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UK Games Expo is two weeks away and the to-do list is already unmanageable. This is the first part of my UKGE2026 Picks
There are stands I want to visit, demos I need to book, and a running list of games that keeps getting longer every time I go near the exhibitor page. If you have been to Expo before, you know exactly what I mean. If this is your first year, brace yourself. The hall opens, the energy hits, and suddenly you have completely forgotten the plan you spent two weeks making. If it is your first year check out my comprehensive Games Expo Tips guide
So in the spirit of getting organised before that happens: here are the three games I am most looking forward to seeing in person at the NEC this year. Two of them I have been watching for a while. One of them has shown up on so many people’s lists that I would feel like I was actively avoiding it if I walked past the stand. I’ll Be honest. #Three Game Thursday will be Game expo focussed for the next few weeks.
Fetching Feathers by Unfringed
| Find it at: Stand 2-628 | unfringed.co/fetchingfeathers | @unfringedthings on Instagram |
I will be honest: if Chris Priscott released a game about watching paint dry, I would probably at least give it a try. I love Zuuli. I love Molehill Meadows. Both of them live on our shelf and both of them get played far more regularly than a lot of games that arrived at the same time. When a designer’s back catalogue already has two games you genuinely enjoy, a new release from them is not something you ignore.
Fetching Feathers is a card game for 2 to 5 players about attracting birds to seasonal sanctuaries. Over three seasons, you are drafting location cards and building a collection of birds, with each location’s food availability changing as the seasons rotate. Completing combos of birds scores bonus points, and the whole thing has the kind of clever layering where the rules are simple but the decisions get interesting quickly.
If you have played Zuuli, you will recognise the DNA. It is the same sensibility: approachable enough to teach in ten minutes, satisfying enough that you want to play it again immediately after. The artwork looks gorgeous too, which I suspect is going to make it very hard to leave the stand empty-handed.
The game was available as a prototype at Expo 2025 and I genuinely regret missing it. This year it is the full release, available for everyone, no sprinting required.
| Bonus: D.O.T. is also on the same stand and looks worth a look. It is a compact two-player abstract duelling game. I know almost nothing about how it plays, which is exactly the right amount to know before walking up and asking for a demo. |
Smallfolk by Roc Nest Games
| Find it at: Stand 3-205 | smallfolk.backerkit.com | @rocnestgames on Instagram |
I have a weakness for games that use folklore as a theme, especially when it is not the usual suspects. Most games that go near mythology default to Norse gods or Greek heroes. Smallfolk goes somewhere more interesting: Greek, Japanese, Arabic, and Celtic stories, drawing on the kind of tales that do not always make it into the mainstream. As a theme alone, that is enough to get my attention.
The game is a tableau builder (where you’re building a personal collection of cards in front of you that generate points and bonuses) for 1 to 4 players. Each round, players travel a central board collecting illustrated story cards. The twist is that cards have emotions: to score them, you need to make them happy by matching the right icons in your tableau. Get the combinations right and the bonuses stack. Get it wrong and your tableau feels slightly passive rather than working for you.
What appeals to me beyond the theme is the structure. The turn options are straightforward enough that new players can pick them up without a long rules explanation, and the playtime sits at a reasonable length rather than becoming an all-evening commitment. That combination is rarer than it should be. A lot of games in this space either feel slight or demand too much.
The artwork is beautiful. Genuinely the sort of thing you want sitting on a table even before you know how it plays. I will be at this stand.
Personal Demons by Tettix Games
| Find it at: Stand 3A-574 | tettixgames.com/pages/personal-demons | @tettixgames on Instagram |
I keep seeing this one on other people’s lists. At some point you have to stop noticing that and actually find out why.
Personal Demons is a 1 to 4 player spatial puzzler and tableau builder from Tettix Games, designed by Judson Cowan, who has a small but genuinely distinctive back catalogue. The premise is that you are summoning your inner demons in a therapy ritual, drafting demon cards and placing them in a circle. Seals you score early will later flip to cracked versions, gumming up your tableau and forcing you to work around the mess you made. There are Hefty and Colossal demon cards that add bigger strategic decisions early on.
The setup is quick, the rules are learnable in a single session, and the replayability is high because the demon cards interact in ways that create different puzzles each game. We played a demo copy at a local games night a few weeks ago and I came away genuinely impressed. I was expecting something weird and fiddly and it was neither. The decisions are clean. The chaos is fun rather than frustrating.
The artwork is the other thing. Judson Cowan does everything by hand in ink and it shows. There is nothing else at Expo that looks like this. Dark, detailed, and genuinely unusual in the best possible way. The components alone make it worth stopping at the stand.
See You at the Tables
Three games, three stands, one very full weekend. If you are heading to Expo this year and want to find me, I will be the one standing in front of a demo table trying to convince myself I do not need to buy everything immediately. or I’ll be playing games in Open gaming with the UK Games Expo Solo’s group, come and say hello
I will be posting about all three of these after the show, so if you want to know whether they lived up to the anticipation, watch this space. And if you are going to Expo and have something on your list that I have missed, drop it in the comments. There is always room for one more.