Alley Cat Games’ pivot to producing more high-complexity designs rewarded with Diamant d’Or win for Ada’s Dream

British board game publisher Alley Cat Games has triumphed in this year’s Diamant d’Or – a prize focused on championing heavier eurogames – after pivoting its strategy several years ago to experiment with crowdfunding more complex designs.

The Toni López-designed dice manipulation game fought off big name titles including Galactic Cruise and Luthier to win the 2026 Diamant d’Or, which was created more than a decade ago to celebrate complex euros the organisers felt were being overlooked by more mainstream board game awards.

Richard Breese’s latest design in his Key series, Keyside, took second place in this year award, while Ants, an ant colony expansion title from frequent Diamant d’Or finalist Cranio Creations, came third.

Speaking to BoardGameWire, Alley Cat Games director Caezar Al-Jassar said the team was “ecstatic” with the win, adding, “we have worked hard for three years to bring Ada’s Dream to gamers and have been blown away by the positive response from our backers and supporters”.

He said, “Ada’s Dream is the most complex game we’ve ever produced. A few years ago we noticed that the trend for Kickstarter games was leaning to heavier and more complex games than we were producing, and so we pivoted to explore creating more games like this.

“This meant a lot of extra work to produce the final game and we are incredibly pleased to see that work has paid off, and that Ada is being celebrated by the Diamant d’Or committee.”

Ada’s Dream was Alley Cat’s most successful crowdfunding campaign in terms of the total raised, having picked up almost £200,000 from more than 3,300 backers.

Its heavier titles in recent years have included Autobahn, Arborea and Baghdad: The City of Peace, while the company continues to put out lighter weight designs such as Timber Town and small-box offerings like Barbecubes, Tic Tac Trek and 2026 release Bookshelf, which Al-Jassar designed.

The Diamant d’Or win comes just under a year after Alley Cat announced during its Kickstarter campaign for Baghdad that it would cease producing retail editions of its crowdfunded titles “for the foreseeable future”, amid rising competition on shop shelves and uncertainty around US tariffs.

A statement from the company at the time said,” It is getting harder for Kickstarter games to succeed, both on Kickstarter and in particular at retail stores after the campaign.

“This, coupled with rising costs and the uncertainty surrounding US tariffs, has led us to look at ways of streamlining the business to ensure that we don’t have so much money tied up in stock. We’d much rather invest this money in making more great games!”

Al-Jassar told BoardGameWire, “Considering that these titles are more expensive to produce, ship, and store than smaller more retail friendly games, we kept the decision to move away from retail distribution of our Kickstarter games.”

A small number of copies of Ada’s Dream were briefly available through the Alley Cat website from February 5, but those available to US and European customers have already sold out.

Al-Jassar said, “The initial webstore sales were some stock not needed for fulfilment. However, as there are still backers that did not complete their Pledge Managers, we will be keeping a supply in storage until a set number of months after the end of fulfilment to ensure all backers have the opportunity to receive their copy.

“Regarding future plans for Ada’s Dream, we won’t be producing a print run for retail distribution but may have some more copies available once enough time has passed after fulfilment, and are exploring a future Kickstarter campaign with an expansion and reprint that we hope to launch in early 2027.”

The 2026 Diamant d’Or

WINNER: Ada’s Dream, designed by Toni López (Published by Alley Cat Games)

Second place: Keyside, by Richard Breese and David Turczi (HUCH!, R&D Games)

Third place: Ants, by Renato Ciervo and Andrea Robbiani (Cranio Creations)

Other finalists:

Galactic Cruise, by TK King, Dennis Northcott and Koltin Thompson (Kinson Key Games)

Luthier, by Dave Beck and Abe Burson (Paverson Games)

Philarmonix, by Faris Suhaimi (Archona Games)

Recall, by Helge Meissner, Kristian Amundsen Østby, Kjetil Svendsen and Anna Wermlund (Alion – by Dr Ø)

Sweet Lands, by Totsuca Chuo (Uchibacoya)