After stiffing advance coverage of Origins Game Fair 2026 in yesterday's post, I decided to relent and highlight a few of the new games being demoed or sold in Columbus, Ohio starting on Thursday, June 18.
▪️ I am not familiar with Jordan Dube of Goosepoop Games, but as you might suspect from the name of this Maine publisher, he creates silly, absurd designs, with his catalog including both role-playing games and card games.
I'm not a RPG guy, but I am intrigued by titles such as Full Metal Trash Can, Frog News, Honk Daddy, Laundry Punks, and Good Soup. One of Dube's newest RPGs is Warped FM, which bears the following description:
Warped FM is a GM-less tabletop role playing game in which players interview creatures from other dimensions! Run your own podcast, exploring the narrative campaign, or play it as a one shot. Features three full campaign stories and five solo journaling adventures to play.
Discover other dimensions and grow your audience in this rules-lite TTRPG!
Again, probably not something I'd play, but I appreciate games that don't just roll out genre tropes we've seen four hundred times.
As for card games, Dube has three on the market currently, all of which are two-player games in an 18-card format, with three more games coming. The existing titles are Big Stretch, a press-your-luck game in which you try to stay up late and claim cards; Choosey Goosey, in which you claim cards simultaneously to dress up your goose; and Pigeon Chess, with both players building a 3x4 grid with their chess-themed cards, then attacking one another and putting more forces into play, ideally scoring more than the opponent.
In Q4 2026, Dube plans to launch a crowdfunding campaign for the "Birdhouse Mega Pack", which will feature the two bird-themed games above and three other 18-card designs: Stork Exchange, Birdhouse, and Bird Bots.
▪️ I previewed Looney Labs' Seven Islands after getting a peek at GAMA Expo 2026, and while the game carries a June 30, 2026 release date, it will be available for purchase at Origins.
▪️ Brian and Michael Toth launched Toth Games in 2025 with a crowdfunding project for Legends of the Arena, and they will debut the 2-6 player brawling game at Origins Game Fair 2026.
Each player starts with a hand of basic cards, as well as a tiny deck consisting of three special cards and an ultimate card. On a turn, draw a card, then program a stack of three cards. Everyone's top card goes off first, with the "speed" of the cards determining the order of play, then the second cards go off, then the third.
Basic cards return to your hand after each use, while special cards are discarded and will be recycled into a tiny deck and ultimate cards can be used only once...which makes sense given their name.
Your cards allow your character to move, turn, strike, and block, with your goal being to push opposing characters out of the arena. Do that enough times, and your team wins. In a free-for-all, non-team game, whoever first knocks two characters out of the arena wins; knocked-out characters aren't eliminated, but they're not in a great position either.
▪️ In May 2025, Korea Boardgames released 도그파이트: 1917, a 2-4 player game from Sol Kong, and at Origins licensee Arcane Wonders will debut the English-language edition of Dogfight: 1917.
The basic game is for two players, with each choosing one of four fighters and one of four pilots, each of which has unique effects. (You can use generic pilots in your first games to simplify things.) Each fighter comes with its own deck of maneuvers, evasions, and attacks.
Each time you damage the opponent, they move cards from their deck to their damage pile, and when your deck is empty, you lose. Each turn, you draw a new card, optionally manipulate your hand (discarding a card to shuffle cards into your deck and draw new ones, while also gaining a tactical token), then engage with the opponent by playing exactly one maneuver card and making basic and special attacks.
If you end movement on a tactical token space, you gain 1-2, which allow you to play special cards, re-roll dice, grab random cards from your discard pile, and (importantly) heal damage by returning three cards to your deck.
Variant rules allow you to play in teams of two or in a battle royale format with up to four players.
▪️ I posted an overview of Raas: A Dance of Love, a 1-6 player game from Mihir Shah and Shaleen Harlalka, after getting a rundown at Gen Con 2025. Arcane Wonders anticipates shipping this crowdfunded game to backers in Q3 2026, but it will have copies on hand for demo games at Origins.
In the game, each player has their own game board of three dancers. Each turn, you draft a die from a set of rotating gears, with you trying to draft dice of certain values, dandiya sticks that match those dice, and dress tokens in the colors of your dancers — all while boosting the values of of these items to maximize your points over three rounds and spotting "love matches" for bonus actions along the way.
▪️ Another title Arcane Wonders will demo at Origins is Crescendo, which comes from Christwart Conrad and MEBO Games, but the description of this 2-6 player game is minimal for now:
Try to be the first to organize your cards in order from low to high. Aside from having a good memory, you must use logic and interact with the other players in order to be the first to claim "Crescendo". Draw a card or use the special power that is available: memorize, sort, gamble, react quickly, and interact!
I would guess the latter verbs are powers you can take. I'm a sucker for "number on card" games, along with designs in which you sequence things, so I look forward to learning more about Crescendo.
