Asmodee’s recently-launched party games studio Moodbox Games has unveiled its first four releases, with Guess the Mess, Link Out Loud, Photo Dump and Who Says? Friends set to hit retail shelves in July.
The announcement marks the first product reveal from the women-led studio, which Asmodee launched last October as part of a push to reach players beyond traditional hobby gamers.
Moodbox says its games are designed around a philosophy that “playing games should feel like a dose of serotonin”, with a focus on approachable rules, social interaction and creating memorable shared experiences for families and friend groups.
Moodbox head Kelli Schmitz said, “The goal with Moodbox Games is to create experiences that instantly bring energy, laughter, and connection to the table.
“This first lineup reflects the kind of social play we know people are craving right now — games that are approachable, highly interactive, and memorable whether you’re playing with family, close friends, or a large group.”
The initial range draws on a mix of established and emerging tabletop design talent, including Happy Salmon co-designer Ken Gruhl, his Mantis co-creator Jeremy Posner, Word on the Street designer Jack Degnan and first-time published designer Annika Wierichs.
Guess the Mess is a family party game for ages eight and up from Degnan and development studio Hedyverse, which challenges players to decipher deliberately chaotic clues in a race against their opponents.
Link Out Loud, designed by Posner and Gruhl and also developed by Hedyverse, is a team-based word association and communication game in which players attempt to make connections and relay them to teammates under pressure.
Photo Dump, designed by Wierichs and developed by Hedyverse, takes a co-op approach, using players’ own photos as clues in a storytelling-focused experience.
The fourth title, Who Says? Friends, is a quote-guessing game designed by Lloyd Mintz and developed by Bolt Games, with players aiming to identify memorable lines and pop-culture references either individually or in teams.
Moodbox highlighted that Guess the Mess, Link Out Loud and Photo Dump were developed, edited and published by teams of women, describing the process as a “collaborative and inclusive creative approach from concept to shelf”.
The studio is led by former Catan Studio director of brand development Kelli Schmitz and long-time young adult-focused book editor Shaina Olmanson, who joined Asmodee as an operations and communications manager in May last year.
Prior to leading Moodbox Schmitz spent a year working on inventor relations for Asmodee’s social games in the US market, across its family game studio Zygomatic, quiz and party games-focused Bezzerwizzer Studio, and Dotted Games, which Asmodee launched in 2024 to create new LEGO board games.
Moodbox’s development partner Hedyverse was co-launched in 2024 by Jessica Aceti – who previously helped establish Seattle-based game design collective Prospero Hall, was VP of business development, marketing and licensing at board game design studio Forrest-Pruzan Creative, and helped launch Funko Games after Funko acquired Forrest-Pruzan Creative in 2019.
The debut Moodbox titles continue a notable expansion from Asmodee in the social and party games segment, coming three months after the board game giant agreed to pay up to €250m for French social and party game publisher ATM Gaming – the publisher of titles including Speed Bac/Quickstop, Mouton Mouton and Pili Pili.
It followed that a month later by picking up the rights to party game Time’s Up! from R&R Games, continuing an expansion push predicated on social games being the fastest growing category of the board games market.
Asmodee said at the time of the ATM acquisition that it expects a compound annual growth rate (CAGR) for social games of between 4% and 8% between 2025 and 2030, compared to about 4% for the wider board games market, citing mass market sales research for the US and ‘main European countries’ conducted by Arthur D Little.
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I feel like I’m really underselling Inis by illustrating it here, to fully understand how gorgeous this game is, you really need to see it for yourself. Matagot also have a few related games of specifically-flavoured historical fantasy area control, each with a different focus. If you want something that’s a bit more about aggression and ruthless combat, maybe check out Kemet, and if you want something with a bit more economic management and an auction mechanic (it’s more exciting than it sounds), take a look at Cyclades.
What’s this? The first actual game recommendation on this blog since April 2019?
Wingspan generated a lot of buzz outside of board game circles when it came out, and y’know what? Good! It’s a good ambassador for the hobby, with its charming, accessible theme and beautiful production, built on top of a solid mechanical core that pushes your brain, but not too hard.
It’s time for your anual bgwf update kids and kiddettes
You can play heavy eurogames and crunchy strategy games on Tabletop Sim, but I don’t think that’s getting the most out of it. There’s a lot of games that have lots of neat automation if you want to play something a bit closer to a video game, but I feel that the game really shines when you’re using it for the things that only board games can do - playing with your friends.
*emerges from the crypt, groaning with jaw hanging off*
If you - the reader - would like to hear about the indie games that have contacted BGWF, let me know! I’d really like to help everyone here. It happens rarely enough that I can’t really do roundup posts, and I can’t really justify the kind of illustrated reviews that I use for the main coverage, but the odd bump can’t hurt!
now to resume my exile, the board game police are still hunting me down
Are these adequate replacements? Maybe! They’re more fun at any rate. Today’s games are Funemployed, Welcome to the Dungeon and Coup.
For more, here’s our RPG update, and here’s our holiday update (part 1)!
Next time, we try to unseat three of the most popular and accessible card games on the market. That’ll go well.
Part 2! Skull, Spyfall, Sheriff of Nottingham, and Dead Man’s Draw.
In a Board Games With Friends first, it’s a double feature! Rainbow Dash will come back with her recommendations for holiday games that are a little spicier next [unit of time] when I can get around to drawing the update.
Once again this time’s games are:
Timeline, The Mind, Codenames, and Sushi Go.
hey check it out i’m gonna be at Bronyscot in a couple of weeks! I know it’s kinda way too late for this to influence anyone’s weekend plans but HEY look for me there if you wanna hang out! I’ll be in the games room and doing an animation thing and probably doing something similar to what I did at Galacon where I just walk around blasting Eurobeat from a speaker.
See you there!
Hey there table friendos! It may interest you to learn, if you are heading to Bronyscot, that I’ll be bringing a couple of custom horse™ conversions of Popular Board Games® to inflict on the general public: Changelingfall (a FiM-themed version of social deduction farce Spyfall), and Crossfire: Fallout Equestria (who knew, it’s a Fallout Equestria-themed version of social deduction accusation machine Crossfire).
In addition to these games, I should be bringing everything I brought to Galacon plus more:
And maybe more! I’m sure someone will turn up at some point with a copy of Shipfic, and I wouldn’t put it past myself to pick something up in a Glasgow game shop on my way there.
Unfortunately I have not got the art credits on Crossfire because it was a
rush job for a one-time convention party piece and these are not going to be sold, though if anyone is interested I should be able to produce art credits on the day. (All the art for Changelingfall is plundered from the show).
Anmelden
