The Portuguese street festival known as “Arraial” is coming to the U.S. in board game form when Pandasaurus releases Mebo Games’ Arraial next spring.

Each summer in Portugal, neighborhoods host a traditional street celebration where both locals and visitors enjoy food, drink, and fun in old neighborhoods decorated with arches, balloons, and music.  These celebrations are the inspiration for the game Arraial, which features Tetris-like tile placement and a rotating game board. 

Players use tiles representing festival attractions, identified by cards on the rotating central board, to fill their own player board.  But, they must place the tiles in the same orientation that they appear on the cards, which is determined by where they are sitting in relation to the rotating board.  By placing like-colored tiles together, they attract color-coded visitors, which award points.

Arraial was created by Nuno Sentieiro and Paulo Soledade, the design team behind Nippon (see “‘Nippon’ and Signorie, From What’s Your Game?”) and both contributors to Panamax (see “‘Panamax’ & ‘Kanban:  Automotive Revolution’”).  The game was produced by Mebo Games of Portugal, which will premiere it at the Spiel fair in Essen, Germany later this month.

The release date for the game in the U.S. and its MSRP have not yet been announced.

Pandasaurus also plans to release a “legacy” version of Masao Suganuma’s Machi Koro in the spring (see “‘Machi Koro Legacy’”).