Yes, Essen SPIEL 2026 is almost upon us. From October 22 to 25, the Messe Essen will once again be invaded by people searching for their next great board game while carrying bags that become progressively heavier and wallets that become progressively emptier. The fair is using all eight exhibition halls this year, because apparently seven halls of cardboard were not enough for your species.

I have been digging through the new releases, and despite my better judgment, I have found ten games that have managed to catch my attention. Some look clever. Some look ambitious. One involves oil, because apparently we still have not learned anything. And one is about cheese and wine, which is probably the most sensible use of cardboard I have seen all year.

Here are the ten games I will be watching at SPIEL Essen 2026.

1. -60° (Sixty Below)

Antarctica. Meteorites. Research stations. Freezing temperatures. Limited resources. Finally, a game where the weather is more hostile than my opinion of most modern rulebooks.

-60° puts players in an alternate 1971, leading research teams across the Antarctic wilderness toward a mysterious meteorite impact site. Players build networks of stations, explore the frozen landscape, manage scarce resources and develop scientific projects while trying to reach the meteorite first.

It has exploration, worker placement and resource management, but what really catches my attention is the combination of harsh environmental conditions and long-term expedition planning. This looks like the sort of game where one stupid decision several turns earlier eventually comes back to bite you in the frozen backside.

Good. That sounds familiar.

2. Kingdom Come: Deliverance – The Board Game

Take a historically grounded medieval RPG, give it to Tomáš Holek and Vlaada Chvátil, turn it into a giant board game and charge humans €149.99 for the privilege of carrying it home.

Obviously I am interested.

Kingdom Come: Deliverance – The Board Game combines an epic adventure with eurogame elements and deck-building. Players begin as ordinary peasants in 15th-century Bohemia and develop their characters through different paths, including combat, alchemy, archery, persuasion and thievery. The game supports 1–4 players and is designed to run at roughly 90 minutes per player.

CGE is bringing the game to the Essen 2026 launch window, with its first pre-order wave scheduled around SPIEL. A second pre-order wave is already planned for 2027. Which means some humans will apparently be standing in queues to collect a very large medieval cardboard problem they were perfectly capable of ordering from a computer.

I understand completely.

3. Drillers

Mechs. Mines. Minerals. Deck-building. Running out of fuel while deep underground.

Yes.

Drillers has my attention.

You take a drilling mech into an abandoned mine, excavate valuable minerals and try to make it back to the surface before your resources become a particularly expensive funeral. The cards are multi-use, you upgrade your deck and mech, and your decisions can affect the opportunities available to other players. It supports 1–4 players and is designed around roughly 30 minutes per player.

The important part is that going deeper gives you better opportunities while also making the return trip more dangerous. That is the sort of push-your-luck decision I like. Humans always want to go deeper. Humans rarely consider the trip back.

Perhaps this is why you keep losing things in basements.

4. Carl von Linné

Natural science, exploration, specimens, botanical gardens and the historical development of taxonomy.

Somewhere, a Swedish goblin just sat up straighter.

Carl von Linné places players in the early 18th century as natural historians inspired by Carl Linnaeus and his contemporaries. Players explore distant regions, collect and research specimens, cultivate botanical gardens, correspond with scientific institutions and publish books while building knowledge and reputation. A lens system helps determine how players balance fieldwork and scholarly study.

It is an unusually specific theme, which is exactly why I want to see it. Essen does not need another game where somebody is building a generic medieval kingdom and calling it innovation. Give me taxonomy. Give me specimens. Give me miserable scientific arguments over where a plant belongs.

Now that sounds like civilization.

5. Carpet Racers

This one sounds ridiculous.

Which is precisely why it has made the list.

Carpet Racers is a racing game for 3–5 players where nobody initially knows which car is actually theirs. Players move cars, set traps, gather clues and try to work out their own secret identity while simultaneously attempting to win the race. It combines racing, bluffing and deduction in a game lasting roughly 25–45 minutes.

So instead of simply racing your own car, you are racing several cars while trying to figure out which one you are supposed to care about.

