The best games presented at the Spiel 1989 game fair in Essen, Germany 2025

In A la carte, players don the hats of eccentric chefs embroiled in the culinary showdown of a lifetime. This lighthearted and quirky game, conceived by Karl-Heinz Schmiel, is as much about managing the chaos of a kitchen as it is about the precise art of cooking itself. Each chef is armed with a mini pan and a hotplate, competing not just against time but against each other's culinary shenanigans.

Favoriten is a simple racing game that incorporates an intriguing element of pressure, allowing players to test their luck. In three races involving five horses, players do not own any horses but have three betting chips each. Players take turns rolling a die to advance the horses, placing bets on them before rolling. The payout system rewards the first player to bet on the winning horse, and players must carefully decide when to place their bets to maximize their potential winnings.

Players must guess or know the dreams, hopes, and wishes of each other while creating their own definition of a personal lifestyle. The active player draws a question card, such as where they want to go on vacation, and selects four image cards with possible answers. Other players then attempt to guess the order of the cards, earning points for each correct guess.

This is a game based on the first Batman film, where the notorious Joker tries to take control of the cities while Batman intervenes to save the day. One player takes on the role of the Dark Knight, while the other plays as the Joker.

Timberland is a family game focused on forest management in earlier times. The game unfolds across the four seasons, with fruits falling in autumn, wild boars foraging in winter, seeds sprouting into trees in spring and summer, and lumberjacks harvesting the trees afterwards. Players select cards and maneuver the wild boar and lumberjack to amass the largest contiguous forest.

This is a steam engine race for up to eight players. The board features a spiral track that leads to the center and back out again. Each player has a locomotive and rolls a die to advance. Players can choose to move slower to gain coal coins, which must then be distributed among opponents. Various maneuvers, such as passing another locomotive or placing obstacle stones, incur costs in coal. The first player to cross the finish line wins, with remaining coal serving as a tiebreaker.

Players aim to conquer the capital of the Kingdom of Zargos. Each participant leads a race featuring dragons, spiders, winged knights, monks, and amazons.

Players own a farm with five fields and face challenges over several years, including crop rotation, market observation, over-fertilization, insects, weather, and more. The player with the healthiest fields and the highest profits at the end of the game wins.

Players move across the sea and must conquer 3 out of 5 islands to win. To capture an island, a ship must land in an area containing that island, and all ships are interconnected. The dice roll determines which side of an area a ship can cross.

Players move their pieces (sailors) through the city to find a pub before the police complete 60 steps around the board. When the police finish their round, the game ends, and points are scored based on how many sailors are in pubs while losing points for those remaining on the streets. The scoring varies depending on the number of sailors in a pub, with penalties for those still outside.