We wanted to give you a preview of what leading tabletop gaming company Arcane Wonders has in store for this year, led by games such as ito (January 2025) and Call of Duty: The Board Game (Q3-4 2025). As you’re thinking of coverage plans for 2025, whether they be gift guides, Most Anticipated lists or otherwise, we hope you’ll consider including these upcoming board games; there is truly something for everyone on tap this year.
Here is a list of what to expect from Arcane Wonders in 2025:
Coming in January:
- ito – ito is a cooperative game where you and your friends will each get your own secret number you then have to try to put in order as a group based on the clues you give related to the chosen theme. ito became wildly popular in its native country of Japan and Arcane Wonders is bringing it to English-speaking audiences for the first time.
- Mezen – Mezen is a puzzle tile-based game where players will compete to achieve a series of scoring goals by removing tiles from their 5×5 board, flipping them over, sliding the tiles above them down, then adding the newly flipped tiles from the top. The gorgeous Siberian art makes Mezen‘s table presence absolutely stunning.
Coming Q3-4 2025:
- Call of Duty: The Board Game – Call of Duty: The Board Game brings the Call of Duty experience to tabletops, immersing players in intense competitive combat. Play on authentic Call of Duty maps such as Shoot House or Standoff. Choose from operators like Ghost Riley or Captain Price. Select your favorite weapons and items. Build a custom combat deck with your signature tactics. Then, jump into the action.
- Buffet Boss – In Buffet Boss, pick your food from the buffet and gain points by stacking food onto your plate. But beware – the food with the tastiest point values are also the hardest to stack! Players will also have Character cards that give them bonus points for stacking specific types of food. Buffet Boss also comes in many different modes to suit all diets – a solo/cooperative mode as well as a mode for kids aged five and up.
- Aquatica: Duellum – New Aquatica is in a duel format: deeper, meaner, and more intense. Choose a Turtle King or a Squid Queen and improve your underwater realm by playing action cards and assembling locations on three-layered boards. After decades of turbulent times, it is time to unite the underwater world under the fin or tentacle of a single ruler!
- Leylines – Leylines is a re-imagining/update of the classic game Auf Achse by Wolfgang Kramer set in a brand new world with new rules by Daryl Andrews, featuring beautiful acrylic standees and a circular board filled magical leylines and mystical markets! To win, players must collect resources in the forest and bring them back along the leylines to the markets to sell them. Be aware, though, that the magical merchants pay different amounts depending on what they are interested in!
- Raas: A Dance of Love – Raas is a light-medium competitive strategy game for one to six players. The ‘board’ consists of a set of seven discs connected with an intricate gear mechanism. Each disc has six dice as ‘dancers’ specializing in different tempos and styles of this energetic Gujarati dance form. Players draft dancers from the central dance floor to train up their own personal dance troupe. Plan your moves to matchmake amongst the dancers to go up the love track and earn powerful bonuses.
- If/Then – If/Then is a game of cooperative pattern solving. One player is the knower, who reads the hint and tells the other players whether their guesses are right or wrong. Everyone else is a guesser; they take turns choosing a card from a display and placing it in the line as a guess. The guessers win if they successfully guess the hint before running out of cards.
- Freedom Five – Freedom Five: A Sentinel Comics Board Game is a cooperative strategy game in which one to five heroes race to protect their home city and its inhabitants from an onslaught of villainy from Baron Blade and his criminal cohorts. Each player must master their character’s unique abilities to manage multiple crises throughout the city of Megalopolis. Assemble your friends to face standalone challenges, or mix it up and adventure through a series of campaign comics in which you will gain rewards — and new threats — each session.
- Millimemory – In Millimemory, players try to remember the length of everyday household items. Each player has an unmarked ruler to estimate the length and begins the game at 100 points. Players lose one point for each millimeter they are off the correct length. Players are eliminated when they run out of points, and the last player in the game wins.
