Road to SPIEL 2026: Prague Unseen - Rebuilding the City of a Hundred Spires

Prague has flooded. Fortunately, the city has Golems, Water Spirits, Devils and Robots available to help with the rebuilding. Admittedly, some of those sound more reassuring than others.

Prague Unseen, from Czech publishger ALBI, reimagines 19th-century Prague as a place where steam-powered industrialisation exists alongside the creatures of Czech myth and legend. Designed by Jindrich Pavlasek, Michal Peichl and Petr Vojtech, with artwork by Pavlasek, the game is a medium-heavy worker placement for 1-4 players.

What is it?

A devastating flood has submerged Prague’s historic centre, and the players are attempting to rebuild the city while establishing their influence over its futrue.

Central to that task are four different factions, each associated with their own area of Prague and who have their own abilities.

Golems are guardians of ancient knowledge.

Devils, sometimes translated as the horned, have their hands on the city’s finances.

Robots embody the ingenuity and technological possibilities of the industrial age.

Vodniks are eccentric Czech water spirits with, unsurprisingly, a particularly close relationship with the Vitava.

These aren’t four conventional factions where each player chooses one. Every player to access to workers belonging to all four groups and must decide which of them to deploy as the city develops. Each of them has their own home neighbourhood and is connected to a different part of the city’s interconnected systems.

So you don’t have to worry about deciding at the beginning of the game who you’re going to play, as you’ll be making use of them all at various points during the game as you decide which of Prague’s strange inhabitants are of the best use to you at any given point.

How does it play?

At its heart, Prague Unseen is a worker placement game, but boht the workers and the places where they work behave differently.

Players gradually create new action spaces as Prague is reconstructed. On your turn you can place a worker in one of the city’s neighbourhoods, enter or construct buildings, build bridges, or eventually pass.

The four worker types - Golem, Devil/Horned, Robot and Vodnik - aren’t interchangable meeples. Each belongs naturally to one of Prague’s four neighbourhoods and has a different relationship with the actions available there.

Send a worker to its home neighbourhood and it generates Rumours. Send it into another group’s territory and it instead collects that neighbourhoods associated resource before triggering its mini-game. That means choosing which worker to send somewhere matters almost as much as deciding which destination you are sending it to.

The four neighbourhoods create four interconnected mini-games, each drawing on a different element of Prague’s mythology and alternative history. Players develop those systems while constructing action spaces, buidling bridges, improving their engines and competing for influence across the city.

All of this ultimately feeds into victory points.

Prague Unseen is played across three eras, with influence in the four districts scored as the game progresses. The relative importance of each district can change, so dominating one part of Prague doesn’t necessarily provide the same reward throughout the entire game.

The individual district mini-games offer different ways to score, while players can also earn Milestones for particular achievements - such as developing aspects of a district, progressing along its associated tracks or completing parts of Prague’s infrastructure. Some provide immediate benefits, while others contribute towards the final scoring.

Strong performance in a district can also unlock additional end-game bonuses.

After the third era, those bonuses are added to the points accumulated through influence, Milestones and the four district systems, with the player with the most victory points winning.

So rebuilding Prague is only part of the challenge. The real puzzle is deciding where to establish influence, which of the four factions to deplay, and how deeply to invest in each district before the city, and its scoring opportunities, move on without you.

By the end of the game the Prague you’re playing on will look, and function, quite a lot differently from the one you started in.

Why we’re watching it

I think I’ve already mentioned how much I enjoy worker placement games earlier in this series, so it’s not a surprise to see another one feature in this countdown.

One of the things with Prague Unseen that I find particularly interesting in that the workers are all different, and everybody has to understand how they work and decide when best to use them, potentially making a more complicated optimisation puzzle than if you just played one faction at the beginning of the game and followed that factions obvious strategy.

The setting helps enormously too. Rather than creating a generic fantasy city, the designers are drawing on recognisable Czech folklore and placing it alongside 19th-century industrial development.

The designers have all published previous games too. Michal Peichl designed Forestry and Witchdom, whie Petr Vojtech and Jindrich Pavlasekhave worked on titles including Terra Futura.

And, frankly, the idea of water spirits helping rebuild the city after a flood - which I’d have thought they’d have quite liked the results of and not want to change back - alongside 19th-century Robots is a game I’d want to check out anyway.

The Game at SPIEL Essen 2026

Prague Unseen is scheduled for release on 22nd October 2026, thje opening day of SPIEL.

ALBI has two stands at the show this year, with Prague Unseen being sold from Hall 4, Stand D400. The publisher is also offering advance reservations on selected English-language games for collection at Essen.

SPIEL Essen runs from 22nd-25th October 2026.

Prague Unseen at a glance

Publisher: ALBI

Designers: Jindrich Pavlasek, Michal Peichl & Petr Vojtech

Artists: Jindrich Pavlasek

Players: 1-4

Ages: 14+

Playing Time: 120+ minutes

Type: Worker placement / city building / area influence / engine building

Engish Edition: Yes

Expected retail release: 22ns October 2026

SPIEL: Hall 4, Stand D400

More information: ALBI - Prague Unseen

Tomorrow on Road to SPIEL 2026: Cascadia: Alpine Lakes - one of modern board gaming’s most successful nature puzzles heads into the mountains with double-sized habitats and landscapes that grow upwards as well as outwards.