All "Deutscher Spielepreis🇩🇪 1998" game award winners & nominees in comparison 2025

Chicken Cha Cha Cha is a delightful and engaging memory game that combines the whimsy of chickens learning to dance with the challenge of strategic movement and memory. Players become chickens vying to out-memorize and outmaneuver their opponents around a circuitous path, aiming to collect the tail feathers of their rivals by accurately recalling the images hidden on octagonal tiles.

Through the Desert is a strategic board game where players guide caravans through the desert to claim oases and territory. Often compared to the classic game Go, it combines strategic planning with a visually appealing setup featuring colorful plastic camels.

Players take on the role of gem traders competing on a marketplace. They race, collect, trade, and try to predict each other's moves. Each player starts with 12 gems of four colors and, in each round, rolls dice to move and chooses from three actions to gain points or gems. Actions can lead to direct execution, mutual trading, or cancellation if too many players choose the same action. After three rounds, the player with the highest score wins.

Reiner Knizia's Tigris & Euphrates is a highly regarded strategy board game, often considered his masterpiece. It's set in the ancient fertile crescent and involves building civilizations through strategic tile placement.

Elfenland is a redesigned version of the original Elfenroads game, set in a mythical elven world. Players, as young elves, embark on a journey across the land to visit as many of the twenty Elfencities as possible. The game is uniquely characterized by its variety of whimsical transportation methods and strategic movement across a network of interconnected cities.

In Caesar & Cleopatra, a two-player card game, participants step into the roles of these iconic historical figures, with Caesar advocating for Rome's invasion of Egypt and Cleopatra fighting for its independence. The core of the game revolves around influencing Roman officials - Aedils, Quaestors, Senators, Pretorians, and Censors - using agent cards numbered 1 to 5. Players must strategically decide whether to play these agents face-down for secrecy or face-up for greater influence. Additionally, action cards like Assassins and Scouts add layers of strategy, allowing players to remove opposing agents or reveal hidden ones. The game progresses by revealing votes from the Roman officials, with the player having the most influence winning their support. The game concludes once all officials have chosen sides, with victory going to the player who has garnered the most support, factoring in bonus points for majorities in specific groups and certain hidden objectives.

Canyon is a trick-taking game where players try to predict the exact number of tricks they will win. The number of cards in a player's hand fluctuates, and correct predictions allow players to move their markers on a scoring track depicted as a river in a canyon. If too many cards are played without a correct prediction, players risk being sent back several spaces when caught "in the current" near the finish line.

Primordial Soup is a unique strategy game where each player guides a species of amoeboid organisms in an evolving ecosystem. Players must navigate a world where species depend on each other’s excreta for survival. The goal is to evolve your species to enhance its population and genetic sophistication. The game involves moving organisms, feeding, adapting to environmental changes, acquiring new genes, reproducing, and ultimately scoring points. The game ends when a species reaches 42 points or the environment cards run out. The available genes offer various abilities like improved movement control, efficient metabolism, and enhanced reproductive or defensive capabilities.

Players navigate their boats in areas determined by the cards they draw, aiming to be part of a capture team with nearby boats. Sometimes, a player takes on the role of the "Flying Dutchman," able to reach more locations but vanishing once a capture happens. Additionally, players can position themselves as the main trader during a conquest, allowing them to pay surrounding boats while ultimately earning more money by the end of the game.

Players take on the role of businesspeople traveling the world to earn money by opening hotels and factories in major cities like Sydney, Cairo, and New York. They aim to build hotels in as many cities as possible while competing for the most hotels to score points, and they can also earn money by constructing a limited number of factories.

Die Macher is a deeply strategic board game centered around seven sequential political races in various regions of Germany. Players take on the roles of leaders of national political parties, tasked with wisely managing their resources to lead their party to victory across these regional elections.