UK Games Expo 2025... and More

Aaaand, relax. UK Games Expo 2025 is in the rear view mirror, and what a few days we had! This year was only the second time that we have attended the Expo as exhibitors, having previously had a stand in 2023. This time around we knew a lot more about what to expect, what mistakes to learn from, and what we could do

to improve the whole experience for ourselves, and more importantly for all of the paying customers who might stop by our stand to find out about our games.

And there were a lot of paying customers this year! Initial figures are reporting 42,000 unique visitors, with around 72,000 total visits, far more than the last time we attended. Which meant we were busy for all 3 days of the show. Good news for us, not such good news for our voices! We had a consistent flow of people to the stand, and rarely went more than a few minutes without showcasing the Strong Point range to someone. I lost count of the number of groups of people (sometimes in 2s, often in 3s or 4s) who either listened to a brief explanation of the game, or more frequently sat down and played a couple of turns. It was a lot of fun, and a lot of talking! But the reward for the near loss of my voice is that 100s of people now know about Strong Point and have a copy of the game and possibly one of the expansions to play on their next games night.

The Complete Package available now!

The Expo also saw the launch of Stronger Point Junior Expansion, the first time this had been on sale anywhere, and it felt amazing to have the full range of Strong Point titles to showcase. Having the 3 games together as the complete package made our stand seem much stronger (see what I did there?) and it definitely helped with drawing more people in to experience the game. Together we feel like Strong Point packs the punch to make a perfect trivia game collection for adults and children/teenagers, and with Stronger Point Junior we hope that we can help more families play together and get around that difficulty of including your kids and/or teens in game night.

We really believe that Stronger Point Junior is another step towards bringing families together. Many parents want youngsters off their screens and joining in with family games nights and while Strong Point base game has category cards that youngsters undeniably do well on (Greek Mythology I'm looking at you), there are many categories on which younger players struggle. The cards in Junior are aimed at players from 8-18 years old, with categories that we selected largely from suggestions by around 120 schoolchildren, thanks to the staff and pupils at St Josephs Primary School, Gateshead. We asked them to suggest 5 things they thought were their 'strong points', that they knew a lot about, and took all of those suggestions to create many of the categories in the game. Then we added more categories for older teens to round out the 100 new cards. The aim is that young players play from their deck of cards and adults play from the regular deck, and the kids can compete on an equal footing with the adults! And most likely win!

Buy Now

We also managed to catch up with 2 of the prize winners from the competition we ran last time we were at the Expo, and we were able to finally deliver their prizes to them in person! The competition was to suggest categories for Stronger Point Expansion One, and if we liked the category enough it would be included. These winners suggested categories we loved and so Friends and Dragons are categories that you will find in Expansion One!

As busy as we were on our own stand, we still found time to meet up with old friends and make new ones, and of course try out some fantastic games that were new to us. With 4 large halls crammed with board game designers, publishers, retailers, and board game related merchandise, the UK Games Expo is a joy for anyone with a passion for this fantastic and growing hobby. Comfy shoes, plenty of water, and a map of the halls are essential requirements for anyone visiting! We even had an encounter with a dalek, who sported similar colours to our branding and had the audacity to claim this meant he owned us! We soon exterminated that idea!

Dalek Alan trying to claim ownership of Strong Point!

We caught up with the lovely folk from the Whose Turn Is It Anyway Podcast and crossed paths to chat and play a few games with Board Game Addict UK over the course of the show. Lovers of all things board games should definitely give these a like and a follow, both are great sources of games news, reviews and fun.

The Whose Turn Podcast Crew

We rounded out the weekend with adding a few new games to our collection, starting with a limited edition copy of the wonderful Fetching Feathers designed by Chris Priscott at Unfringed, and the beautiful Kavango designed by Matt Brown and Zara Reid and published by Mazaza Games. We also added one of the top sellers of the Expo, Forest Shuffle bought from Zatu Games, along with Flamme Rouge and Sky Team bought from Magic Madhouse, two of our 'go to' places for new games.

New games we added at UK Games Expo 2025

We'd love to namecheck every one of the designers and publishers that are part of the BoardGameProtohype community, but we'd be here all day, so we'll just say thanks to every one of them who have provided help, guidance, and inspiration over many months.

Finally, next on the agenda for us is the North-East Tabletop Expo at Gateshead Stadium from Friday 11th - Sunday 13th July. It will be the second time this has been held, and we love that we have an Expo so close to home! Here's to a good one!

Thanks for reading,

Si.