Coming soon: Downtown, Escar-GO, and Matchbox

A strategic city/bag building game with Ian O'Toole art. A push-your-luck snail race by Reiner Knizia. The world's hottest party game.

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Have A Magical Day

Plan the perfect day at the world's best theme park.

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Bitewing Is Win? Consult Baba to Find Out

On Friday, July 31, Bitewing Games was one of several publishers participating in a "Mega Announcement Showcase" event in which they revealed upcoming games, with Bitewing releasing introductory details about five titles. **_Baba Is You: The Board Game_** is a tabletop adaptation of the Baba Is You puzzly video game created by Arvi Teikari, who goes by Hempuli, and the board game has been created by Hempuli and Peter C. Hayward. The video game has more than two hundred levels in which a single player tries to overcome various challenges by creating and breaking rules. "Baba Is You" is one of those rules, with you embodying a strange white creature named Baba. You walk around the environment and can push words to change the rules of play. Push the word "Rock" in front of "Is You", and you immediately become the rock! Mock-up of __Baba Is You: The Board Game__ Unlike the video game,_Baba Is You: The Board Game_ is for two players, with one being Baba and the other Keke. You know which creature you inhabit by the "Keke is YOU" rule that points at you. The game features scenarios that comprise two or more video game levels, with players changing the rules until ideally whatever thing is YOU moves onto whatever thing is WIN (or vice versa). Other words featured in the game are STRONG, SCARED, and MELT, with the game featuring 35 levels in seven worlds. You can play a one-hour game through any five-level world (with whoever wins three scenarios winning the game), or you can take on the full seven-world campaign against a single opponent. The scenario loser decides which level stays in the game to be combined with a new level Once you've played through the worlds, you can also combine levels to create new scenarios. Bitewing Games will launch a crowdfunding campaign on September 15, 2026 f0r _Baba Is You: The Board Game_ , as well as for **_Party House: The Deckbuilding Game_** , a 1-4 player game by Jon Perry that is also based on a video game by Joy Perry: **_Party House_** , which is one of the designs in UFO 50, a collection of fifty solitaire and multiplayer games. Art by Daniel Profiri _Party House: The Deckbuilding Game_ is a press-your-luck design in which you want to throw a rager and attract all sorts of VIPs to your party before the police bust up your party. Guests will arrive at your house offering money (which you get to keep no matter how long guests stick around) and popularity (which stays with you only if you don't get busted). Each character also has 0-3 trouble — and 8 trouble in one location spells the end of the night for you! If you don't bust, you can spend money and popularity on new guests, such as "a monkey who increases your popularity but also increases your trouble, a driver who can fetch another guest for you, a hippie who calms down a troublemaker, a bartender who makes you more money, and a security guard who kicks somebody out for you". Guests can help you grab objective cards that grant VIP points, but ideally you can lure long-term VIP guests to your house: an alien, a ghost, a genie, a mermaid, and more. • • • • • • • • • • • • • • Bitewing Games will then run another crowdfunding campaign in Q4 2026 for its other three titles, including Reiner Knizia's **_Escar-GO!_** , which is a new edition of his press-your-luck dice game Exxtra, a.k.a. _Excape_. Art by Thomas Wellmann You want to reach the end of the racetrack first, but sometimes you'll find yourself moving in the wrong direction. On a turn, you roll your two dice as many times as you wish to create a two-digit number — but if you get an X from your second roll on, you bust and move backward. If you stop before busting, you place your dice on an empty space of the movement ladder, and if your number is higher than any dice above you on the ladder, you bump them off! If no one bumps you off before your turn comes around again, you move your snail as many spaces as the number on your ladder rung, so do you want to play it safe or take a chance on moving quickly should you hang on? _Escar-GO!_ features a double-sided ladder (0-5 and 0-6), as well as a double-sided track with 0-20 on one side and 0-30 on the other; the longer track features a few special spaces that trigger if you land on them, such as Double, which moves you again; Ketchup, which moves everyone behind you three spaces; and Catch 22, a hurdle that can bump you back to 22. Each player also has two one-shot tokens they can spend to ignore a bust to allow the snails a reprieve from sliding back. Art by Ian O'Toole **_Downtown_** is a city-building game for 2-4 players from Robert Hovakimyan in which players will focus on building in one zone at a time, with you trying to connect tiles across multiple zones so that you can earn more on a turn. Each turn, you draw tiles from a personal bag, return some of them to the bag, place others on the game board, then replenish your bag so that it always has the same number of tiles. In the publisher's words: "Players' bags will begin to diverge as they place and replenish unique tiles. Your strategy will evolve and pivot as you play across different zones of the city, and you'll have to adapt to the tiles that enter your hand and the tiles that others play to the board, so the bag building is less about constructing an engine and more about steering your strategy." During the game, you gain benefits from placing next to certain locations, compete for majorities, and decide each turn whether to take your income as money or points. The latter helps you win, of course, but without money you won't be able to do much each round. Art by Andrew Kolb and Alexandra Preda In the Alex Cutler and Peter C. Hayward co-operative game **_Matchbox_** , 2-10 players split into two teams to try to identify their own words...which seems like an odd concept, but here's how it works: > During the first phase of a round, you place your team's hand of cards — with each card featuring one of 200+ objects — into the card stands in the middle of the table. The other team simultaneously places their hand of cards into the same stands, but their cards will face them and your cards will face you. Cover the cards with matchboxes, rearrange them, flip them toward the other team, then unveil them. Now you have to find and recall your team's cards using the other team's cards as your guide! > How is this possible? Well, before you place each card (in the first phase) or recall each card (in the second phase), you flip an adjective card that says something like: smelly, expensive, solid, etc. Then you have to discuss together and select the noun that best fits the adjective (either from your hand in the first phase or from the other team's cards in the second phase) — and hopefully both teams are on the same wavelength, or you're already at risk of losing a life! > In the second phase, once you have decided on which card you think the other team selected, you point at it (without saying its name), then you have to say the name of the card **that the other team is looking at —** that is, the card that your team originally chose from your hand in the first phase for the same adjective. If you point to the wrong card or recall the wrong card, then the table loses a life! After all cards have been found and recalled, the round ends, and to win the game you must complete three rounds of increasing difficulty. I imagine a video demo of this design would make the concept much clearer... ****Like this kind of coverage?**** Get Board Game Beat’s free posts by email — original reporting, designer interviews, and industry news, with no tracking, no ads, and no spam. Want more?