Excellent. A racing game with an identity crisis. Humans have finally made a game about modern life.

6. Oil Rock

Nothing says peaceful Thursday evening like building an oil empire.

Oil Rock puts players in control of expanding oil companies competing for influence and efficiency. You will position yourself on an action wheel, expand across the map, build drilling rigs, develop refineries and turbines, manage railway connections and improve your company while trying to dominate the market. It is a 2–4 player strategy game with an advertised play time of around 50-80 minutes.

It is also an interactive design, with worker placement on the wheel and development both on personal boards and the shared map.

I have no idea whether building an oil empire is morally questionable in this particular cardboard universe. I do know that if there is a mechanic where somebody can ruin my carefully planned supply chain because they placed a worker in the wrong place, I will probably enjoy it.

That is what board games are for.

7. Lairs

Build a dungeon. Fill it with walls, traps, treasures and monsters. Then hand it to your opponent and try to survive theirs.

Lairs is a two-player deduction game in which both players construct a dangerous catacomb for the other player to explore while simultaneously attempting to navigate the opponent’s creation themselves. The game is designed for roughly 35 minutes and mixes deduction, exploration and a little luck.

This is exactly the sort of compact idea I like seeing at Essen. You are not merely solving somebody else’s puzzle. You are building the puzzle they have to solve while secretly hoping you were more clever than they were.

Petty. Competitive. Efficient.

Very goblin.

8. Wine & Cheese

Wine and cheese.

Finally, a game about something humans actually understand.

Wine & Cheese is a two-player strategic game set in Burgundy where players manage farms producing both wine and cheese. Ingredients are gathered using paired workers, production and ageing need to be timed carefully, and players must balance the two products because at the end of the game the weaker of the two income streams determines the reward.

It is the spiritual successor to Beer & Bread, but the designers explicitly describe it as more complex with different mechanics rather than simply putting a new label on the old machine.

I appreciate that. Humans have enough games that are essentially the same mechanism wearing a different hat.

Wine and cheese, however, is a combination I am willing to investigate thoroughly.

9. Forbidden Legacy

Forbidden Legacy takes the familiar Forbidden formula and turns it into a seven-episode adventure involving a crumbling city floating above Earth, time travel, hidden components and lasting changes to the game.

Players must repair a portal and keep the city afloat while working through a campaign in which new rules, abilities and challenges emerge over time. It supports 2–4 players and is designed for roughly 30–60 minutes per episode.

I am particularly interested in the legacy element. The best campaign games make your decisions matter without turning the first thing you do into a permanent punishment because you misunderstood one sentence on page seventeen of the rulebook.

If Forbidden Legacy can deliver meaningful evolution without drowning the experience in campaign administration, it deserves attention.

Also, a city floating above Earth while everything is collapsing sounds like an appropriate metaphor for Essen on Saturday afternoon.

10. Timespan

Lead a civilization from the Stone Age to the Space Age in about 90 minutes.

Apparently humanity has finally invented fast-forward.

Timespan is a civilization game for 1–5 players where each player chooses from asymmetric civilizations and combines that choice with one of several technology boards. Players can further customize their civilization by recruiting from a large selection of historical people, buildings, technologies and wonders. Much of the game is played simultaneously, with five rounds covering exploration and action phases.

There is no warfare. Instead, the focus is on peaceful civilization building, exploration and developing an economic engine. That alone makes it unusual enough to get my attention. Humans have somehow managed to make a civilization game where you can reach the space age without immediately declaring war on somebody.

Perhaps there is hope for you after all.

So, What Am I Actually Looking Forward To?

There are hundreds of games competing for attention at SPIEL Essen 2026, and I have no intention of pretending these ten are objectively the ten best games at the fair. That would be nonsense. They are the ten that currently have me most interested in finding a table, stealing a chair and forcing some unfortunate human to explain the rules to me.

-60° has the exploration and survival puzzle. Kingdom Come: Deliverance is an enormous project with some very serious names behind it. Drillers looks like the sort of risk-management headache I enjoy. Carl von Linné has a theme I genuinely want to see handled well. Carpet Racers sounds gloriously stupid in exactly the right way.

