Forage — my favorite roll-and-write of the year (SPIEL Essen 2026)

About Forage, from BoardGameGeek:

Forage is a puzzly tableau-building roll-and-write game for 1-6 players with gorgeous artwork by Beth Sobel! It is designed and developed by the team that brought you the Calico, Cascadia, and Point Salad series of games! Rules are simple: Roll the forage dice and reveal a unique journey tile each round. Choose a combination of dice and carry out one of the actions: exploring, storing, or gift-giving. As you carry out actions, you'll earn bonuses that allow you to power up your future actions or make additional moves to complete your goals! Use your time wisely - there are several journeys you can take to collect knowledge, experience, and prestige. Once you have completed your turn, you'll choose one of the three types of cards to draw and add to your tableau giving you more ways to combo and complete goals! Completing exploration cards involves traversing trails through the forest and collecting bonuses by surrounding them via a spatial puzzle that extends as you add cards to your tableau. Completing pantry cards involves storing goods in jars and unlocking bonuses as you complete rows and columns within your shelves. Completing gift-giving cards involves collecting specific ingredients in the exact quantities to produce gifts, providing you with immediate and end-game scoring bonuses! There are over 90 unique exploration, pantry, and gift-giving cards to collect, so you will have a completely unique foraging journey each and every time you play! 6 unique double-sided goal cards and 27 unique journey tiles also encourage player interaction and strategic thinking throughout the game. Forage is a unique roll-and-write game where you write on cards in an ever-changing tableau. As the game progresses, your options increase and your scoring conditions change. It is easy to learn, but challenging for everyone! -description from the designer