Most Anticipated Board Games of 2025, Part 2

It’s been a few months since my last post thanks to the chaos of tariffs, new releases, and the convention season. Plus, I can’t lie, I’ve been playing a lot of Mario Kart World and Donkey Kong Bananza during the times when I normally write about board games. Too busy gaming to talk about games, go figure.

But what better way to get the blog flowing again then with my Most Anticipated Board Games of 2025, Part 2 list? If you missed Part 1, you can check it out here (many of these games either just barely released or have yet to be released, so the list is still very relevant).

These hotly anticipated games are roughly ordered by release date or crowdfunding launch date. Note: this list will include a few titles published by us here at Bitewing Games (labeled below) — because why wouldn’t I be excited about those?

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Soda Jerk

Expected Release Date: August 2025

I had the pleasure of trying Soda Jerk a year or two ago as a prototype on TTS, which means my memory of it is now fuzzy, but I do recall it being far more amusing than it has any right to be. If you, like me, have enjoyed Chris Yi’s witty humor laced throughout the Dice Tower’s video content, then you’ll likely enjoy his quick, clever, and dramatic game of commodity speculation and soda sabotage.

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Tearable Quest

Expected Release Date: August 2025

Tearable Quest is another game that I’ve been able to play before its release … and I love it. As the title implies, here you are racing to carefully tear out the most valuable items from your sheet of paper while avoiding tearing into the perilous traps. Buying a game only to immediately tear it apart sounds like madness. But the good news is that this game is dirt-cheap ($9) and it comes with a bunch of sheets and variety, so I think you’ll get your money’s worth here. Plus I’ve never played anything like this, so I think the game absolutely justifies its price.

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Cat and the Tower

Expected Release Date: August 2025

My girls (4 and 6) are big fans of Rhino Hero Super Battle — a kid-friendly dexterity game where you build towers out of folded cards. So when I heard rumblings that Cat and the Tower is like Rhino Hero — but cooperative … and possibly better — that’s all I needed to add it to the list. 

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Rheinlander

Q3 Kickstarter Launch

A year or two ago Reiner Knizia teased in an interview that he was working on new content for an updated version of Rheinlander. The long wait (at least until the crowdfunding campaign) is nearly over, and we’ve finally gotten our first look at the new edition illustrated by Ian O’Toole! From my plays of the original version, I always felt like this game had more potential just waiting to be developed. I’m happy to see that this hand management area majority game is under the solid stewardship of 25th Century Games (who also published the newest version of Ra). It’ll be interesting to discover what Reiner has cooked up on the development end.

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Qwirkle Flex

Expected Release Date: August 2025

I’ve never played Qwirkle, despite it being an all-time best selling family-weight board game. In Qwirkle, you are simply adding matching colors or shapes to growing rows and columns in the central play area. What better way to motivate me to try it than with a meatier version co-designed by Reiner Knizia? Apparently, Qwirkle Flex adds another layer of complexity to the game by also letting players score diagonally on newly added background colors.

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Junk Art Revolution

Expected Release Date: August 2025

Junk Art might just be one of the best stacking games ever created. It features delightful wood blocks that come in all kinds of versatile shapes used across several different game modes. Junk Art Revolution promises to raise the bar with revised rules, an updated scoring system, and new modes of play. Color me intrigued.

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Moytura

September 23 Kickstarter Launch

Published by Bitewing Games

Moytura represents our first-ever collaboration with designers David Thompson and Trevor Benjamin (designers of Undaunted and War Chest). It is game three in our critically acclaimed 2-player line, the Mythos Collection, which started with Iliad and Ichor by Reiner Knizia. It is also a very different beast from the other games in this line. Moytura was created specifically for the Mythos Collection with the ambitious goal of being a streamlined area majority war game steeped in Irish mythology. Where most area majority games desperately need 3+ players to thrive, Moytura works beautifully as a 2-player-only game thanks to the non-player enemy faction that competes with both players for control and spreads out across the island a bit like Pandemic diseases. Moytura is also packed with extra content including asymmetric enemy clans and a full blown expansion that will be free during the Kickstarter — making it our largest Mythos game to date.

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Azure

September 23 Kickstarter Launch

Published by Bitewing Games

While Moytura could easily be its own Kickstarter, we’re launching it alongside another killer Mythos game from the designers of Mandala, Patterns, and Great Plains (Trevor Benjamin and Brett J. Gilbert). And while Moytura is more dramatic and epic, Azure is perhaps the most universally loved game among our playtesters and team that will give even Iliad a run for its money in a popularity contest. That’s because it is quick, smooth, and oh-so satisfying to play. In Azure, you must manage your hand of cards and spend them to claim valuable spaces in the square grid that grant boons (specific cards and/or points). As your stones begin to occupy the grid, they will grant you discounts on other spaces in their same rows and columns. Meanwhile, you’ll be competing with each other for the favor of the four auspicious beasts (including the titular Azure Dragon). This Splendor-like game just hits the spot, and like Moytura it comes with a free expansion for Kickstarter backers.

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The Hobbit: There and Back Again

Expected Release Date: September 26, 2025

I’m not hungry for more roll & write games, but I’m willing to make an exception for a Reiner Knizia roll & write campaign based on The Hobbit. My City: Roll & Build is proof enough that Reiner knows how to make this kind of game. I expect that The Hobbit is will be even more interesting since it doesn’t have retread the My City formula. Plus publisher Office Dog has been nailed their productions lately (I was impressed with both Lord of the Rings: Trick-Taking Game and River of Gold).

