We’re proud to launch Board Game Fest, a new initiative designed to put the spotlight on board and card games.

Board Game Fest is our way of celebrating International Tabletop Day (happening on June 6th this year), but rather than limiting the celebration to a single day, we wanted to create something that lasts longer and reflects how people play.

This initiative is about celebrating both the games and the people who play them, shining a light on games that so many of us value in our own way. Whether it’s board games, card games, TCGs, or miniatures, if it’s played around a table, digital or physical, it has a place here.

Join and finish a game on Board Game Arena between June 5th and June 7th 2026 and receive a special trophy for the first edition of Board Game Fest.

And most of all: keep playing, take care and play fair!

It's 16th-century Goa, the trading capital of the known world. Silk and pepper flow like currency, fortunes are made in a single deal, and the wrong bid can sink everything you've built.

Goa, a classic by Rüdiger Dorn, puts you at the head of a trading house on India's western coast. Your goal is simple: outthink, outbid, and outlast everyone around that table. The road there, auctions, resource chains, five interlocking progress tracks, is anything but simple.

Every round, tiles hit the market grid and the bidding begins. But here's the twist that changes everything: you're not always the one chasing. Sometimes you're the auctioneer. You hold the power. You decide whether to take someone's money and let them have the tile, or pay one less than their top bid and steal it yourself. That moment of choice, sell it or take it, is where the game gets under your skin. It's personal. It's tense. And it feels real every single time.

When you win a tile, it feeds your engine: ships, goods, taxes, exploration, outposts. Watch each track climb and you'll feel it: the quiet pride of a plan coming together, of a trading empire built piece by piece with your own hands. And then someone outbids you for the depot you needed. Your whole strategy pivots in one turn. You find another way.

Goa doesn't just make you feel clever. It makes you feel invested. Like it actually matters. Because somehow, it does.

https://boardgamearena.com/gamepanel?game=goa

A huge thanks to Rüdiger Dorn and Pedro André Oliveira Correia, the game designers, as well as the publisher, Quined Games, for allowing us to add this classic to our platform. And this would not have been possible without the work and dedication of Jonathan2004, so thank you!

This was your Wednesday release.

Goa-head and show them who really rules the auction floor! Until next time, take care and play fair...

You're sitting at the table, playing with your best friend, your row of cards is perfectly aligned (courtesy of BGA), one animal away from victory and then your best friend sends you a smile emoji... They play the Crab. Your carefully built row shuffles sideways, your Alliance crumbles, and just like that, you're starting over.

That's Collect! in a nutshell.

The setup couldn't be simpler: draw a card, place it in your row, use your animal's ability. You're racing to line up 4 identical animals, it is called an Alliance, and claim the Crown before anyone else does. Sounds easy but it’s not. And that's the whole point.

See, every animal in this deck has an agenda. The Crocodile quietly buries your best card. The Monkey swaps your prized piece for their junk. The Parrot gambles everything on a coin flip. And the Chameleon? That sneaky little wildcard is whatever it wants to be. Every turn feels like a tiny heist where you're never quite sure who's robbing whom.

Collect! balances the two things that make games memorable: the joy of a solid plan, and the chaos of watching it fall apart. You'll think three turns ahead. Someone will ruin it in one. You'll laugh, groan, and immediately deal again.

It has that rare quality where even losing feels fun, because you were this close, and next round, you're sure of it.

https://boardgamearena.com/gamepanel?game=collect

We’d like to thank Jérémy Ducret and Johannes Goupy, the game designers, as well as the folks at CMON for letting us add their game to the platform. We’d also like to thank Moof, for the BGA port.

This was your Monday release.

In the immortal words of every ruined strategy ever: “That escalated quickly.” Take care and play fair…

Somewhere out there, lost in in the middle of the ocean, there is an island no one mapped. And it is full of strange creatures: glowing birds, giant insects, and weird animals with far too many legs. Wondrous Creatures invites you to go find them.

You're not here to fight. You're not here to survive. You're here because you love animals, and building your own reserve on a mysterious island is absolutely irresistible.

The heart of the game is your reserve: a personal collection of creature cards and eggs you'll carefully curate. Each creature has its own ability, and the magic is in making them all work together. That small creature you picked up early? It might just be the key to a combo you didn't see coming. There's a specific joy in watching your reserve click into place, not just because it is a    digital version of the game...

Every turn, you're making real choices. Do you send your crew out to gather resources, or play the cards already in your hand? Do you rush to complete that achievement before someone else does? And those eggs, oh, those eggs... Collecting them, hatching them, flipping them at just the right moment… it all feeds into something that feels alive.

What makes Wondrous Creatures memorable is that you keep discovering new things: new habitats emerge from the mist as the game progresses, the island keeps growing, and each game tells a different story depending on which creatures you meet.

