These are the highlights of game fair SPIEL

SPIEL is a game fair that takes place in Essen, Germany. It's an incredibly fun exhibition with all kinds of games.

This was my first time attending SPIEL and I couldn't be happier with my experience.

Throughout my 3 days (October 6th to 8th), I saw amazing projects, had the chance to talk to great creators, and more importantly, I got to try a bunch of super cool games.

On my first day, I spent the entire day at hall 6 except for a quick lunch break and the last 45 minutes when I had a quick look around halls 4 and 5.

My first stop was at the Nanolith booth by Woodpecker Games. I really wanted to give it a try since I love the style and the fact that their campaign can last between 50-60 hours. Unfortunately, although I arrived at 10:10 all the slots for the day were already taken, and until the end of the convention I wasn't able to get a seat. The same thing happened with Gloomhaven, again no luck there.

Afterwards, I walked around and checked several other booths and finally sat down to try Scale75’s new game Pintamonas. It’s a fairly simple game, but it got my attention since it involves painting a model throughout the game, which is something I usually dread doing, especially because I have zero talent for it. I’m always looking for a reason to push myself, and Pintamonas ended up being an extremely fun experience, although you can see below that I did not do well at all (model on the left)

I walked around a little bit more and saw amazing models and artwork being displayed by several artists.

While walking around I noticed a game called 12 Rivers. Besides beautiful artwork, I find the game pretty unique. I immediately signed up to play it and, while I waited, the nice people at BGNations, Board Game Rookie, and Dexker introduced me to several of their other games. My favorite was the Chinese Zodiac, which I ended up buying to play with my family. It’s a great game for the young ones and a funny way to introduce them to the Chinese Zodiac.

Despite playing 3 games, there were still plenty of people ahead of me, so I ended up checking out a couple more games which is when Nimmerlichtern’s amazing models grabbed my attention. Unfortunately, I wasn't able to give it a try since the creator was out for lunch, which inspired me to do the same.

After grabbing a quick lunch and a beer I went back to 12 Rivers and – finally – I was able to play. To find out more about it make sure you listen to our podcast, which goes live on October 19th.

Immediately, I decided to buy it, but was told that they had already sold out since midday (which basically comes down to selling 200 copies in 2 hours). I was going to purchase Yin and Yang instead, but when I was about to pay they found one last copy! I really believe it was the last one since there were 2 other guys behind me trying to get a copy of 12 Rivers and they ended up leaving empty handed (#sorrynotsorry guys!).

For the next couple of hours, I played the Agony of Wizardry, a pretty fun game where you need to capture spells in order to graduate from wizarding school. I played Warcrow from Corvus Belli, which I’m definitely keeping an eye on since it comes with an app and it seems extremely interesting for solo players (I’m always worried about the app support for these games), and I also played Pictures: Orange. At the end of the day, I still thought of buying some sceneries from Battle Systems, but I started to get concerned about how to bring everything back with me. I must say that I have never seen cardboards of such quality, and at some point, I thought it had to be MDF until I talked with the team.

This was it for day 1 stay tuned for the next article.