Nurnberg Toy Fair - Game Highlights (courtesy of Die Poppelkiste)

It takes two (that's 2 in Arabic numerals, II in Roman numerals) different bits of Internet magic to bring you the latest information about kid games:

• The first is the wonderful website of Brigitte & Wolfgang Ditt, Die Poppelkiste. Their reviews and previews of games are insightful & informative. And in German. (BTW, you may know Herr & Frau Ditt from their game designs, Nautilus & Big Points, as well as a lot of scenario & variant design for The Settlers of Catan.)
• The second solves the whole "in German" problem - it's Google Translate. I can click from page to page in a website & get quickie translation of the pages. (Note: there's an art to reading these machine translations... they are literal to a fault & filled with odd syntax.)

With all that said, if you want to read this stuff for yourself, head to the Google Translation of their Nurnberg Toy Fair report.

Or you can simply read my paraphrase in the rest of this post - which doesn't require you to click away.

Here's some highlights:

• More light games at Nurnberg than at Essen (or at least less "heavy" games).
• The kid games feature a lot of use of magnetism & memory - which is basically the recipe for making Das Magische Labyrinth, the winner of the Kinderspiel des Jahres in 2009. (Well deserved award, btw... I'll be reviewing it soon.)
• Their favorite kid game of the fair is Haba's Hexenduell (Witch Duel).

Now, after I've read through it, here's what I'm excited about:

• Velo City (Abacus) - a tactical dice game about cycling
• Regatta (Asmodee) - a sailboat racing game that uses a mechanic similar to Techno Witches
• Hexenduell (Haba) - a magnetic dexterity game with a time element
• Fauna Junior (Huch & Friends) - a kid-friendly version of the well-liked (as yet not released in English) animal trivia/estimation game
• Snapshot (Kosmos) - a Rudiger Dorn-designed dexterity game for adults... really!
• Seeland (Ravensburger) - a Kramer game about Holland & dikes & windmills
• Turi Tour (Selecta) - send your animals on vacation... and somehow there's a blindfold involved!
• Asteroyds (Ystari) - described by the Ditts as "RoboRally in 30 minutes"... excellent.
• Heckmeck BBQ & Heckmeck Junior (Zoch) - 2 new ways to dice for worms!