by W. Eric Martin

▪️ Wandering Towers is a delightful 2022 family game from Wolfgang Kramer and Michael Kiesling in which 2-6 players race around a circular track, trying to land their wizards into the moving target of Ravenskeep Tower, and in October 2025 publisher ABACUSSPIELE will release Die wandelnden Türme: Der Zauberturm ("The Magic Tower"), an expansion with five modules that can be added to the game individually or in any combination. They are:

—Two elixir fountains that let you fill any empty flask or take a full flask of yours from the box.
—Two spiderwebs that can't be landed on, forcing wizards and towers to "bounce" forward the same distance they just moved.
—A hag that moves one space each time a movement card with text is played, with the hag draining a full flask from each wizard in the space where she lands. Don't have any flasks? Then the hag gives you a special empty flask that you can fill only by capturing her in a tower. Oh, and if you need to move her and can't remember where she is in a tower, your turn ends immediately.
—A raven that moves a distance equal to a die roll used for movement, with anyone in the same space as the raven receiving a raven feather. Spend 1-3 feathers for special actions, such as advancing a wizard 1-6 spaces.
—A magic tower that can move like any other tower, although towers cannot be placed atop it. With this tower in play, you lay out five magic spells at the start of play — possibly choosing among the eight new spells included, some of which are module specific — and if you land on the magic tower, you may cast a spell immediately without paying its cost.

▪️ Ralf zur Linde's Hier is an old-school card-slapping game for 2-8 players.

From a deck with penguin cards numbered 1-100, each player starts with a stack of five random cards, then you lay out fourteen face-up cards on a pool of the remaining face-down cards. To start the first round, someone reveals a face-down card from the pool, then everyone races to slap the card that is numerically closest to the newly revealed value. (If two cards are equally close, then the higher-valued card is the correct target.)

If you manage to do this, flip the top card of your pile onto the previously correct card to start the next round. If no one slapped the correct card — and only one card is ever correct — then flip a face-down card onto that correct card to start the next round. Whoever flips their final card first wins.


▪️ Zur Linde is also the co-designer, with Arno Steinwender, of another new ABACUSSPIELE game that challenges you to find the smallest difference. Here's an overview of the 2-6 player game What's Next?! Erfindungen ("Inventions"):

As you might imagine given the gameplay and subtitle, additional What's Next?! titles are in the pipeline for future release. The first one to appear will the correct answer when What's Next?! Erfindungen is the sixth object...