This is it. 2015 has come to an end. Many months ago I posted on my blog an article called After the battle. Basically, I was convincing you that 2015 would be freaking awesome.

Don’t want to brag, but hell, was I right!

Let me just name three games. Pandemic: Legacy. Blood Rage. TIME Stories. Some pretty nice additions to our hobby.

And I tell you this – I strongly believe that 2015 will be a year we will mention a lot in the future. The year when a very strong accent was put on storytelling in board games. We had these ideas floating around for a while: we had Sherlock Holmes Consulting Detective that was some sort of an interactive story. We had Tales of Arabian Nights that were a crazy interactive story. We had the Voyage of the Beagle expansion which is basically some sort of a Robinson Crusoe Legacy game that everybody asked me for.

We had these ideas but they were not ready, not well laid out, not well presented, not well executed. If I can say so, there was Tragedy Looper but we were still waiting for something. We were waiting for TIME Stories.

Now these ideas are well laid out. Now other designers can be inspired. Now our worldwide brainstorming is taking place. Now our hobby is taking a deep breath and tries to discover new possibilities, ideas, directions.

2015 has added a lot of new items to the set of tools we designers have [at our disposal?].

We have new toys to play with.

Having some behind-the-curtain knowledge, knowing a little little little bit about what my friends – designers – are working on now, and knowing what I am working on myself, I can tell you this – I promise you: 2016 will be great.

Happy New Year, my friends. It’s gonna be awesome.