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Coming soon: Downtown, Escar-GO, and Matchbox

A strategic city/bag building game with Ian O'Toole art. A push-your-luck snail race by Reiner Knizia. The world's hottest party game.

kickstarter.com

TTGDA: Please Credit Designers for Their Work

On July 23, 2026, the Tabletop Game Designers Association issued a press release pleading for recognition of game designers in the publication of their work: > **TTGDA CALLS ON AWARDS, CONTENT CREATORS, AND PUBLISHERS TO ATTRIBUTE GAME AUTHORSHIP FULLY AND ACCURATELY** > Several recent announcements in the tabletop games industry have failed to identify creators of the games being discussed or described those games as being "by" their publishers, without naming the individual designers. The TTGDA finds this practice unacceptable and calls on awards organizations, content creators, publishers, and sales platforms to accurately identify designers when discussing games. "You would never recommend The Widow as the latest book by Doubleday. It's by John Grisham." said TTGDA Treasurer Elizabeth Hargrave. "The same > should go for tabletop games." > **Common Ways Designers Are Not Properly Credited** > ● Designers not receiving clear and specific credit in published products. > ● Publishers failing to name designers in solicitations and marketing text. > ● Sales platforms not including designers in their listings for products. > ● Awards not promoting creators as prominently as publishers in ceremonies and PR. > ● Influencers and games journalists covering a work's publisher but not also its creators. > ● Publishers identifying themselves as "creators" in marketing text or as "authors" or "designers" on sales platform listings. > ● Derivative products not identifying individual designers and source works. > Specific examples of these issues exist across our market. TTGDA has been actively working with both GAMA on the Origins Awards and Mensa on their Select winners to correct problems with their promotions, which have failed to include designers across multiple years. TTGDA has also had success working with Barnes & Noble to add designer names to their listings. Amazon, on the other hand, has resisted calls to properly make designers part of their listings, even though they have the ability to identify musicians and book authors in ways that make them > searchable and connect them to their creations. > TTGDA would also like to emphasize that while we see many instances where designers are not properly or accurately credited, there is also widespread support for designers in the industry. Some recent examples include the designer-focused Spiel de Jahres [sic] awards and the BoardGameGeek convention preview (such as the currently active Gen Con and Spiele [sic] lists). ## An Aside on Barnes & Noble TTGDA launched in May 2024, and on October 4, 2024, its second press release (PDF) highlighted efforts by the organization to work with the Barnes & Noble retail bookstore chain to have game designers credited on its website. From that press release: "Starting today, visitors to the Barnes & Noble website will see the names of game designers prominently displayed alongside game titles. TTGDA is using the resources at the BoardGameGeek website to assist Barnes & Noble in the ongoing process of adding designers to their large catalog of games, enabling this information to be available for both new releases and existing games." Looking at the B&N website, you'll see that the company took the "names alongside titles" pledge literally. Here's a sample book listing: Psst, read this book! But don't read anything about it first! And a sample game listing: Those two are not the same. Click on "Michel Faber", and you'll see other works written by him or including his writing. No such link exists for "Elizabeth Hargrave", but one does exist for "Stonemaier Games". And not all game listings on the Barnes & Noble website include a designer name: ## And a Similar Aside about the Origins Awards After the winners of the 2024 Origins Awards were announced in mid-2025, I recall seeing a note by TTGDA president Geoff Engelstein that objected to those awards mentioning only the publishers of those winning games, not their creators. The winners of the 2025 Origins Awards do have their designers listed on the Origins website, albeit after the publishers, but if you look at the list of finalists for the 2025 Origins Awards that published on March 18, 2026, that list credits only the publishers, not the designers. Looking at the listings for winners from 2010 to 2024, none of them include designer credits...which seems especially odd given that The Academy of Adventure Gaming Arts & Design, which runs the Origins Awards, also maintains a Hall of Fame for notable people and products. Want to know which creations by Hall of Famer Eric M. Lang have won Origins Awards, if any? Good luck as no links exist between the Hall of Fame and Origins Award winners. ## And Now One for Mensa Select The Mensa Mind Games website lists game creators for the awards given out in 2025 and 2026, but not for earlier