by W. Eric Martin

Let's run through a few more discoveries at the GAMA Expo 2025 trade show, a task that will take a while to complete given all the notes and pics I've taken...and a task that will never be completed if I don't start.

Non-final components
▪️ Fountains is a take-and-make game from Kedric Winks and The Op Games in which each player starts with a round fountain that features a spout and room for four features.

On a turn, move one of the tokens — green, blue, white — 1-3 spaces clockwise, skipping over occupied spaces, to land on an empty space. You then take the top tile next to this token and add it to your board. You can expand out or up or both, but you want to ensure that you have a spout at your highest level and water flowing through all of your lower levels or else you have dead zones that won't score. If you stop next to the tiny oval features, choose one and add it to an empty space in your fountain.

When someone lands on the green, blue, or white space with the matching colored token, everyone scores for the linked item: lilypads, separate pools linked by constant water flow, and fish. (Fish come in three types, and the player who scores fish chooses which color scores.) For each item, you score 1, 2, 3, etc. points if the item is on the first, second, third, etc. level.

I have developed my fountain in a rather bulbous manner
In my fountain at lower right, I have five pools, but a constant water flow through only four of those pools since the pool at upper right is a separate branch. I have coins in two pools, and when you place a tile with coins, you immediately score 5 points if water is flowing onto those coins.

When a player hits a point threshold, players then score for all three colors once again, as well as endgame bonuses such as 2 points per coin icon and 4 points for a set of fish in the three colors.


▪️ HUTAN: Life in the Rainforest is another take-and-make game, but potentially meaner than the usual fare, with this design coming from Asger Harding Granerud and Daniel Skjold Pedersen of Sidekick Games, with The Op Games co-publishing the title in the U.S.

The game lasts nine rounds, with each player taking two actions in a round. Most of your actions will be to choose one of the cards revealed that round, then place the flowers depicted on that card in your area so that all flowers placed this turn are adjacent. Alternatively, you can pick the "start the next round" token, if it's available, and that comes with a flower of your choice.

Granerud (at left) has had his desired card yoinked by the previous player
Your board has various islands on it, and if you fill all the spaces of an island with flowers of the same color, you score the points listed on it. (If you start an island and don't finish it, you lose those points instead. If you fill an island with flowers of differing colors — or don't start it — then it's worth 0 points.)


If you place a flower on top of a flower of the same color, you discard that second flower, then place a tree on this space, making it off-limits for the rest of the game; each tree on your board is worth 2 points regardless of how the island scores. If you would place a tree on the final space of an island, instead place an animal of the appropriate color on that space, with animals providing another means for points and serving as an endgame trigger if they've all been placed.

Granerud says that you typically fill three-quarters of your board, but that will vary depending on how often you take the start player token or single flower joker card, as well as how much you stack your flowers.


▪️ Estate: Raise the Realm, the debut title from Devon Grodkiewicz, Kathryn Hahn, and Grod Games, is due out before the end of 2025.

Over five eras, players take turns placing workers to draw estate cards, play estate cards (and advance the token matching the card type on a track), produce on their cards at a level up to their production track, and take era actions (assuming they've advanced to that era through other actions).

▪️ Castle Raisers from Le Minous Erwan, Anthony Perone, and Wonderful World Board Games challenges your piggy self to defend your castle from attacking wolves — but you don't have much of a castle to start with, so you need to raise the walls and find defenses.

To start, each player drafts a hexagonal tile and places it on their starting piggy space. Each tile shows a scoring condition, but that condition will apply only in the trident — that is, the 120º degree triangular area — where that tile is located...although three tiles will straddle two tridents and apply to both areas.

Unfortunately, the closest castle was not being played upon as I was taking notes
In each of three rounds, players draft four wall arcs, then have some intermediate actions. When you draft and place a wall arc, on the ground level you place it straddling one of the five dark lines, gaining the action of whatever you cover: drafting and placing a hexagonal tile, gaining the first player marker and a pighead tile, fighting a wolf, gaining soup to dump on a wolf later, or gaining a serrated wall arc.

Above the ground level, a placed wall arc must straddle two arcs, which is kind of what you want since you'll usually cover two icons and take two actions.

Non-final components
Based on additional icons on tiles and your central castle area, you might take an action multiple times or in a stronger form. The castle above, for example, has two blue tiles that show a serrated arc icon, so you would take this action multiple times when you cover that icon. (What's more, that leftmost blue tile scores 1 point per level in that trident. The rightmost blue tile is worth 4 points per empty hex space in two tridents since it straddles their shared border.)

The serrated wall arcs make your wall grow taller, but they leave the icons underneath them revealed, so you can still take these actions later if you cover them. Wolves come in normal and improved strength, and some of them have a bow and arrow to attack your castle.

When you fight wolves, your opponents draw a wolf token from their bag and place it around their castle, presumably because you seem like a tough target, so they move elsewhere.

Non-final components
▪️ Another title from Wonderful World Board Games due out in 2025 is Last Lantern from Jérémy Ducret, Grigori German, and Anthony Perone, which the publisher describes as something like a polyomino version of The Mind.

Players are collectively trying to puzzle their way forward to the dimming last lantern in hopes of saving it, and in each round players simultaneously choose a tile and a token, with the tiles helping to pave the path and tokens being collected to trigger special abilities.

Non-final components
▪️ Dragonarium is another WWBG release, with this Wei Chang and Kuan Chen design being due out in Sep/Oct 2025 along with Last Lantern, whereas Castle Raisers is due out in mid-2025.

Each of the 2-4 players has their own player board on which they will place and stack domino-style tiles that they draft. After placing the tile, you move an element token matching one of the sides of the tile to energize that tile and prepare the dragon egg for hatching, which will take place once you cover it.