Alex Cutler and Peter C Hayward both saw two of their creations win the seal this year, including their co-design Critter Kitchen, Hayward's Things in Rings and Cutler's A Place for All My Books - which he co-created with Michael Mihealsick.
Other titles picking up nominations across multiple categories included Eternal Decks, Star Trek: Captain's Chair and Hot Streak, with four each, while Magical Athlete, Molly House, Luthier, Galactic Cruise, Corps of Discovery, The Old King's Crown, Speakeasy and The Elder Scrolls: Betrayal of the Second Era all picked up three nods.
Lucky Duck has a big hitter of its own in the Chronicles of Crime series of games, which have sold more than one million copies worldwide.
Brady, who spent two years as president of GAMA, had been a key driver of a plan for the organisation to become the "epicentre" of global tabletop gaming, underpinned by the unveiling of its first-ever 10-year plan last October.
The organisation has been rebranded as the Syndicat des Auteurices de Jeux - the Union of Game Designers - following a vote at its annual general meeting at the Festival International des Jeux in Cannes.
Flat River had laid off the vast majority of staff and suspended new projects at Spirit Island publisher Greater than Games in April last year, blaming “ongoing economic pressures resulting from the international tariff crisis”.
This year's Strategy Games prize went to Matt Leacock's pandemic spinoff The Lord of the Rings: Fate of the Fellowship, while the Complex Games title went to Jo Kelly's and Cole Wehrle's design Molly House.
FFG said, "Simply put, the game is too expensive to make. Between ever-increasing manufacturing costs, lengthy and pricey app development timelines, and global economic shifts making everything more expensive to produce, it became abundantly clear that continuing to make this game is just not feasible."
Julia Marcelin, who has been with Asmodee for almost seven years, becomes head of five studios as part of the shake-up, taking on responsibility for Days of Wonder, Space Cowboys, Repos Production, Libellud and Next Move.
Gigot hopes newly launched platform BoardGameCommerce will give publishers of higher complexity games with smaller print runs - of between 500 and 1,000 units - a more sustainable financial option than the traditional board game industry distribution model.
Mensa in Deutschland has run the awards contest since 2009, and has operated a ‘shorter games’ category for more than a decade and lighter two-player games prize since 2019.
CMON's $23m losses across 2024 and 2025 are now almost 5.5-times larger than its profits from the preceding nine years combined - and have led an independent auditor hired by the company to question whether it has the resources to stay in business for the foreseeable future.
The Oink Games-published design fought off competition from 2025 winner Isao Mukai, who was nominated for Banana Governance - a card-based drafting and bidding game which sees players attempt to satisfy the needs of hungry monkeys better than their opponents.
Emma Recher, who will head up a three-person team at Don't Panic's new US office in California, told BoardGameWire, "Several recent titles have reinforced our confidence in expanding more directly into the US market. "
About a quarter of the 171 designers who answered the TTGDA survey said they had used a genAI platform to come up with game ideas or mechanisms - while more than half indicated they were 'strongly opposed' to using AI in that way.
President Nicole Brady, who runs review site SAHM Reviews, was re-elected to the board by GAMA's media and events member group, while treasurer Tiffany Reid from Southern Hobby Distribution won re-election from the wholesale group.
The board game giant said buying ATM, the publisher of titles including Speed Bac/Quickstop, Mouton Mouton and Pili Pili, was predicated on social games being "the fastest growing category of the board games market".
The title is the latest seminal eurogame to be re-released in a spruced-up, premium edition by Awaken Realms - and also the latest to see the publisher come under fire for embracing generative AI software such as Midjourney in developing some of its games.
Japon Brand was instrumental in bringing Japanese designs such as Love Letter and Machi Koro to international markets, after being inspired by the surge in novel games from home-grown designers in the early 2000s.
Publisher Equinox said the €1.1m raised between the Roots of Corruption Gamefound campaign and through retailer pre-orders was "far too far" from the €2m it needed to "guarantee the future of the game".
Print and Play had provided prototypes, promos and components for a string of big-selling titles, as well as fast turnaround print and play services for budding developers and designers.
