Its official, Fantasy Flight Games has released Mutant Chronicles officially (since Origins and GenCon, miniatures have been trickling into retail outlets).  Mutant Chronicles is the latest reimagining of the classic post-apocalyptic setting.  Mutant Chronicles is a 54mm, pre-painted miniature game originally scheduled to release in collectible format, but switched in July to non-collectible form.  The game uses a hex-based map and has mechanics similar to FFG’s popular Doom and Descent games (including the great customized dice!).  The miniatues look good for the most part, with nice sculpts and decent paint jobs (though there seems to be quite a bit of variability in terms of the quality of the paint jobs).  The starter set retails for $30 while faction-specific expansion packs can be had for $20.

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So there’s been a wave of prices increases in the games market this year (including Games Workshop and Days of Wonder to name a few…) and it looks like the bad news for gamers is far from over.  Fantasy Flight Games has announced a price increase across the board for nearly all of its board games.  Most games are seeing a price increase of about $10 US, but the “Silver Line” games are only increasing by about $5 US.  The price increases are effective immediately for new games and on November 1, 2008 for previously published titles.

But wait!  There’s more!  Steve Jackson Games had a similar announcement, revealing that several of their games may be having similar price increases, starting with the second print run of the recently released Munchkin Quest game (which will also have a price increase of $10 US starting mid-2009).

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Fortune Seeker looks like four separate board games in one, with areas in stock market, race track, casino, and real estate.

You get to decide in which area or areas of the board you want to play. It’s a roll and move game, but looks like it may be a tad more interesting than the usual Monopoly fare.

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Published in cooperation with Kosmos, Mayfair Games is shipping Journey to the Center of the Earth. This board game takes 2-4 players on the adventure of Jules Verne’s classic novel. The game plays in three phases, covering descent into the Icelandic crater, traversing the subterranean lake, and riding a lava flow out the volcano. With the right equipment and a dose of luck, fossils and other artifacts found along the way will survive the trip. Journey to the Center of the Earth incorporates the three adventurers from the novel, but rather than assigned an individual character, players take turns in control of all three. Adding to the challenge is the fact that the three figures travel separately during the descent but must share a single raft across the lake and up the volcano. Mayfair estimates the playing time for this game at 60-75 minutes.

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