This has been one of those months where the games shelf has barely been touched. We’re mid house purchase, which means the spare room is full of boxes that aren’t games boxes, our evenings are eaten up by solicitor emails, and “shall we get a game out” has been replaced by “shall we just collapse on the sofa and stare at our phones.”
What that’s actually meant in practice is a lot more Board Game Arena and a lot less table time. Which, as it turns out, was decent timing, because BGA has spent the whole of August running its 2026 Summer of Games. I made it my mission to open as many of the daily releases as I reasonably could between viewings. Two in particular stuck: Slambo and Digging for Dinos.
What the 2026 Summer of Games Actually Is
For anyone who hasn’t come across it, BGA ran a Summer of Games event in August. It works like an advent calendar, except it’s summer and nobody’s freezing (sadly less chocolate). A new box on the calendar unlocks each day from the 1st through the 31st, and clicking it reveals that day’s featured game.
This year’s theme is cats, so opening a box every single day earns you exclusive cat-themed trophies that won’t come back once the event ends. Miss a day and the streak resets, which is exactly the kind of low-stakes pressure that’s dangerously effective on someone already stressed about completion dates.
A few things worth knowing if you want to follow along next year:
- It runs the full month of August, one new game revealed per day.
- BGA aimed for 31 new or newly digitised games across the 31 days.
- Daily trophies are themed and only available during the event.
- The full list of revealed games gets updated in BGA’s own forum thread as the month goes on.
I didn’t come close to a full streak. House buying doesn’t leave much room for daily click-throughs. But even a partial run through the calendar turned up two games I’d happily recommend.
Slambo: Hand Management With a Sumo Referee Shouting at You
Slambo is Allplay’s small “Tiny Box” card game, designed by Ryan Richford, and it’s built around a single simple idea. There’s a balance that sits at 5. Blue cards push it up, red cards pull it down, and you’re trying to force your opponent to send it above 10 or below 0 before they do the same to you.
That’s genuinely most of the rules. What makes it interesting is working out when to play your big-swing cards and when to hold them back, because your opponent is doing exactly the same maths against you. I played a string of quick rounds online one evening, and the whole thing has the rhythm of a proper sumo bout: a lot of careful circling, then one card that ends it in a single move.
It’s a hand management game (where you’re deciding which cards from your hand to commit and when) that plays in ten minutes or so, and I’d file it as a proper filler. If you like tight two-player card games with a bit of psychological push and pull, it’s worth a look.
Digging for Dinos: Fossil Hunting for People Who Like Set Collection
Digging for Dinos, from Th3rd World Studios, is a lighter, family-friendly game about racing rival teams of paleontologists to assemble complete dinosaur skeletons. Each player controls two paleontologists, and on your turn you move one of them to a new dig site card, collecting whatever fossil piece is there. Gather every fossil a specific dinosaur needs and you bank the points for it at the end of the game.
There’s a nice bit of tension in choosing which dinosaur to chase, because tiles from an incomplete dinosaur score you the lesser points from the cards. I had one dig where I’d collected four out of five pieces for what I was convinced would be a complete stegosaurus, only to realise partway through that I couldn’t get the final piece in time. Lesson learned: ploan ahead.
This is set collection (where you’re gathering matching pieces to complete a goal) at its most approachable, and it’s quick enough that it never outstays its welcome. It won’t test experienced strategy gamers, but for family sessions or anyone easing a newer player in, it’s a genuinely charming way to spend twenty minutes.
Final Thoughts
There may be more than 2 i end up recommending but some require more plays to decide and some games haven’t finished yet.
Between the house move and the Summer of Games calendar, this has been a month of gaming in short digital bursts rather than long table sessions, and I’ll admit I didn’t expect to enjoy that as much as I did. Slambo is going straight on the list of games I recommend for a quick two-player fix, and Digging for Dinos has earned a spot as a go-to for game nights once we’re properly moved in and the table’s clear again.