New to the island? The tutorial will help you when you start exploring. But whether you end up with the highest score or a gloriously chaotic reserve full of dragons and glowing insects, you'll want to go again.

https://boardgamearena.com/gamepanel?game=wondrouscreatures

Our thanks to C.W. Yeom, the game designer, and the team at Bad Comet for letting us add their game to our platform. And a big shoutout to jordijansen who brought the island to life on BGA.

This was your Wednesday release.

Set sail. The creatures are waiting. Take care and play fair.

There is something deeply satisfying about putting things in order. Whether it’s a bookshelf or a hand of cards, our brains just love it when a plan comes together. IPSO takes that feeling and turns it into a fast-paced "construction game".

At its heart, this acronym for Include, Plan, Score, Optimize, is about turning chaos into a masterpiece. You start with 14 cards face down, a pyramid of secrets waiting to be revealed. One by one, you’ll swap them for the numbers in the center, trying to build rows that flow perfectly from low to high.

The magic of the game lies in the choices you make! Do you take that blue 45 now to secure your middle row, or do you wait, hoping for a lower number to keep your options open? Every card you flip over is a moment of truth. There’s a specific kind of joy in watching a row of cards finally click into place. It’s like finding the last piece of a puzzle you didn't know you were solving.

And there is a cherry on top of that cake: your Star card sits there like a silent guardian. It’s your safety net. As the game nears its end, you face the ultimate "what if" moment: do you hold onto it for the guaranteed points, or do you discard it for one final swap to fix a broken row?

IPSO is a game that asks you to be both a strategist and a dreamer. The pyramid is waiting so let’s get ready to scratch that "just one more game" itch. Are you ready to build your legacy, one number at a time?

https://boardgamearena.com/gamepanel?game=ipso

Our thanks to Alexandre Droit, the game designer, and the team at Gigamic for bringing this elegant challenge to BGA. A huge shoutout to darhf and BoucleMed for making the pyramids look as good as the Giza originals on the platform!

This is your Monday release.

Build your own stairway to numerical heaven one card at a time and as always take care and play fair.

The Dwarf King, that’s the one with the longest beard, has challenged humans and goblins to a tournament. Your goal: outscore your rivals across seven deals and claim the crown, even if your beard isn’t quite long enough yet.

You will find all the classic aspects of a trick-taking game, with a twist: every single deal plays by different rules.

What keeps things spicy is the deck itself. Alongside the 39 standard Court cards, one of 14 Special cards is shuffled in each deal. You never quite know which wildcard is lurking until the deal is under way.

Each deal, a special scoring rule called a Quest gets revealed and it completely reshapes what you're trying to do. The result is a game that rewards both planning and adaptability. You might be dealt a hand full of low-value cards and think you're done for, then realize the active Quest scores for exactly those values. Or you'll be sitting on a powerhouse hand only for the Quest to penalize every trick you win. The cards you're trying to collect — or avoid — shift every single round.

The Dwarf King brings you just enough tension and just enough swing to make every deal feel like a proper contest. The crown is up for grabs and we can help with thanks to the tutorial but… who's going to earn it?

https://boardgamearena.com/gamepanel?game=thedwarfking

Our thanks to Bruno Faidutti, the game designer, and the good folks at Iello, the publisher, for letting us use their game on BGA. And to MathCT for doing us a good turn with this adaptation.

This was your Friday release.

No beard was shaved during the making of this article. Take care and play fair…

Let’s be honest: hearing about “cooperative poker” made you a little skeptical. The two words don't exactly belong together. Poker is about reading people, bluffing, and outsmarting everyone, not helping them. But The Gang pulls it off in a way that feels fresh without losing what makes poker fun.

You and your crew are professional thieves orchestrating a series of heists. To crack the vaults, you'll need to play Texas Hold 'em together. Win three heists before tripping three alarms, and the loot is yours.

Each heist follows the familiar poker structure: you get two pocket cards, then community cards are revealed round by round (the Flop, Turn, and River). But instead of betting, you're grabbing chips. Each one represents how strong you think your hand is relative to everyone else's. Take the highest-star chip? You're saying you've got the best hand at the table. Grab the 1-star? You're calling yourself the weakest link.

The first rule of The Gang is: you do not talk about your cards. No hints, no winks, no "hypothetical" questions. The chips are your only language. After four rounds, everyone reveals their hands in chip order, and if the hands come out weakest to strongest without a single mistake, the vault opens. One slip, and the alarm goes off.

Whether you're a poker shark or someone who just learned what a flush is, this game will have you silently losing your mind as your teammate confidently grabs the wrong chip. Ready to pull off the perfect heist?

https://boardgamearena.com/gamepanel?game=thegang

Our thanks go to John Cooper and Kory Heath, the game designers, as well as the KOSMOS’ crew for letting us add their game to our platform. And we would like to thank darhf and BoucleMed for the BGA port.

