Dixit and Mysterium studio Libellud has been acquired by Catan, Pandemic and Ticket to Ride owner Asmodee
Fantasy Flight, Z-Man and Catan Studio parent picks up French publisher.
Libellud, the French board game publisher behind Dixit and Mysterium, has been acquired by tabletop behemoth Asmodee.
Libellud was founded in 2008 and is probably best known for Dixit, its acclaimed party game released the same year that sees players telling stories using picture cards. The game picked up the Spiel des Jahres, Germany’s prestigious Game of the Year award, in 2010 as the result of designer Jean-Louis Roubira’s inventive gameplay and Marie Cardouat’s striking abstract artwork.
Dixit has since influenced a number of other games that encourage players to use picture cards with psychedelic artwork to tell stories or otherwise communicate. Among the more successful is Libellud’s own Mysterium, a game of deduction where players are clairvoyants attempting to solve a murder based on picture clues given by a silent player embodying the victim’s ghost. Mysterium was itself followed by a spiritual successor of sorts in last year’s Obscurio, which was once again published by the studio.
Other games released by Libellud include dice-rolling board game Dice Forge and sorcerer-battling card game Seasons. According to the publisher, its family-orientated games have sold “several million copies” during its lifetime.
Asmodee’s acquisition of Libellud sees the French outlet join the likes of X-Wing and Keyforge maker Fantasy Flight Games, Catan Studio, Pandemic and Carcassonne publisher Z-Man Games, Ticket to Ride creator Days of Wonder, Unlock! and TIME Stories label Space Cowboys, and several other studios and publishers owned by the sprawling tabletop company. Asmodee also previously owned Dead of Winter and Specter Ops maker Plaid Hat, before the publisher regained its independence earlier this year - the first Asmodee-owned studio to do so.
In January, Asmodee acquired Repos Productions, the maker of 7 Wonders and Just One, last year's winner of the Spiel des Jahres.
As part of the Libellud news, founder Régis Bonnessée announced that the studio has “many exciting new projects ahead of us”, with no details on the publisher’s next game given.