by W. Eric Martin

Here's more from the floor of Gen Con 2025. (I have zero pics from the ceiling of the Indiana Convention Center, so in fact it's all from the floor.)

▪️ While U.S. publisher Keymaster Games focused on demoing and selling Henry Audubon's Parks (Second Edition), it did reserve demo space for a second edition of a different title: Reiner Knizia's Samurai, which has been transformed into Hanami, with a crowdfunding project running through September 5, 2025 ahead of a projected mid-ish 2026 retail release.


Gameplay remains the same as in Samurai: On your turn, place one of the five tiles in your hand, then if any of the tokens on the board are surrounded, compare the strengths of the tiles surrounding these tokens to see who claims each token.

Tokens come in three types, and you must have more of one of these tokens than each other player in order to win. Win two majorities, and you win outright; if no one does, then everyone who has a majority in one token compares how many other tokens they have won, and whoever has the most wins.


Hanami includes a double-sided game board, with the Tokyo side having a different map layout than what was included in Samurai.

It also includes eight unique single-use special action cards that you can use to replace the original special action card that all players have. During set-up, each player receives two cards, then discards one. These cards are public, so everyone knows what each player can do.

The basic special action card is in the lower left corner
▪️ In July 2025, publisher [company=52393]Ghost Galaxy[/company] raised US$1.3 million in backing for a new edition of Reiner Knizia's The Lord of the Rings: The Confrontation, with the crowdfunding campaign including a US$2,200 option for a deluxe edition with "a sturdy wooden box with built-in drawers [and] a hand-painted 3D play-surface", with a US$500 base and table leg available separately should you want to transform that box into a table.

After teasing this new edition at Gen Con 2024, in 2025 Ghost Galaxy showed a mock-up of the game's "premium" edition ahead of what I presume will be the game's debut at Gen Con 2026.


▪️ Should you want even more Knizia in your lives, you should have visited the Bitewing Games booth, which featured a Reiner Knizia stuffie with an alien bursting out of his chest.


▪️ IV Studio had a snazzy display space that stood out from others, looking somewhat like an upscale dentist's office with ridged vertical walls and thick wooden displays. Demo space to show off its new releases — Brink, Graft, Pillars of Fate, and Time to Panic — was somewhat limited, but it did have a separate room elsewhere in the ICC.

Too bad I forgot to circle back after initially running into a giant line and thinking, well, I'll come back later. Maybe I'll remember in 2026...


▪️ On Thursday morning just ahead of the exhibit hall doors opening, I got an overview of Paul Dennan's Lightning Train, which was the game I heard most on people's lips when talking about what they looked forward to playing. Dennan designed both Dune: Imperium and Clank!, so perhaps that level of enthusiasm is to be expected.

The gist of the game is that on your turn, you draw five tiles from your bag, some of which might let you draw other tiles, then you use those tiles to claim stations and place them on the board, claim routes on the board, buy new tiles, deliver goods, etc.

As soon as the exhibit hall doors opened, a line materialized at the Dire Wolf booth that reached the back wall...


...then snaked far down it. Lightning Train didn't have Lorcana levels of excitement, mind you, but copies vanished quickly and the few we had in the BGG Hot Games Room were constantly in play.


▪️ Members of the Spiel des Jahres jury were once again on hand at Gen Con to teach the most recent award-winning games — Bomb Busters, Endeavor: Deep Sea, and Topp die Torte! — to passersby.


▪️ Want to see work from the #1 artist on metal for over a decade? Then Gen Con 2025 was the place to be.