I write for a worldwide audience, yet I know that plenty of folks on the North American continent where I live are wondering when they might get their hands on games that made a splash at SPIEL Essen 25, at Game Market Autumn 2025, or somewhere else on the European or Asian market. Here's a quick summary of licensing deals along these lines:
▪️ Mayfair Games has signed an exclusive distribution agreement for Recall, a beefy game from Helge Meissner, Anna Wermlund, Kristian Amundsen Østby, and Kjetil Svendsen that made a splash at SPIEL Essen 25, with the first three designers being three-quarters of the team that made 2022's equally well-received Revive and the latter two designers being owners of originating Norwegian publisher Alion Games.
Recall reaches North American shelves on April 22, 2026.
▪️ Another SPIEL Essen 25 debut was Kingdom Crossing from designers Marco Canetta and Stefania Niccolini — well-known for titles such as Railroad Revolution and Zhanguo: The First Empire — and publisher Sorry We Are French. Pandasaurus Games has picked up this title, which was inspired by the Seven Bridges of Königsberg problem, and plans to release it in early August 2026.
For details on the game's creation and development over many years, read Marco Canetta's designer diary on BGG.
▪️ In Q2 2026, Allplay will expand its tiniest game line with Le Chocolat, a new edition of Mashiu's Chocolate Favorers, which debuted from their own Mashiu Games in 2024.
In this two-player game, you start with a "bar" of 36 chocolate tiles arranged at random. On a turn, you "break" the chocolate bar by splitting one group of tiles into two along a straight line; if a group ever has fewer than four tiles, the active player claims it at the end of their turn. Of course, whether they want that piece will depend on the scoring rubric revealed at the start of this ten-minute game.
▪️ Mighty Boards is crowdfunding a new edition of Yōtei, a game from first-time designer Huy Pham that debuted at SPIEL Essen 25 from first-time publisher Kumagera Seisaku G.K., which is located on the Japanese island of Hokkaido and makes craft items (and game pieces) from local wood.
Gameplay is set at the base of Mount Yōtei, a stratovolcano in Hokkaido near the original publisher, with players building their own town. Each round, players take turns claiming cards; some cards are free, some cost potatoes, and some allow multiple players to claim them, with each placing a secret potato bid in a box. Before claiming a card, you can choose to flip it face down, claiming forests or potatoes at no cost and denying an opponent a card they might have desired.
Cards come in three tiers, with the second and third tier cards being worth more charm points, but often having requirements that you must meet before being able to claim them. When a player has claimed a second tier III card, the game ends, then everyone compares their charm.
▪️ Japanese publisher SUNNY BIRD released Kentaro Yazawa's game FALLING in 2025, and U.S. publisher Capstone Games has picked up this title for release in May 2026.
The gist of the game is that an enormous tower fell from the sky, a tower so tall that the top could not initially be seen, but now a vortex has opened underneath that tower, which is falling again and which you hope to explore, mine, and profit from before it disappears.
In each of four rounds, you collect supplies, install devices like smelters and refineries, and ascend the levels of the tower. At the end of each round, the bottom two levels of the tower disappear, forcing you to ascend continually as your work will vanish into the vortex. With every tenth point you score, you gain a victory point card that features a random bonus on its reverse side. You can play with the same starting resources and bonus action for each player, or you can choose one of two sides from a random partner card to have varying bonuses and starting resources.
▪️ To throw in one out-of-region licensing deal, in mid-April 2026 Brettspielbox reported that PD-Verlag will release a German-language edition of Sweet Lands from designer Totsuca Chuo and publisher uchibacoya.
