One Sunday evening in September, at home, with Christophe and two friends, I brought out Carcassonne Labyrinthexpecting a light aperitif game. It is Ravensburger's autumn release, and it marries two of the house classics, Max J. Kobbert's Labyrinth and Klaus-Jürgen Wrede's Carcassonne. An hour later, the three of us were grown adults hunched over a grid of tiles, wondering who would dare push the bottom row, because pushing it opened a beautiful path, for me and above all for

I had been warned. A few voices, dropped across game tables and conversations, had told me it would fall flat, polished but hollow, a mythological coat of paint over not very much. So I opened the box dragging my feet, all but certain I was there to confirm the verdict. A handful of games later, including a good few solo runs, I owe it a mea culpa: I came in negative, I walk away convinced. As long as you know who it is for. Playtime: 25 min · Age: 8+ · Players: 1 to 5 · Publ

I put it on the table in front of players who have seen everything tile-laying has to offer, with the polite certainty that we were about to spend a pleasant, unremarkable half-hour. Origames released La Vallée des Tori in France on 14 August 2026, the box promises a Japanese print, and the first reviews announced a pretty but predictable game. Several plays later, the table was still arguing about who had left which tile to whom. That is not the conversation you have around

Wispwood caught my eye at Essen. In the middle of that ocean of boxes, it was the Halloween colours that grabbed me: glowing wisps, a forest that smells of October, that little visual shiver that makes you reach out. The publisher (CGE) kindly gave me a copy in its original edition, and I went home a happy man. Then I opened the box, saw the tiles waiting to be slotted into a grid and thought: "oh great, another Tetris." Big mistake. The game is far cleverer, far more of a br

There are games you bring out to duke it out, and others you set down on the table the way you would light a candle. Flamecraft clearly belongs to the second kind. At home, it started with an unboxing on a rainy Sunday (in Belgium, as you'll have gathered, that's a redundancy), and it ended up squatting the living-room shelf because the neighbors kept asking for more. They are the ones, in fact, who made me understand the game's effect: two people who never touch a "modern" g

I snubbed it at first. One evening, alone in front of my screen, I fired up a test game of 7 Wonders Architects on Board Game Arena, head to head, and I stayed cold: too much access to the cards, not enough tension, where had the vertigo of the great 7 Wonders gone? I almost left it there. Then I pulled the box out again one Sunday, around the kitchen table, with my mother and my mother-in-law, who never touch a modern game. Three back-to-back rounds later, they were asking f

Let me make a confession few reviewers dare to: I opened the États d'Âme box with stars in my eyes, and I closed it with a sigh. Not once, several times. I read the rules, they wore me out. I read them again, they wore me out more. And I ended up asking myself the real question, the one that separates an impatient gamer's tantrum from a reasoned verdict: is it me, is it the rulebook, or is it the game? After picking the title apart from every angle, I have my answer, and it's

With Schmidt Spiele, I've picked up a habit: not trusting my own eyes. The publisher regularly hands us boxes with artwork that's questionable to our French tastes, yet often hides seriously well-built games behind that cover. The Quacks of Quedlinburg, The Taverns of Tiefenthal, the list of titles you'd be wrong to judge by their box art is a long one. So when Morty Sorty: Magic Shop shows up, the latest release from the house, a family game of drafting, placement and tablea

I brought Amanite back from Essen 2025, in that pile of boxes you grab "just to see," without really knowing what you'll do with them. In the end, it found its table at my neighbours' place. They play a little, without being die-hards, and Alix actually forages for her own mushrooms in the woods. She was sold on the theme before we even opened the rulebook: Roxane Campoy's artwork, painted in gouache, spoke to her directly about her forest walks. I shared that visual crush in

I waited for this game like a kid waits for a parcel. I had discovered it at the Asmodays, I clicked with it right away, and Repos Production sent it over in the wake of that. Except the parcel landed smack in the middle of a Bpost strike, and I spent more than a month chewing my nails. Suffice to say that by the time I opened the box, I was already well and truly won over. The good news is that Spooky Tower delivered on every promise. Since then, I have had my mother, in her

It's past eleven at night, the table is littered with wooden tokens scattered like fallen leaves, and Christophe just snatched the last phoenix feather from under my nose with a smirking grin I won't forgive for at least two more games. Nocturne has been camping out in my game collection for two months now, and this scene repeats itself unfailingly: carefully laid plans that crumble, victories snatched through sheer audacity, and that strange feeling of wanting to immediately

I discovered The Druids of Edora on a rainy October day in my brand-new game room set up in the garage. You know, the kind of perfect day for unpacking a surprise package. When I saw the Ravensburger logo on the review copy parcel, I immediately hoped it would be a new Feld. And bingo! The Druids of Edora. Needless to say, the excitement was at its peak. As an absolute fan of The Castles of Burgundy (I even splurged on the deluxe version, oops), I'd been waiting for this mome

I have to confess something: Take Time is definitely not the kind of game I would have naturally gravitated toward. Let's be honest, when you look at the box or hear about the concept, it doesn't exactly scream "game of the year." And yet, thanks to the Asmodee evening, I discovered a little gem that completely won me over. The Unsettling Discovery During the rules explanation, I genuinely wondered: "what is this game?!" The concept leaves you a bit perplexed at first. We hav