OgreCave

If you thought their forays into video games were unexpected, sit down now. Thanks to the band Beatnik Turtle there is now an official album of songs devoted to the wonders of Cheapass Games. Hey! Don’t just sit there. Listen to sound samples!

While it seems like it hasn’t been long since the last one, Rio Grande Games has produced yet another newsletter. Most of the game descriptions have been seen in past announcements, but they have revealed more details on their forthcoming Carcassonne releases. The new expansion will be called The Count while the new stand-alone game will be called The City. If you’re a fan of the tile-laying game and can’t wait to find out more, there are more details available at BoardGameGeek here and here.

Those who are interested in the challenges of transitioning the most popular board game of the last ten years to the screen (not that screen – stop being difficult) might want to have a look at the updates on the official Catan Online site. You can read a developer diary post, see a screenshot at one degree of separation, or even “Learn about the Klaus Teuber.” More fun than a barrel of insert-resource-card-name-here.

Election USA‘s marketing text begins with the following: “Why not run for President in this first boardgame from Mongoose Publishing? Remember, though, you have to be a Republican!” Yes, it’s a bit of political satire from the other side of the pond (where maybe it’s a little safer, commercially speaking). I’m always surprised that there aren’t more satirical games, given that game systems can caricature economic realities the same way cartoons can caricature appearances. People seem to have figured this out in the video gaming arena, but there still isn’t a lot happening of note, even there. Guess we’re still too busy drawing babes with swords.

I was just playing a little online Acquire (a friend of mine hacked it up, and it’s still aggressively beta so be gentle) and did a quick search to see if I remembered, back at Origins, to post about the Face 2 Face Games folks and their line of reprints of the work of Acquire designer Sid Sackson. It turns out I didn’t. At the time they were already having great success with their version of Kohle, Kies & Knete, retitled I’m the Boss, and were previewing the card game Sleuth; their third “Sackson Signature” game BuyWord was previewed at Gen Con and will be hitting the channel soon.

At Origins I spoke to Face2Face’s Lawrence Whalen about the Sackson line – he told me they were working closely with Sackson’s family (and that the I’m the Boss character portraits were in fact of extended Sackson family members). Sackson’s immense collection of games, split up and sold at auction after Sackson’s death in 2002, apparently contained a number of prototypes of Sackson originals – many of them unpublished. When I talked to them, Face2Face was starting to work with the family to track these prototypes down, possibly develop them, and bring them to market. Naturally, we wish them all the best with that project. Their next planned Sackson reprint is Metropolis, due sometime next year.

As one of our commenters pointed out previously, it’s sad when a collection goes to the four winds at the end of someone’s life, but at least it’s good for the collector to know that things are going to people who know and love them. Here’s hoping that Sid Sackson’s legacy gets a better end than it’s gotten so far – better for the family as well as for gamers everywhere.

The comparatively open-ballot, gamer-ish answer to the juried Spiel des Jahres award has announced Michael Tummelhofer’s card-ish market board game Saint Petersburg as its top vote-getter for the year. Here’s the whole list of honorees.

Rumors persist that Avalon Hill will be giving RoboRally its first stateside printing in many years in the first half of ’05 – here is either a sneak of the cover or some (other) obsessed fan’s hour’s-worth of Photoshop labor. As much as I love the game, it really needs a new edition, not just a reprint. Some things in there need improving. There is also allegedly an unspecified Charlie Catino wargame design planned for next year, a sci-fi thing called (or codenamed) “Dragon Mount,” which sounds like it will go nicely with Cow Poker.

Uberplay has posted commercials for some of their board games. Next up, the Happy Meals of Catan?