Days of Wonder will premiere a new worker placement style game called The River at the Spiel fair in Essen, Germany this October, with release into the trade in November.

The River was created by Sebastien Pauchon (Jaipur, Yspahan) and freshman designer Ismael Perrin.  In the game, players are pioneers settling a new world by building and exploring along the banks of a river.  During each round, they deploy their workers to acquire resources, claim terrain tiles for their personal player boards, and construct buildings using their resources to earn victory points.  Along the way, they must manage production and storage of resources, and as they expand, their workers will leave them to settle their own homes, reducing their placement options for the rest of the game.

The game includes 1 double-sided main board, 4 double-sided player boards, 4 boat tiles, 20 worker pawns, 44 wooden resource tokens, 65 tiles, 1 first player pawn, 33 cards, and 20 bonus tokens.  The River is intended for 2 to 4 players, ages 8 and up, and takes 30 to 45 minutes to play.  MSRP is $40.00.

Days of Wonder recently released a compact, more casual version of its flagship game Ticket to Ride exclusively for the Target chain (see “Tour the Big Apple in ‘Ticket to Ride:  New York’”).