Smirk & Dagger Games has released This Game is Killer: Franchise of Fear, a semi-cooperative hilariously deadly party game, into retail.

A hilariously deadly party game about a possessed animatronic going on a killing spree in an abandoned old restaurant. As part of the restoration team, you must now survive four hours, managing the power to lock doors and activate cameras to keep yourselves safe. Or become Snapjaw’s next victim!

This Game is Killer: Franchise of Fear is for four to ten players, ages fourteen and up, and plays in around fifteen minutes. It retails for $19.99!

Smirk & Dagger Games also previously released Hell of a Deal. (see “Hell of a Deal board game“).

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Alderac Entertainment Group has released Cascadia: Alpine Lakes, a standalone follow-up to the hit spatial puzzle game Cascadia, into retail!

In this puzzly tile-layering game, players continue the journey started in Cascadia to create the most diverse Pacific Northwest environment as they draft new double-hexagon habitat tiles and unique new wildlife tokens to build out — and up — their beautiful landscape mosaic.

Each game of Cascadia: Alpine Lakes features unique combinations of scoring objectives linked to how the five wildlife species are arranged across three different alpine habitats. Players also score for how well surrounded and elevated their lakes and wildlife are. Habitat and environment scoring cards add unique scoring conditions so that each game provides a new spatial challenge with thousands of possible combinations.

Turns are simple: Choose a habitat tile and wildlife token pair, then place them into your expanding environment. This time, each habitat tile is a double-hexagon and tiles can be stacked. Many of the core game mechanisms are similar to Cascadia, but the twist is that each habitat scores in different ways and your environment is now a three-dimensional spatial puzzle with new stacking and adjacency challenges.

Designed by Randy Flynn, Cascadia: Alpine Lakes is for one to four players, ages ten and up, and plays in thirty to forty-five minutes. It retails for $59.99!

Alderac Entertainment Group also previously released JumbleJack (see JumbleJack board game).  

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Hachette Boardgames has released Leaf It!, a tree-building dexterity game, into retail.

The sun slips below the horizon, and the rainforest begins to come alive. As the sky darkens and the leaves gently sway, the first nocturnal animals start to peek out from the tree tops.

You’ve just finished building a wobbly tower of cards – your very own giant forest tree. Now it’s time to tiptoe through the canopy and carefully take it apart, one card at a time. As you go, you’ll try to rescue as many sleepy (and valuable) forest friends as you can.

But watch out! Get too greedy, and the whole leafy tower might come tumbling down…giving your rivals a chance to snatch up those precious points.

Designed by Anja Wrede and Christoph Cantzler, Leaf It! is for two to four players, ages six and up, and plays in around ten to fifteen minutes. It retails for $14.99.

Hachette Boardgames also previously released Perfectly Imperfect (see “Perfectly Imperfect party game“).

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Kosmos has released EXIT: 2026 Advent Calendar, this year’s version of their popular advent calendar series, into retail.

Your part-time job as a pizza delivery driver was pretty boring – until today! You are about to deliver an order to one of the most famous film studios in the world, but when you arrive, something is very wrong.

The new Christmas blockbuster should be in full swing, but instead, the set is dark and deserted. Where is the film crew? Where is the Hollywood star you were desperate to get an autograph from? All you find are spooky footprints in the fake snow that lead straight to a gaping hole in the wall.

Do you have the courage to follow the trail and go deep behind the scenes of the studio? This advent calendar is an EXIT game and an adventure story in one: Each day reveals an exciting new riddle that brings you closer to your goal of finding the missing star. Solve all 24 riddles to uncover the secret and save the film!

Designed by Inka Brand, Markus Brand and Emely Brand, EXIT: 2026 Advent Calendar is for one or more players, ages ten and up, and should take you twenty-four days to complete! It retails for $49.99.

Kosmos also previously released EXIT Family: The Trophy Case & Night at the Carnival (see “EXIT Family: The Trophy Case & Night at the Carnival game“).

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For a while, that identity involved astronauts trying to communicate in space. We called it Alpha 24. When Queen Games picked it up, they felt a themeless approach would work better and allow for future editions built around different categories. The published game became Out of Words, with Mike and me sharing the design credit. Queen initially published it in German for their audience and released it at Essen in 2025. It finally reached the United States this year.

Out of Words is a cooperative word game for two to ten players, ages 10 and up. Everyone works together to guess as many words as possible before the available letters run out. There’s one clue giver each round, and the rest of the table discusses the clues and agrees on an answer.

To set up, shuffle the letter tiles and arrange twenty-five face up in a five-by-five grid. Keep the remaining letters in a reserve stack nearby. Shuffle the word cards and set out the five numbered arrow markers. The speech bubble identifies the clue giver, while the megaphone goes to a member of the guessing team who has the final say if the group can’t agree.

