Lets face it, there a LOT of publishers joined together under the Asmodee label. Just swing by the Asmodee booth(s) in the dealer hall and it’s pretty obvious. So much so that we’ll be diving into Asmodee titles for at least two days. While some titles, like Azul Kids or Dixit Kids are explicitly Asmodee games there are more out there that are distributed by Asmodee. Moodbox Games has two lightweight games in the word-association Link Out Loud and Hundo, a Price-is-Right type card game where players are trying to get a “hund”red points. Rebel Studio had the slightly heavier adventure-esque The Trial of the Forest and the tile-laying, apartment-building Happiest Cat in the World. Zygomatic had the lightweight card game, Crashed Out, where players attempt to get the lowest sum of their hidden cards. Spot it: Connect! Power Up takes the hexagon-matching of Spot it! Connect and adds in some special black-background hexagons that change up how tiles are placed. Finally, their Only Colors is a minimalist cooperative party game where players try to give clues by stacking colored sticks. The game with the best presence was LEGO Ninjago Destiny’s Bounty Adventures from Dotted Games. Players take on the role of the ninjas and work through a series of scenarios defending the ship from pirate (or other) attack.

Asmodee

Azul Kids  by Michael Kiesling

As with grown-up Azul, 2 to 4 players draft tiles from several pots of tiles in the center of the table. Rather than fill up a card to create points, here players are trying to fill in a specific shape.

When taking tiles, a player needs to pick up all of them from one pot. If there are leftover pieces and there is no open spot on the active player’s board, they pass the extra ones to their neighbor, who passes any they can’t use onward, etc…

The game boards have two sides, one is a big picture and the advanced side has multiple, smaller pictures. When playing with the advanced side, tiles can only be placed on one picture per turn.

 Dixit Kids by Elodie Clément, Théo Rivière, Jean-Louis Roubira

Dixit Kids is a cooperative game for 3 to 6 players. Like its older brother, players are trying to suss out the intent behind a (often surreal) artwork card clue. Here, the board is divided into four corners. Each rabbit on the board wants to go home to their corner.

The “head rabbit” chooses artwork cards in order to give clues that are supposed to match one or the other “moods” of a specific rabbit.

If the clue is guessed correctly, that rabbit gets to go “home.” Get all the rabbits home to win the game. The game has 84 new Dixit-style cards, with an eye to kid-friendly pictures. These can be used in the game or even ported over into the big-boy version of the game.

Moodbox Games

Link Out Loud by Ken Gruhl, Jeremy Posner

Link Out Loud is a word-association game for 2 to 8 players. Given a display of several item cards, the clue-giver must provide a clue linking only two of the cards. A successful guess earns points for your team. Those cards are removed and the other team gets a chance to clue & guess. Thus clue words may go out of date (no longer be helpful) whenever new cards enter the mix. When played with 2 players, the game essentially becomes a cooperative game.

Hundo by Brady Peterson

Hundo is a 2 to 6 player card game coming out this fall. The deck consists of ten 5’s, nine 10’s, on up to one 50. Each player is given 11 of these cards and the goal is to get rid of all of one’s cards to score zero points. All other players score points based on the total of their leftover cars.

On a turn, a player flips over their cards, adding up their total. Players can continue to flip cards until they choose to quit, go over (bad), or exactly meet 100 points – a “hundo”. If 100 is reached exactly, the played card get dealt out to the other players. There are a few special cards in the deck: Undo, Force, and Showdown. Undo does what it says, you may take back a flipped card. Force will cause another player to keep going one more card. Showdown is a bit strange, two players play “war” with each other, with the winner passing out any used cards to the other players.

Rebel Studio

The Trial of the Forest by Giancarlo Spinelli

Releasing at Gen Con, The Trial of the Forest has players taking actions to explore and create their own story as they adventure across the map. It isn’t a cooperative game, though, as each player attempts to earn the most fame points. Each player starts out with four core statistics to help them negotiate, move, or fight (enemies on the board or other players.) During a turn players spend actions to move, shop, gather resources, etc…

After using four action tokens, they must camp to get their tokens back. As they move around the board, there are places to explore (swamps, caves, mountains, etc….) It’s often recommended to gather up some items before getting too involved in case a fight breaks out.

The game has a deck of cards, every one unique, that can be used in one of two ways. There is a “good guy” option and a “bad guy” option to use when played. Neither way is better than the other. Players track a sort of alignment level at the bottom of the board. While there are consequences for each extreme, it is generally more useful to lean in to one side or the other. Some cards will give out quests, allowing players to tuck cards under their player board – making them more powerful over the course of the game.

