How often does a board game come with actual gears? Arcane Wonders' Raas: A Dance of Love is built around a set of seven rotating discs linked by an interlocking gear mechanism, and turning one nudges the others, so the dance floor never sits still. It is one of the more unusual table presences you will see this year, and it has just turned up at Origins Game Fair ahead of a retail release this summer.
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Start organising for freeRaas takes its name and look from Garba and Raas, the energetic Gujarati folk dances performed during Navaratri, all twirling colour and clacking dandiya sticks. Designed by Mihir Shah and Shaleen Harlalka, it is a light-to-medium strategy game for 1 to 6 players that runs around 30 to 90 minutes. You lead a dance academy, drafting dancers (represented by dice) from the central discs and building a personal tableau. Along the way you kit your troupe out with bright dress swatches and dandiya sticks, matchmake pairs of dancers to climb a love track for bonuses, and try to match the tempo of each round's song.
Points come from hitting the song's tempo, meeting sponsors' requests, outfitting your dancers and making sure your troupe can handle the full range of styles. The gear-driven board means the dancers available to you shift every time someone takes a turn, so the puzzle keeps changing.
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See how it worksIt is part of the Dice Tower Essentials line, the imprint curated by the review crew at The Dice Tower, and ran on Gamefound back in October. Retail copies are due on 5 August 2026, with pre-orders already live. If a dice game about Indian dance sounds like a welcome change of pace, it might be one to bring to your next game night.
Sources: Zatu Games | Board Game Bliss | Gaming Trend | Gamefound
