Ten years ago, German publishers held off on announcing info for games due out in the first half of the year until that year had actually started, but given the marketing arms race required due to the vast number of titles coming out, some publishers have been moving up their announcements week by week each year.

KOSMOS, for example, has been drip feeding announcements on its Instagram, starting with German editions of 3 Ring Circus from Remo Conzadori and Fabio Lopiano (designer diary here), Sky Team from Luc Rémond, and Bonsai from Rosaria Battiato, Massimo Borzì, and Martino Chiacchiera (diary). (KOSMOS has published four books on bonsai, so I’d expect a cross-promotion.)

• Most other announced titles so far are spin-offs of earlier releases. Die Crew: Family, for example, puts a twist on Thomas Sing‘s highly successful The Crew: The Quest for Planet Nine by crossing it with the setting of The Swiss Family Robinson. Players find themselves stranded on a deserted island and have to make decisions together to figure out how to eat, sleep, and fend for themselves.

Why can’t players talk to one another this time? Maybe they picked up a tropical virus that affects their vocal cords? Or perhaps sensitive-eared wolves roam the beach, so they can’t risk speaking or making any other noise? We’ll see!

• Dodo is a 2020 co-operative game from Frank Bebenroth and Marco Teubner in which players need to “escort” a dodo egg down the sides of a steep hill so that it lands safely at the bottom and the dodo species will be saved. (Narrator: That did not happen.)

In Dodo Ahoi!, you continue the story, with the dodo egg now rolling around the boat because no one secured it. Communicate with other players to place the right cards and steer the boat through the open ocean until you find the right island to serve as a resting place for this precious egg.

• Reiner Knizia‘s Einfach Genial, a.k.a. Ingenious, debuted in 2004 and undoubtedly missed out on winning the Spiel des Jahres (for which it was nominated) only because Ticket to Ride was released the same year.

That game celebrates its twentieth anniversary in 2024, so Knizia and KOSMOS have two new offerings in that game line. Einfach Genial 3D features the same gameplay as the original Ingenious, but with 3D pieces that allow you to stack tiles on the game board. The publisher has released only a cover image for now, but I imagine the game board is smaller to force you to keep building higher.

The other Ingenious title is Einfach Genial Brain Games, a collection of two hundred logic puzzles in which you try to duplicate a pattern with tiles from Ingenious.

The somewhat similar Einfach Genial Knobelspass was released in 2007, but that challenged players to race to duplicate a pattern with tiles from Ingenious — and with competition to win, that item is a game, whereas Einfach Genial Brain Games is a solitaire logic puzzle, and therefore not listed on BGG. Perhaps in time on PuzzleGeek…

• The Exit: The Game series from Inka and Markus Brand will have two new entries, with EXIT: Das Spiel – Die Venedig-Verschwörung (The Venice Conspiracy) being an advanced-level title that challenges you to uncover the cause of mysterious activities in Venice and save the city.

• In EXIT: Das Spiel – Kids: Gruseliger Rätselspass, you combine picture cards to solve puzzles and help Frankengirl Vicky get a spooky outfit so that she can join the party at Schauerstein Castle.

• Fisch & Flausch (Fish & Fluff) is a card game by Robert Brouwer in which the 2-6 player cats secretly bid with their cards on items of varying values to end up with the best collection of toys and fish.

• Rounding out the revelations to date is Adventure Puzzle: Das Licht im Zauberwald (The Light in the Magic Forest), an item by Dave Neale for one or more players that may or may not be a game. Where’s that PuzzleGeek when you need it?!

Here’s the publisher’s pitch for what it describes as “an interactive point-and-click adventure in puzzle format”:
Discover what adventures await in the mysterious enchanted forest behind the magical portal. Experience an exciting adventure story puzzle piece by puzzle piece!

In more detail, the 200-piece puzzle motif is puzzled in sections, with solvers alternating between reading a short section of the adventure book, then puzzling a part of the motif. In the puzzle picture, you discover the place described and find objects that help you solve tasks and progress through the story. Only in the end do all the pieces come together to form a complete picture.

• Unlike KOSMOS, AMIGO has dropped its line-up all at once, but with only bare bones information for now ahead of a full unveiling on January 3, 2024 — which used to be when AMIGO would reveal everything all at once.

The nine(!) titles coming from AMIGO in the first half of 2024 include four by Reiner Knizia — not quite 50%, maybe next time? — and two anniversary editions of classic designs:

— 6 nimmt!: 30 Jahre-Edition, a thirtieth anniversary edition of Wolfgang Kramer‘s 6 nimmt! that may or may not include any new material.
— Saboteur: 20 Jahre-Edition, which is similar to what’s above, but instead a twentieth anniversary edition of Fréderic Moyersoen‘s Saboteur.
— Feiges Huhn! (Cowardly Chickens) is a card game from Ken Gruhl and Quentin Weir.
— Snack Rabbits is a card game from Trevor Benjamin and Brett J. Gilbert.
— Wolkenschiff is a co-operative game from Die 7 Bazis — a collective design group — that puts players in a cloud ship.

— L.A.M.A. Kadabra, a card game from Knizia that undoubtedly has you wanting to keep your point total as low as possible, as in L.L.A.M.A., which I covered in depth in 2019.
— Pick a Pen: Gärten, Pick a Pen: Riffe, and Pick a Pen: Schatzkammern, by Knizia, with this being a trilogy of roll-and-write games in which you roll colored pencils at the start of each turn, then draft a pencil and mark your sheet based on what was rolled on that pencil. I covered these titles in depth in March 2023.

Bock, bock