by W. Eric Martin

The SPIEL Essen game fair opens in less than a week, which means it's time to talk about the new releases from German publisher Gerhards Spiel und Design. Gerhards doesn't do a lot of publicity, but amongst the hundreds of flashier, one-might-say garishly colored games that will debut at that show, the publisher's solid wood designs will stand out by not standing out.

Here's a look at its four new releases for 2025:

Image: Alejandro Pardo
▪️ Schaf nachgedacht marks the sixth collaboration between Gerhards and designer Andreas Kuhnekath-Häbler since his debut there in 2018 with the clever Rukuni.

Schaf nachgedacht could be translated as "Thinking hard about sheep", and in this game you are a shepherd who wants to line up your sheep three times. After all, once could be an accident and twice could be chance, but three times? Well, clearly you're the boss of those sheep.

On a turn, move your shepherd any number of spaces in a line without jumping over pieces or move any sheep in the same manner — but only if the sheep is "visible" to your shepherd at the start of a turn, that is, your shepherd and that sheep must be in a line with no other figures between them.

If you create a line of your shepherd and three sheep that are not your color (and the shepherd isn't in the center hole), your opponent replaces one of the white sheep with a sheep of your color. In the image above, you can imagine the green shepherd just created a line, then the white sheep on the left was swapped for a green one; additionally, the black shepherd can move to the far side of the board to create a line there.

Create a line like this three times, and you win.


▪️ You'll also be sliding pieces in Armin Edalat's Repulso, but only some of the time.

Each player has twelve pieces in their color and six action pieces. On a turn, either you place a piece of your color onto an empty space that's not orthogonally adjacent to a similar piece, or you place an action piece. When you do the latter situation, all colored pieces orthogonally adjacent to it must move in a straight line as far as possible in one of the three directions away from the action piece, starting with the active player's colored pieces.

Why would you do this? First, if you can't play a colored piece onto the board and you have no action pieces remaining, you lose, so you need to move colored pieces in order to play more.

Second, if everyone has placed all of their pieces, whoever has the fewest number of clusters — that is, orthogonally connected groups of pieces — wins. In a tie, the player with the largest cluster wins.


▪️ Adam Porter's Surikata flips the elements from Schaf nachgedacht, with players being able to take action only in unseen spaces while trying not to get three in a row.

To set up, players take turns placing termite mounds on the 5x5 board, and after the final mound, that player places a colored token on the board, then places the meerkat on this token. The next player can place their token only in an empty space that the meerkat can't see — and the meerkat is afflicted with compass fever, so it sees only in orthogonal lines from its location, with its vision being blocked by the termite mounds.

If you cannot place a token on your turn, you lose; similarly, if you are forced to create an orthogonal or diagonal line of three of your tokens, you lose. To win, you must make the opponent lose as otherwise the game will end in a draw.


▪️ Having used up my quote of the word "orthogonal" for the remainder of 2025, we'll turn to Moritz Dressler's Passage, which challenges you to get your pieces to the opposite side of the playing area first, a classic abstract strategy goal that was also featured in Giansimone Migoni's 2024 game Blütentanz from Gerhards.

To set up, take six small discs in each player color, then randomly place them one by one in the eleven spaces in the three middle rows; whichever color isn't placed indicates the starting player. In turn order, each player takes turns placing their final three small discs, then play begins. (Note that the publisher's image above features an incorrect set-up, with four black discs in the outer two rows and only two red ones. Boo.)

On a turn, move one of your large pieces diagonally as much as you want over pieces and discs of your color, ending movement when you land on a disc of the opposing color or in one of the starting or ending spaces. You can't block an opponent's piece from moving. By placing your pieces on opposing discs, you can rob the opponent of movement possibilities while creating a "bridge" in your own color.

Whoever first moves all four of their pieces to the opponent's starting spaces wins. Should you want a rematch, the rules suggest players take back their pieces, rotate the board 180º, then play again with the same player starting.