▪️ Swiss publisher Helvetiq has revealed its early 2025 line-up, with Bugs Buddy from Christoph Cantzler and Anja Wrede being a 2-4 player game that fits the publisher’s model of centering nature in its gameplay and keeping the rules to a minimum:
Each player starts with a secret hand of four double-sided insect tiles. Nine types of insects are included in the deck, each appearing eight times. On a turn, either add a new insect to the display, then place one of your colored cubes underneath it, or add an insect to the column of matching insect tiles already present, then replace another player’s cube(s) underneath this insect with the same number of cubes of your color, plus one. (If you place a bee, for example, in a column that has two bees, you remove the opponent’s two cubes, then place three of your own.) To end your turn, draw a tile from the deck.
Each insect type will have a single column, and you cannot replace your own cubes when placing a tile. If you don’t have enough cubes to play any of your tiles, skip your turn. If you have no more cubes in front of you, you win; if all players pass in turn, whoever has the fewest cubes remaining wins.
▪️ Chit Chat is a co-operative party game from Matt Burtonwood, Deej Johnson, and Billy Langsworthy for up to eight players in which you receive a stack of eight question cards that always have a number as an answer. Place a random card number-side up on the table, then try to arrange all of your cards in order from lowest to highest to achieve a perfect score as a team.
▪️ Frantic Antics is a 4-10 player party game from Aaron Smith and Ryan Hennings in which everyone does charades at the same time, trying to guess what others are miming while successfully acting out your challenge.
▪️ Tacoloco is a card game from <a href="https://boardgamegeek.com/boardgamedesigner/70970/treo-game-designers”>Treo game Designers that challenges 2-5 players to stuff each other with as many tacos as possible:
Sample cards
The game includes two special cards: the “legendary taco” card immediately fills the taco to 11, allowing you to give these cards to someone else, whereas the “lonesome taco” allows you to bring the sum of a taco to 0 or to respond to someone playing a legendary taco, forcing them to take it.
When all the cards have been played, the game ends, and whoever has the fewest cards wins.
▪️ For its Steffen Spiele game line, Helvetiq has repackaged three existing titles to bring consistency to the line. Here is the new look for Víktor Bautista i Roca‘s Nonaga (originally released in 2017), Julien Griffon‘s Ringo (2018), and Laurent Escoffier‘s 27 (2017), which has been renamed Stakko. (I covered 27 in detail <a href="https://boardgamegeek.com/blog/1/blogpost/167903/game-review-27-or-three-squared-in-one-line”>in December 2024 and plan to do the same for Nonaga after a few more plays.)
All three of these new editions are due out on March 13, 2025.
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