I normally focus on games being released in the specialty market or at conventions, but plenty of games debut in mainstream outlets, especially those based on licensed properties, so let’s sample what’s been released within the past four months:
▪️ Co-publishers Winning Moves and Hasbro describe Risk: Stranger Things as “collaboratively designed with the Duffer Brothers” with never-before-seen artwork from Kyle Lambert, who has created multiple posters for Stranger Things. Whether playing on the side of good or evil, you’re both trying to stop Vecna from reaching the Creel House. The release date for season 5 is still unannounced as of the end of 2024, so I guess you need something to hold over fans in the meantime.
▪️ Monopoly: Sonic the Hedgehog, another title from the same publishing pair, coincides with the release of the Sonic the Hedgehog 3 movie and is presumably not identical with either 2013’s Monopoly: Sonic the Hedgehog Collector’s Edition or 2019’s Monopoly Gamer: Sonic The Hedgehog. You might think that two Monopoly games based on Sonic the Hedgehog would have saturated the market, but apparently that assumption is wrong — and the same can be said for the next title.
▪️ Hasbro and Winning Moves have also partnered on Monopoly: Hello Kitty, an October 2024 release that is presumably not identical with either 2010’s Monopoly: Hello Kitty Collector’s Edition or 2022’s Monopoly: Hello Kitty and Friends. Seeing all of these dates lined up, you can get a sense for how long a licensed title might stay on the market before being swept away and refreshed for a new life.
▪️ Speaking of Monopoly: Hello Kitty and Friends, that title is still on the market from <a href="https://boardgamegeek.com/boardgamepublisher/634/the-op-games“>The Op games, and we can speculate as to whether that publisher is annoyed to share the stage with another M:HK title, but perhaps a rising tide of cuteness lifts all licensed boats.
In any case, in September 2024 The Op games released <a href="https://boardgamegeek.com/boardgame/429648/the-game-of-life-hello-kitty-and-friends”>The game of Life: Hello Kitty and Friends, bringing its catalog of <a href="https://theop.games/collections/hello-kitty-and-friends” target=”_blank” class=”postlink” rel=”nofollow noreferrer noopener”>licensed Hello Kitty products to an even dozen.
▪️ The Op games has another long-lived children’s IP in its line-up, with Clue: Goosebumps, which debuted in September 2024. (Goosebumps hit about fifteen years too late for me to be the right audience for it, and I’ve yet to see a huge market for Encyclopedia Brown licensed products, much less Scott Corbett’s The Great Custard Pie Panic or The Red Room Riddle. Gen X gets screwed again!)
▪️ For more spookiness(?), you can also reach for Clue: What We Do In The Shadows, another September 2024 release from The Op games. It’s interesting to see how a franchise develops from almost nothing, with What We Do In The Shadows originally being a short film released in 2005 that was then transformed into a feature-length film released only in New Zealand in 2014, that was spread virally until it debuted elsewhere in the mid-2010s before being transformed into a four-season television series in New Zealand starting in 2018, with a six-season series running almost simultaneously on the FX channel starting in 2019.
▪️ In October 2024, The Op games released Ouija: The Exorcist, which is not a game in the way that Ouija is not a game, but I thought I’d mention it anyway. The only new aspects of this design appear to be the cover and glow-in-the-dark elements that reveal bloody handprints and bon mots from one Regan MacNeil.
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