All "Spiel des Jahres🇩🇪 1988" game award winners & nominees in comparison 2025

Bausack is a unique and engaging game that combines elements of strategy, dexterity, and auctioning. Players challenge each other to build precarious structures using a variety of uniquely shaped wooden blocks. The game tests your architectural skills and your ability to make strategic decisions under pressure. Players must balance the risk and reward of accepting or refusing blocks, using 'beans' as currency in auctions to influence decisions. The game ends when a player's structure collapses, leaving the last player standing as the winner.

Players receive a set of cards numbered from one to fifteen. During each round, a price token is drawn randomly, which can have either positive or negative points. Players secretly choose one of their remaining cards and reveal them simultaneously; the highest card wins the prize if it's positive, while the lowest card wins if it's negative. However, if two players play the same highest or lowest card, they cancel each other out, and the prize goes to the next player.

Players create objects using modeling clay that others must guess. They take turns moving on the board by rolling dice or spending gems, with the landing spaces determining the actions. Correct guesses earn points, with the object's creator also gaining or losing points based on how many arrows are stuck in it. The challenge is to represent a word that is not too easy or difficult to guess, making the game both engaging and competitive.

Inkognito is an intriguing board game that combines deduction, secret identities, and espionage in a vibrant setting. Players take on the roles of secret agents with hidden missions, navigating a world of intrigue as they try to identify their allies and complete their objectives without knowing who they can trust from the start.

The award-winning cooperative board game features a dice-based movement mechanic. Players navigate a tree-shaped board filled with movement spaces, which are gradually covered by game pieces representing acid rain. It's a race between accumulating droplets and the players' collective ability to deftly flick them away. Players are encouraged to openly discuss their movement options, but tackling the acid rain together remains a challenging task, with adjustable difficulty based on the number of droplets that fall.

A highly sought-after placement game by Wolfgang Kramer allows players to alternately place colored game pieces in various rooms. Once a row, column, diagonal, or room is filled, it is scored, with the majority shareholder gaining points while minority shareholders lose out. When players run out of pieces to place, they must move a piece, which can lead to the loss of potential points accumulated.

Conquer and occupy valuable desert territories while protecting your home village. By strategically moving groups of camels and utilizing their special abilities, players can dominate the desert. The game features a board made of large square tiles representing different types of desert terrain, each with varying economic and strategic values.

Players manipulate a column to remove as many tablets from the board as possible, aiming to claim the area made up of four spaces. The last tablet removed determines which area is won, and the player places one of their coins in the payment circle. Points are tallied at the end of the game to determine the winner.

An abstract racing game set on the Mississippi River. Each player has a hexagonal boat numbered 1 to 6 on its sides. Players move their boats along a winding S-shaped track by spending logs to advance forward or backward, with potential boosts from neighboring boats creating a dynamic racing environment. The first boat to reach the finish line wins.

Players produce chocolate to earn money. They take on the role of chocolate bars, engaging in every aspect of the business from production to sales. By purchasing cacao, transforming it into chocolate, and selling it at trade meetings, they must also manage staff and resources effectively to maximize profits and win.

Players have 12 blocks of one color in a four-player game or 24 blocks, 12 of each of two colors in a two-player game, to build a 3D pyramid. They must place their blocks so that no two blocks of the same color touch. The game scores points only for blocks that are visible from the top, with players earning points for groups of adjacent blocks, which must be on different levels.