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In Skeleton Island, players try to piece together treasure maps and find gold coins by digging in the "sand" – more specifically, by digging in the sand-decorated cards. To set up the game, someone takes the deck of 49 sand cards, splits them in half, turns one half face-down, shuffles the two halves together, then swishes the combined deck around on the table to make a pile of sand.

Each turn, a player takes either a standard turn or a piracy turn. In a standard turn, the player takes one "free" card – that is, a card not covered at all by any other card – and looks at it. The player can keep the card, or return it to the edge of the sand pile and draw a second card, which she must keep. (If only one or two cards are free, the player can close her eyes and blow on the pile to spread the sand.)

Players are searching for gold coins, which are valuable on their own, or halves and quarters of a treasure map. The first player to hand in a complete map of one of the five colors collects the island card of this color, which is worth five coins.

On a piracy turn, the player removes any three cards she's collected from the game, then either takes two consecutive standard turns or swipes any card from an opposing player.

When all the islands have been claimed or all the sand cards removed, the game ends and the player with the most coins wins.

In Making Profit: The Boardgame every player is both factory manager and investor at the same time. As factory manager you have to decide: should you run the factory for profits or develop it instead... and what area to develop: resource or products? As investor you have to choose the factories to invest into; should you stick close to your own plant or are there more lucrative options made available by opponents? But there are so few actions available each turn...and at the end the winner is the one with most combined wealth.

Captain Swallow has always dreamed of pocketing a large nest egg in order to retire on a remote island – but he never counted on stiff competition from Captains Stanley Rackum, Dirk Chivers and others, greedy and cruel enemies who always manage to attack the same ships as him. If he wants to finally sink back and enjoy peaceful days in the sun, he must become the most cunning pirate!

In Libertalia, you must thwart the plans of competitive pirates over the course of three rounds while using cards that show the same crew members as your piratical comrades-in-arms. Yes, not only do they attack the same ships, but they employ the same type of ravenous scum that you do! Can you take advantage of the powers of your characters at the right time? Will you be outdone by a pirate smarter than you? Jump into the water and prove your tactical skills!

You are so tired. You just can't run anymore. Your breath sounds like a jet engine and sweat has soaked every inch of your body. A shower would be nice. Hell, just being able to catch your breath would be great... Who are we kidding? Ten whole minutes not completely enveloped in sheer terror would be heaven. To bad the zombie horde looking to make you lunch doesn't see it the same way...

Zombies!!! The Card Game simulates the coming zombie apocalypse in card game form. Each player uses her own deck to form the narrative of her attempted escape; the ground-breaking card design allows for each card to be used for the card effect printed on the front or as a location as indicated by the card's back. The first player to make her way to the "helipad" at the bottom of her deck escapes certain death and wins the game.

The zombies are right behind you. Do you have what it takes to survive?

10.) In closing, what can Academy Games offer to the wargaming market that other developers cannot?

Nothing. We are part of a very creative, diverse, and growing market segment. Other developers are publishing incredible games that I love to play and often recommend to others. What Academy Games can offer is to be part of the driving force that is expanding this wonderful hobby of ours.

GAMA's use of web 2.0 and social media is simply laughable. The Facebook page was updated at the beginning of the month (May 5th), but its Twitter account hasn't been updated since Summer of 2011. Gen Con, in comparison has a BOT account dedicated to retweeting anything with #GenCon. The official Gen Con Twitter account also updates almost daily. Gen Con also works with the surrounding businesses, frequently tweeting and providing information about hotels, restaurants, etc. in the area. They are a well oiled machine. And it isn't just Gen Con who has a significant voice on social media. ForgeCon, a first-time convention taking place in May is quite active on Twitter, as are lesser known cons such as NeonCon, Denver ComiCon, etc. I don't know if Origins thinks something like this is out of their budget or if it's simply unneeded, but they're shooting themselves in the proverbial foot every day they don't proactively interact with fans and potential customers.

Compounded is a game about building chemical compounds through careful management of elements, a fair bit of social play and trading, and just a bit of luck. In Compounded, players take on the roles of lab managers, hastily competing to complete the most compounds before they are completed by others – or destroyed in an explosion. Some compounds are flammable and will grow more and more volatile over time; take too long to gather the necessary elements for those compounds and a lot of hard work will soon be scattered across the lab.

Although Compounded does involve a fair share of press-your-luck tension and certainly some strategic planning, the most successful scientists will often be those who strike a good trade with their fellow lab mates. Players are able to freely trade elements, laboratory tools and even favors – if there is truly honor among chemists!

