by W. Eric Martin

Time for more pics and game announcements from GAMA Expo 2025, with minimal info on most of these games since I spent a brief time at dozens of publisher booths during this trade show:

▪️ U.S. publisher Van Ryder Games will release José D. Flores' Dragon Clans, which debuted in 2024 from Spanish publisher Gen-X Games. This title, which will first appear at Gen Con 2025, invites players to press their luck with dice rolls to claim Pokémon-ish dragon cards.

Each card shows a half egg on its left and right side, and by matching two halves, you get a special power to use as long as that egg is visible — but you can have at most two piles of dragons, so eggs will come and go. Collect both dragons in an "evolution" to score bonus points.


▪️ "Final Girl", you say, and yet more keep coming?


▪️ Search for a Giant Squid: The Game, due out in March 2025 from MindWare, can be played co-operatively or competitively, with players moving from the surface to the depths to reveal hidden items. If you discover gear, keep it so that a future peril tile doesn't boot you back to the surface immediately.

If the tile shows something you need to find for your personal board, claim it; otherwise flip the tile back over...unless it's one of the five parts of the giant squid. Be the first player to complete your board or find the final squid bit, and you win.


▪️ Stabbits! is another March 2025 MindWare release, with players moving around the board to pick up carrots and stab others in the back. Yes, you need to approach your opponent from the right direction so that they don't see you coming. The hole in the center of the board gives you a round's reprieve from fatal carrot wounds.


▪️ I forgot to take a pic of Ringer while at GAMA Expo 2025, but this MindWare release seems to fall in the crazy eights/Mau Mau bucket of discarding cards based on color or number, but with the added excitement of a die that allows for bonus plays. Sorry that I can't be more descriptive, but should you be in the market for a deck of cards with a hole throughout, then this is the game for you.


▪️ Shuffle Dungeons is one of two debut titles from U.S. publisher Zero Strategy Games, with this being a 1-4 player co-operative dungeon crawler from Isaac Serafini, Jeremy Stark, and Kyle Talbert that players build with cards as they explore.


▪️ Cutthroat Cove: Pieces of Eight is the other launch title for Zero Strategy, with this description bearing almost no information: "Race to gather the pieces of eight before your friends do. But don't take too many, lest a curse be put upon ye!" This is due out in July 2025, as with Shuffle Dungeons.


▪️ Following the release of those two titles, in the second half of 2025 Zero Strategy Games plans to crowdfund The Sheep, a game in which you want to care for the sheep during the day, while avoiding them at night since they turn evil and will chase you down. Ideally the publisher will post more info so that you can avoid suffering a woolly end.

Baaa-aa-aa-ad to the bone...
▪️ Seen on the streets of Louisville, Kentucky:

One-way chicken