Tag Archives: Bomb Busters

Deutscher Spiele Preis – 2025

The Deutscher Spiele Preis is awarded anually based on an open vote from German games clubs, gamers in German-speaking countries and people in the gaming industry.  It recognises the “Best Children’s Game” and a top ten list of the “Best Family and Adult Games”.  Although the order of the top three in each category won’t be announced until the Internationale Spieltage in Essen at the end of October, the list of winning games has been released.

Endeavor: Deep Sea
– Image by BGG contributor tobsn,
adapted by boardGOATS

The top three in the general category in alphabetical order are:

The remaining list of games in the top ten are:

  1. Castle Combo
  2. Faraway
  3. Civolution
  4. Blood on the Clocktower
  5. Slay the Spire: Das Brettspiel (aka Slay the Spire: The Board Game)
  6. Astrobienen (aka Apiary)
  7. Dune: Imperium — Uprising

The games named in the Deutscher Spiele Preis lists often intersect with the winners and nominees of the annual Spiel des Jahres Award. This time is no exception, indeed the only game in the top five Deutscher Spiele Preis list not to have recieved a Spiel des Jahres award or a nomination likely missed out because it was considered too complex.  And therein lies much of the difference between the two:  the Spiel des Jahres nominees/winners are chosen by a committee with a list of strict criteria, whereas the Deutscher Spiele Preis is more like a list of the most popular games of the preceding year, with the gaming public having a strong say.  As a result, the Deutscher Spiele Preis often includes heavier games.

Bomb Busters
– Image by BGG contributor spiritraw,
adapted by boardGOATS

The top three children’s games (again in alphabetical order) are, Cascadia Junior, Die kleinen Alchemisten (aka Little Alchemists), and Die Sandburgen von Burgund (aka The Sandcastles of Burgundy).  The order of the top three in both categories will be announced at the press conference on Wednesday 22nd October; congratulations to everyone on the list.

Deutscher Spielepries 2025 Logo
– Image from
spiel-essen.com

 

Spiel des Jahres Winners – 2025

Last weekend, this year’s Spiel des Jahres (German Game of the Year) winner was announced as Bomb Busters, by Hisashi Hayashi, the designer of Trains, MetroX (aka Voll Verplant), String Railway and Yokohama.  Based on the earlier Bomb Squad by the same designer, this is a cooperative, card driven game, where players work together to try to defuse a bomb before it explodes.  Players begin with a hand of numbered Wire cards (four each, numbered one to twelve) and then take turns pointing at each others’ wires and guessing their values.  Correct guesses lead to wires being cut, incorrect guesses and the detonator advances…

Bomb Busters
– Adapted from image by BGG contributor spiritraw

The winners of the Kinderspiel des Jahres (Children’s Game) and the Kennerspiel des Jahres (“Expert” or “Connoisseur’s” Game) were announced at the same time. The Kinderspiel des Jahres went to Topp die Torte!, which is a tile laying game by Wolfgang Warsch—a previous winner of the Kennerspiel de Jahres in 2018 with Die Quacksalber von Quedlinburg (aka The Quacks of Quedlinburg) and designer of The Mind, Ganz Schön Clever and Quacks & Co., all of which have received recognition from the jury in recent years.  This year, the Kennerspiel des Jahres award went to Endeavor: Deep Sea by New Zealand designers Carl de Visser and Jarratt Gray, a game where players explore the deep sea using the action mechanism from Endeavour: Age of Sail (and its predecessor Endeavor).

Endeavor: Deep Sea
– Image from kickstarter.com

Endeavor: Deep Sea can be played competitively or cooperatively with up to five players (using the Deluxe edition). This means that as last year, both the “senior awards” have gone to cooperative games.  Indeed, the last four Spiel des Jahres awards (Sky Team, Dorfromantic, MicroMacro and Just One) and three of the last five Kennerspiel awards (Paleo and The Crew as well as e-Mission/Daybreak) have gone to cooperative games.  This style of game is clearly very popular with families (where arguments are often best avoided), but can be less so with more traditional gamers who prefer a bit of competition.  As such, cooperative games very much have the “Marmite Factor”, but in such cases, the nominees and recommended lists cater for every taste, with games like Looot, Castle Combo, Faraway and Flip 7.

Bomb Busters
– Image from spiel-des-jahres.de

Spiel des Jahres Nominations 2025

The nominations for the 2025 Spiel des Jahres Awards have just been announced.  Although there are now other lots of other awards (including the recently announced Golden Geek Awards), this is still the most prestigious award in board gaming and certainly the one that carries the most weight when it comes to casual gamers.  There are three categories, the Kinderspiel (children’s game) , the Kennerspiel (“expert’s” game) and the most desirable of all, the family award, the Spiel des Jahres or “Red Poppel”.  The nominees for this year’s awards have been announced as:

  • Kennerspiel des Jahres
    Kennerspiel des Jahres 2025 - Nominees    Endeavor: Die Tiefsee (aka Endeavor: Deep Sea) by Carl de Vissser
    & Laurent Escoffier
    Faraway by Johannes Goupy & Corentin Lebrat
    Neuland (aka Looot) by Charles Chevalier & Laurent Escoffier

 

In recent years, there has been a shift in both the family and expert awards, away from traditional Euro-style board to lighter, more innovative games.  Gone are the days of El Grande, Tikal and The Settlers of Catan (all winners from the 1990s) with recent winners including MicroMacro: Crime City (from 2021) Pictures (from 2020), Challengers! (from 2023).  It may be that there has been a concerted effort to “freshen” the brand and subvert the conventional idea of what a board game is.  Last year’s winners, were Sky Team and Daybreak which were unusual in that both are cooperative games with Sky Team also being a two-player game (unusual for a “family game”).

– Image by BGG Contributor JuiceNeutron

In addition to the nominees, there are always a number of recommendations, which in this year include Castle Combo and Cities.  The Spiel des Jahres Awards are still the industry’s headline award and therefore are of great significance; it will be interesting to see which direction the awards go in this year when they are announced on Sunday 13th July in Berlin.

The Spiel des Jahres Awards
– Image from spiel-des-jahres.de