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Tower Up: Paradise Islands

Expected Release Date: October 2025

Tower Up was one of the best new releases I played last year. Here is what I said about it in my Top 20 Games of 2024 list:

“Tower Up is a beacon of hope in this modern gaming world. Like its titular skyscrapers, it stands tall and boldly displays the glory of light strategy gaming. Tower Up is the kind of design that impresses me far more than a big box Eurogame with complex and layered systems. You won’t find an ounce of fat in this ruleset. It’s a lean, mean evergreen about raising skyscrapers and cruising up the score tracks. You can play it with anyone, yet you’ll uncover plenty of depth underneath its simplicity.” 

I’m thrilled to see a new expansion is releasing soon featuring an island board, red bridges, and new objectives. 

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Gingham

Expected Release Date: November 2025

Published by Bitewing Games

While our 2-player Mythos Collection rolls on, we’re also excited to be releasing the first games our Travel Line this year. This line aims to be portable, compact, quick, and approachable. In other words, these games are super easy to take on a trip and get to the table with any kind of group. Gingham is a very unique game of jockeying for turn order while deploying ants to a picnic blanket. The objective is to connect matching sweets to create stockpiles and surround those stockpiles with your growing chains and clusters of ants. Players can even bump each other’s ants out of a space in a Hansa Teutonica style way that benefits both the bumper and the bumpee. There is a lot of strategic depth to uncover in the quick-playing Gingham.

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Gazebo

Expected Release Date: November 2025

Published by Bitewing Games

Gazebo is the other big-game-crammed-in-a-small-package, like Gingham. This strategic domino game is designed by Reiner Knizia, and he has called it one of his “Top 10 designs, ever” (which is saying a lot when he’s designed over 800 games). Between the smooth gameplay of placing dominoes on a shared board and the dynamic interactions that emerge from the area majority gameplay, I can see what he means. You are simply racing to put out all of your gazebos first — the competition is fierce and the variety is huge with the four possible maps.

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Bombastic

Expected Release Date: November 2025

Published by Bitewing Games

I’m a huge fan of Trio/Nana thanks to its hilarious drama and addicting approachability. This kind of game is exactly what we at Bitewing are aiming to publish more of — small, quick, affordable, memorable, dramatic, and addicting. It’s not so easy to come by these brilliantly simple games, so we feel very fortunate to be releasing Bombastic. Bombastic does to tic tac toe what Trio/Nana does to go fish — it takes a game that everyone is familiar with and makes it a blast to play. Bombastic is a 5-minute 2-player game that features 9 face-down tiles (4 Xs, 4 Os, and 1 Bomb) that players take turns peeking at, rearranging, showing, and more until they decide to “Go For It” and flip three tiles in a row. If the flipped tiles are all yours, then you win. Otherwise, you give your opponent valuable information or even lose if you flip the bomb. This game also comes in a clamshell case letting you take and play it anywhere — on an airplane tray table, at the beach, you name it. Preorders for this game will go live in August, and all preorders come with a free PVC card upgrade (making the game fully water-proof… except for the rulebook which you won’t need after your initial plays).

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Hibachi: Fired Up!

Expected Release Date: Sometime 2025

I got a kick out of Hibachi back when I tried it a few years ago. It’s hard not to enjoy tossing poker chips onto a large board and aiming to land them on valuable ingredients while knocking away opponent chips. I had a lot of good things to say about the experience here . Yet after writing my first impressions, I soon found myself willing to part with the game because it tended to last longer than I preferred. What I failed to recognize in that impressions post is that the game was overstaying its welcome, and that eventually wore me down to the point where I culled the game from my collection. I must not have been the only person with that feeling, because Grail Games is about to release a new version of Hibachi featuring streamlined rules and a shorter playtime! If this version actually hits the 25 minute mark that the box promises, then Hibachi: Fired Up should have a much longer shelf life in my collection. 

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Feya’s Swamp 

Expected Release Date: SPIEL Essen 2025 or Q1 2026 Release

The early buzz is strong with this one. Feya’s Swamp presents itself as a punishing and interactive pick-up-and-deliver game. The landscape of the board is a large swamp that changes over time as players expand islands while navigating around those islands with boats. This can make the game turn into a nightmare of choke points and detours if your opponents are inclined to slow you down. This is the kind of economic nightmare I want to dive into when the game fittingly releases at SPIEL Essen in October (or 2026 in retail).

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Article written by Nick Murray. Outside of practicing dentistry part-time, Nick has devoted his remaining work-time to collaborating with the world’s best designers, illustrators, and creators in producing classy board games that bite, including the critically acclaimed titles Trailblazers by Ryan Courtney and Zoo Vadis by Reiner Knizia. He hopes you’ll join Bitewing Games in their quest to create and share classy board games with a bite.

Disclaimer: When Bitewing Games finds a designer or artist or publisher that we like, we sometimes try to collaborate with these creators on our own publishing projects. We work with these folks because we like their work, and it is natural and predictable that we will continue to praise and enjoy their work. Any opinions shared are subject to biases including business relationships, personal acquaintances, gaming preferences, and more. That said, our intent is to help grow the hobby, share our gaming experiences, and find folks with similar tastes. Please take any and all of our opinions with a hearty grain of salt as you partake in this tabletop hobby feast.