Today was the first day of the largest annual games fair in Europe and arguably the world.  The Internationale Spieltage is known to gamers worldwide simply as “SPIEL” or “Essen”.  This is a “fair” rather than a “convention” and is of particular significance as a lot of new releases are scheduled to coincide with the event, just in time for Christmas sales.  This year, for the first time, tickets were sold out for Thursday and Friday before the fair even started—partly  caused by the ever-growing numbers of attendees, but also as a result of the numbers being capped, apparently due to changes in German legislation.

– Image by boardGOATS

It has been additionally observed that whereas Thursday and Friday used to be the quieter days, in more recent years there has been a tendency for Gamers attend on these days to avoid missing the new and hottest games.  As a result, there have been a large number of games selling out early.  For example, this year, Castle Combo had sold out English language copies by 11.30am, and while more will arrive over the next few days, these will be in smaller numbers and are expected to run out even earlier.  Saltfjord, Panda Spin, The Yellow House, and Endangered Rescue! #1: Galápagos Penguins were also sold out before the end of the first day.

– Image by boardGOATS

The Deutscher Spielepreis winner was announced at the fair as Forest Shuffle (so it was unsuprising that the the day’s quota of copies of its second expansion, Woodland Edge were also gone before the doors closed on Thursday).  It was also revealed that Stonemaier Games has acquired the Tokaido line of games from Funforge, and there will probably be other industry announcements along the same lines before the end of the fair.  One thing is for sure, and that is that there will be the usual deluge of new games and exciting expansions to known and loved games arriving in the shops over the coming weeks.  It will be fun to see what people enjoy playing over the next year.

– Image from spiel-essen.de