Build One Tower, Stash Gems in Another

German publisher Zoch Verlag has announced its late 2026 line-up, with three titles for players aged 8 and up and one for the youngsters at home.

Pocket Pisa

Zoch has a long history of balance and dexterity games — Bamboleo, Bausack, Villa Paletti, Menara, and more — and to that line it's adding Pocket Pisa, a relatively small game (thus, "pocket") from Christoph Cantzler and Anja Wrede for 2-4 players.

The game is played on a circular base that's rounded on the bottom, duplicating the mistake used by those who constructed the Tower of Pisa. As for gameplay, the publisher writes:

Piece by piece, the tower rises higher and higher. Along the way, players must decide whether to cash out early and collect victory stars — or keep building for even greater rewards while risking a spectacular total collapse. With every new block, both the tower and its value grow. But the higher you aim, the harder it becomes to stay balanced. One wrong move…and down goes the tower — along with your hopes of claiming those stars.

My interpretation of that description: Players bid for how high they think they can collectively build the tower, and if the tower reaches that height before it topples, you score that many points, with the qualification that once the tower reaches that height, you can no longer participate in building it. I'm curious to see whether I've come close to how the game actually plays...

Nein! Doch! Ohh!

Christoph Cantzler has a second title coming from Zoch in late 2026: Nein! Doch! Ohh!, which translates to something like "No! Really! Ohh!" and which is the second 2026 release that has you trying to guess when sand timers have run out after Jason Tremblay's Hummingbirds, which I covered in February 2026. Cue Dr. Doofenshmirtz!

Four sand timers, each with a different duration, are hidden under cups, and on a turn, you roll the die, then decide whether the sand timer under the indicated cup has run out. If you don't think it has, say "No" and pass the turn to the next player — but someone can call out "Yes!" to challenge you, then pick up the cup to reveal who scores. Regardless of whether the timer has run out, flip it over to keep everyone on their toes. The die can also direct players to move the timers to different colors, challenging your memory in more ways than one.

Der Turm

The 2-5 player game Der Turm ("The Tower") is credited to BLOB Factory, a gaming studio consisting of Luca Bellini, Carlo Emanuele Lanzavecchia, Walter Obert, and Luca Borsa, but the description from Zoch Verlag is more evocative than descriptive:

Ten tower floors are available in which players can hide their precious gems — but nothing stays on the same level. Every turn, the tower's modular floors are taken apart and rebuilt in a completely different order. What was once at the top may suddenly reappear near the bottom, turning memory and orientation into a constant challenge.

Players who can keep track of the shifting floors and follow the hidden flow of gems may stay one step ahead of their opponents as opening an overloaded compartment can backfire, sending your carefully planned progress right back to you. Victory goes to whoever manages to place all of their gems into the tower first...but this tower doesn’t accept just anything.

Funkel Munkel

We'll close with a very Zoch-sounding game title: Funkel Munkel, the meaning of which eludes me beyond "funkeln" being a verb that means "sparkle". As with Der Turm, Funkel Munkel comes from an Italian design team, with Cielo d'Oro's first design credit being the 2011 title Aquileia, also from Zoch Verlag.

In this 2-4 player game, players will slide their mine carts between the layers of the game board, but once those carts go underground, you'll need to track which carts are going where on the intersecting tracks as you want to drop gems into the carts that you believe are yours so that you can assemble the most valuable gem collection once you carts pop out somewhere from the underground labyrinth.