Players have a very clear objective: Eliminate the opponent's champion. Champions start the game in the arena but are inactive and defenseless. They will not fight until the crowd is behind them. Each player takes turns drawing, playing and moving gladiators from their "hand" and assisting them with tactic chips.

Based on opponent's moves and play style, each person will need to adjust their strategies. Defend your champ, take over and hold the crowd favor areas, assault opponent's champion, cover deployment zones, eliminate tactictions to reduce enemy options, fight beasts to gain crowd favor, the list of tactical possibilities is endless.

The idea for Collapsible D: The Last Minutes of Titanic comes from the mind of the Italian author Gianluca Santopietro. In this game the players are on board the Titanic during the night of April 14, 1912, starting at 11:40 p.m. when the ship collides with an iceberg; each turn represents ten minutes in real time. Each player controls a passenger of each Class and a member of the Crew. Each character has a different starting point, an attempt to recreate the exact location where they were on the ship, thanks to historical research lead by the author in cooperation with history experts on the Titanic, such as Claudio Bossi. Thanks to an intuitive movement system, players will move their passengers through the ship, trying to reach the lifeboats on the dock.

Meanwhile, the water floods in quickly and the risk of drowning is very high. Each saved passenger grants victory points, and the player with the highest score wins.

Each player holds two animal cards stating the type and amount of terrain needed, five multi-terrain tiles, and wild cards. On a turn, she may lay up to three tiles, place one or both of her animals in free-form contiguous blocks of appropriate terrain, and use all or some of her wild cards. The starter tile has two blocks of each of the four terrain types: forest, grassland, desert and water. The number of blocks of terrain needed by an animal is equivalent to the number of points you can score by placing it. When the tile supply is exhausted, each player takes a final turn, then loses points for an unplaced animals still in hand. The player with the highest score wins.

Komodo can be played competitively in both basic or strategic mode. In the former, wild cards are obtained randomly; in the latter, players can choose their wild cards. Actions permitted by a wild card include: releasing animals to free up their terrain; bartering or stealing terrain tiles; remodeling tiles already placed; and forcing an exchange of animals.

In the cooperative version of Komodo, all 32 animals must be housed and each player must place at least one animal during her turn. The game is played open-handed, and the wild cards hinder the players.

Times have been hard. To save on money, you've moved out of your old castle and into a luxurious ravine. You didn't like that castle anyway; it was always getting looted and never at a reasonable hour. And if it wasn't barbarians it was the plague, or sometimes both would come at once, and there wouldn't be enough chairs. The ravine is great; you get lots of sun, and you can just drop garbage wherever you want. In your free time you've taken up begging. Begging is brilliant conceptually, but tricky in practice since no one has any money. You beg twigs from the villagers, and they beg them back, but no one really seems to come out ahead. That's just how life is sometimes. You're quietly conquering people, minding your own business, when suddenly there's a plague, or barbarians, or everyone's illiterate, and it's all you can do to cling to some wreckage as the storm passes through. Still, you are sure that, as always, you will triumph over this adversity, or at least do slightly better than everyone else.

Dominion: Dark Ages is the seventh addition to the game of Dominion. It contains 500 cards but is not a standalone game. It adds 35 new Kingdom cards to Dominion, plus new bad cards you give to other players (Ruins), new cards to replace starting Estates (Shelters), and cards you can get only via specific other cards. The central themes are the trash and upgrading. There are cards that do something when trashed, cards that care about the trash, cards that upgrade themselves, and ways to upgrade other cards.

Fantastiqa is a deck-building board game set in a fantastical landscape of dark forests, mist-shrouded highlands, and frozen wastes. As you and your opponents journey around the board, you will subdue strange creatures and fulfill fabulous quests.

Each creature you encounter has both an ability and a vulnerability. By playing card symbols to which a creature is vulnerable, you can subdue it and recruit it as an ally. Each creature you defeat is added to your expanding deck of cards, making its special ability into an ability of your own! A defeated Enchantress will wield her beguiling charms to help you overcome wandering Knights. Knights in turn subdue Dragons, adding their fiery breath to your cause. By combining the powers of different creatures you can fulfill curious quests: Send forth your Rabbits of Unusual Size to Nibble Through the Violin Strings of the Violent Vampire Volnar! Deploy a party of web-slinging Spiders to String a Bridge Across the Chasm of Chaos! Send your Dragons and Vampire Bats together on a mission to Ignite the Whisker-Wick'd Candle Guarded by the Ice Cats of Kituviel!

