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  "description": "Overviews of future releases from Looney Labs, Capstone Games, and Spiral Éditions",
  "path": "/omens-show-rising-cultures-on-seven-islands-in-2026/",
  "publishedAt": "2026-03-12T06:00:14.000Z",
  "site": "https://www.wericmartin.com",
  "tags": [
    "Dog Fluxx",
    "Fluxx",
    "Looney Labs",
    "Aquarius",
    "Math Fluxx",
    "Volcano",
    "Pyramid Arcade",
    "La Cosecha",
    "an early March 2026 post",
    "Capstone Games",
    "Québec",
    "this designer diary",
    "The Royal Society of Archeology",
    "Papyria",
    "Irongames",
    "Pirates of Maracaibo: Bermuda Triangle",
    "Wandering Towers: The Magic Tower",
    "wrote about",
    "Abacusspiele",
    "Wandering Towers: Spell Pack",
    "Tea Garden: Puerh",
    "Rising Cultures",
    "HUCH!",
    "Pagan: Expeditions into the Wild",
    "Pagan: Fate of Roanoke",
    "ANTS",
    "Cranio Creations",
    "Rats of Wistar",
    "Rats of Wistar: Clans & Portals",
    "my preview",
    "Night at the Zoo",
    "Prague Unseen",
    "my Feb. 6, 2026 post",
    "Hachette Boardgames USA",
    "Présages",
    "Spiral Éditions",
    "this October 2025 BGG News post",
    "crowdfunded"
  ],
  "textContent": "Here's a sampling of what I saw during the \"media first look\" portion of GAMA Expo 2026, which involved dozens of publishers setting up games on tables in a ballroom, then media folk like me wandering around going, gosh, there's no way we can see everything in here.\n\nAnd we didn't.\n\nDog Fluxx, which I believe is the 48th Fluxx title from Andy Looney and Looney Labs, hit retail markets on March 3, 2026, and while other _Fluxx_ titles are in the works, the company's next release will be **_Seven Islands_** , which arrives on June 30, 2026.\n\nThe game starts with the \"START\" card in play and with players having a couple of cards in hand. On a turn, you draw a card and play a card. Perhaps you'll play gear so that you have access to its special power later, or you'll add to an island with pyramids, moai, towers, portals, wells, and bridges. You want to move your tokens around the islands, with one portal teleporting you to another, a pyramid giving you an extra card, a well a bonus play, and so on.\n\nYour goal is to occupy the flagged tower that matches the ship at the dock, but ships come and go, in the tradition of Looney titles with shifting goals. Action cards are included in the game as well, making this design akin to a _Fluxx_ /Aquarius mash-up in how the island chain grows throughout play.\n\nTo celebrate the company's thirtieth anniversary, Looney Labs will release \"Little Purple Bag\", with this being a carrying case that holds one _Fluxx_ -sized game and comes packaged with seven promo cards: one specifically for Math Fluxx, with the others being usable in any _Fluxx_ game.\n\nLooney Labs is also working on a sweet version of Kristin Looney's 2000 pyramid game Volcano, with this version having a see-through game board that you can illuminate with a light underneath so that the frosted pyramids glow like technicolor lava. No pics yet as the materials were all mock-ups, but the hope is to release this item in late 2026, with packaging to match Pyramid Arcade and other recent pyramid releases. **UPDATE, May 1, 2026:** Kristin Looney tells me that the new edition of _Volcano_ will now be released in Q3/Q4 2027.\n\n• • • • • • • • • • • • • •\n\nI've already written about the involved roll-and-write game La Cosecha in an early March 2026 post, but U.S. publisher Capstone Games showed off a few other upcoming releases at GAMA Expo 2026:\n\n  * Québec is a second edition of a Philippe Beaudoin and Pierre Poissant-Marquis design from 2011 in which players build the city of Québec over a period of four hundred years. For more on the game, read this designer diary from Beaudoin that I published on BGG News back in 2011.\n  * The Royal Society of Archeology is an Eric Jumel design for 1-4 players in which you travel the globe in search of relics and knowledge.\n  * Papyria is a Bernd Eisenstein design that he released through his Irongames brand in 2025. In this, another 1-4 player design, you construct canals, discover inventions, develop mines, and build temples, sanctuaries, and cities in 1,500 BCE where the Euphrates and Tigris rivers meet.\n\n\n\nCapstone Games released Pirates of Maracaibo: Bermuda Triangle**__** in February 2026, with this expansion adding a \"treasure hunt\" module to the base game, in addition to new improvement cards.\n\nIn April 2026, the publisher will release Wandering Towers: The Magic Tower, which contains five modules that can be mixed and matched and which I wrote about in October 2025 when originating publisher Abacusspiele first announced it. Also arriving that same month is Wandering Towers: Spell Pack, which features six new spells for the game that were previously released two at a time in promo form.\n\nMay 2026 brings the release of Tea Garden: Puerh, an expansion that adds two new actions to your possibilities each turn, upping the complexity of this Tomáš Holek design.\n\nRising Cultures is a two-player game coming in March 2026 from Aske Christiansen and Francesco Testini that HUCH! first released in Q4 2025. Each player represents one of four civilizations — Egypt, Persia, Rome, or the Abbasid Caliphate — and employs its unique deck of multi-use cards to build, install leaders, conquer provinces, and more.\n\nAnother May 2026 release is Pagan: Expeditions into the Wild, which adds still more to the world of Kasper Kjær Christiansen and Kåre Storgaard's Pagan: Fate of Roanoke. Man, I played this game once in April 2025 and really dug it, yet I haven't got it back to the table since. In my younger years — read this as \"pre-child twenty years ago\" — this game would have been on the table daily, giving me time to explore both sides of this asymmetric game and dive into each expansion. Wistful memories...\n\nCapstone Games will release an \"updated English version\" of the 2025 game ANTS from Renato Ciervo, Andrea Robbiani, and Cranio Creations at Gen Con 2026, along with a \"limited reprint\" of Cranio's 2023 game Rats of Wistar and the debut of the Rats of Wistar: Clans & Portals expansion. (For details on _ANTS_ , check out my preview from September 2025. I would have played more, but someone has borrowed my copy for quite a long time at this point...)\n\nFinally, Capstone Games has partnered with Czech publisher Albi on two upcoming releases: Night at the Zoo, which will debut at Gen Con 2025, and Prague Unseen, which will debut at SPIEL Essen 26. You can learn about these games in my Feb. 6, 2026 post from Spielwarenmesse.\n\n• • • • • • • • • • • • • •\n\nAt GAMA Expo 2026, Hachette Boardgames USA revealed that the English-language edition of Maxime Rambourg's funky trick-taking-ish game Présages will be...originating publisher Spiral Éditions, with the name of this edition being **_Omens_**. I posted an overview of gameplay in this October 2025 BGG News post when Ravensburger revealed that it would release the game in German.\n\n• • • • • • • • • • • • • •\n\n**_Mythic Legions: The Roleplaying Game_** is being crowdfunded through April 4, 2026, and I know nothing about the game, but I liked this shot I took.\n\n• • • • • • • • • • • • • •\n\nLike what you read? Leave a tip to support independent board game journalism!\n\nLeave a tip",
  "title": "Omens Show Rising Cultures on Seven Islands in 2026",
  "updatedAt": "2026-05-02T16:12:12.959Z"
}