Wield Dice from Mars, Chuck Dice in the Pool, and Stitch a New Love Letter | BoardGameGeek News

by W. Eric Martin

▪️ I know that gamers often express frustration when a design comes in an unusual package, but I appreciate publishers who lean into the unexpected — or are just doing something eye-catching that tries to boost the “fun” dial on their product. Today’s example is Stitch: The Fix for 626, a Lilo & Stitch-themed version of Seiji Kanai‘s 2012 game Love Letter, with Jorge Zhang being credited as co-designer.

What a goofy looking “box”!

The game lasts multiple rounds, with one player always holding onto Stitch, who switches between “Experiment 626” or “Good Stitch” incarnations. Your goal each round remains the same as in Love Letter: Be the only player who hasn’t been eliminated, or hold the highest card when the deck runs out.

Stitch: The Fix for 626 is due out in October 2025.

▪️ Martian Dice was the first published game from designer Scott Almes, debuting in 2011, and U.S. publisher Calliope Games is bringing it back to print in mid-2025.

Here’s an overview of this game for two or more players:

Your mission, Martians, is to swoop down on the pathetic denizens of the primitive planet Earth and scoop up as many of the inhabitants as you can manage. We are interested in samples of the chicken, cow, and human populations so that we can determine which of them is actually in charge. The Earthlings might manage to put up a feeble defense, but surely nothing that a small taste of your death rays can’t handle. Make Mars proud – be the first Martian to fill your abduction quota!

In Martian Dice, you roll thirteen custom dice in an effort to set aside (“abduct”) humans, chickens, and cows. With each roll, you must first set aside any tanks, representing the human military coming to fend off your alien invasion, then you may choose one type of die to set aside as well — one type of earthlings to abduct, or death rays to combat the military. At the end of your turn, if you have at least as many death rays as tanks, then you may abduct the earthlings you’ve been setting aside. You can’t pick any type of Earthling twice in one turn, but if you manage to abduct at least one of each, you’ll score a bonus!

▪️ Another dice game being reborn on the market is Dice Pool Party, a 2-8 player design from Christoph Cantzler and Torsten Marold that was first released in 2022 by Drei Hasen in der Abendsonne as Dice Cup. A “pool party” sounds way more inviting than a “cup”, so that’s probably a good change.

I played the original game once at SPIEL Essen 22, and it plays akin to Yahtzee, but with everyone playing at the same time. Everyone gets their own scoring sheet, and at the start of a round, someone rolls the dice, slams the cup down on the table, then lifts up the cup for three seconds: one… two… three!

Only dice in this pool, please

Then they slam the cup down again, after which everyone marks the category on their score sheet that they want to score: a color, a number, a set of dice, everything, etc. Then the active player removes the cup, and everyone tallies their score for their chosen category. You can choose each category once, and after a set number of rolls, the game ends and everyone tallies their score.

▪️ In August 2025, Horrible Guild will release Similo: Aquatic Animals, the latest iteration of this design from Martino Chiacchiera, Hjalmar Hach, and Pierluca Zizzi.

In Similo, one person is the cluegiver who is trying to help others guess one of twelve cards in a display. Each round, they reveal a card from their hand and indicate whether the target card is like or unlike the clue card. Players need to keep eliminating cards from the display until (ideally) only the target remains.

As with all other Similo releases, you can play Similo: Aquatic Animals on its own, or you can pair it with another Similo deck, giving clues from one deck while trying to get players to guess a card from the other.

▪️ While reading a U.S. industry publication, I came across this ad from Hasbro Games:

Wait a minute — Wolfgang Kramer? A 2-10 player count? The card 104?!

Beat the Heat is clearly a new edition of Kramer’s classic card game 6 nimmt!…but 6 nimmt! is currently available on the U.S. market from AMIGO Games under the name Take 5, so what’s going on here?

In case you doubted the connection between the two games, ACD Distribution lists Beat the Heat as an August 1, 2025 release with this description: “Get fired up for the Beat the Heat game! Designed for the whole family, this strategy card game for kids and adults is all about scoring low. The player with the fewest points wins. In each fast-paced round, players carefully choose number cards from their hands to play on one of 4 rows. But beware! Any player that plays the sixth card in a row will have to take the first 5 cards — and all the points that come with them.”

I’ve reached out to both Hasbro and AMIGO for clarification and will update this post should they respond.