Expansions Are on the Way for Earth, Tower Up, Underwater Cities, and More | BoardGameGeek News

by W. Eric Martin

Non-final Animal Kingdom cover▪️ With Earth: Abundance landing in port, publisher Inside Up Games anticipates that crowdfunding backers will receive copies in April 2025, so it’s dropped word of the next expansion to Maxime Tardif‘s 2023 game Earth — Earth: Animal Kingdom.

To match what it’s done previously, Inside Up plans to launch a crowdfunding campaign for Earth: Animal Kingdom on April 22, 2025 — a.k.a., Earth Day — and here’s what this expansion offers:

Earth: Animal Kingdom features 36 new animals, each with powerful asymmetrical abilities that change how you build your tableau. Whenever you use a leaf, your chosen animals activate, generating resources, triggering abilities, or unlocking new scoring opportunities. At the end of each round, a global animal ability activates for all players, providing everyone with an opportunity to plan ahead to leverage its effects.

Each animal interacts with your tableau in a unique way, challenging you to shape your ecosystem to maximize its potential, with animeeples that roam your tableau and interact with the flora and terrain you’ve cultivated.

From the burrowing pocket gopher to the soaring golden eagle, each animal breathes new life into Earth.

Fun fact: The name “Earth Day” was coined by advertising copywriter Julian Koenig, who was coincidentally born on April 22 and liked that “Earth Day” rhymes with “birthday”.

▪️ Pedro Pereira‘s 2022 two-player trick-taking game Violet and the Grumpy Nisse will receive an expansion in 2025: Violet and the meddlings of Madame Kamila, which publisher Agie Games is crowdfunding through March 28, 2025.

In the original game, Violet is going on a journey to meet her friend, which is taking her through said grumpy Nisse’s turf. With the expansion, Violet must draw a Tarot card to determine which path she must take while traveling, with the path affecting the rules of the game. New advantage tokens and event tiles are shuffled into those from the base game to provide more variety.

▪️ If you want more of Ted Alspach‘s Maglev Metro, in April 2025 Bézier Games will attempt to fund Maglev Maps: Volume 2: six new maps on three game boards that “range from futuristic real-world cities to the netherworld and from the colossal to the microscopic”.

More importantly (?), the cover of the new expansion expands the existing panorama:

▪️ Pandasaurus Games has teased a forthcoming expansion for Ashwin Kamath and Clarence Simpson‘s 2022 game The Wolves titled Apex Expansion. Nothing has been revealed beyond this cover image:

▪️ At SPIEL Essen 25, Delicious Games will release Underwater Cities: Data Era, the second expansion for Vladimír Suchý‘s 2018 game Underwater Cities. Here’s an overview:

In Underwater Cities: Data Era, players receive a new resource type: data discs, which provide additional actions. The expansion also includes new buildings called data centers, and a new city type: information cities; data centers and information cities provide players with new ways of scoring.

Data Era can be used with just the base game or combined with the first expansion, New Discoveries.

▪️ Another SPIEL Essen 25 expansion will be Tower Up: Paradise Islands, an expansion for my hit from Gen Con 2024: Tower Up, from Frank Crittin, Grégoire Largey, Sébastien Pauchon and Monolith Board Games.

Here’s the publisher’s brief for this expansion: “After finishing construction in the city, your firm is going all the way to the coastline. It’s time to build bridges to connect islands, and don’t forget your statues! Planning and tactics will still be your best assets to beat your opponents in Tower Up: Paradise Islands.”

Mock-up at the Asmodee Belgium discovery day (Image: Wouter Debisschop)