by W. Eric Martin

Time for another dash through part of the GAMA Expo 2025 exhibit hall, with notes, pics, and database updates about new and upcoming games, this time focusing on a single publisher:

▪️ In December 2024, U.S. publisher Play to Z announced a strategic partnership with the game review channel Shut Up & Sit Down to launch the "SU&SD Presents" line of games that SU&SD will select and develop, with the debut title being Animal Rescue Team from designers Matt Leacock and Lisa Towell.


Play to Z's Zev Shlasinger had a mock-up of the cover, game board, and components at GAMA Expo, with the latter highlighting the toy factor in the design. Note that none of this material is final. As for the gameplay, here's a short description:

Animal Rescue Team was announced as a game that would be crowdfunded, but that plan has now changed, and this straight-to-retail title should debut in September 2025.


▪️ Tyler J. Brown's 23 Knives — in which players try to save Caesar, kill him, or opportunistically make the final decision on his fate — will be in the hands of Kickstarter backers soon, with a U.S. retail release coming in April 2025.


▪️ Scott Brady's Better Letters debuted in January 2025, and in each round you have 60 seconds to write a word that you think will score as many points as possible by fulfilling rule cards that are connected orthogonally.

In the grid above, the word "SANK" would satisfy the four marked rules, and the player would score 6 points...except that all players mark all of the rule cards that they have used, and if more than one player uses a rule, then it's worth 1 point less for all of those players. If you use 5-6 of your tokens on a single word, you earn bonus points, which is also true when you play one of your two secret goals with a word.

Any rule cards used are replaced, while unused ones have a bonus token added to them, then you play another round, with the grid increasing to 5x5 as the rounds continue.

▪️ The fortieth anniversary edition of Eric Goldberg's Tales of the Arabian Nights is now due out in July/August 2025.

▪️ In Matthew Rodela's Twisted Trumpets, which is due out in June/July 2025, players draft tiles — then possibly trade up for better tiles — in order to create Seussian musical instruments that feature flags, birds, and more in order to satisfy both public and private goals.