Then there is Oil Rock, Lairs, Wine & Cheese, Forbidden Legacy and Timespan, all offering very different reasons to stop wandering around Essen long enough to actually sit down and play something.

Essen SPIEL 2026 runs from October 22 to 25. The doors open at 10:00 each day, with Sunday ending at 18:00. The fair is spread across all eight halls of Messe Essen this year, so if you intend to play everything you want, I recommend bringing sensible shoes, water and the sort of determination normally reserved for military campaigns.

As for me, I will be looking for good games.

If I find them, I will grudgingly admit it.

If I find bad games, I will remember them.

And if I find a shiny ceramic mug at a reasonable price, the rest of the expedition is cancelled.

Now tell me, humans: which games are you hunting for at SPIEL Essen 2026?

The post Essen SPIEL 2026 — Jugbite’s 10 Most Anticipated Games appeared first on Grumpy Goblins.

Four days. Indianapolis. Thousands of humans. Hundreds of exhibiting companies. Thousands of ticketed events. Board games, card games, roleplaying games, miniatures, tournaments, seminars and enough cardboard to make a goblin suspicious of structural integrity.

And somehow you humans decided this was a sensible way to spend four days.

I understand why you go.

I really do.

You like games. You want to discover new ones. You want to play things you cannot easily find at home. You want to meet publishers, see new releases and spend time with other people who understand why sitting around a table arguing over cardboard is perfectly reasonable.

That part makes sense.

What I do not understand is why humans have an almost supernatural ability to take something enjoyable and surround it with enough planning, scheduling and unnecessary decisions to make a military campaign look relaxing.

Four Days. Thousands of Ways to Waste Them.

Gen Con 2026 ran from July 30 through August 2 in Indianapolis, with the Indiana Convention Center and Lucas Oil Stadium at the centre of the convention. Gen Con says the event offers thousands of ticketed events covering board games, card games, roleplaying games, seminars, entertainment and more.

Thousands.

At some point, that stops being a schedule and becomes a punishment.

You look at the event listings and discover that there are more things to do than any sane goblin could possibly accomplish. Games to play. Games to learn. Tournaments to enter. Seminars to attend. Exhibitors to visit. Demonstrations to watch.

Humans see this and think:

Wonderful. So much choice.

I see it and think:

Pick a bloody game and sit down.

There is such a thing as having too many options. When your gaming convention requires military planning just to decide where you are supposed to be at two o’clock, someone has lost the plot.

I have planned raids with fewer moving parts.

The Great Human Migration Toward Cardboard

There is something genuinely impressive about Gen Con.

Humans from all over the place gather in Indianapolis because they care about games enough to make the journey. Gen Con has been running since 1968 and now attracts a huge audience of tabletop gaming enthusiasts. Its own corporate information says the convention has more than 140,000 consumer and professional attendees across the event community, with more than 500 exhibitor booths listed among its attractions.

That is a lot of humans.

Normally I would consider that a serious warning sign.

But in this case, I will admit that there is something good about it.

People are actually gathering around games.

They are playing them. Discovering them. Demonstrating them. Talking about them. Meeting the people who make them.

That is what a gaming convention is supposed to do.

You can spend six months arguing about a game online without ever actually playing it, which is one of humanity’s more impressive accomplishments. At Gen Con, there is at least a reasonable chance that someone will eventually put the game in front of you and say, “Here are the rules.”

Excellent.

Now we are getting somewhere.

Of Course You Had to Make It Complicated

Gen Con itself is not the problem.

The human obsession with trying to experience all of Gen Con is the problem.

You do not need to attend everything.

You cannot attend everything.

And yet I know there are humans who will look at a convention this enormous and immediately start building a schedule so tightly packed that there is barely enough time to walk between rooms.

Badge registration.

Hotel registration.

Event registration.

Tickets.

Times.

Locations.

Queues.

Different halls.

Different events.

Different games.

Gen Con’s 2026 registration schedule alone involved badge sales in February, hotel registration later that month and ticketed event registration in May.

