New Game Watch: Essen 2013
Though Origins is my annual gaming highlight, last weekend was Essen Spiel, the biggest event for the world in general. Given that, I thought I’d take a look at what new and upcoming games are the most interesting right now.
This is definitely not a thorough list. It’s just the games that I have my eye on after skimming through various news sites and blogs. And since most of those sites were mainly posting pictures and discussing the new convention hall, I turned to the two community ratings charts: BGG Geekbuzz and Fairplay. You can see the Fairplay results at Opinionated Gamers, but I’m not sure if you can find a history on the GeekBuzz page, or just see the latest convention’s results. So for posterity, here are the top ten in each:
| GeekBuzz | Fairplay | |
| 1. | Amerigo | Russian Railroads |
| 2. | Bruxelles 1893 | Concordia |
| 3. | Tash-Kalar: Arena of Legends | Glass Road |
| 4. | Twin Tin Bots | Bruxelles 1893 |
| 5. | Romolo o Remo? | Kashgar |
| 6. | Love Letter | Rokoko |
| 7. | Serpent’s Tongue | Spyrium |
| 8. | Hanabi | Madeira |
| 9. | Steam Park | Love Letter |
| 10. | Glass Road | UGO! |
It’s a little frustrating to try to make sense of this list from the other side of the world. It’s dominated by worker placement games, and I can find very little information about most of them online. (The rules are often available, but it can be difficult to get much from those alone, especially when you’re trying to catch up on so many.) I haven’t found much in the way of reviews or commentary to tell me how one new worker placement game differs from the next. But as I already mentioned, everyone is talking at length about the Essen convention hall set-up.
I’m sure that a year from now, I’ll have opinions about most of these games. But for now, all I can do is make a note of the most popular ones and try to guess at the best ones.
My initial guesses are below.
Cult of the New 