Are you going to the UK Games Expo this year? Are you wondering what games you should beeline for when you get there?? Well, if you want some inspo check out our UKGE 2025 hit list – the games we’re hoping to see more of at the expo!

It was really, REALLY hard to whittle down to 12 games from our long long longlist. And there are lots of other cool games at UKGE that we didn’t include here because we’ve already been lucky enough to check them out this year. So if you want more suggestions, make sure to keep an eye on our Instagram stories and our UKGE Instagram highlight, where we’ll be sharing more awesome exhibitors you should have your eye on.

So, in no particular order, let’s get into it!

Shoal – Molinarius Games (Stand 3-T27)

Shoal is a fishy tile placement & layering game with a gorgeous pastel colour palette and cute goofy fish! We missed Shoal at UKGE 2024 and have been intrigued by it ever since, especially because all our friends who’ve played it seem to love it.

This will be our first time checking out Molinarius Games, so there are a few other games we’re also hoping to see while we there; namely The Lakes (a 2-player card game set in the Lake District0) and their newest game Flippers (cute Antarctic penguins and seals – need we say more?!)

Pergola – Rebel Studios (Asmodee Stand TBC)

Pergola is an upcoming, gorgeous-looking garden nurturing game from Rebel Studios. Players select tools to cultivate their gardens, attracting insects and small animals. That’s about as much as we know about Pergola – the gorgeous artwork and cute critters pulled me in, and we’re intrigued to see how the different tools work. It sounds like players can end up with wildly different gardens, so we’re intrigued to see if that means there’s lots of different strategies to choose from!

Asmodee have an extensive range of games from various publishers to preview and demo across their exhibition spaces, so they’re definitely worth paying a visit.

Australis – Kosmos Games (Stand 3-1030)

We always pay a visit to Kosmos at UKGE to top up our EXIT games – this year is no different and we have our eyes EXIT: The Hunt Through Amsterdam and the new EXIT: Catan. We’re also hoping the newest EXIT advent calendar might be there for a sneak peak!

But what we’re really interested in demoing is Australis, a new underwater dice-rolling boardgame based around turtles cruising the Eastern Australian Current – aka the EAC from Finding Nemo!

The art looks absolutely beautiful (are you seeing a trend in our game choices! haha), the nature theme is right up our street, and it sounds like this might have a nice level of crunchiness for us. And we’re excited to try an ‘actual’ board game from Kosmos for possibly the first time! Totally tubular!

Questiny – Questiny Board Game (Stand 2-282)

We’ve been following designer Leon’s journey with Questiny on Instagram for a while – and if you haven’t been, you really should @QuestinyBoardGame. Our anticipation has been building and we can’t wait to see Questiny in real life!

Questiny is a co-operative fantasy where players team up to traverse a labrynth, take on the Goblin Queen and retrieve an ever-so-important Artifact. What’s cool about this game is that the labrynth game board moves – part of it rotates. AND THERE’S AXES THAT ACTUALLY SWING!

Definitely one to look out for if you like nostalgic adventurer party vibes and a bit of interactive tactility in your games! Questiny launches on Kickstarter later this year!

Timber Town – Alley Cat Games (Stand 3-902)

Timber Town is Alley Cat Games’ newest 2 player game and is launching at UKGE. Players are beaver architects competing to build new towns by drafting tiles that are floating down the river! Part of the challenge is that you can only place the tile in your town from the same column as where you collected it in the river.

We love tile placement games so Timber Town was already on our list, but Broken Meeple’s glowing review definitely sealed the deal! We hope we’ll get a demo, but this is going to be very popular at UKGE!

While we’re at Alley Cat Games we’re also hoping to check out some of the new tiny tin games, especially Tic Tac Trek. We love portable ‘coffee shop’ games – we already have Tinderblox – and we’re always looking for more!

Restless Spirits – Sneaky Rascal Games (Stand 2-241)

Another game where the art drew us in straight away! In Restless Spirits, players take on the role of a Spirit Guide and try to help any spirits they encounter to find their way home to the Spirit Realm. 