I understand why these things exist.

I am not complaining because organisation is inherently bad.

I am complaining because humans have an unfortunate tendency to mistake more organisation for better organisation.

There is a difference.

A good plan gets you where you need to go.

A bad plan has you sprinting across Indianapolis because you spent forty minutes arguing about whether you could squeeze one more event into the afternoon.

That is not gaming.

That is cardio with paperwork.

Then There Is the Shopping

Gen Con is not only about playing games. The Exhibit Hall brings together hundreds of companies selling games, accessories, art, books, clothing and all the other shiny things humans apparently cannot walk past without touching.

Gen Con describes its Exhibit Hall as featuring well over five hundred companies.

This is where I become concerned.

Because you people have already spent money travelling to a gaming convention.

You have already bought a badge.

You have probably paid for a hotel.

You have probably paid for food.

You have probably bought event tickets.

And then you walk into a hall containing hundreds of companies selling games.

And you say:

“I am just going to look.”

No, you are not.

Nobody goes into a room containing hundreds of shiny new board games “just to look.”

That is not how humans work.

You will see something interesting.

You will pick it up.

Someone will explain it to you.

You will convince yourself that you absolutely need it.

Then you will return home carrying a box that weighs approximately the same as a small goblin and spend the next six months explaining to your partner why it was an excellent purchase.

I have watched goblins do less damage to their own finances during a raid.

The Part I Actually Like

Here is the irritating part.

Gen Con is enormous. It is busy. It is complicated. It is full of humans making questionable decisions about how many games they can possibly play in four days.

But it exists because people genuinely care about gaming.

That matters.

Gen Con gives publishers and game designers a huge place to show what they have made. It gives players somewhere to discover games and actually sit down and play them. It brings a ridiculous number of people together around a hobby that is fundamentally about getting humans around a table.

And I cannot reasonably complain about that.

Well, I can.

I am Jugbite.

It would be suspicious if I didn’t.

But I can admit when something is worthwhile.

Gen Con is worthwhile.

There. I said it.

Nobody tell Krizbella. She will assume I have been replaced.

Jugbite’s Verdict

Gen Con 2026 was four days of games, people, cardboard, shopping, events and enough choice to make a perfectly sensible goblin question his life decisions.

But underneath all the chaos, it is still about the important thing.

Games.

That is why I cannot hate it.

Do I think humans could make the whole experience simpler?

Obviously.

Do I think you need to schedule every waking minute?

Absolutely not.

Do I think you need to visit every booth?

No.

Do you need to buy every shiny box?

For the love of the Great Jug, no.

And if you have scheduled yourself so tightly that you cannot actually sit down and enjoy a game, congratulations.

You have travelled across the country to attend a gaming convention and somehow forgotten to leave time for gaming.

That is an achievement worthy of humanity.

Gen Con may be over, but the cardboard mountain will remain.

Somewhere, right now, a human is looking at the games they bought and saying:

“I probably won’t buy anything next year.”

Sure.

And I am probably going to stop collecting shiny things.

Jugbite’s verdict: Gen Con is too big, too busy and far too easy to overcomplicate.

Fortunately, it is also about games.

So I suppose I will allow it.

For now.

The post Gen Con 2026 — Jugbite Has Had Enough appeared first on Grumpy Goblins.

Absolutely cursed behavior.

And naturally, Jugbite will be there too. Not because Jugbite enjoys crowds. Crowds smell like convention carpet and expired energy drinks. But because UKGE always hides strange treasures among the endless sea of generic fantasy farmers and “peaceful woodland strategy experiences.”

So here are some of the games Jugbite is most eager to stomp toward first.

Drillers

Finally. A game about gigantic industrial drills ripping into the earth instead of planting adorable turnips.

Drillers looks packed with resource extraction, machinery, and economic greed. Humans love pretending environmental destruction is “strategic infrastructure,” and honestly? It makes for excellent board games.

Jugbite expects tense decisions, ruthless competition, and players aggressively consuming resources while pretending they are visionaries instead of raccoons fighting over scrap metal.

