Organizations: Game Designers of North Carolina

Experience the excitement and thrill of Mutton Bustin, a beloved rodeo event, from the comfort of your table!

In this fast-paced game, each player will take on the role of young cowboys and cowgirls as they compete to see who can stay on the back of a bucking sheep (played by everyone else) the longest.

Riders must quickly roll their dice to meet certain criteria to advance along the score track, earning more points the longer they can stay on. But be careful – all of the other sheep players are simultaneously rolling their own criteria to try and knock the rider off. But there’s a catch for the sheep...they will have to do a series of crazy antics before they can lock in their dice.

The rider with the most points is declared the winner and crowned the Mutton Bustin’ champion!

Beasts is a co-operative card game in which players work together to climb ever higher through a series of three-digit numbers, transforming the current number by strategically covering one digit at a time. Each player plays all cards of a single suit from their hand on their turn, always aiming to create a new number that's higher than the last.

But things get wild when the beasts arrive. These mischievous creatures correspond to specific card types — like Whole Hearts or Broken Spades — and once they show up, they restrict where those card types can be played on the board. Beasts are startled when placed above matching cards, which makes them move (or even flee), and part of your team's challenge is luring and managing these creatures so that they don't block your most valuable options.

Each player has limited information they can communicate, so the game hinges on clever planning, interpreting your teammates' cues, and maximizing every turn. With just a few shared discard tokens and an ever-growing number, your group will need to work in perfect sync to survive all the beasts and play every card in the deck.

Complete the deck, tame the chaos, and claim victory with the highest number possible — if you can outwit the beasts.

A Place for All My Books is a puzzley book gathering, sorting, and organizing game in which players arrange stacks of books in different rooms of their apartment as personal projects. When done, they can admire their accomplishments and gain their rewards – not least of which is renewed energy, which they can then spend to head out into the village - to pick up more books!

Over nine rounds, players visit locations and gather books to complete objectives and earn Victory Points. The player with the most Victory Points wins.

The organizational puzzles are easy to accomplish, with the challenge being how many of them you can accomplish all at once to optimize each "admire" action.

A Place for All My Books includes a solo mode in which you must beat the game's rival: Penelope Eveready, an untiring extrovert who seems to be grabbing all the books you had wanted.

—description from the publisher

During the 19th century, the elevation of the Chicago area was just a few feet higher than the shoreline of Lake Michigan. For many years, there was little or no naturally occurring drainage from the city surface, and this lack of drainage caused unpleasant living conditions. Standing water harbored pathogens that caused numerous epidemics including typhoid fever and dysentery, culminating in the 1854 outbreak of cholera that killed six percent of the city's population. The crisis forced the city to take the drainage problem seriously. In 1856, engineer Ellis S. Chesbrough drafted a plan for the installation of a citywide sewerage system and submitted it to the city council, which adopted the plan.

However, due to the minimal elevation above the lake, the sewer could not be built underground and had to be built at street level. The city council then decided to implement a radical idea: Prevented from digging down, they instead decreed the buildings of the city would be raised to allow the new sewer system to be hidden under the new street level. Representing one of the four companies that were created to tackle the problem of raising the buildings of Chicago, it's up to you to gather resources, take on the most attractive projects, and help solve the sanitation crisis of the city.

On your turn in Raising Chicago, you place a tile on a resource slot associated with one of five building projects, then claim the resource you covered. After all players have placed tiles, each project is evaluated. The winning player pays resources to complete the project, claims the project reward, then places all of their tiles associated with that project as levels underneath the building onto a space on the board. Players earn points for placing buildings cleverly, doing the most work in a ward, and meeting the demands of council people.

Only the most successful player will win, so play strategically to prove you can raise buildings the best in Raising Chicago!

—description from the publisher

It's Restaurant Week in Bistro Bay! Restaurants are competing in food challenges, while also planning an epic meal to impress a celebrity critic. As one of 1-5 players in Critter Kitchen, you'll send your chefs into the city to gather ingredients to create amazing meals and demonstrate that your restaurant is the best in town.

Each round, new random ingredients are placed in locations throughout the city. Players simultaneously and secretly plan which locations to send their three chefs to, hoping to collect the best ingredients. Some chefs are fast, but can gather only one item, while others can carry three items but arrive late. Rumors are also available at locations and provide guidance on what the critic desires.

Challenges revealed in rounds 1-6 offer the players opportunities to earn stars for crafting dishes with specific ingredient requirements. After round 7, the players must create an epic meal to impress the celebrity critic and cater to their appetites. A multitude of different critics, rumors, and restaurateurs mean every game is fresh!

—description from the publisher