years at least as far back as 2010. An additional oddity is that Mensa credits each game to a "manufacturer", not a publisher — and in many cases the "manufacturer" listed isn't even the publisher, but a distributor of the game in question, or a licensee of that game, not its originator. At a minimum, the credit should read "Publisher: Gigamic", but ideally it would read "Designer: Jules Messaud" with perhaps a secondary line for the publisher • • • • • • • • • • • • • • Let's return to the interrupted press release: > **Games Are Created by Designers** > While games can follow many paths before reaching the public, the most common one is for a designer to have an idea that they work on for months or years before pitching it to a publisher or deciding to self-publish. The polishing and product design work a publisher does — while important — does not override the designer's authorship of the game. Even for works that are created by an employee of a publisher, the designer is not the publisher itself but the individual doing the actual creative labor. They deserve to be credited by name. > "Accurate and prominent name credit should be a given in all aspects of game publishing and promotion," notes TTGDA Board Member James Lowder, an author and RPG designer with more than 35 years' experience. "Those credits have clear commercial and personal value for every creator. The industry must do a better job acknowledging the people who imagine the works and worlds that underpin everything we do." > **Designers' Names Are Readily Available** > In 1988, a group of board game designers organized by Reinhold Wittig banded together and signed a proclamation stating, "None of us gives a game to a company if our name is not written on the box cover!" Even for people outside a publisher's circles, game designers' names are now readily available not only on the covers of some games themselves, but in online resources like BoardGameGeek.com. 💡 For background info on this "Beer Coaster Proclamation" and details on ****how designer Reinhold Wittig contributed to the game industry**** , read this memorial post I wrote in April 2026. > "The games industry has largely agreed that designers' names belong on their games for over 30 years. Now we are calling on the industry to carry that over into how we talk about games," said TTGDA President Geoff Engelstein. > **Best Practices** > TTGDA recommends these best practices for talking about tabletop games: > ● If you mention the publisher, also mention the designers. This doesn't mean every person working on a multi-designer project needs to be listed every time, but at least mention the leads. When notable elements, such as innovative mechanisms, are promoted for multi-author works, credit the creators. If art is used in the PR, credit the artist. > ● Words matter: A game is "by" its designer or designers, and "published by" or "presented by" the publisher. The "creator" of a game is the designer, not the publisher. > ● If you don't want to take the time in a video or awards ceremony to read a list of names, consider a text overlay. This gives the opportunity to also highlight key facts in your presentation such as play time and player count. > ● Consent matters: Publishers, awards, and events should coordinate with designers on the use and presentation of their names. If a designer doesn't wish to be connected to something, they should be able to remove their name. As a best practice, this encourages designers to participate more actively in promotions where their name appears by consent. > ● Integrate clear designer credits and consent for name use into all game publishing contracts. > The Tabletop Game Designers Association is committed to working with any publisher, influencer, news platform, awards organization, and sales platform to encourage these best practices and continue to stress that fair treatment of creators is both the right thing to do and good for long-term business. I try my best to credit a game's author(s) whenever I write about it, but I typically don't include the creators with every _mention_ of a game, as when I didn't name check Larry Harris, Jr. following the appearance of Axis & Allies 1941. In the past month, I've started adding artist credits to images of game covers and components. Not sure why I didn't do this previously and why I started when I did — it just felt right suddenly. I am a stickler for mentioning the originating publisher of a game when it wins an award, as in my cover of the 2026 Spiel des Jahres winners, and if I write about publisher X releasing a game that debuted from publisher Y, I will typically work in a reference to publisher Y. After all, publisher Y brought the designer's work to its final form, so why should publisher X get all the credit? In addition, if someone likes game Z, they would benefit from knowing that they might want to check out other releases from publisher Y. P.S. Ironically(?), this press release from TTGDA had no credited author. • • • • • • • • • • • • • • Like what you read? Leave a tip to support independent board game journalism! Leave a tip

