SPIEL is a fascinating gathering of people that share a hobby: board games! And you feel that enthusiasm throughout the entire show, from visitors, volunteers, companies, and everything in between. Seeing that many (new) board games is somewhat overwhelming so we count ourselves lucky that our SPIEL schedule is booked full with meetings with publishers and friends. It’s a chance for us to finally meet people in real life which whom we’ve only had digital contact so far and to see those who we only meet at conventions. And what’s still amazing: meeting our readers! The fact that people recognize us and walk up to us and say hi is so awesome! Thank you all so much, we really do appreciate it! <3 Being at SPIEL for four days is destructive and exhilarating at the same time, so we’re happy to be home and get back into normal life (with a normal sleep rhythm…) but we also experience that post-SPIEL void of meeting up with all those wonderful people.

Let’s just say that SPIEL is an experience! Lion and Gazelle forget the social aspect of the whole event here. 😉

As far as games go. We took home a lot of them! All except for one are gifted to us by publishers, so we’d like to emphasize that this amount of board games is not normal.

For those who are curious, we’ve made a list of what we carried home last night. The publishers who gifted us the games are mentioned below or behind the titles.

• Verdant
• Wormholes
• The Guild of Merchant Explorers
• Smash Up: 10th-anniversary edition
  (Thank you Alderac!)
• Terracotta Army
• Tiletum
  (Thank you Board & Dice!)
• Galileo Project
• Gosu X
  (Thank you Sorry We’re French!)
• Northgard: Uncharted Lands
• Vivarium
• Oriflamme: Alliance
  (Thank you Studio H)
• Deal With The Devil
• Starship Captains
  (Thank you Czech Games)
• Fish & Katz 
• Sweet and Spicy
  (Thank you Heidelbär Games!)
• Tidal Blades: Banner Festival (Thank you Lucky Duck Games!)
• Akropolis (Thank you Gigamic!)
• Vengeance Roll & Fight Episode 1 (Thank you Mighty Boards!)
• Aleph Null (Thank you Frosted Games!)
• Turing Machine (Thank you Scorpio Marque!)
• Troublez (Thank you Time Slug Studio!)
• Miss Match (Thank you Teddy Tech!)
• Tribes of the Wind

Playing actual games is not really part of our SPIEL experience. We did play some fun prototypes of games (Sky Team and Joyride) that will be released next year and smaller games in the pub in the evening, but that’s it. Our homework starts now and we can’t wait to play these games and share our impressions with you! For now, we’re happy that Lion and Gazelle wanted to take the stage, so we can regain our footing and slowly let all of the new experiences sink in.