During GAMA Expo 2026, publisher Czech Games Edition announced two new titles for release in 2026. (Disclosure: CGE has purchased advertising on Board Game Beat that will run the week of March 9.)
Codenames: Critical Role Adventures puts a new spin on Vlaada Chvátil's 2015 party game Codenames, with this 2-4 player game co-designed by Felix Podlesny being fully co-operative, akin to 2017's Codenames: Duet, as one player steps into the role of game master to lead the other players on a series of adventures inspired by the Critical Role web series in which professional voice actors play Dungeons & Dragons.
In the style of a Critical Role campaign, the game master gives clues to the other players, with them ideally figuring out how to advance on missions toward the final boss. To quote the publisher's description:
Together, they can journey through three separate campaigns, each consisting of multiple branching missions. Every mission features its own goals, as well as rules that tweak the standard Codenames gameplay — requiring the GM and their party to adapt and think differently to overcome the challenges at hand.
The party chooses three out of seven iconic Critical Role characters to embark on the adventure. The base game introduces Vex (and Trinket), Percy, Grog, Jester, Nott, Dorian, and Fresh Cut Grass. Players can mix and match these heroes before every new campaign as different combinations result in distinct gameplay styles.
Playable heroes have their own cardboard miniatures to be placed on the words during guessing. Each hero also comes with personalized abilities that unlock as players collect XP from successful missions, and they can equip items that can be purchased along the way. To track XP, HP, character progression, and items, every character has their own character sheet. And yes, there is a D20 included in the box as characters must pass their own unique skill checks that determine how well (if at all) their abilities are executed.
Codenames: Critical Role Adventures includes two hundred double-sided word cards, and the number of Critical Role-specific codewords, such as "Exandria" in the lower-right corner, is limited. At GAMA Expo 2026, a CGE rep said that the word mix leans into classic fantasy, while still trying to match the format of classic Codenames in which lots of cross-referencing is possible in the clues. (I'll confess that I've so far come up empty in trying to think of a clue that links "bidet" and "natural 20". Any suggestions?)
Should you wish to indulge in eponymous geekiness, a separate Vox Machina expansion pack will be released, similar to other Codenames expansion packs due out in Q2 2026, with this expansion consisting of a new character (Keyleth), two new items, and 42 words themed on Critical Role's first campaign, which ran from March 2015 to October 2017.
Both of these items will debut at Gen Con 2026, with a retail release in Q3 2026.
The second CGE title due out in Q3 2026 is Drillers, a 1-4 player game from Project L's Adam Španěl and company artist Říman, who is getting their first design credit.
Drillers is a deck-building game in which most of the cards allow you to move your drill or drill with your drill — but you are not a dentist drilling teeth, as fun as that might be. No, you are using your drill to dig far into the earth.
The game board consists of multiple levels, and when a drill reaches a level, you reveal the ! or !! card to discover the features of that level. Levels might feature resources that you can acquire, or you might be the one to dig up new resources that other players might then grab before you can do so. (As you do so, you take tiles — which are longer at deeper levels — and build across the top of your player board, as seen at the lower right.)
Your deck is on a stand with the top card visible to you, and as you acquire new cards, they are stacked onto the deck, so if you buy the right cards in the right (reverse) order, you can set up future turns.
To play cards, you need to spend energy, with your reserve initially being capped at 10, but you can boost that ceiling during play. You can spend energy to use cards or discard cards to regain energy, but if you can do things the right way and end your turn on the surface, your energy tops off automatically. (I'm guessing you're solar powered, but you could also just handwave it away as "The game says so".) Of course, the deeper you go, the harder it will be to surface.
CGE is also getting into the "upgraded bits" game, with (from left to right below) coin and compass tokens for Lost Ruins of Arnak, metal coins for Drillers, and energy and credit tokens for SETI: Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence.
