Canadian Games at Essen

The giant boardgame trade show, Internationale Spieltage (aka Essen Spiele), is currently underway in Germany and Canadian games are there in force. We've been keeping an eye out for how various Canadian games are faring in BoardGameGeek's GeekBuzz metrics, which attempt to gauge the popularity of the various games present at the fair.

Most popular right now among the games we're tracking are Belfort (averaging 4.8 stars out of 5), Jab: Real-Time Boxing (4.6 stars), D-Day Dice (4.2 stars), Québec (4.1 stars), Undermining (4.1 stars), Quarriors! (3.9 stars), Ticket to Ride: Team Asia & Legendary Asia (3.6 stars), Alba Longa (3.3 stars), Pamplona: Viva San Fermin! (3.3 stars), and 1812: The Invasion of Canada (3.3 stars). That last one, by Ontario-based designers Beau Beckett and Jeph Stahl, is new to us so we're glad to now have it on our radar.

BoardGameGeek is also doing a great job of posting video interviews and rules explanations with the designers and publishers. Check out some of the Canadian Content below:

Best New Family Game of 2010?

It's always exciting (and a little nerve-wracking) to see your creations finally out there in the wild. So far, however, I'm grateful to see that Two By Two is being well-received.

With its current average rating of 7.03 out of 10, Two by Two is the 6th highest rated game on a religious theme over at BoardGameGeek, nestled right in there between the religious editions of Carcassonne and Settlers of Catan. That's fairly good company to be keeping, as those are both considered to be fairly highly regarded versions of the original classics (which are themselves rated 7.47 and 7.57 respectively).*

Codename Punk and How to Kickstart a Baby

It's Essen season in the board game industry and all eyes are turned to Germany. The big scandal this year is that one of the major European component suppliers has fallen behind on their orders and, as a result, a lot of highly anticipated games are delayed and won't be available at the industry's biggest trade show. This is devastating for some small publishers for whom that may be their only title this year. Fortunately, Valley Games is unaffected. They've run afoul of late deliveries in previous years so this time around they made sure to fly everything out to Germany a month in advance and warehouse it there so it would be ready and waiting for them when they arrived yesterday. Here's wishing them luck and some great international exposure for Two by Two.