So the reviews are starting to come in for the Essen Spiel 2020 releases. I wasn’t massively excited about the list of titles this year, but there are bound to be some great new board games. And with just one review in from me so far, things are looking more hopeful than I’d thought.
This will be an evolving post until about March, so please bookmark and pop back once a month so. I’d love to go faster with the reviews, but the new UK lockdown is making things more difficult. I’ll update the list as review copies are confirmed and when reviews go live. As you can imagine, it’s quite a task for publishers to have to deal with all this via post/email rather than face to face, so I’m not holding my breath. But given time, the games will come! Some are already on the shelves, and more are on the way.
Essen Spiel 2020 releases: Game reviews – live
- Anansi (1-5 players, 30-60 mins)
Reprint, with new art, of clever trick-taking game Eternity. - Aqualin (2 players, 20 mins) Very light abstract with both players scoring the same pieces, but in different ways.
- Bonfire (1-4 players, 1-2 hours) Point salad-y Stefan Feld euro game, at the high end of complexity for his game designs.
- Calico (1-4 players, 45-60 mins): Mini review. A cute abstract featuring cats on quilts. Oh, and pattern matching.
- Gods Love Dinosaurs (2-5 players, 45 mins) Light tile-laying game where players create sustainable food chains.
- The Isle of Cats (1-4 players, 60-90 mins) Cute drafting and polyominoes game game about filling a ship with, erm, cats…
- Lost Ruins of Arnak (1-4 players, 1-2 hours)
Deck building, action selection and resource conversion combine in this well constructed midweight euro game.
- Red Cathedral (1-4 players, 60-90 mins): Mini review. A light euro/gateway game with a dice-driven rondel at its heart.
Remember Our Trip (Being played – 2-4 players, 30 mins) A drafting and pattern building game, with a clever evolving central ‘memory’ board. - Under Falling Skies (1 player, 20-30 mins)
Sci-fi/save the world solo dice puzzler, including full campaign mode. - Welcome To New Las Vegas (1-9 players, 45 mins): Mini review. A more complex version of the excellent Welcome To, for those who need such a thing.
- Winter Kingdom (2-4 players, 45-60 mins): Mini review. Kingdom Builder revisited, with some fixes for things that weren’t really broken.
Spiel reviews incoming
- Baron Voodoo (Being played – 2-4 players, 45 mins) Gorgeous strategic abstract where you’re collecting dice and using special abilities.
- Curious Cargo (Being played – 2 players, 45 mins) Pick up and deliver, tile placement and route building in this factory-based one-on-one puzzler.
- Kompromat (Incoming – 2 players, 30 mins) A gamers take on Blackjack/Pontoon/21, with an element of Schotten-Totten thrown in.
- Royal Visit (incoming – 2 players, 30 mins) Reprint of designer Reiner Knizia’s 2006 tug-of-war style hand management card game, Times Square.