Let’s move on to the SPIEL Essen 24 reviews, this time focusing on the European editor IELLO’s release schedule for 2025, which is distributed by Flat River Group and Hutter Trade in Germany and the United States. Each year in Essen, IELLO puts up a press store, and I’m happy to share pictures from that present. Please take note that the representations and graphics used are not always last.
We’ll begin with Victor Saumont’s 2-4 person financial administration game Popcorn, which IELLO intends to be its biggest launch of the year: Gen Con 2025 or SPIEL Essen 25:
Quote:
The game lasts nine rounds, and in each large you may win a new film, update your theater, or use advertising to draw new customers from your carrier to see who has already shown up. Place guests in the appropriate seats to trigger specific abilities, pair them with the appropriate movies, and you receive a film prize as well, thanks to their enthusiasm for your excellent taste.
Reminder: Non-final design, as with all photos in this post
After watching movies in your drama, you may be directed to another drama by the same theater owner’s advertisements, but you’ll probably do the same for them as well.
The prizes in a film get worse the longer it lasts, but be sure to bring in new ones to keep viewers on the edge of their seats. After all, content guests can support your drama win awards in town, more important, they can preserve the “popcorn” piling up in your coffers, and whichever drama proprietor fills their popcorn box the best wins.
When you match guests with this film, you choose the reward you want in the lower-left drama, and roll up the audience stone to protect the bottommost bonus, which indicates the audience becoming less eager to see this movie over time. This is done in the lower-left theater.
• Simply two bonus items from the album film” King of Tokyo” are still in the green theater when you’re looking at Popcorn. Are large monsters beating on one another annoying to audiences? In light of other books coming out in 2025, such as the Bookwyrm, a promotional King of Tokyo monster that will be available exclusively through bookstores, IELLO sure does n’t think so.
• If you saw my 2023 write-up of IELLO’s timely names in 2024, you may remember a poster that featured 88 King of Tokyo demons. Monster #98 is Bookwyrm, which has increased over the past twelve times.
Monster #99 did the Globe Smasher, one of four demons included in the King of Tokyo: Tournament Kit, which did album in Q1 2025. The other monsters are Lynxote, Scheggiatron, and Marhanagy Szürke, which used to be exclusively distributed within ( respectively ) Spain, Italy, and Hungary.
The King of Tokyo: Tournament Kit contains the elements needed to host an 8- or 16-person game. It is designed to help organized enjoy. These parts include 16 switches and 18 discount cards, which can also be used as awards, precisely six copies of each of three new cards. Every two centuries, IELLO intends to update the Tournament System.
• King of Tokyo demon# 100 may get… The 100th, which is outfitted in IELLO’s yellow and black colours, will be available in Q1 2025 to mark the company’s 20th anniversary.
• Even coming in 2025 is King of Tokyo/New York: Monster Pack – Luchador, the second title in this collection and the first in five decades following Cybertooth in 2019. This consists of several factors that can be added to your game either separately or jointly, like previous monster packages. First, the monster Luchador enters the ring, with or without power cards depending on how you play King of… games.
Second, the expansion introduces” challenge mode”, with each monster donning a mask at the start of play. If you damage a monster in Tokyo ( or New York ) and that monster does n’t retreat, you can challenge them to a one-on-one match. Each of you will face-down a challenge card, and other players can insert challenge cards either on one side or the other. Whoever executes the best wrestling move is a” Giant Powerhouse” contender, perhaps? — wins the match and takes the other monster’s mask, which is worth 2 VP as long as you hold it.
• A Baby Gigazaur monster card that will come with new power cards will be included in Richard Garfield’s King of Tokyo: Duel. In 2025, this item will only be offered as a tournament prize for the first six months, before going on sale for retail.
• On Nov. 8, 2024 in France and in 2025 elsewhere, IELLO will release Time Bomb: Undercover, a new version of Yusuke Sato’s Time Bomb co-designed by Quentin Schoemacker in which 4-8 players are divided into three teams, with Agency trying to stop a bomb from going off, the Organization trying to destroy the world, and the Shadow trying to manipulate everyone else in order to snip the final wire on the bomb.
Each player’s ID is displayed in the lower-right corner of their card, and the Shadow may choose to reveal it to a neighbor at any time. However, some roles ( Viper and Ace ) are double agents and the Shadow may choose to work with them as they see fit. As players continue to snip wires bit by bit throughout the game, the location cards that are revealed each round introduce new twists to the gameplay.
• IELLO released Yann Dupont’s Piña Coladice in France in July 2024, and the game will come to the U. S. in 2025. You must roll the five dice three more times each turn before winning the 4×4 grid’s coaster. The earlier you claim a coaster, the more points it’s worth — and if you place four of your cocktail markers in a line, you win instantly.
• Taiki Shinzawa’s LUZ is in a similar situation, debuting in France on October 11, 2024 and coming to the U. S. in 2025.
You are aware of the colors of the cards you have in this trick-taking game, but you are not aware of their numbers. Your neighbor has set up your hand so that each suit starts at high, and then gives you those cards to hold. You bid on the total number of tricks you’ll perform each round, but you can fudge that number by one, giving you fewer points if you hit either target.
Nice card layout and image progression!
• In 2022, Korean publisher Playte released a new version of Manfred Reindl’s Skull King: Das Würfelspiel — a trick-taking dice game combination — under the name Mino Dice. Although IELLO has already released this title in France under the same name, it will be called Mythical Dice when it debuts in the United States in 2025 to prevent any chance that someone will overhear the name and mistake it for a dice game about tiny fish.
• IELLO’s deduction game series Guilty will receive a new entry in 2025 with Guilty: Fontainebleau 1543 from Jérémy Fraile, Eliette Fraile, and Yohan Servais:
Quote:
To start Guilty: Fontainebleau 1543, you’ll read the introduction, then place the specified cards on the table. Choose a card, turn it over, and read it. What will you find there? And behind reading, you might have to put your skilled nose to the test with scratch-and-sniff cards that bring history to the present.
As you become immersed in the French royal conspiracies of the 16th century, which are based on historical facts, time will keep passing, which might lead to unexpected outcomes. Conduct your investigation, card by card, but time is short and your choices have consequences…
Canoe Rabbit Bat Peas is a popular party game. was the title “work in progress” that IELLO displayed at SPIEL Essen 24. In this party game, Justine Vanhuffel and Louise Blaise work as teams to give clues to their teammates that sound nonsense but ideally converge in meaningful words or expressions when they repeat the clues aloud.
In the category of gastronomy, you have a two-word phrase, with each word having two beats
• Little Soldiers — a wargame/party game combo from Florent Baudry and Adrien Fenouillet, based on a concept from Cédric Barbé, that was originally intended as a Gen Con 2024 release — has been moved to 2025/2026 to give the company more time to streamline the design as a family-plus game instead of something more complex.
• IELLO distributes Restoration Games ‘ Unmatched line in Europe and Asia, and it expects to release Unmatched: The Witcher – Realms Fall and Unmatched: The Witcher – Steel and Silver in Q1 2025, with Unmatched Adventures: Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles following in Q3 2025.
IELLO also plans to release Unmatched: Acrylic Sidekicks Pack 4 in November 2024, with this set featuring minions from Unmatched Adventures: Tales to Amaze.
• IELLO has been encouraging SPIEL attendees for the past few years to sign a long exterior wall on their booth. After SPIEL Essen 24 was over and everyone was heading for the door, I took a photo of the wall below.
Do n’t feel bad about yourself after reading a thousand messages from gamers all over the world.