Also: giant drills.

Big machines improve everything.

Krizbella disagrees, naturally. She said the theme “feels environmentally upsetting.”

YES. THAT IS WHAT DRILLING DOES.

Borealis: Arctic Expeditions

Now THIS sounds properly miserable.

Borealis: Arctic Expeditions puts players in charge of scientific crews exploring the Arctic, balancing specialists, logistics, survival, transport, and research in freezing conditions.

Excellent.

Finally a nature game where the environment actively wants you dead instead of gently rewarding you with bird points.

You manage a team of specialists while navigating dangerous terrain and icy waters. Which means one player will absolutely sabotage the expedition because they got distracted chasing bonus objectives instead of keeping everyone alive.

Classic human leadership.

Jugbite expects:

• frozen explorers
• supply shortages
• screaming over resource management
• somebody dramatically announcing “we’re doomed”

Which is exactly what Arctic exploration should feel like.

Las Vegas

Ah yes. Gambling.

One of humanity’s few truly honest activities.

Las Vegas is a dice-driven casino game full of risk-taking, competition, and watching your plans collapse because somebody else dumped a pile of dice onto your precious casino.

Beautiful.

Humans always think:
“This time I’ll win big.”

Then five minutes later they’re yelling at cubes.

Jugbite respects any game where greed immediately ruins everything. That’s authentic design.

Also, anything named after a city built entirely on bad decisions deserves goblin approval automatically.

Foxglove Farm

Look at this suspiciously wholesome nonsense.

Foxglove Farm is all cozy farming aesthetics, transporting goods, placing tiles, building production chains, and pushing wheelbarrows around like overworked woodland peasants.

But Jugbite sees the truth beneath the carrots.

Any farming game eventually becomes a panic spiral where players scream internally because one misplaced action destroyed their entire production engine.

“Oh no, the apples didn’t reach the market.”
“THE WHEELBARROW SYSTEM HAS COLLAPSED.”

Excellent.

Also, if at least one fox is secretly committing tax fraud, Jugbite will consider the theme immersive.

Container

Capitalism has returned.

Container is a brutal economic game about manufacturing goods, manipulating markets, shipping containers, and turning friendships into financial casualties.

No dragons.
No magic.
Just profit margins and human greed.

Terrifying.

Players produce goods, sell them to each other, transport them, and constantly manipulate pricing while pretending this is somehow different from real-world corporate villainy.

Jugbite loves it.

There is something deeply beautiful about watching humans undercut each other over tiny plastic containers like desperate goblins fighting over shiny rocks.

Finally. A game honest about what civilization really is.

Night at the Zoo

This one sounds like absolute chaos.

Night at the Zoo mixes animal mayhem, nighttime disaster energy, and what Jugbite assumes will become complete strategic collapse within minutes.

Because no board game involving escaped animals has ever ended calmly.

Humans always think:
“We can manage the situation.”

Then suddenly there’s a giraffe in the penguin enclosure and somebody is losing victory points because the baboons escaped again.

That is quality game design.

Jugbite fully supports any game where the central gameplay loop appears to be:
“Everything is under control.”
“No it isn’t.”

More UKGE Nonsense

UK Games Expo 2026 runs across the NEC Birmingham once again, spreading humans, dice towers, and financial irresponsibility across multiple halls of cardboard chaos.

There will be:

• giant publisher booths
• hidden indie gems
• demo tables held together by hope
• queues longer than goblin grudges
• at least one person carrying six unopened games while claiming they’re “just browsing”

And somewhere in the middle of it all, Krizbella will probably be trying to convince strangers to play some cooperative gardening game about emotional healing through compost.

Disgusting.

Meanwhile Jugbite will be hunting demos, stealing table space, and judging everyone’s resource management from a safe distance like a proper swamp intellectual.

Now tell Jugbite this:

What are YOUR most anticipated games from UK Games Expo 2026?

And if anyone says “a relaxing solo farming experience,” Jugbite is flipping your player board directly into the wetlands.

The post UK Games Expo 2026 — Jugbite’s Most Anticipated Games appeared first on Grumpy Goblins.

