Besides Holding On at Essen Spiel, Hub Games will be releasing Blankdemic, a small expansion ($6) meant to showcase the flexibility of the company’s customizable card game, Blank. Blankdemic cards, designed by Matt and Colleen Leacock, provide a more tactical game experience and are obviously inspired by Matt’s earlier board game, Pandemic.

Then for the UK Games Expo, Hub is planning Mega Cities, which combines Euro-style and dexterity elements in a city-building game. The goal, to satisfy certain building contracts, is accomplished by stacking odd-shaped pieces, made from a variety of materials, over foundation spots marked on platform tiles. To score, players must slide their tiles across the table, over to the city, without knocking down their buildings.

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The Creativity Hub, the Irish firm responsible for publishing Rory’s Story Cubes and The Extraordinaires Design Studio is shifting focus from the educational market exclusively to tabletop games. With that comes a new name, Hub Games.

What the company will keep doing, however, is producing products with a unique sensibility.

Hub Games aims to publish games that foster discussion between players at the table and beyond; games with heart. By encouraging self-expression through play and having gamers reflect on the choices they make, Hub Games looks to push past the idea of games being simple entertainment.

Its two latest releases are Blank and Untold: Adventures Await. Blank is a card game reminiscent of Uno, except that the cards and game rules are modified by the players with each play. Thus, over time each card deck becomes a reflection of the people who’ve played with it. Untold: Adventures Await is a storytelling game, a kind-of cooperative RPG in which participants describe a series of adventures using Rory’s Story Cubes in a structure of scenes, episodes, and seasons.

The rights to Rory’s Story Cubes were sold by the company last year to Asmodee.

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