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Hypothetically - Limited Edition [Pre-order]

Guess your friends' answers to absurd questions! Players take turns selecting ridiculous prompts about themselves, like “How many chickens have you seen in your lifetime?” Everyone else secretly write...

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Why We're Doing Journalism Differently: The Future isn't Games, it's Play - PMG | Guadalindie 2026

YouTube video by MálagaJam

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Podcast #298 - Prospective Dragons - Shut Up & Sit Down

On this glittering and golden episode of the Shut Up & Sit Down Podcast, Matt and Tom are sitting atop a dragon’s hoard of card board! Wahey! That’s what we in the business like to call “Rhyme Style”,...

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Biffing Balatro

Ready for a confession? I didn’t love Balatro, the roguelike poker deck-building game from a couple years back. Don’t get me wrong, the number-go-up part of my brain adored Balatro. But…

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BATS: The BoardGame Animal Talk Show

Games Podcast · A spinoff of the YouTube channel @BoardGameAnimal where we talk all things board games with guests from throughout the hobby. Join me, Justin, and maybe some surprises along with vario...

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The Man Who's Spent a Lifetime Making One, Giant Map

YouTube video by People Make Games

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BATS (The BoardGame Animal Talk Show) Teaser

YouTube video by Board Game Animal

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Arribada & Seagrass | Charming, travel-friendly board games!

2 charming and approachable board games with optional travel pack upgrades!

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Arribada - Teach & Playthrough

YouTube video by Before You Play

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How to Play Arribada (in a nutshell)

YouTube video by Bitewing Games

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