by W. Eric Martin

Whew, the game news has gotten away from me the past couple of weeks, with most of my time spent on the SPIEL Essen 25 Preview (now with 1,281 listings!) and dozens of designer diaries for games debuting at that show. Let's dig into a few items I've missed:

▪️ Tangerine Games plans to release a new edition of Reiner Knizia's Genesis, with the publisher promising a "retheming" and "tweaks and additions".

The tile-laying game Genesis had its genesis in 2006 from Face2Face Games, and in this design, 2-4 players take turns rolling two dice that show four types of terrain, then placing tiles of this terrain from their reserve onto empty spaces on the game board.

Each player's tiles have a particular species on them, and if a terrain block consists of at least three tiles, it scores, with the largest and second largest species herd in that block earning points for its owner. The largest block in each type of terrain has its points doubled or tripled...unless ties exist, in which case points remain as is. Thus, players are encouraged to be jerks, creating ties or playing tiles to combine an opponent's two areas into one, thereby lopping off half the points.

I haven't played Genesis in nearly twenty years, but I still recall it fondly as I had my first rule-writing jobs through Larry Whelan at Face2Face Games, which was close to where I lived at the time.

Non-final cover art▪️ For another game with prehistoric creatures that's getting a new life, we'll turn to Dinosaur Island: Fully Charged from designers Jonathan Gilmour-Long and Brian Lewis, a game that publisher Pandasaurus Games is marketing as Dinosaur Island 2.0, with crowdfunding for this title taking place through October 10, 2025 for release in Q4 2026.

Fully Charged includes all of the material in the "Xtreme" editions of Dinosaur Island and its Totally Liquid expansion, along with new executives, specialists, objectives, and modules, as well as various gameplay changes.

The crowdfunding campaign includes an upgrade kit with the new material and updated rules. It also promises magnets in all the dinosaurs and other figures to keep them in place on the now metal-bearing cardboard bits. "No more table bumps to worry about", according to the crowdfunding campaign. Was table bumping a particular concern with this game over others?

In a sign of these tariff-filled times, Dinosaur Island: Fully Charged will be a Kickstarter-exclusive release, aside from possible sales at conventions.

Not a dinosaur▪️ In December 2024, I wrote about Legions as an early 2025 release from French publisher Bombyx, but this two-player-only Abyss spinoff game from Bruno Cathala, Charles Chevallier, and Johannes Goupy is now scheduled for an October 2025 release.

Here's what you're trying to do in the game:

As you might expect, locations and heroes feature powers that you can use when you, respectively, hold that majority or recruit them. Interesting to note the continued use of instant-win conditions in Cathala co-designed two-player games, as in 7 Wonders Duel and 2025's Gatsby. That element creates an inherent tension in your choices since you're not simply weighing points vs. points, but points vs. the risk of winning/losing.

▪️ Zygomatic, an asmodee studio that focuses on mainstream games, is taking advantage of CATAN being distributed by the same parent company to release Spot it! CATAN, a.k.a. Dobble CATAN, with this game for 2-6 players debuting in Q3 2025.

Here's what awaits in this design by Denis Blanchot and Jacques Cottereau: