The best games presented at the Spiel 1990 game fair in Essen, Germany 2025

This engaging dexterity game is played on a tabletop board made of a wooden grid with a piece of linen stretched across the bottom. Players place small colored balls into the holes and then strike the table with long wooden mallets. If a ball is hit correctly, it jumps to another section closer to the opposite side of the board. Landing on another player's ball allows you to capture it, but if your ball falls off the board, it is out of play.

Players create a puzzle by secretly selecting the positions of 4-5 marbles on an 8x8 grid. The opposing player tries to guess their locations by "shooting" rays into the grid and observing how they bounce. The player who uses the fewest rays to solve the puzzle wins.

Zatre, short for Numbers & Steps, is a strategic game involving 121 tiles numbered from 1 to 6. Players take turns placing tiles on the board to create patterns and score points by forming lines that total 10, 11, or 12. The game is easy to learn yet offers a challenge, requiring players to find optimal placements to consistently achieve scoring opportunities.

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.

Players try to protect their chosen dinosaurs in a constantly changing environment. Each round, they attempt to alter their surroundings. Those unable to survive in the current environment risk extinction, while those who do must survive a battle round against the opposing player's dinosaurs.

The theme of airlines is exactly as the title suggests. Players compete to become majority shareholders in several highly abstracted companies, with the player holding the most valuable portfolio winning at the end. Each round, players choose between expanding an airline to increase its value or playing stocks from their hand. However, when a valuation card appears, only played stocks count as a player's ownership.

Players answer questions, perform charades, or sculpt objects from clay in this party game. The first hippo to cross the finish line wins, encountering funny tasks and crazy events along the way. A standard game lasts about an hour, but rules for a 30-minute version are also included.

Players build towers and the first to place their six flagpoles on six towers of different heights (ranging from six blocks high down to one block high) wins the game.

Players must understand themselves in a psychological game. Each game begins with players preparing their personal game board by selecting a card representing their zodiac sign and placing red points accordingly. Over twelve rounds, players draw cards that align with their personalities, aiming to accumulate points by fulfilling specific conditions and distributing them wisely across various areas.

Hyle is played on a 5x5 board. In each round, one player (Chaos) randomly places colored wooden discs on a vinyl cloth. The other player (Order) then moves the discs to create palindromes, sequences that read the same forwards and backwards. The game consists of two rounds, with points awarded based on the length of the formed palindromes. Hyle 7 follows the same rules but on a 7x7 grid.

Eon Borderlands is designed to condense diplomacy into a manageable timeframe, where political maneuvering is essential and a free market society fuels ambition for conquest. The game combines conflict and trade mechanics with resource management, drawing inspiration from Settlers of Catan. The German edition, Ascalion, includes elements from both Borderlands expansions.

There are seven different versions of the game, all functioning in the same way. One player acts as the host to set up the puzzles and check answers, while the others place bids on prizes. The player who bids closest without going over competes in a price game for additional prizes. The final round, called the Showcase round, involves players estimating the total value of their three prizes, with the closest guess winning.

Players take on the roles of the powerful noble families, the Welfs and the Staufer, during the 12th century conflict in Germany. They aim to crown one of their family members as king, and eventually emperor, by influencing other German nobles through conquests. The game features a beautifully illustrated map of Germany, France, and Italy in a medieval style, along with numerous wooden pieces displaying the historically accurate coats of arms of the German nobility.

This 18xx game takes the basic mechanics of Tresham's 1829 and introduces new elements. Players aim to earn the most money by buying and selling shares of various railroad companies on a German map. The game board features an abstract hexagonal system with track tiles placed on the fields. Players manipulate shares, but the stock manipulation aspect is less harsh than in 1830. The game ends when the bank runs out of money, and the player with the highest personal wealth wins.

Based on a German lottery game, this TV-based game offers a unique experience. Each player moves their piece around the circle by pressing one of three movement arrows, aiming to collect numbers and correctly arrange them in their card holder. The goal is to be the first to obtain the chosen number to win money.

Amphoren oder Das Zehn Vasen Spiel is a stone collection game set on a 7x7 grid filled with 40 stones, including 10 amphora images. Players move 2 or 3 spaces in a turn and can pick up the last stone they played. The goal is to collect complete sets of amphora stones, with a complete set worth 4 points, while ensuring that only sets of 3 or more are safe from being stolen.