Mushroom wizards racing through a shifting forest to snatch up spellbooks: that is the pitch for Seeker of Spells, a family strategy game from British designer Ellie Dix that is heading to Gen Con this month as one of publisher MindWare's headline demos.
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Set up your group for freeDix is a familiar name to UK gamers. She founded independent studio The Dark Imp in 2019, specialising in games in unusual formats such as coasters, placemats and greetings cards, and wrote The Board Game Family: Reclaim Your Children From the Screen, a guide to prising kids away from tablets and onto the table. She also won Hasbro's inaugural Women Innovators of Play contest, so a clever mushroom-wizard board game is very much on brand.
Seeker of Spells is for two to four players aged 8 and up. You guide a team of fungal spellcasters across a modular forest board, collecting valuable spellbooks while using portals, barriers and spell cards to block and outwit your rivals. Because the board is rebuilt each game, no two forests play the same, which keeps it fresh for repeat family nights. It reached US retail earlier this year for around $25.
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See how it worksThe Gen Con push should put it in front of a far bigger crowd. If you are trying to build a rotation of games that genuinely work with kids and adults together, this is exactly the kind of light-but-clever title worth a look.
Dix has more or less written the book on family game nights. If you want to start one of your own, set up a group on Backseat Gamer.
Sources: MindWare | PR Newswire | The Dark Imp