Some of the creatures you encounter carry precious gems, which you can spend to purchase powerful artifacts or to summon mythical beasts to your aid. You begin with little, but you will grow in power as you adventure and gather allies! By completing quests you score victory points and claim other special rewards. The board changes every time you play, so prepare for a new, exciting adventure each time you enter the world of Fantastiqa!

Fantastiqa is easy to learn but challenging to master – a game for families and gamers alike. The components are lavishly illustrated with fine art by Caspar David Friedrich, Vincent van Gogh, Claude Monet, Arthur Rackham, John William Waterhouse, John Bauer, Edward Burne-Jones, Francisco Goya, and others.

The woods are old-growth, dappled with sunlight. Delicious mushrooms beckon from every grove and hollow. Morels may be the most sought-after thing in these woods, but there are many tasty and valuable varieties awaiting the savvy collector. Bring a basket if you think it's your lucky day. Forage at night and you will be all alone when you stumble upon a bonanza. If you're hungry, put a pan on the fire and bask in the aroma of chanterelles as you sauté them in butter. Feeling mercantile? Sell porcini to local aficionados for information that will help you find what you seek deep in the forest.

Morels, a strategic card game for two players, uses two decks: a Day Deck (84 cards) that includes ten different types of mushrooms as well as baskets, cider, butter, pans, and moons, and a smaller Night Deck (8 cards) of mushrooms to be foraged by moonlight. Each mushroom card has two values: one for selling and one for cooking. Selling two or more like mushrooms grants foraging sticks that expand your options in the forest (that is, the running tableau of eight face-up cards on the table), enabling offensive or defensive plays that change with every game played. Cooking sets of three or more like mushrooms – sizzling in butter or cider if the set is large enough – earns points toward winning the game. With poisonous mushrooms wielding their wrath and a hand-size limit to manage, card selection is a tricky proposition at every turn.

Following each turn, one card from the forest moves into a decay pile that is available for only a short time. The Day Deck then refills the forest from the back, creating the effect of a walk in the woods in which some strategic morsels are collected, some are passed by, and others lay ahead.

Germany was one of the biggest markets for board games in the 1980s and 1990s and so having a games company over that time has been a wonderful experience. However the rest of the world has woken up to this so there is a bit of a crisis in Germany. Everybody is seeking to sell their games into the German market with some great games coming out of the Czech Republic, Italy, Korea, and Brazil amongst other countries, and the number of games being produced is just not sustainable given the current levels of demand.

Over the years the German games publishers have had a convivial rivalry with it being like a big family where everybody is doing their own thing but we all know each other. Increasingly though the smaller retail outlets are not taking games, and whilst the big chain stores do, they don't have staff that understand the games and can demonstrate them. We are also increasingly seeing companies coming into our market with games very similar to ours and or with very similar artwork but ultimately nothing new, other than at a lower price point!

This website was originally designed like a small game encyclopaedia, and this concept has become largely obsolete, for at least two reasons. First, there are more and more new board and card games every year, and I play fewer of them every year, which makes the ideal game library much less relevant. Second, the internet also has changed, and encyclopaedias are now collective stuff. There is more even about my own games on the Boardgamegeek than on my own website.

This is why, in a few weeks, I plan to shut down this website and replace it with a more modest, more standard, but also more actual blog, with only short descriptions of my games and the occasional op-ed, not necessarily always about games.

In Okiya, subtitled "The House of the Geishas", each player tries to arrange her geisha tiles in a pleasing manner in order to gain the favor of the emperor. Alternatively, you can prevent your rival from placing a geisha in the Imperial garden, showing that you have more control than your opponent.

To set up the game, shuffle the 16 tiles and arrange them in a 4x4 square; each tile shows one of four types of vegetation (maple, cherry, pine or iris) and one of four types of poetic symbols (rising sun, bird, rain or tanzaku - the small pieces of paper on which people sometimes write wishes).

The starting player removes one tile on the border of the square, sets this tile aside, then places one of her geisha tokens in this space. The opponent must then do the same thing, but can choose from only those tiles that depict the same type of vegetation or poetic symbol shown on the tile first set aside. Play continues, with each set-aside tile determining where the next player can go until:

• A player forms a line with four of her geisha tokens in any direction,
• A player forms a 2x2 square with four of her geisha tokens, or
• A player chooses a tile which doesn't allow her opponent to place a geisha token.

In any of these cases, the player has won the game. A match can be a single game, a "best of three" series, or a point-based match, with the winner of a game earning as many points as the number of tiles remaining in the grid when she wins; in this case, the player who first collects ten points wins the match.