Just as Toy Fair was starting, the news went out that Ravensburger, Wonder Forge, and BRIO were all being reorganized under a new Ravensburger North America division. Most of what we saw at the show game-wise is starting to be listed under the Wonder Forge brand line, but there were quite a few games that were coming out with a Ravensburger logo on them. Several items featuring Minions and other characters from the Despicable Me movie franchise were found in both brand lines.

On the Ravensburger side, Despicable Me Labyrinth (Spring, $32) is a themed version of their popular Labyrinth game line. The Despicable Me-themed Eye Found It! (Fall, $26) joins that game’s line with a six-foot board and a card game version (Fall, $6). Those last two were so new, that even though they had them for display at the show, they were waiting for the licensor’s artwork approval, so no photos as of yet!

Wonder Forge’s Despicable Me showings included Linked Up (a Fall Target exclusive, $15), where you place plastic “link” bars connecting character images on a tight board; Battle Matching (Summer, under $10), a cute take on a memory/picture matching game; and Surprise Slides (Summer, price TBD), a spin and move game that’s a bit like Snakes & Ladders if you could move snakes and ladders around during the game.

Wonder Forge’s other items this year mainly featured Disney properties. The Elena of Avalor Flight of the Jaquins game (Fall, $20) features sculpts of Jaquins, a player-assembled palace, and bilingual cards. The game also has different modes of play to scale for age ranges: your kindergartener can play with your fourth-grader, each with different objectives, to complete first. Mickey and the Roadster Racers Bump ‘n’ Race (a Spring Toys R Us exclusive, $20) features a very simple game element with four small cars representing racers from the Mickey Mouse Clubhouse, a sloped playing surface, and movable barriers to bounce off of.

The trivia-with-images game line Pictopia has two new entries, a smaller sized Marvel Cinematic Universe-themed Pictopia game (soon) and a big box Harry Potter edition (Summer). Each game has similar game play with trivia questions on the back of a card that features four images. The Harry Potter game contains questions about all of the movies, including Fantastic Beasts.

Back on the Ravensburger side of the booth, we find Krazy Wordz (Spring, $20). Create words out of your letter tiles, and then players choose which word sounds like it would fit the definition on the term cards in the center of the table. Does a “Garbuna” sound more like an Australian marsupial or a brand of chocolate bar to you?

The tenth anniversary editions of Notre Dame and In The Year of the Dragon are coming! (Availability date and retail prices TBD.) Both games will come with expansions included.

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Navigate the Labyrinth to save Baby Toby from The Goblin King in the board game version of Jim Henson’s famous Labyrinth. Based on the classic 1986 movie, players take control of Sarah, Hoggle, Ludo, and Didymus, trying to navigate the ever changing maze while keeping their willpower up. At the end of the game they must storm Jareth’s castle to free Sarah’s brother.

As a huge fan of the movie, this will be a “must have” for me sight unseen, as I’m sure it will be for many children of the 80’s.

“You Have No Power Over Me” … except it totally does.

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The idiosyncrasies of international toy licensing means that some of the latest Star Wars games are not available (at least not officially) to us here in the North American market. Though new and packaged for The Force Awakens, some of these are also actually based on events and characters of the earlier movies.

Star Wars: The Force Awakens Ubongo is a fast-play puzzle game where the players race to fill in mission cards with a set of polyominoes. There are 50 different mission cards and each turn the players roll a die to determine whether to use First Order or Resistance pieces filling them in.

Star Wars Galaxy Rebellion is a push-your-luck dice game representing a competition between Han, Luke, Leia, and Chewbacca to see who will blow up the Death Star.

In Star Wars Labyrinth the goal is to find the various Star Wars characters at the center of a shifting maze.

A variant of the classic tile-laying game, Star Wars Carcassonne incorporates new rules for taking over other players’ planets and for dice-based combat over other features.

Star Wars: Secret Invasion is a Star Wars-themed version of Love Letter. Exclusive to the Russian market, the game is about rescuing Princess Leia with each round seeing one player closer to success.

Just released by Ravensburger, Star Wars: The Force Awakens Rebel Forces is a Reiner Knizia design that requires “concentration and a quick response”, so fast-play memory?

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You remind me of the babe.

The movie that made seven-year-olds into lifelong fans of David Bowie and turned the Muppets into rock stars is getting a bit of board game love this year. River Horse recently announced that they have acquired licensing to create a board game based on Jim Henson’s Labyrinth movie.

The game has not yet been designed and there is no information as to its future launch. However, on the game’s Facebook discussion group page, River Horse Managing Director and the game’s designer Alessio Cavatore noted that the plan is to make it a traditional family-friendly board game (so, no minis).

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