The clue giver draws a card without showing it to anyone else. Each card has eight words, and the number showing on the back of the next card determines which one they must explain. Look over the letters in the grid and choose one that can start a useful clue. Mark that tile with the first arrow, then give a clue consisting of exactly one word.

Suppose you’re trying to get everyone to say “beach.” If there’s an S available, you might use “sand.” The team talks it over and gives one answer. If they guess incorrectly, you choose another unused letter and give another clue. “Ocean” might help, provided an O is still available. The earlier clues remain part of the discussion, so each new word should help narrow things down.

You have a maximum of five clues to get the answer. A correct guess earns the team that word card as a point. If five clues aren’t enough, the card is set aside without scoring. After at least three clues, the group can also agree to abandon a word instead of spending more letters on it.

At the end of the round, remove every letter tile used for a clue. There’s an important exception: if the team gets the answer from the very first clue, replace that used letter with one from the reserve, as long as any remain. Then pass the clue-giving role and begin again with a new card.

This is where the grid becomes important beyond simply providing starting letters. A clue that seems obvious may no longer be possible because someone used its first letter earlier. You might have a perfectly good way to explain your word, then discover you need another approach. Using fewer clues preserves more of the grid for the people taking their turns after you.

The game ends when the last letter has been removed. Count the word cards your team earned, with thirteen correct answers being the starting goal for a win. There are also variations, including an easier option that lets the clue giver choose any of the eight words on a card and a challenge requiring consecutive clue letters to be adjacent in the grid.

Since this is one of my designs, I’m sharing how it came together and how it plays. The prototype Mike brought on that cruise went through quite a few changes before reaching publication, including the addition and eventual removal of its space setting. It’s interesting to look at the finished game and remember where we started.

Queen’s decision to leave room for category editions has already led to another release, which I can talk about soon. In the meantime, ask for the original Out of Words at your favorite local game store, order directly from Queen Games’ website or look for a copy online.

What’s a one-word clue you would use for “beach” if both S and O were already gone?

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25th Century Games has released Operation Barclay, a thematic game about the intelligence war between the Allies and their Abwehr counterparts in the Mediterranean theater in 1942-1943, into retail.

Operation Barclay puts players in the shoes of competing military intelligence directors who are attempting to mask or learn the truth about the Allied invasion plans for 1943.

The Abwehr must attempt to learn where the Allies intend to land next. The London Controlling Section (LCS), the core intelligence agency responsible for Allied intelligence, must prevent the Abwehr from discovering the truth. The LCS player uses a variable set-up, placing tiles face down to establish where in the Mediterranean a primary and a secondary offensive will occur.

Over the course of the six game months, the Abwehr player attempts to win sufficient evidence tokens to be able to turn enough of these tiles face-up to reveal where the Allied offensives will come. To win evidence tokens, players build hands of five cards to take tricks, similar to poker. While having the best hand will secure two evidence tokens, correctly betting after each player reveals the first three cards of each hand on who will have the best five-card hand is worth three evidence tokens.

Further, players have ways to manipulate the decks from which they draw. They may create a double-cross deck, allowing them to leave cards useful to them face down in a deck to draw from when they choose later – unless the other player takes those cards instead…but perhaps the player who planted those cards was bluffing and hoping the other player would waste their draw on a useless card. Alternatively, players may draw from their own dedicated deck to augment their hands with unique abilities inspired by historical figures, events, and capabilities. The LCS has access to Ultra – decrypts of German codes – but this alone will not be enough if it’s not used carefully.

Designed by Maurice Suckling, Operation Barclay is for two players, ages fourteen and up, and plays in around thirty minutes. It retails for only $19.99!

25th Century Games also previously released The Battle of Versailles (see “The Battle of Versailles game“).

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Geek Attitude Games has released Not Alone Remastered, a 10th Anniversary remaster of their popular title, into retail.

In addition to containing the original game with new illustrations and enriched material, this new edition offers many new features: the frozen lands of the planet Artemia that require more mutual aid and coordination from the castaways, characters who each have their own ability, but also a contamination system will be added to the Creature’s arsenal so that no one leaves the planet.

NOT ALONE is an asymmetrical game between one player (the Creature) and the other players (the Castaways). If you play as one of the Castaways, you’ll explore Artemia using Location cards. With the help of your Survival cards, you will try to resist the hunt for the Creature until help arrives.

If you play as The Creature, you’ll hunt down the Castaways from space in order to assimilate them into the planet’s biomass. With the help of your Hunt cards and Artemia’s manifestations, your repeated assaults will gradually annihilate the will of the Castaways. This will inevitably bind them to the planet.

Designed by Ghislain Masson, Not Alone Remastered is for two to seven players, ages ten and up, and plays in thirty to sixty minutes. It retails for $29.99.

Geek Attitude Games also previously released Babylon (see “Babylon board game“).

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