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it’s easy to do so. And their enthusiasm to see their game be appreciated is both appealing and delightful. The new pub- lishers come from the UK as well as all over Europe and it makes you wonder why they choose UKGE. There seems to be two reasons. First, the scale is not as daunting as Essen SPIEL and the second is the language. Publishing a game in En- glish attracts a wide audience of English speakers as well as those for whom En- glish is a second language.
Even so, the number of new games launched at the show is very small when compared to Essen SPIEL. The official UKGE website suggests about 200 prod- ucts, but a significant number of these are already in retail distribution and the actual newly launched ones are proba- bly far closer to 50 or so titles. New in this case probably refers to the last six months or so.
Of these brand-new launched games, there are only a few larger games being showcased at UKGE. Board & Dice had Windmill Valley from designer Dani Garcia, best known for his Barcelona. After a slow start it looked like many of the games had been snapped up as the
show drew to a close. Oink games from Japan had a few new games from their popular range of small box games.
The show highlights include a wide range of Kickstarter projects at various stages of funding. Large and well publi- cised games like Galactic Cruise from Kinson Key Games have been funded and will be fulfilled in the months to come. Others like Terminus from Inside Up games, Arcs from Leder Games, SETI from CGE and Pampero from Ape Games are very close to fulfilment to backers. All of these had demonstration copies to play and someone to teach you the game.
There were many other projects that are in the funding cycle now or about to launch. One of the most innovative ideas came from an Italian team called Tablescope. They have used a game from 20 years ago originally created by James Ernest and Tom Jolly called Light Speed and updated it for the modern era. The game is a quick one as players simultane- ously place cards on a table one at a time until all eight cards have been placed. These are then resolved from lowest num- bered to highest with each card showing a spaceship with one or more lasers firing
in a straight line. If the laser hits the out- line of a ship, the owner of the firing ship receives a point and more if they destroy the ship. Resolution of this takes a few minutes before the winner is determined.
In the new version a picture of the final position is uploaded to an app, which de- termines the outcome, with the option to go straight to the end or more entertain- ingly resolve each ship one at a time. It’s extremely enjoyable. The innovation of resolving via picture and an app is clever and ingenious and works well. Perhaps this idea will be used in other games to determine the outcome of a game at the end of a round or at game end. Obviously, it would not work in many games, but the concept is new and has brought in a dif- ferent dimension to board games.
I The state of the
UK market
Discussions with a wide range of UK
based retailers and distributors revealed that the board games market in the UK is still growing though there has been a cooling off of crowd funded projects. Partly this is because board games are being produced at a rate that no one
A family game
for 3–6 frogtastic players
Become a hungry frog and snatch the juiciest cards from the pond!
From the makers of SPICY!
US Release August 2024
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LIVE AT GENCON
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We donate per sold games. www.heidelbar.com
how to play
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