With mechanics including hand management,  set collection, and take that to compliment the spooky theme, Restless Spirits seems like it would tick a lot of our boxes for us. 

The Lord of the Rings: Fate of the Fellowship – Z MAN Games (Asmodee Stand TBC)?

Drawn to the Lord of the Rings theme like Ringwraiths to the One Ring, we’re so excited for this new co-operative game based on the Pandemic System (Lauren seriously squealed with excitement when it was announced).

This is probably one of the biggest games on our list but Pandemic was one of our gateway games and we are always up for a pandemic style game. In Fate of the Fellowship, players take control of two LOTR characters and use their powers to protect Frodo and the ring. Players will need to travel across middle earth battling enemies and evading the nazgul which sounds epic. If that doesn’t sell it to you then what about an imposing Barad-dûr dice tower keeping watch over your gameplay. 

We’re really interested in this one but  it is going to be a hot ticket item at the UKGE so demos will be really popular – we might have to make the choice of buying before we try (something we’ve done well to avoid this year so far!)

Smallfolk – Roc Nest Games (Stand 3-222)

Another game we don’t know a lot about yet, but it’s a cozy engine-builder set around folk myths and legends, that would apparently appeal to fans of Wingspan, Everdell and Flamecraft (all games that we LOVE) – so we know enough to know it’s one we’re definitely interested in!

And the art teaser has such a cute interpretation of the three-headed dog Cerberus (aka Fluffy from Harry Potter and the Philosopher’s Stone, but cuter)

Smallfolk won’t be available to demo but we can’t wait to get a sneak peek of what’s to come!

The Fellowship of the Ring: Trick-Taking Game – Office Dog Game (Asmodee Stand TBC)

The art.

Do we really need to say anymore! Ok, we probably should. We’ve come to realise we quite like trick taking games (see our review for Seas of Strife) even though in the past we haven’t enjoyed the community favourite Fox in the Forest. We’re intrigued to see what this co-operative trick taking game has to offer – especially as it has a campaign element where you can follow the story through 18 different chapters. The LoTR theming and gorgeous artwork are the icing on the cake and makes it a must try for us. 

Fathom – Paper Fort Games (Stand 2-714)

This choice is a bit of a wild card, because before putting this list together we haven’t played anything from Paper Fort Games before (sorry, PFG!) or any of the games they were bringing to UKGE. And underwater games seem to be a big thing this year, because Fathom is all about exploring down into the depths of the sea to discover different marine life.

What piqued our interest with Fathom was the central Sonar Board, which looked like it might add a cool element to gameplay. We can’t wait to dive in!

Muster: Raise the Banners – Play Monkey Games (Stand 2-860)

Muster: Raise the Banners is a 2-player lane battler game where you play different cards to claim control of 5 different castles. The artwork for this game is so colourful, and the character designs are so cute (but very fearsome, I’m sure)! 

Muster:Raise the Banners is currently live on Kickstarter (but only a few short days left!).

Landmarks – Floodgate Games (Stand 4-102)

We aren’t typically big on party games – mainly because we rarely have the numbers to play them. The main ones we have in our collection are Code Names, Resistance and Exploding Kittens.

But Landmarks by Floodgate Games has caught our eye. Combining word association with navigating your party away from dangers is a coolidea. It feels like it might be Codenames+. We would love to give this a go at UKGE to see if it scales well to 2 players. We’ve been playing along with the landmark clues  on Floodgate Games’ Instagram recently and trying to work out the solutions has definitely solidified our interest.

____

So there we go, that is our hitlist! You might have noticed that it doesn’t feature games on the heavier side (in play length/complexity). We’ve accepted this is the life stage we’re at – work and the toddler (and our pets) are taking a lot of time and mental energy right now! Light to medium games are easier to fit in around everything else for now 🙂 And it’s unlikely we’ll get to see everything at UKGE, but it’s nice to have a plan. We’ll report back after UKGE with which ones we managed to see!