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Asmodee scores big at Dutch game of the year awards as Take Time, Lord of the Rings trick-taking titles triumph
Asmodee has sealed a strong showing at this year’s Nederlandse Spellenprijs, with co-operative puzzle game Take Time and its Lord of the Rings-themed trick-taking games taking home two of the three prizes in the country’s longest-running board game awards.
Take Time, designed by Alexi Piovesan and Julien Prothière, beat Castle Combo and Rebirth to the family game of the year award – marking its first major award win, after having picked up a ‘recommended’ in the Spiel des Jahres and nomination in the French As d’Or.
Bryan Bornmueller’s two The Lord of the Rings: Trick-Taking Game releases, which were judged as a single title, triumphed over Dewan and Pondscape in the connoisseur games category, handing a win to Asmodee studio Office Dog.
This year’s expert game prize, meanwhile, went to White Goblin Games’ Dutch-language edition of River of Gold – which saw off competition from Ants and Yokohama. That title was also originally published by Asmodee studio Office Dog in English.
Take Time’s victory means this is only the second time in five years that the Dutch family game award has not gone to a Spiel des Jahres winner, with Cascadia, Sky Team and Bomb Busters each having claimed both prizes in 2022, 2024 and 2025 respectively.
The victories also mark a second successive year in which a single publisher has claimed two of the three Nederlandse Spellenprijs awards, following 999 Games’ success with Bomb Busters and Botanicus in 2025.
The result saw three-year-old Dutch publisher DSV Games miss out on a prize despite securing a trio of nominations this year – 12 months after picking up its first win in the contest with Tomáš Holek design SETI.
This year’s entire shortlist was shared between just three publishing groups in Asmodee, White Goblin Games and DSV.
BoardGameWire revealed last month that huge demand for co-op puzzle game Take Time had led publishing giant Asmodee to print more than 325,000 copies less than a year after release – outstripping even the company’s high expectations which surrounded its record-breaking launch.
Game line manager Auguste Lecoeur told BoardGameWire, “As soon as the game’s prototype was shown to us and signed, it became an internal priority, with resources and manpower being redirected from other projects to Take Time.”
The title sees players attempting to place cards around a series of clock faces while meeting increasingly challenging conditions, with limited opportunities to discuss their plans before playing.
More than 100 Dutch-language board and card games were assessed by a jury of experts for this year’s Nederlandse Spellenprijs, which is now in its 26th year. Games were assessed on their quality, originality and replayability.
This year’s ceremony marked a change in leadership for the awards, with Anna Wassenburg taking over as chair from Niek Ederveen, who stepped down after nine years in the role.
Another change this year was the physical format of the awards themselves, which are now shaped like pawns with windmill sails.
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