Want to dive into rich and demanding strategy universes? This year, the Brussels Games Festival invites you to special Expert Games sessions to discover five titles:

Sessions (per game)

1st session2nd session3rd session
Friday, 28 August 202614:30 > 18:4519:00 > 23:45
Saturday, 29 August 202610:15 > 14:1514:30 > 18:4519:00 > 23:45
Sunday, 30 August 202610:15 > 14:1514:30 > 17:45

Registration

The Expert Selection

Ants

In Fourmis, players control ant colonies locked in an eternal struggle for dominance over the garden.

Expand your anthill, explore the terrain, and mark your path with pheromones.

Gather food and leaves, battle rival insects, and outmaneuver your opponents. Lay eggs and hatch larvae to grow your workforce with specialized ants.

Evolve your colony to unlock unique abilities and secure supremacy over enemy nests.

For the Colony!

Play time: 60-120 min
Recommended age: 13+
Difficulty level: ⭐⭐⭐⭐

Men Nefer (NL)

In Men-Nefer, you’ll relive one of the greatest periods of ancient Egypt, performing tasks typical of Egyptian culture: acquiring knowledge in the houses of life, navigating and trading on the Nile, making offerings to the revered God, embalming the bodies of nobles to send them on to a better life, erecting magnificent sphinxes and helping to build the Great Pyramids.

Over the course of three eras, players choose which area of Egyptian life and culture they wish to develop each turn, thanks to a new selection of actions combining worker placement and tile drawing. 

Players must try to obtain the highest number of prestige points in each era, as only those who succeed in obtaining the most prestige will win the game.

Play time: 60-120 min
Recommended age: 14+
Difficulty level: ⭐⭐⭐⭐

The Voynich Puzzle

The Voynich manuscript, named after the bookseller who discovered it in 1912, is an enigma that has resisted human curiosity for over 600 years. Is it an otherworldly botanical treatise? A secret code of alchemists? Or perhaps an elaborate hoax by some medieval genius Every theory falters before the abyss of its unknown author, its incomprehensible purpose, and its unreadable language.

In The Voynich Puzzle, you will collectively try to decipher the Voynich manuscript, using your copy of the book as the main tool to do it. As the collective understanding of the manuscript grows, you will be able to gradually decipher pages on your book, improving your chances to decode it. The player with the most overall knowledge at the end of the game, will be the winner.

Play time: 60-120 min
Recommended age: 14+
Difficulty level: ⭐⭐⭐⭐

Orloj

In the heart of Prague’s Old Town, the ancient astronomical clock, the Orloj, marks the passage of time through its complex mechanism and enigmatic figures. A masterpiece of medieval technology that has stood the test of time.

With every gear, sphere, and zodiac sign assembled, you’ll get closer to completing this masterpiece that will mark the city’s time for generations to come.

Each turn, players place workers on the clock face to earn resources and perform actions to build the Orloj calendar. In addition to recruiting assistants, they build the Apostles’ Carillon and develop their knowledge across three tracks, with experience allowing them to improve their skills.

Play time: 90-120 min
Recommended age: 14+
Difficulty level: ⭐⭐⭐⭐

Keyside

Keyside takes place on a busy island with 12 harbours and a myriad of ‘quays’.

Each player controls a team of 18 workers, known as ‘keyples’, who will work in the farms, harbours, markets, quarry, wheat fields, and woods. Players use their 6 dice to either direct the boats to their chosen harbours or to join the other players on their turns and, in both cases, set their team of keyples to work.

After three rounds (years), players score points depending on where their keyples are located, most notably in the harbours, and from the cottages, houses, and headlands they have built and from skills they have collected.

Play time: 90-120 min
Recommended age: 14+
Difficulty level: ⭐⭐⭐⭐