InsideUp's Most Exciting New Games at Essen Spiel 2026 #boardgames
Transcript
What are the most exciting family board games being released at Essen Spiel this year in 2026? Let me show you three games from Inside Up that I'm most excited about. The first game is one you're definitely going to see. It was a Kickstarter last year. It's just now going into fulfillment. The game is Calypso. Calypso is a tile-placing game featuring Holdfast Coding, which is a soft coating that allows the tiles to adhere to themselves almost like magnets. That in itself is something that I want to try. However, that's just the components. What I like about the gameplay is that in this game you are drafting your objectives every round. So, while there are some uh point-scoring mechanics that you're going to be scoring the same way every single game, there is a lot of potential for each game to be different based on how you're going to be drafting those objectives. I definitely want to try that out. The other two games that I'm excited about are both parts of the Twisted Realms series, a three-part bundle that was also a Kickstarter last year. The first of those is Thieves of Eldris. Now, if you've heard of a hidden movement game before, usually you have one player who is trying to outsmart everyone else and hide, and everyone else is trying to use deduction to figure out where they are.
In Thieves of Eldris, everyone is trying to hide from everyone else. The deduction is going every direction. It sounds like it could either be completely chaotic or one of the most compelling challenges. So, I really want to check out Thieves of Eldris. And then finally, there's Crits and Tricks. Crits and Tricks is a trick-taking game, but in this one the cards only have a suit. The rank of every card is actually determined by the roll of dice. So, this is a role-playing themed game where you're rolling dice from everything from a D4 to a D20 behind a screen, and then as you're playing the tricks, you're assigning dice to your characters. That's not enough. Every single character has a different ability and the leading character is going to determine what wins for that for that trick. Much like Origin Story, which was one of my favorite games last year, this sounds like a really thematic experience full of surprises, crits and tricks. So, those are the three games from Inside Up that I'm most excited about, Calypso, Fees of Eldritch, and Crits and Tricks.
Be sure to check them out at SHP