NewsHistoricalBoardgames23rd Sep 2026

Road to SPIEL 2026: -60° - Into the Antarctic Unknown

Day two of our 30 Day countdown to the doors opening for SPIEL Essen 2026. Our second game under the spotlight is Alexander Pfister and Peter Prinz' -60° (Sixty Below), set in an alternate timeline where a meteorite crashed in Antarctice on 23rd September 1971.

AngusA23rd Sep 2026

At 11pm on 23rd September 1971, people across the world looked up and saw a strange light crossing the night sky.

Three hours later it struck Antarctica.

Fortunately this didn’t actually happen. It is, however, the starting point for -60° (Sixty Below) and, entirely appropriately, we’re looking at the game exactly 55 years after its fictional meteorite crashed into our planet.

Designed by Alexander Pfister (Great Western Trail, Port Royal, Isle of Skye), and Peter Prinz (Thebes: The Tomb Raiders, Crime Story)-60° sends rival scientific expeditions into an alternate-history Antarctica to establish research stations, explore the frozen continent, and ultimately reach the msyterious meteorite impact site. Published by Nanox Games and dsitributed by dlp games, it supports 1-4 players and has an average play time of two to three hours.

What is it?

The year is 1971, but history takes a different turn.

Several research teams have landed on the Antarctic coast, each hoping to build the infrastructure necessary to penetrate further into the continent. Players must gather limited resources, establish stations, develop new technologies, undertake scientific projects, and prepare expeditions cabable oif surviving increasingly hostile conditions.

At the centre of everything is the meteorite, and reching it means pushing steadily deeper into explored territory, but -60° isn’t simply a race game. Players need to develop engines capable of supporting the exploration while deciding how much risk they’re prepared to take along the way.

How does it play?

-60° combines worker placement, deck building, exploration, and push-your-luck across six rounds.

At the beginning of a round, playwers draw from their personal decks one card at a time. Each new card presents a decision: continue pushing for a stronger turn or stop before conditions deteriorate. Storm cards can provide valuable energy, but accumulating too many of them begins suppressing the benefits generated by your other cards.

Then comes the expedition.

Explorers are places on action spaces around Antarctica but, unlike most worker-placement games, they don’t come back. Once an explorer occupies a space it remains there for the rest of the game. Action spaces gradually disappear beneath previous expeditions even as exploration expands the map and reveals entirely new opportunities. Building stations can also create new places to act, so as you develop your own network you may also be opening up possib ilities for your rivals.

So while Antarctica becomes larger as you explore it, your available options start increasingly becoming more limited.

Why we’re watching it

The designers of -60° alone make the game worth watching.

Alexander Pfister’s catalogue includes Great Western Trail, Mombasa, Maracaibo, and Boonlake, while Peter Prinz is probably best known for the archaeological exploration game Thebes. -60° appears to bring together some recognisable elements from both designers, engine building and push-your-luck on one side, exploration and expeditions on the other.

There is already a lot of pre-release interest in the game, with more than 1,200 BoardGameGeek users currently having the game on their wishlists. Peter Prinz has also written a Designer Diary on BoardGameGeek about how the game came to be, which is worth a read.

I also love worker placement games, so -60° ticks that box for me, and am also a big fan of Pfister’s Great Western Trail.

The Game at SPIEL Essen 2026

-60° is being released in both English and German. Copies can currently be preordered for €80 for collection at Spiel at dlp’s stand in Hall 3, Stand C115.

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