I’ll be honest with you; I’ve never really seen the appeal with Loot Crate. I know it’s cool to feel like it’s your birthday every month but you usually end up with a lot of tat. Now what if you could get a box delivered to your door every month full of tasty gaming goodness? Well that’s exactly what Deck Maniacs is all about, and about feeding your card game addiction.

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Happy Otter Games have taken the Pixar approach when making Creature College, by trying to design a game that is squarely marketed at younger gamers but has more than enough strategy to keep grown-ups happy, and do you know what, I reckon they've pulled it off.

At its heart Creature College is a bidding game. You will bid on a variety of creatures available each round and at the end of each term (three rounds) you'll send your creatures off to battle. There's also a simple dice system that gives you a random choice of some juicy bonuses to acquire.

On the surface it's a very simple game, bid on the creatures you want, win points for being victorious in battle and get some extra points for a secret, set collection mission.  But scratch beneath the surface and there's a lot more game underneath.

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It’s less than one week until Internationale Spieltage 2015, more commonly known as Essen, arguably the world's largest board game convention. For the first time ever I will be visiting Germany to soak in the cardboard heaven and so, more than ever, I've been keeping a careful eye on the games that are going to be available.

The sheer number of games previewing at Essen is staggering and to cover them all would be a mammoth task, so I’ve handpicked a small selection of games that I think are worth a look. This preview covers not only the big, hot off the press, games that everyone will be wanting to buy, but also those intriguing looking hidden games, those games from small European publishers that you will probably never see outside of mainland Europe.

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