Tikal designers’ next game has wizards wobbling on wandering towers

The co-designers behind Tikal – Wolfgang Kramer and Michael Kiesling – have created a new upcoming board game together called Die Wandelnden Türme.

Roughly translated into English as The Wandering Towers, Die Wandelnden Türme has two to six players trying to get their faction of wizards back to their home – the Raven Castle – before their opponents do. (Thanks BoardGameGeek .) Set within a land populated by magic-casters, Die Wandelnden Türme focuses on a group of rival wizards who all seek to return to their rightful home before the others can arrive. How they return is via a series of strange moving towers, which they will have to navigate across and avoid being trapped in by any of their rivals.

At the start of the game, the Raven Castle is placed onto its starting square, with a series of nine towers arranged in a clockwise direction away from that space. How many wizards players have to return to the Raven Castle depends on the current player count, with the maximum number of wizards being five each. Each player’s wizards are placed across the towers on the board, with players being able to move them by playing cards from their hand.

In the fantasy board game, players take turns to play up to two movement cards from their hand, with these cards enabling them to either move one of their wizards or one of the towers. Any movement performed must be done in a clockwise direction, with the number of spaces a piece can move being determined by either the specific amount shown on the card or via the roll of a die. The number of times a die can be rolled depends upon the movement card that was played.

Whenever a player chooses to move a tower, any wizards standing on that tower are carried along with it. Players can place a tower on top of another one, with any wizards standing on the tower below being trapped inside. Trapping wizards in Die Wandelnden Türme grants players the ability to fill one of their magic flasks, with players needing to fill all of their flasks in order to win. If players find themselves in a difficult spot, they can use one of their flasks to perform a spell to move a wizard or tower – using flasks to cast spells does not cause them to be unfilled.

Whichever player manages to fill all of their flasks and move every one of their wizard meeples onto the Raven Castle becomes the game’s winner.

Apart from Die Wandelnden Türme and Tikal, Kramer and Kiesling have also co-created other board games such as the abstract tabletop title Torres – which has players building castles and placing knights – and the civilisation game set in the ancient city of Tenochtitlan, Mexica.

Abbacusspiele is the studio behind Die Wandelnden Türme, with an English language version yet to be confirmed.

Die Wandelnden Türme is set to be released sometime in March 2022.