By Krizbella the Grumpy Goblin Princess, Keeper of Low Expectations

Bah! Essen Spiel 2025 approaches, and once again the humans, elves, and cube-kissers are squealing like pigs in a bakery. “Oh Krizbella, isn’t it wonderful? Four whole days of new board games!” Wonderful? WONDERFUL?! Don’t make me gag on my own bile. Let me tell you what’s actually waiting inside those shiny halls of cardboard misery.

Cubes, Cubes, and More Rotten Cubes

Mark my words, I’ll walk into Hall 1 and be blinded by a tidal wave of painted wood. “Resources,” they call them. Grain, stone, iron, wool, “mystic cheese” — always cubes, never teeth or daggers. If I wanted to shuffle cubes all day, I’d just raid a dwarf’s pantry and be done with it. But no, humans will pay gold to shuffle cubes for hours and call it “deep strategy.” Deep as a puddle, more like.

Deluxe Disasters

Every year, some puffed-up publisher unveils a “Deluxe Edition.” What’s deluxe about it? Same boring rules, but now the box is the size of an ogre’s coffin. Shiny bits, plastic minis, and enough foil on the cards to blind a dragon. Oh, and the price? Twice what a goblin chieftain spends on a new spear. They’ll even brag: “It’s only 249 gold coins!” Pfah! For that, I could buy a barrel of ale, three goats, and still have coin left to bribe the town guard.

Crowds of Cardboard Cultists

Nothing worse than wading through the swamp of sweaty humans, each dragging tote bags heavier than a troll’s skull. They’ll line up for hours just to demo a game where they shuffle turnips and count victory points. Try getting through that mess with goblin legs. By the time I elbow through to the booth, some elf with shiny hair has bought the last copy. I swear, if one more human blocks my path with a baby stroller full of meeples, I’ll bite their ankles.

Same Stinkin’ Soup, New Label

Here’s how Essen works: Take last year’s big hit, slap a new theme on it, and call it innovation. Worker placement? Again. Deckbuilding? Again. Civilization-building with “unique asymmetry”? AGAIN! This time it’s not Rome, it’s Space Rome. Or Elf Rome. Or Post-Apocalyptic Goblin-Free Rome (my least favorite). The publishers will squeal: “It’s completely fresh!” Fresh like moldy bread.

The Fake Goblin Games

Do you think I’ll get one proper goblin game this year? One? Bah! Instead, I’ll see this nonsense:

• Cube Hoarders IV: The Reckoning – where you hoard cubes to trade for cubes.
• Sheep Lords Deluxe – comes with tiny wool minis and a 60-page rulebook about shearing.
• Meeple Empire 3000 – now with glow-in-the-dark meeples! Same rules, bigger price.
• Dungeon Without Goblins – HOW DARE THEY.

Every one of them an insult to my green goblin face.

My Rotten Conclusion

Essen Spiel 2025 will be the same as every year: overhyped, overcrowded, overpriced, and cube-obsessed. I’ll go, because someone has to scowl at the humans while they squeal over sheep tokens. But don’t you expect me to smile, or clap, or say, “Oh, what clever mechanics!” No. I’ll be there with arms crossed, crown crooked, and scowl sharpened to a dagger’s edge.

And if, by some miracle, I find a game about real goblins — stealing, snarling, stabbing, and hoarding shinies? Well… maybe I’ll grunt. Once. But don’t count on it.

Now get out of my swamp.

— Krizbella the Grim, Princess of Disappointment

The post Krizbella’s Rotten Rant: Essen Spiel 2025 Is DOOMED appeared first on Grumpy Goblins.

1. ANTS (Cranio Creations)
Humans crawling around like insects? Finally some honesty. A game about ants building their filthy colonies, stealing food, and fighting for dominance. Sounds like a goblin family reunion.

2. 7 Wonders Dice (Repos Production)
As if the original wasn’t smug enough, now you can chuck dice to build wonders. Watch as humans pretend rolling dice is “strategy.” Bah! At least it’s faster than listening to them explain their tableau for half an hour.

