Essen Spiel 2022 took place from October 6-9, 2022 in Essen Germany. It is one of the biggest board game conventions in the world and is a big opportunity for publishers to showcase their offerings ahead of the Holiday season! We didn’t make it to the show this time, but publishers have been shouting to the mountaintops about their games! Below is a list of nine games from the show floor that we are very excited to play!
Gummiland
(Age 6+, Blue Orange Games)
Gummiland is a deck-building game meant for younger kids. The components are adorable to begin with, but the premise definitely suits it. Players are competing to capture all the Gummiz using adorable fruit cards.
Mech A Dream
(10+, Blue Orange Games)
Mech A Dream is a worker placement, engine building game set in a far flung future where humans and robots live side by side. Robots don’t have dreams in this world and this game is all about building machines that make dreams for the robots! I love the graphic design on the components that have been revealed so far.
Mist Over Carcassone
(8+, Z-Man Games)
We love Carcassone (and all tile laying games for that matter), over here. A new version with a spooky theme just seems like an absolute win. I’m particularly intrigued by the cooperative elements as they haven’t been a part of the Carcassone world before.
Turing Machine
(14+, Le Scorpion Masqué)
I have no idea if this game will even be fun, but The Turing Machine includes an “analog computer” that does calculations using perforated cards. Its a deduction game where you either cooperate as a team or compete to crack codes using the computation that are only possible using the computer within the game itself. I’m absolutely fascinated by how this could work to the point of distraction.
Evergeen
(8+, Horrible Guild)
Evergreen is a board game from the same designer as Photosynthesis and shares some of the same themes. This one is all about planting trees and placing other objects to help build a complete ecosystem. The components look lovely and I always appreciate a science themed game. Linda, our managing editor of board games, is very excited for this one.
Peter Pan
(Age Unknown, Zatu Games)
Peter Pan is a deduction game where each player knows the location of both a lost boy and one of Captain Hook’s pirates. Players can only share that information to each other via picture cards that provide clues. Then players venture through Neverland trying to find the lost boys and avoid the pirates.
Animals of Baker Street
(10+, IELLO)
Animals of Baker Street is a deduction, puzzle solving game featuring cure animals and a Sherlock Holmes theme. It is a cooperative game with a limited number of puzzles to solve, but it looks like there should be enough content in the box to keep it entertaining for a while.
Starship Captains
(12+, Czech Games)
Starship Captains is a 1-4 player eurogame that combines action selection and engine building. You manage a crew and operate a starship as you go on adventures and face different challenges. This is one that I absolutely must play as someone who loves Star Trek and other similarly themed games.
Those are just a few of the games that were featured at Essen this year. We’re sure that we missed some. Let us know in the comments if you found any that didn’t make it onto our list!
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Guest Writer 
Linda Wrobel