Race

Heat: Pedal to the Metal

Based on simple and intuitive hand management, Heat: Pedal to the Metal puts players in the driver's seat of intense car races, jockeying for position to cross the finish line first, while managing their car's speed if they don't want to overheat. Selecting the right upgrades for their car will help them hug the curves and keep their engine cool enough to maintain top speeds. Ultimately, their driving skills will be the key to victory!

Drivers can compete in a single race or use the "Championship System" to play a whole season in one game night, customizing their car before each race to claim the top spot of the podium. They have to be careful as the weather, road conditions, and events will change every race to spice up their championship. Players can also enjoy a solo mode with the Legends Module or add automated drivers as additional opponents in multiplayer games.

—description from the publisher

Orichalcum

Orichalque is a tense and fast-pace strategy game – similar to a short 4X. Each player has their own Island board to explore and develop. On each turn, they choose a set of one Exploration tile and one Action : recruit hoplites, produce precious orichalcum (a legendary metal from Greek mythology), construct buildings granting powerful bonuses, or try to get rid of Monsters infesting your island (and preventing you to build new building).

To prevail, you will need to erect majestic temples, forge orichalcum tokens or win the favors of titans (by creating areas of their favorite landscapes. The first to get to 5 victory points while clearing their Island of all Monsters wins the game.

—description from the publisher

First Rat

For generations, the rats in the old junkyard have been telling each other the great legend about a moon made out of cheese and they want nothing more than to reach this inexhaustible treasure. One day, the little rat children discovered a comic in the junkyard that described the first landing on the moon, and thus the plan was born: Build a rocket and take over the cheese moon!

Fortunately, the junkyard has everything the rats need to build their rocket, and the other animals are willing to support this daring venture — at least if they're well paid. Of course, all the rats work together to achieve this mighty goal. However, each rat family competes to build the most rocket parts and to train the most rattronauts so they can feast on as much of the lunar cheese as possible.

In First Rat, each player starts with two rats and may raise two more. On your turn, you either move one of your rats 1-5 spaces on the path or move 2-4 of your rats 1-3 spaces each as long as they end up on spaces of the same color. Your rats can never share the same space, and if you land in a space with another player's rat, you must pay them one cheese, borrowing cheese from the back as needed. After movement, you collect resources (cheese, tin cans, apple cores, baking soda, etc.) matching the color of the space you occupy or move your lightbulb along the light string, which will boost your income in future turns. (More lights in the junkyard makes it easier for you to find things!)

If you end movement near a store, you can spend resources to buy a backpack or bottle top — or you can steal an item instead, with the rat then returning to the start of the movement track. You can also spend resources to build rocket sections (and score points) or spend cheese in bulk as a donation (and score points).

When you pick up apple cores, you move around the rat burrow to pick up comics or stored food or raise one of your rats from the nursery. Alternatively, you automatically get a new rat when one of your rats reaches the launch pad and boards the spaceship. When a player places their fourth rat on the spaceship — or places their eighth scoring marker on the board — the game ends, and the player with the most points wins. In the event of a tie, the tied player with the most rattronauts in the rocket wins.

First Rat includes a solo mode as well as variable game set-ups described in the rulebook.

Key to the Kingdom

Key to the Kingdom is a restoration of the 1990 classic game. The new version features the classic hole-in-the-board mechanism to hop through portals and explore the Demon King's domain.

As the kingdom's not-so-mightiest heroes — Pitiless Pixie, Knovice Knight, Unique Unicorn, Merciless Mercenary, and Gnarled Gnome — you'll go on adventures to gather the three pieces of the magic key, then hop through a portal to defeat the Demon King once and for all.

This new version gives players greater control over the whims of the dice. You'll use your collection of items to tweak your rolls. But make sure you have the right item ready when you go on an adventure to give you an easier path through. You'll get magic items and companions along the way as well. It also adds a new endgame in which you need to face a series of mini-challenges to win the game.

—description from the publisher

Welcome to the Moon

You've built housing for humanity in neighborhoods and New Las Vegas. Now you need to save humanity through space colonization...

Welcome to the Moon uses the same flip-and-write game mechanisms as the earlier title Welcome To..., but now you can play in a campaign across eight adventure sheets. On a turn, you flip cards from three stacks to create three different combinations of a starship number and a corresponding action, then all players choose one of these three combinations. You use the number to fill a space in a zone on your adventure sheet in numerical order, and everyone is racing to be the first to complete common missions.

The eight adventure sheets feature very different mechanisms from the classic Welcome To... concept, and when you play in campaign mode, you'll make choices that change the next adventure, which means that each campaign will differ from the previous one.