Sometimes I devote an entire post to a single game based on a licensed IP, as with the March 25, 2026 announcement of The Lord of the Rings: The King's Gambit, but more frequently I race through IP-based games like they're a swarm of bees. I'm acknowledging their existence and letting others know they exist, then you can do with that knowledge what you will.
▪️ The 2022 trivia game Hitster from designer Marcus Carleson and publisher Jumbo has been a massive success throughout Europe, with many spinoff titles specific to eras, countries, and musical genres. (If you're not familiar with the gameplay, you scan the QR code on a card, listen to the linked song via Spotify, then place that song correctly in your personal timeline, as in the game Timeline.)
In the second half of 2026, Jumbo will release Hitster: W:O:A, with that acronym standing for Wacken Open Air, a heavy metal music festival held annually in Wacken, Germany. The event started in 1990 and currently attracts more than 80,000 visitors. W:O:A 2026 takes place July 29 to August 1, and Hitster: W:O:A will be previewed at the event ahead of its retail release.
▪️ In Q3 2025, Goliath Games released The Sims Board Game, and it's now followed that up with a card game — The Sims: YaGoBuGi. The gist of the game is that you draw cards with the Simlish syllables Ya, Go, Bu, and Gi, and you put together 2-4 syllable nonsense words. Match other players, and you score Simoleons, with longer words being worth more.
▪️ Company of Heroes, a 2021 design from Chris Gabrielson, Bryan Kromrey, and Bad Crow Games based on a video game of the same name is getting yet another expansion — Desert Warfare — as part of a crowdfunding campaign that's raised US$1.1 million as of April 8, 2026. Only US$895 for the "damn near everything" bundle...which doesn't include the US$59 neoprene mat-pack.
▪️ In August 2025, MOOD Publishing crowdfunded Rival Incursion and Horrors of Hoxxes, two expansions for 2022's Deep Rock Galactic: The Board Game, which is based on a 2020 video game, with nearly €1.4 million in funding from more than six thousand backers — then with fulfillment of that campaign still outstanding in late March 2026 it launched a new campaign for collectible figurines of the space dwarfs — I mean, of the dwarven space miners — collecting more than €242,000 as of April 8, 2026.
Got to keep those dwarven terms distinct so that Games Workshop isn't involuntarily summoned...
▪️ And speaking of GW, in mid-April 2026, Steve Jackson Games will release Munchkin Warhammer 40,000: Grudges and Gore, the sixth expansion for Munchkin Warhammer 40,000 since that game's debut in 2019.
▪️ The Super Mario Galaxy Movie debuted on April 1, 2026, so naturally Hasbro's Monopoly: The Super Mario Galaxy Movie hit shelves about the same time. What's the shelf life for a game like this? I guess it depends on how the movie performs
▪️ Hasbro released a Fourth Wing-based version of the party game Priorities in July 2025, and in July 2026 that game will be joined by Monopoly: Fourth Wing and Monopoly Deal: Fourth Wing, with the former being packaged like a slipcovered book, which is a nice way of acknowledging the literary origins of Fourth Wing, which is the first book in Rebecca Yarros' Empyrean pentalogy.
▪️ Hasbro released Guess Who? Pokémon at about the same time, and while the company isn't promoting it as an anniversary edition, 2026 is the thirtieth anniversary of the first Pokémon video games.
▪️ To continue with a wisp of a Japanese connection, in March 2026 Canadian publisher Wiggles 3D released 5-Minute One Piece, this being a new version of Connor Reid's 5-Minute Dungeon that uses One Piece characters, enemies, settings, and more by way of the Netflix adaptation of the One Piece manga/anime.
