Loop 40 Numbers, Play With Eggs, and Help the Insider

Just three weeks out from debuting Compress and The Frozen Passage in the U.S. at Gen Con 2026, Japanese publisher Oink Games has announced new titles for release at Game Market Autumn 2026 on October 17-18, with three of these titles also scheduled to be available at SPIEL Essen 26 and PAX Unplugged 2026. Let's look at those three titles first. [Disclosure: Oink Games is an advertiser on Board Game Beat.]

Loop 40

The gameriest design in the batch is probably Loop 40, a 3-5 player game from designer 6jizo, who debuted in 2024 with Ninjan from Swiss publisher Helvetiq. Loop 40 consists of cards numbered 1-40 and penalty point tokens, with you wanting to ditch the former to avoid the latter.

The core concept for this game is that the numbers 1-40 loop, so if 1 leads the turn, then 40 is the strongest card — and if 27 leads the turn, then 26 is the strongest. A turn starts with a player leading one or more cards in sequence, after which players either (1) play at least the same number of cards in sequence of a stronger value or (2) pass. Once you pass, you're out of the turn, and once all but one player has passed, the turn ends, with that last player removing from the game what they most recently played, then picking up all other played cards on that turn. That player then leads the next turn.

Thus, winning a turn lets you ditch one or more cards at the cost of picking up many more...and yet you might have picked up many cards that allow you to create long sequences, and if no one else can play a sequence as long as yours, then you win the turn, discard those cards, and lead again.

Looking at the gameplay example above, the player to your right has played 36-37-38. You can pass on this, or you can play 7-8-9-10. If that wins the turn, you'll ditch four cards to pick up five, with the 24-25 filling in a four cards sequence from 23 to 26. (Since the numbers loop, a sequence of 39-40-1-2 would also possible.)

As soon as a player ditches their final cards, the round ends. The player who goes out ditches a penalty token of their choice, while everyone else scores points for cards in their hand, with each sequence of n cards being worth n² points. Play as many rounds as the number of players.

Eggsposed

Social deduction fans can try their hand at Eggsposed, a game by first-time designer Ali Mussell. Each of the 3-8 players is either a "bright bird" or a "night bird", with night birds trying to get their eggs into the shared nest.

Each player receives a secret role, and the nine egg tokenss in the game are shuffled, with six being placed in a circular nest — which starts with six feathers inside the circle — and three eggs set apart from the nest.

On a turn, you:

• Secretly look at an unfeathered egg in the nest, then place a feather on it.
• Return all feathers on eggs to the nest, then remove one feather from play, then (with everyone else covering their eyes) swap any two eggs without looking at their hidden faces.
• If no feathers are on any eggs, reveal an egg in the nest; this egg can no longer be swapped.

If three or four night birds are ever revealed in the nest, the night bird players win. If all eggs in the nest are revealed without this happening, the bright bird players win.

Insider Magic

In 2016, Oink Games released Insider from the design team of Akihiro Itoh, Kwaji, Daichi Okano, and Kito Shinma. In that 4-8 player game, one player is the Master who knows a word they want the other players to identify, and one player is the Insider who also knows this word and wants others to not identify it, but without their own identity being revealed.

After selling 100,000+ copies of Insider, in 2020 Oink released Insider Black, which plays the same as (and can be combined with) Insider, but features more challenging themes, team rules, and a Follower role that tries to support the Insider in their deception.

With 300,000+ copies of Insider titles now sold, Oink Games is releasing Insider Magic, which it describes as more casual and accessible than the original game. The game features a similar set-up, with a Warlock and an Insider both knowing the secret word or phrase, but the Insider is now in league with a team of Villagers and wants the Villagers to identify the word, while Team Villager wants to keep the identity of the Insider hidden.

Team Villager has three minutes to ask yes-or-no questions to discover the secret word, with the Insider trying to subtly guide them to the answer, but to complicate things the Warlock has cast a spell on each player: You must speak like a robot, you speak only in whispers, you speak like a centagenarian, you must sound like you're panicking, and so on.

The Other Three Games

Starting in (I believe) 2020, Oink Games released new editions of existing games that feature licensed IP, with those games being available solely in Japan due to the licensing agreement. Examples include Hide and Seek in the Moomin Valley (based on Nine Tiles) and Toy Story: Toy Overload (based on Order Overload: Cafe).

The newest such title along these lines is くまのプーさん ハチかミツか, which translates as "Winnie the Pooh: Bees or Honey", although the box includes the more succinct English-language title Bees or Hunny. This is a new version of Bruno Faidutti and Jun Sasaki's 2025 game Wriggle Roulette, which I reviewed in July 2025, with eels and snakes being replaced by hexagonal tiles bearing Pooh and bees. Otherwise, gameplay seems identical. Bees or Hunny is available solely in Japan, whether at Game Market Autumn 2026, at Oink's retail store, or online.

Souvenirs from Tokyo features gameplay identical to 2024's Souvenirs from Venice by Jun and Goro Sasaki, with players traveling through a grid of tiles and collecting souvenirs to bring home. To maximize souvenir points, you want to collect three of the same type, but more importantly than that, you need to return to the train station before all the tiles have been revealed or else you automatically lose.

Instead of sailing in gondolas to collect wine glasses and Venetian masks, you're now moving in taxis to collect origami, manekineko, kimono, and other Tokyo-based souvenirs. To complete the thematic immersion, this title can be purchased solely at Oink Games' retail store in Tokyo. Yes, this game is itself a souvenir — very clever marketing!

Souvenirs from Beijing is another thematic remake of Souvenirs from Venice, now featuring panda plushes, Peking duck, tang suits, and more. (In real life, you should probably avoid choosing Peking duck for a souvenir. I've been in the customs room when inspectors find carefully wrapped meat in travelers' suitcases, and those inspectors are not forgiving.)

In addition to being available at Oink Games' retail store, Souvenirs from Beijing was available at DICE CON 2026, but that event ended a few hours before this post went live, so unless you can time travel that's not an option — and if you can time travel, you probably have better options available than picking up a limited edition game.