If it’s summertime, it must be time for Gen con. I made my annual pilgrimage to Indianapolis to this largest of American game conventions. Traffic today seemed a little bit worse than usual between a pop-up thunderstorm and a huge number of streets closed in Downtown indianapolis. After taking an extra half an hour to get to where I was going, I managed to get into the convention hall.

My first stop was at Surfin Meeple. They have a number of new games including a very nice new line of mini games from Grail.  Two of these are trick taking games while the other is a smaller version of Fjords.

Of note they are also selling some of the older hobby Japan titles . This will hopefully get those previously hard to find games into stores and eventually your game collection faster.

Peak Team is a new cooperative game from Scott Almes, and the players work together here as a bunch of Park Rangers trying to protect wildlife.  I have a copy of this, so there should be a review coming in the near future…  It should be available at SPIEL in full release in a few months.

Finally, Yubibo is getting a wider release – their unique dexterity game has players trying to hold up sticks using only the tips of their fingers.  Cards determine which fingers are to be used!  I’ve played this over the years with an original Japanese copy, and it’s always a blast.  So nice to see this getting a wider release as well.

Then off to Bezier Games for another great demo of The Game Makers, their upcoming Kickstarter project. Here, you get to get behind the scenes of the hobby as you work on producing boardgames!

The hook here (at least for me) is that they have received permission to use the images of plenty of popular games in the hobby, so you’re not just making generic games but rather beloved member of your own game collection.  The game is complex (in a good way) with rondel action selection, resource management, plenty of special action management / engine building a la Maglev Metro, and a really neat scoring system.

At Asmodee, there was plenty of hullabaloo around Catan’s 30th anniversary.  The new 6th edition was seen everywhere, and there were plenty of giveaways and raffles to celebrate the milestone.  Just look at these new tiered slanted card holders!

Office Dog did announce a second trick taking game in their Lord of the Rings Trick Taking game line – The Two Towers-  to come out in 2026.  While they did not announce anything further, I feel quite confident that a third is to come in the future to complete the trilogy.

Days of Wonder had their new Battle of Hoth – which we previewed yesterday – and the very short supply of that was quickly sold out in the Asmodee store.

Speaking of things that were selling quickly – as usually happens at Gen Con – some games are there in short supply, causing people to rush to the stands early and often wait in long lines.  Battle of Hoth was one of these.   Ace of Spades from Devir was out of stock quite early in the morning following some early positive buzz.   However, I heard reports that this game will have more copies available each morning…

I saw a lot of people carrying around a game I hadn’t heard before – Lightning Train from Dire Wolf – apparently a bag building train game – by the time I made it to their stand, same story… come back tomorrow morning! Other games that were quickly out of stock for the day included Vantage (Stonemaier) and Luthier (Paverson).   I’m a big fan of Paverson’s Distilled, so I’m hoping to get a chance to try out their newest game!

Kosmos is offering only a few copies of The Gang each morning, and they were in demand as there is a Gen Con only expansion available with it…

For that matter, it’s probably worthwhile to note that Gen Con itself is sold out!  No badges available to be purchased at the window.  The same thing happened last year, so if you plan to go in the future, be sure to get your badges online prior!

Pegasus had a huge stack of Bomb Busters as they celebrated their Spiel des Jahres win… But, that’s old news!  What interested me was the new two player games, specifically one from Andreas Steding, Rival Cities.  This was one of the few 2p only games that I specifically requested to play so I’ll report back soon on this.

Thunderworks Games had two new releases that caught my eye.  Fliptoons is a deck  building game about making an animated show.  Citizens of the Spark is a tableau builder where you recruit animals to your city.  You only use 10 or so different types in the game, but there are 30 in the box – so there is a Dominion-esque variability in the game set up.

Mighty Boards was showing three or four games in a very small booth – including the new Fateforge expansion.  They have also picked up some distribution rights for a few small games including Red North – a remake of Saer from La Mame games.  Saer was one of my surprise hits from Spiel 2024, so it’s really nice to see this get  a reskin and wider distribution.

The Kosmos booth was filled with mystery/puzzle games; the company is definitely leaning into this space with their line of Exit games – now in three levels: Adult, Family, and Kids.  They also have Exit jigsaw puzzles and Advent Calendars.   Their Masters of Crime line is also getting a new edition.

Once you get past the “play once” section, they also have a new word game that look promising,  Dice Words.  Here, you roll three times to get letters and they try to make the best word possible – trying to match as many letters from the ice cube holder on the table.

Hachette has a lot of new games, but the biggest for me (and very possibly my most anticipated game in my haul) is Tag Team.  In this auto-battler, you duel against another player, each having two heroes in the fight, thus the title of Tag Team.

CGE was excited about their upcoming Wispwood, a really clever tile/tableau game where you draft tiles and then arrange them well to score points… but you must do this over three rounds with the catch being that your scoring markers remain in place, so you have to rebuild around them each time.

Board and Dice had a few copies of Tianxia, the newest entry into their T-line of games. I hope to get a chance to play this in the coming months as well.

I am also happy to see that Happy Camper has released Four Doors, a really great cooperative game from Matt Leacock. I played an early version of this a few years back with the designer, and it was really good then, though Matt said he was still tweaking things.  I’m definitely excited to see how it has turned out!

Queen Games showed me Star Explorer, and it looks really clever.  Each player gets a round board full of stars, and then each turn you have to draw in a constellation of a certain size, getting points based on which stars you use/connect.  Then, the round boards are rotated and the process repeated. It is an international version of Night Sky Explorers, a game released in 2024 by Lucrum Games only in the Polish language version and a limited run in English, exclusively for Essen 2024. After selling out in two days, it was picked up by Queen Games for international release in 2025.

OK, that’s a very brief view of the con – Matt Carlson will surely give a much more detailed run down of things seen at the Con later in the month, so I’ll leave much of the news to him.  In the meantime, I’ve got a huge stack of games to start playing!

Until your next appointment,

The Gaming Doctor