Gen Con 2026 – Tesselation Games, Incredible Dream Studios, Lime Green Games

While the main dealer hall can’t be beat for concentrated gaming information, the adjacent gaming hall is a great place to stop in and play games. Some publishers rent space to provide an area for a full playthrough of their games and/or host tournaments during the weekend. This includes some people without a booth in the dealer hall. The gaming hall provides a bit of exposure and much more room for gaming for what I suspect is a lower price point.

Since I usually went through the gaming hall on my way in and out of the convention, I was able to check out several publishers who weren’t to be found in the main dealer hall. Tesselation Games was an easy visit because they were showing off String Theory, the crazy-looking yarn-unspooling game of conspiracy podcasting. I also tried their older game, Berrymandering, consisting of repeated I-split you-choose results until the board is finished off.

As a fan of the League of Legends videogame, I was happy to see Incredible Dream Studios bringing back the cooperative Mechs vs. Minions campaign game. You can get it with cardboard and acrylic pieces or the old-school pile of plastic figures. Not technically the game demo hall, but I caught up with a friend at the freeplay ballroom to see how his car-battler Vroom Zoom Boom from Lime Green Games is coming along.  Continue reading

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Dale Yu: Two new Pandasaurus versions of classic games: Gulo Gulo and Hacienda

 

 

Well, Pandasaurus has had a number of new summer releases, and two of them share names with classic games.   Daryl Andrews is back to his old tricks, and he has reworked both of these games into new versions.

 

Gulo Gulo

  • Designers: Wolfgang Kramer, Hans Raggan, Daryl Andrews, Jurgen P. Grunau 
  • Publisher: Pandasaurus
  • Players: 2-6
  • Age: 5+
  • Time: 20-30 mins
  • Amazon affiliate link: https://amzn.to/4yiVGiL
  • Played with review copy provided by publisher

Each player is a Gulo, or wolverine, trying to rescue a baby Gulo who got caught by the swamp vulture whose eggs it was trying to steal. Unfortunately for the baby Gulo, all the adult Gulos are distracted by all the delicious swamp vulture eggs, and it has to wait very, very patiently as the adults constantly trip the very, very sensitive “egg alarm” rigged by the vulture to scare off the pesky Gulos.

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Dale Yu: Review of Golfie

 

 

Golfie

  • Designer: Jimmy Dorion 
  • Publisher: Unigoat
  • Players: 1-8
  • Age: 8+
  • Time: 25 minutes
  • Played with review copy provided by publisher

Welcome to the course! In this golf-inspired board game, each player must take action on the 9 cards on his or her course in order to score as few points as possible. For a 9-hole, the game is played in 28 actions. Each action is determined by the 28 shuffled action cards.

May the best golfer win! 

 

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Dale Yu: Review of Mountain Goats: Legacy

 

 

Mountain Goats: Legacy

  • Designers: Alex Cutler, Michael Mihealsick, Stefan Risthaus  
  • Publisher: Allplay
  • Players: 2-5
  • Age: 7+
  • Time: 20-45 minutes
  • Played with review copy provided by publisher

Each turn, roll and combine dice to race up the mountain. Get to the top to score, but don’t get knocked off! If you roll the goat symbol, activate new abilities — powers that rotate every mission. As your story progresses, you’ll unlock even more powerful abilities and face tougher challenges. The mountain itself might even transform beneath your feet.

Mountain Goats: Legacy combines dice rolling/combining and events into a longer version of Mountain Goats. But, after the first session, more and more hazards and gameplay tweaks show up. The dice now have a goat symbol — when rolled, you’ll get to use one of the unlocked player powers. These can change with every session! There’s also a new system called “Courage” that greatly affects your ability to mitigate luck and refine your dice rolls.

 

This game can be played as either a single session or a legacy game. As a legacy game, it is fully replayable and resettable. You will not be asked to destroy or modify components. The first session can also be combined with the original Mountain Goats game.

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Dale Yu: Review of 3 Witches

 

 

3 Witches

  • Designer: Corey Young 
  • Publisher: Allplay
  • Players: 3
  • Age: 10+
  • Time: 20 minutes
  • Played with review copy provided by publisher

3 Witches is a must-follow, trick-taking game with no trump suit. At the start of each round, players bid on how many tricks they can win (out of five). The highest bidder becomes the Lead Witch, and their opponents play together on a team as Lesser Witches. The Lead Witch plays two cards (one face down), while the two Lesser Witches combine one card each. Two ingredients of the same rank or suit get added together, leading to tricky situations! If the Lead Witch wins exactly the number of tricks that they bid, they receive two fate tokens at the end of the round; if not, each Lesser Witch receives one fate token. The first player to collect five fate tokens wins.

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Gen Con 2026 – Cephalofair Games, Dara Studios, Pegasus Spiel, Pine Box Entertainment

Sometimes I’m lucky enough to give a game a good demo, as I did with Cephalofair’s card drafting Mercenaries Wanted. Of course, having played the original game I didn’t necessarily need to take the new Buttons & Bugs expansions for a spin. Pub Crawlers adds in a new campaign while the smaller, The Flames of Ashtar, is just a few scenarios to link the two. Other times, like visiting Dara Studios, I was only able to get a brief rundown as I travelled about the hall. Terraria: The Boardgame is a sprawling sandbox exploration/upgrading/fighting boardgame modeled after the videogame. Then there’s Computer Junkyard where players try to collect the pieces to build a vintage computer, which will certainly not be able to run Terraria. Pegasus Spiel was showing a sort of werewolf/Love Letter game called Wolfmoon and I was happy to see the real time Light Speed Arena being shown off. I love the original and having an app do the scoring is pretty handy. Finally, there was Pine Box Entertainment’s Pendragon: Glory of the Round Table. Players, as knights, bid cards to fulfill quests to score glory points. You only have one squire so use them well, or just use them up and get another one.

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