3. Dirt & Dust (Albi)
A game where you scrabble around in filth and sand. Humans finally making a game about their natural environment — dirt and disappointment. If this comes with real dust, I’ll eat it.

4. Aquaria (Delicious Games)
Oxygen, fish, pearls, and humans pretending they understand ecosystems. Bah! I’ll play this just to drown my opponents in cardboard aquariums.

5. Echoes of Time (Cranio Creations)
Deck-building with sky pirates, forest creeps, and ocean weirdos, plus tiles that shove time around. Looks clever, but I bet it’s just humans fumbling combos until they trip into victory.

6. Galactic Cruise (Dranda Games)
Space tourism for humans! As if anyone wants to sit next to them on Earth, let alone in a tin can floating among the stars. I hope the game comes with vomit tokens.

7. Feya’s Swamp (Fractal Juegos)
Finally, a swamp game! About time you humans recognized the glory of muck, slime, and festering bogs. Feya can keep her swamp; I’ll be stealing the frogs.

8. The Hobbit: There and Back Again (Office Dog)
Ah yes, another retelling of that hairy-footed thief’s trip. As if we goblins need more reminders of dwarves barging into caves uninvited. Still, smashing adventurers never gets old.

9. Fearless (2F-Spiele)
Humans pretending they’re brave — ha! The title alone is the biggest joke at the fair. I bet it’s full of timid choices and nervous giggling. I’ll play it just to prove how scared they really are.

10. Age of Galaxy (Second Edition) (Portal Games)
Another galaxy-building game where humans think they’re mighty emperors. Bah! If goblins ruled the stars, we’d fill them with smoke, mushrooms, and exploding moons. At least a second edition means they admitted they messed up the first time.

So there you have it — ten shiny new distractions to lure humans away from sensible activities, like hitting each other with sticks. Essen Spiel 2025 will be a sprawling mess of cardboard towers, whiny rule arguments, and overpriced sausages… and I’ll be there, sneering at every booth.

Now tell me, squishy readers — what miserable boxes are you drooling over for Spiel 2025?

The post Essen Spiel 2025 — Jugbite’s 10 Most Anticipated Games appeared first on Grumpy Goblins.

Every hall I stomp through will be stuffed with nerds clutching decks like they’re sacred relics. Pokémon, Lorcana, Magic… bah, all the same! Humans shuffling cardboard and pretending it matters. “Look, I pulled a shiny rare!” What do you do with it? Frame it? Sell it? Cry over it? None of those involve stabbing anyone, so what’s the point?

Magic players, with their smug combos — “infinite mana, infinite life.” Oh, congratulations, you broke your own game. Should I clap? No, I’ll flip your deck into the swamp. Lorcana players babbling about singing princesses while goblins like me rot without a single card. Where’s the Goblin Queen of Scowls card, hmm? Nowhere! And Pokémon? Don’t talk to me about Pokémon. Hundreds of creatures, not one goblin. Not one! You’ve got an ice cream cone monster, but no goblin. I’d rather eat the booster packs than play.

And it’s not just the cards. The whole convention will reek. The scent of burnt hotdogs, overpriced merch, and the sweat of gamers who forgot soap exists. Rows of booths promising “the next big hit” that’s just more cube-pushing nonsense. Crowds shuffling like trolls in a fog. Cosplayers painted green calling themselves “goblins,” smiling like fools. We don’t smile! We scowl until our faces crack!

So here’s my grand prediction: Malmö Game Week 2025 will be a swamp of disappointment. A noisy parade of plastic minis, soulless card slinging, and humans patting themselves on the back for their “creativity.” I’ll be there, arms crossed, crown crooked, glaring at every last one of them.

And if some fool actually shows me a real goblin game — with ankle biting, table flipping, and proper swamp rules — then maybe I’ll grunt in approval. Maybe. Otherwise? I’ll declare the whole fest cursed before it even starts.

— Krizbella the Grim, Princess of Disappointment

The post Krizbellas´s rant: Malmö Game Week 2025 appeared first on Grumpy Goblins.