a Critical Role-themed co-op reworking of Codenames and several Codenames expansion packs, focused on themes such as sci-fi, fairy tales and ‘cute critters’.

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Ich war schon oft in Prag. Ich habe den Bau der Karlsbrücke unterstützt (PRAGA CAPUT REGNI), bin durch die Gassen geschlichen (SEVERTON, meine Rezension) und habe Golems gelenkt (GOLEM). Die Karls-Universität ist meine spielerische ALMA MATER. Und irgendwie habe ich dabei auch immer an der Uhr gedreht, so schnell, wie die Zeit verflog.Um eine Uhr geht es auch in ORLOJ: THE PRAGUE ASTRONOMICAL…

Quelle