by W. Eric Martin

▪️ I previously marveled at the cover of ARCTICA from designers Rémi Mathieu and Sams, and at Gen Con 2025 publisher This Way! ran game demos ahead of a crowdfunding campaign scheduled in early 2026.

The short description: "ARCTICA is a competitive, card-driven, engine-building Eurogame based on the development of Arctic ecosystems, especially fauna. The game features more than 160 animals, and you want to build a viable ecosystem. In the end, the player with the highest biodiversity score wins."


Okay, that description doesn't tell you much, but I can add to that. ARCTICA is in the Ark Nova / Terraforming Mars family in that it features dozens of cards with all sorts of details that you'll want to mesh together. Five types of animals are included in the game, such as symbiotes and predators, with them being short- or long-generation, which affects (if I recall correctly) the birthrate of them, which affects their availability in the shared environment.

You place animal tokens on two of the gears on your personal board and food tokens on the third gear, turning all of them together in order to eventually drop tokens through the holes and make them available. You need to keep your animals fed, or you'll lose them.


Each turn, the active player takes two actions, while everyone else gets one of those two. Game board arcs will be added to the shared area over the course of play, providing another element of variability.

▪️ Another demo-ahead-of-a-crowdfunding-campaign was being run by Trick or Treat Studios, which showed off Camp Grizzly: Second Edition from designer Jason Topolski.

Camp Grizzly first appeared in 2015 from Ameritrash Games, and copies now sell for hundreds of dollars on the used market, so it makes sense that ToTS is bringing it back to market — especially since the subject matter is so spot on for the publisher! Here's an overview of this 1-6 player game:


This second edition contains the base game and all previous expansions, as well as a new camp layout on the reverse of the game board.

▪️ And a third such project is Raas: A Dance of Love, a game from Mihir Shah and Shaleen Harlalka that Arcane Wonders plans to crowdfund in Q4 2025 for release in 2026. Here's an overview:

Yes, another game with gears! How about that?

I watched a couple of turns of Raas while Shah was leading a demo game, and all players seemed heavily involved, mostly because you're trying to co-ordinate the various elements on your personal gameboard, so you need to plan for future turns, assessing how the gears might turn. Everyone chooses an action simultaneously, and it appears that you have little ability to quash others, but the full rules aren't public yet, so I must look for details later.

▪️ Duat is a two-player design from Caleb Carvalho and Unphazed Games that was demoed at Gen Con 2024 and available for purchase in 2025.

The image below shows the set-up, and gameplay is straightforward: On a turn, take either 1 or 3 actions, with those actions being to (1) rotate one of your scarabs 90º or (2) move one of your scarabs forward one space in the direction it faces. If other scarabs are in front of the moving scarab — and they're not facing the mover — then they are all pushed one space. Your goal: Push one of the opposing pieces off the board.

That's it! Seemed like a neat concept, but my abstract gaming buddy Ken Shoda was in Japan instead of cruising the convention floor with me, so giving the game a try must wait for later.


▪️ Have you been pining for a version of Sid Sackson's classic dice game Can't Stop in a dangerously pointy box that could serve as a weapon should the need arise?

Korean publisher Playte and Popcorn Games have you covered, with U.S. publisher (and Playte licensee) Crafty Games selling copies at Gen Con 2025.