I didn’t count them myself but Iello’s Matt Bonin told me that the company released 20 games since last Gen Con!
Among the newest making their appearance at this year’s show, the most anticipated had to be King of New York. I expect it would have made a bigger splash if Iello had more than just 200 available to sell.
Also designed by Richard Garfield, King of New York borrows a lot from its predecessor, King of Tokyo, yet presents players with a few more interesting choices and alternate strategies. For example, in the new game players must not only consider the risks and rewards of entering Manhattan (which replaces Tokyo) but also a location from among New York’s other four boroughs while outside the city center. In each borough, destroying buildings (achieved with certain dice results) earns a player benefits like victory points, energy, and health, but turns those building tokens in to military units, which may later attack the monsters.
King of New York should be available at retail outlets in September for $50.
Night of the Grand Octopus ($40, available October), which we previewed at Toy Fair, is a bluffing and negotiation game with a Cthulhu-like theme. Players move their cultist figures simultaneously around the board trying to collect ingredients for a summoning. Whenever two or more cultists end up in the same location, the players must agree on who will get the ingredient or all suffer a penalty.
The latest in Iello’s Tales & Games series, The Hare & the Tortoise ($30, available now) has players wagering on the result of a race among five animals. In general, card play advances the animals, but not always in a simple relationship. Depending on the talents of a particular animal too many cards could freeze it (when ahead, the hare may decide to take a nap) or it may move forward even if no cards are played (the tortoise is a slow but steady racer).
Friday the 13th is a new version of Reiner Knizia’s weird trick-taking card game, Poison. The game includes three suits: mirrors, black cats, and ladders. Collected cards are negative points, except for the player with the most of each suit, for whom that suit counts as nothing.
Looking forward, Iello will be distributing in English several games from French publisher Serious Poulp: Steam Torpedo, a two-player game of tactical submarine combat, 8 Masters’ Revenge, a card game of Kung Fu fighting, and 7th Continent, a solo or cooperative game of adventure and exploration.
Also planned for 2015 are The World of Yo-Ho, a board game about animal pirates that uses smartphones as playing pieces, and a game without a title yet, which features cooperative play, deck building, and fighting monsters.