Aquaretto is a challenging game in which you are vying with the other players to build the best 'Sea World' attraction. The follow-up to last year's shortlisted Zooloretto, Aquaretto has even more options and decision making. Not only will you need to balance the new stock of animals you receive each turn with the available space, but you now also have access to specialised staff who can help teach the animals tricks or make the concession more profitable. A fun and intriguing game with cute pictures, and your Sea World animals can even have a baby!

Friedemann Friese

The simple rules are fantastic for getting straight into the game, which is a race between lumberjacks riding logs down river. As you race down rapids, you can push the logs and even other players to try and get them into a river current which will lead them towards (or more often, away from) the finish line. The game comes with many different double sided boards, allowing players to tailor their games by choosing the game length and complexity and makes he game frsh and different each time.

Ilium is the ancient name for Troy, and in this game you each control a team of archaelologists scouring for artefacts in the excavation site of Troy in 1870. The deeper a given site is dug, the more valuable the artefacts you are likely to find. However, careful planning and timing are necessary to deny the other players the star find you have been banking on. Each turn is simple, where you allocate 1-3 of your diggers to a site, but there is considerable strategy in choosing the best time and place to claim artefacts.

Max J. Kobbert

Master Labyrinth is a challenging maze game that takes the very successful game aMAZEing Labyrinth to a new level. The board shows a labyrinth that you and the other players must wander to find treasures. The great thing about these games is that the half the board is made of movable tiles so that every turn the labyrinth changes! On your turn, you push one row of tiles with the hope of changing the layout of corridors so that you can reach the next treasure you are collecting. The twist from previous versions of the game is that now there are gargoyles and a dragon protecting the treasures, and the end of the game features a battle with the dragon to see who emerges as Master of the Labyrinth!

Sébastien Pauchon

You take the part of an urban planner in quest of prestige in the futuristic city of Metropolys. Each player has secret goals to complete such as siting their buildings by lakes or near bridges. Players compete by offering bids (bribes?) to be allowed to build on a particular site, vying especially for trendy neighbourhoods and trying (if possible) to avoid heritage-listed areas. Winning the bid lets you choose the next site to put up for development. Clever planning and a ruthless desire to hinder your competitors are necessary to become the greatest developer of Metropolys!

Åse Berg & Henrik Berg

Oregon is set in the West of 1846 America, and has players staking out and developing land. You will have to construct a variety of buildings, as well as choose whether to farm or mine the land by placing your pioneers. The choices of where to play each turn are limited by your hand of cards which helps keep the game fairly simple. To win, you must choose the right times to farm and the right times to build, as well as keeping a close eye on what your opponents are doing.

Pandemic is a game where all players must work together to defeat the rising tide of global diseases. Each player has a specialist role that they must use to best effect in trying to curb the four diseases that are developing throughout the world. Working together to contain and cure the disease, the players need to keep an eye out for new outbreaks anywhere in the world. The game is very well produced and has interesting game play as players are working cooperatively: either everyone wins together, or the world is overwhelmed by disease!

A quick game for two players to see who can pick and pack the best apples. The neat aspect of this game is that the players are moving the same crane to pick up crates: the problem is that one player controls the horizontal movement and the other the vertical! If you can think ahead, you can set yourself up to get the best apples while leaving the poorer ones for your opponent! Different everytime because the warehouse layout is set up anew for each game.

Players are gnomes on a damaged Russian submarine, trying to rescue the submarine from sinking to the bottom of the sea. Working together, you must try and hold out for an hour until help arrives. But as time creeps towards the hour mark, inevitably more and more things will go wrong. You need to quickly resolve or stabilise the problems affecting the sub before new fires, floods or torpedo malfunctions add to the problems. Players win by saving the submarine, or else go down together with the submarine.

As part of the highly successful Ticket to Ride franchise, this game also delivers excitement, fun, and tension, but has several game-play twists in a new stand-alone, card game format. You will be collecting sets of illustrated Train cards, which you then use to complete Destination Tickets. But before the Train cards can be played, you face the risk of "train-robbing" where another player may force you to lose those hard-earned cards. An enjoyable game with lots of interaction and some memory element, all in a small box!

It’s a clever game where you are witches trying to brew the best potions. Each round you must choose 5 characters out of your hand of 12. These characters will help you collect or trade ingredients, brew potions, or disrupt your opponents' plans. The trick is to choose when to take risks and compete against your opponents and to sit back and watch your fellow players devastate each other. Simple and clever, this game rewards players who can anticipate what everyone else will choose to do!