This is your Wednesday release.

The house always wins… unless the whole house plays together. Take care and play fair…

Close your eyes and let yourself drift away into the world of Visions, where the night is just beginning and your imagination is about to take flight. You are a dreamer weaving together fragments of a subconscious world. Your mission is to assemble these fragments into two coherent dreams before the sun comes up or someone decides to wake up a little too early.

As you settle into your sleep, you’ll find yourself holding three cards, each representing a piece of a dream with its own unique environment and category. On your turn, you simply play a card to start or continue one of your two dreams.

Your dreams need to make sense, so you can only add a new fragment if it shares the same environment or category as the one before it. Perhaps you’re wandering through an Enchanted Forest and find yourself transitioning into a world of Mythical Creatures, or maybe the cold air of the Icy Birches leads you toward a dream about Time.

Of course, no night is complete without a few shadows. If you find yourself stuck or just feeling a bit mischievous, you can choose to have a Nightmare. It’s a bit of a gamble, but sometimes a little chaos is exactly what your dream needs to stay alive.

When the night finally ends and you open your eyes, you’ll look back at the dreams you’ve built to see who found the most harmony and wins the game…

Master the art of reflections and echoes to score the most points, but stay alert, a nightmare might just change everything before you wake up!

https://boardgamearena.com/gamepanel?game=visions

A massive high-five to the lead dream architects Bruno Cathala and Florian Sirieix, the game designers, as well as Olemains for bottling this magic and allowing us to share it with the world. A big shout out to Moof for coding the Matrix and turning these fragments into a digital reality.

This was your Monday release.

Exit light. Enter night. You're off to never-never land. take care and play fair...

Long before cities, castles, and complicated tax systems, there were giant creatures living in untamed lands. In First Giants, you are a paleontologist collecting the most beautiful fossils to display at your museum. Choose which specimens to study. Every fossil brings its own unique ability to the table. Slowly, your collection starts to take shape, and you’ll probably grow a little attached to your favorite discoveries along the way. But eventually, the museum wants results.

To score points, you’ll need to put your fossils on display. Sounds great… until you realize that once they’re exhibited, their special abilities are lost for good. Every decision becomes tricky. Do you proudly showcase that powerful fossil now, or keep it in your lab a few more turns to squeeze every last benefit out of it? Push your luck for too long, however, and another player might beat you to important scoring opportunities.

On your turn, place a marker at a dig site and apply the card’s effect. You can also reclaim a marker to gain amber or display a fossil by spending amber and score points when you expand your fossil set. The game ends when a player takes the last Set token from the supply or when the deck is empty after a player refills a Dig Site.

Are you ready to create the most prestigious exhibition with dinosaurs, flying reptiles, and giant mammals? So, take out your brush, embrace your inner Dr Alan Grant and dig in:

https://boardgamearena.com/gamepanel?game=firstgiants

We would like to thank Matthew Dunstan and Brett J. Gilbert, the game designers, and Space Cowboys, the publisher, for the opportunity to experience this prehistoric journey online. We would also like to thank darhf and BoucleMed for bringing the giants to life on BGA.

This was your Friday release.
A perfect day to be collecting Giants! Take care and play fair…

You are a brave Emberling and your mission is to rebuild your home in the heart of an ancient forest. Tiny houses rise among the trees, shops appear along winding paths, and every carefully placed tile helps transform the wilderness into a bustling little haven.

Emberleaf manages to balance relaxation and strategy. One moment you’re admiring your cozy woodland bakery, and the next you’re calculating the ideal combo chain like you’re solving a forest-themed chess problem.

The gameplay revolves around tile placement, resource management, and careful planning. Each turn, you and the other players expand the shared forest by placing terrain tiles and constructing buildings that score points in different ways. Some structures reward careful positioning, and others thrive on connections or surrounding terrain. Every decision matters, especially when others are competing for the same perfect spots.

To succeed, you’ll have to brave the wilds, hunt for resources and build a future for your kind. You’ll pick up heroes, some powerful allies, bringing unique skills to back you up. But don't get too comfortable: room is tight in the woods, and you aren’t the only Emberling to have plans for the forest.

Build wisely. Expand carefully. And remember: every great forest kingdom starts with one tiny treehouse. It is easy to jump into your first game while still giving experienced players plenty of room to optimize their leafy empire.

https://boardgamearena.com/gamepanel?game=emberleaf

We would like to thank James Tomblin and Frank West, the game designers, as well as The City of Games’ crew for letting us add their game to our platform. And let’s not forget Sir Heo, the developer who brought this cozy woodland adventure to BGA.

This was your Wednesday release.
Every decision you make shapes the destiny of your people, so take care and play fair...