What’s your Game is one of those smaller publishers that manages to publish very good games year after year. Two years ago it was Madeira, one of the my favourites of the 2013 Essen crop, and last year it was ZhanGuo, another highly rated game.

This year they have two new releases:

In Nippon, players control Zaibatsu and try to develop their web of power by investing in new industries, improving their technological knowledge, shipping goods to foreign countries or using them to satisfy the local need, and growing their influence and power as they oversee the era of rapid industrialization in Japan. The foundations of the big Zaibatsu were the traditional silk workshops, but soon the conglomerates diversified their influence and power, building a complex structure of interconnected companies that made them giant players in the world’s new industrial era.

In Signorie, you will play the role of a Signore, a Lord of one of the most prestigious families of the Renaissance. One at the time, players choose one die from a common pool. (Twenty dice in five colors are rolled at the beginning of each round.) You place it on your player board (your city) and perform one of the possible actions. The color of the chosen die determines the action, and the number on the die is a discount on the cost of the action.

During a round, each player can perform up to four actions. At the end of the round, if the sum of a player’s chosen dice is equal or lower than 13, he can obtain a reward.

Both games will get shipped to us the week after the Essen show, so they should be available by mid-October.