This weekend was SPIELdigital! Normally we would be in Essen for about five days, meeting friends, talking to publishers and checking out all the cool games at the Spiel expo. This year it was all handled through the website and although we heard from several industry people it wasn’t great for them, as regular visitors it was a great excuse to hang out with friends over Discord. We had several hangout sessions in which we just talked about games we like, the state of the world and how we are all doing. Looking back on it all we’ve come to realise more than before that gaming cons are about meeting your friends and SPIELdigital should probably lean into that a bit harder.

But that doesn’t mean we didn’t see and demoed some fun games. First, we played Caretos by Mebo games, which is a family level game in which every player plays a team of monsters trying to scatter groups of villagers so you can capture them when they’re alone. We really enjoyed it as the rules were simple but every monster comes with his/her/its own sets of powers that break the game in an interesting way. If you like games about blocking your opponents while creating combo-situation, this is one you should check out.

We also played The Court of Miracles by Lucky Duck Games which is a nice bluffing area control game in which you try to become the king of beggars in France. Unfortunately, this sort of game doesn’t work well on Tabletopia so it was a bit slow but we think it’s probably a lot of fun at the table. We watched a demo of Gods Love Dinosaurs by Pandasaurus Games which looked like an interesting puzzle to crack and we also caught a bit of Paul Grogan’s livestream about Lost Ruins of Arnak which looked like it is something we would enjoy as well. We also checked out a lot of other games, but mostly by reading about it and watching videos.

Our definitive highlight of this year’s Spiel however was the HABA Game Design Jam live stream. Several teams of media people and a game designer were sent a mystery box by HABA which contained game components that need to be turned into a game in thirty minutes. The end results were all amazing and we highly encourage you to check out the VOD if you got the time. We had a great time and it very fun to do something with friends like Dave, Emma and Tiffany while meeting Ruel, Paula, Omari and the brother Murph for the first time. Team Things Get Dicey won the contest, but honestly, we were hyped by all the creative ideas of all the teams.

This week, we’ll hopefully be playing some of the new Spiel releases, so check out our Instagram page if you’re curious about what we think of them.