One company I missed seeing at the 2026 Spielwarenmesse toy and game fair was Zoch Verlag as between my last visit in 2020 and this year parent company Simba Toys had moved its home to hall 6, which features action toys, educational toys, and other types of toys. Well, now I know for next year...
Zoch was previewing only two new upcoming titles, one being Claude Weber's Die Zausel vom Zauberwald, which translates to the extremely Zoch-ian title "The Shaggy Creatures of the Enchanted Forest".
The gist of the game is that you and your fellow players are forgetful gnomes who have left their hats in various bushes throughout the forest. You're devoid of dosh, though, so you can't buy new hats; you must go searching for what's been left behind, and the more rings on a hat, the better!
Unfortunately, the circular areas present challenges in that they'll tip over if you step on them the wrong way, so you need to learn and remember safe passages through the forest so that you move those hats homeward. (During set-up, the game board is placed on a raised platform, creating room for the traps to tip, with players rotating the traps once hats with two and three rings become available to keep everyone guessing.) As long as you don't trip in a trap, you can keep moving toward a bush or toward home.
The ghosts will block your way and laugh at you when you stumble, as captured in the documentary footage shown on the game cover.
The other title — Regine and Thomas Fabien's Flitze Flatze Bärentatze, which translates to something like "Flit, Flap, BEAR PAW" — is also for 2-4 players aged 6 and up, and in this game you're trying to get salmon from a netted pool to the spawning grounds on the perimeter of the game board.
On a turn, you add one of the two net cards on the game board edge to the image in the center of the table. Doing this affects which colors of salmon are visible, as well as where the nets are open, which determines which tributaries the salmon can swim in.
For each color present in the central pool, you move that color salmon on one tributary a number of spaces equal to the number of salmon of that color in the pool. If a salmon of that color is already present in the chosen tributary, advance it; if not, add a salmon of that color from the reserve to that tributary.
In the meantime, a bear awaits on a tree stump to demonstrate the power of the Bärentatze. If a salmon ends its movement next to the bear, you remove it from play; if it swims past the bear in a single movement, it's safe. If the pool contains three or more salmon of the same color, the bear moves to a new stump at turn's end, possibly feeding again.
Why do you care which salmon move where? At the start of play, you're secretly assigned one of the five colors, and after the final net card has been resolved, players see which color has been rescued the most to determine a winner.
Aside from these two games, Zoch Verlag will release a 15th anniversary edition of Carmen Kleinert's Da ist der Wurm drin, which won the Kinderspiel des Jahres in 2011. This new edition will include a bonus game: Da ist der Wurm drin: das Würfelspiel.
Mark Calin Caliman's Crossboule — which is like an indoor version of bocce or pétanque — also celebrates its 15th anniversary (at least with Zoch) in 2026, and a special version of the game with three sets of boule balls will be released in March 2026 at the same time as these other three items.