Happiest Cat in the World by Olivier Cipière, Oussama Khelifati

In Happiest Cat in the World, 2 to 5 players use tile-placement attempting to build the best possible apartment for their cat, who is on their board and can move around. Players draw five cards to start and play begins. A player can play a tile next to their cat, move the cat, or use coins in their hands to buy more tiles from the market. Of course, there are scoring tiles to pursue. Some give points for specific arrangements while other score points when you move your cat and/or mouse around your board. When playing tiles, if you get three of a color in a row/column, take an extra turn. The game should become available at Essen this year.

Zygomatic

Crashed Out

Crashed Out is a party card game for 2 to 5 players. Players begin with 6 cards laid out face down in 2 rows of 3 cards. Cards run from 0 to 12 as well as 15’s and one 20. Players are vying for the lowest score. On a turn, a player draws one card and looks at it. They may then discard it or replace one of their six cards.

The leftover card is discarded. However, any player may then discard a card if it matches the one the active player discarded. The higher value cards can trigger actions if they are discarded. A 7 or 8 will let players look at face-down cards. A 6 lets a player draw the top card and give it to someone else. A 9 will let a player trade cards with someone else. The 10, 11, and 12 cards have no special power but they become worth zero points if you have three or more of the same one. The game continues until someone calls the end or if someone discards the 20.

Spot it: Connect! Power Up by Mathieu Aubert, Denis Blanchot, Jacques Cottereau, Guillaume Gille-Naves, Igor Polouchine

As with every over Spot it game, players are looking at cards,trying to find a perfect match of shape/item and color. Spot it: Connect! comes with hexagonal cards (in two colors) and players are looking to find a perfect match between two cards. If there is a perfect icon match to a hexagon on the board, announce the match and add the held tile to the board adjacent to its matching tile. The goal is to place four of your own cards in a row.

The Power Up version adds in special black hexagons, each with a special power. One causes time to freeze (I think to give time for people to think), another forces cancels out one of the adjacent tiles (it can’t be used as part of a 4 tile line), and the last one lets a player overwrite (or discard?) an opponent’s hexagon.

The entire thing is played out in real time, so matching is fast and furious. The game handles up to 8 players, made into two teams.

Bonus Photo: K-Pop Demon Hunters, the next theme in the Spot it! Line.

Only Colors

Only Colors is one of those clue-giving games (for 3 to 7 players) where your teammates have to guess the word. Here, the other players only have to pick your word out of a set of five on a card, but the special restriction (there’s always one) comes in how hints are given. The game begins with a pile of wooden colored popsticks in the center of the table. There are 5 sticks of 10 different colors. To give a clue, take one or more sticks and then put them in horizontal layers, similar to a striped flag. There is no leaning, no stacking on top of each other, no diagonals, etc.. just those lines.

Try to guess my red/white/red clue word. (We got it wrong.) Then guess Eric’s grey white clue. (I talked my team out of the correct answer…)

Once each player has made the clue for their card, everyone goes around the table trying to guess which word goes with the wooden display. After guessing, all the sticks used are removed from the game, leaving less in the middle for future clues. Players keep going until there are 10 or less sticks left in the middle. The game is not yet out for release, look for it sometime in 2027.

To save time, I took a photo of a fellow writer taking a photo. That way, I get to delegate how to set up the game and frame the photo!

LEGO Ninjago Destiny’s Bounty Adventures by Jonas Resting-Jeppesen

You know you’re going to get a decently cool game board if the name starts with the word LEGO. LEGO Ninjago Destiny’s Bounty Adventures is a 2-4 player cooperative game where the players, as ninjas, work their way through a series of adventures along an overarching plotline. If a particular game is lost, it can be replayed – with the benefit that players know some of what will happen.

It is kind of a tower defence game. Villains appear on edges of the board and work their way along a path into the middle of the board. If they reach their goal, they are added to the villain track. If the villain track fills up, the game ends.

A player starts their turn by flipping over a card, moving their character, and then fighting a villain – possibly calling over another character to help in the fight. Defeated villains have their own track. Fill it up to win the game. As the track fills up, some spaces will trigger a character upgrade.

Players get to pick an upgrade (each ninja character is unique) and then physically add the upgrade LEGO pieces to their character on the board. Some scenarios may have white tokens to collect by moving around the board. Once collected they help to fill up the defeated villain track.

The game has six adventures, each a little different from the others, perhaps an escort mission or maybe even a boss fight.

There was a massive LEGO ship in the exhibition hall.

Note the aft cabin on the boat.

The ship’s cabin, it even had a tiny (what I think is a) pirate map!