Let's continue walking through the Greater Columbus Convention Center to explore Origins Game Fair 2026:
▪️ Kinson Key Games' Galactic Cruise has proved to be a huge success, and the publisher is returning to the stars with Excursions, a 1-6 player design from Ben Rossett that's set in the same world as Galactic Cruise, with art and graphic design once again by Ian O'Toole. Here's a game summary:
When you are the active player, you choose one of the seven actions around the outside of the space station. These actions include building developments, advertising to guests, discovering new excursions and adding them to your itineraries, upgrading your ships and player board, and sending guests on the vacations of their dreams. All players take this action simultaneously, but as the active player you also gain a bonus, the potency of which fluctuates as the space station rotates.
Once a player reaches the requisite number of points, the game comes to an end and final scoring commences. Whoever has the most points is crowned cruise director extraordinaire.
Each player has their own game board where they will organize up to two excursions, with an excursion being represented by a row of cards next to one of your two spaceships, ideally with the colored halves of adjacent cards matching. The multi-use cards are also tucked under your board to boost bonuses you receive. Passengers come in three colors, and they want different things when they travel.
The central board above shows the seven actions available, with the central ring rotating so that the multipliers vary for an action. You want to build developments from your game board and place them between the actions so that (1) you increase the upper limits for resources(?) on your game board and (2) you connect adjacent actions, thereby allowing you to take a linked action instead of the one where the spaceship is placed.
Much more is going on in the game, and I passed on a demo game as I had other things on the go. Kinson Kay Games plans to crowdfund Excursions in Q4 2026 for release in 2027, so details will come in time as the company prepares for launch.
At Origins 2026, Bitewing Games was also demoing a game heading to crowdfunding: Peter C. Hayward's solitaire game Rolling Deep, which it describes as "a Balatro-inspired roguelike dice-building adventure". That cascade of words seems to mimic gameplay, with the demo person showing how one action rolls into another. From the publisher:
Rolling Deep features a cornucopia of unlockable content, addicting challenges, and delicious combos. Each round, you roll dice representing your team's daring actions as you push deeper underground. Decide when to act (scoring a roll) and when to try your luck (re-rolling individual dice in pursuit of a stronger outcome).
When you score a roll, its value advances your progress toward a target score, the difficulty required to overcome the current stage of the journey. Each set of three rounds is called a chapter. Each chapter raises the challenge, and the final round of every chapter features a boss — a dangerous encounter that alters the rules for that round.
Between rounds, you visit the shop, where you spend coins to acquire upgrades and consumable gear. Some upgrades permanently alter the sides of your dice, changing their values and allowing them to generate coins or re-roll potions when scored. Others boost your score, either every roll or when you score specific result ranges, rewarding careful control over how boldly (or cautiously) you push forward.
I've never tried Balatro, but the Rolling Deep demo, which featured a lot of activity to move bits around the table, left me more tired than inspired. Solo games aren't my thing, though, so that's not surprising.
In 2023, Explosm Games, the company behind Joking Hazard, acquired Lay Waste Games — so many links! — but sometime in the past couple of years a new company entered the scene: Scrungo LLC, which owns and operates Lay Waste Games in partnership with Explosm.
What's more, Scrungo LLC — which uses a logo reading "Scrungo & Co" — also releases designs under a "Scrungo Games" branding. I passed the Scrungo Games display at GAMA Expo 2026 near the end of my time at that show, and now at Origins 2026 I looked at the banner and display table featuring five games I did not know and thought...maybe I can read the rules online. I was hitting a wall and wasn't ready for a rules blitz.
Unfortunately, Scrungo hasn't posted rules online, so I've poked the company for info — after discovering that it was reaching out to me through an old email address I rarely check. So many little complications for a handful of simple-looking games...
Maybe I missed out by not exploring the Race to Stupid Games catalog, but I thought it would be okay to let you know that Toots and Poops exists and let you take things from there should you be so inspired.
I saw "mystery boxes" only at the booths of Indie Boards & Cards and Arcane Wonders. Could they possibly be worth the cost? Depends on what you're looking for, of course.
As for me, I'd head to BoardGameGeek and look over the last five years of the company's releases and see whether I'd want to spend US$55 on any combination of games listed. If so, then I should buy those games to ensure that I get what I want; if not, well, why would I want to spend that money for games I likely don't want to play?
(In my youth, I'd buy random LPs in the $1 bin at record stores to try out new bands, discovering The Fall, Nina Hagen, and others this way, but $1 ≠ $55 — and you don't have to learn new rules to play an LP.)
