Bomb Busters designer Hisashi Hayashi has adopted up last year’s Spiel des Jahres triumph with one other vital award win, after Railway Boom was named the Worldwide Avid gamers Awards’ finest multiplayer recreation for 2026.
The Arclight Video games title is a remodeling of Hayashi’s 2022 Japanese launch of the identical identify, with Barrage and Darwin’s Journey co-designer Simone Luciani appearing as a developer for the brand new model.
That outcome means Luciani has been concerned in three IGA multiplayer class winners within the final six years, having beforehand scooped the award for his co-designs Barrage (with Tommaso Battista) in 2020 and Nucleum (with Dávid Turczi) in 2024. He additionally received with Daniele Tascini co-design The Voyages of Marco Polo in 2015.
Hayashi was additionally within the operating for the IGA multiplayer award final yr with Bomb Busters, however missed out to Tomáš Holek’s SETI. His design Yokohama was additionally a multiplayer finalist again in 2017.
Railway Growth noticed off competitors from a heavyweight discipline together with Matt Leacock’s The Lord of the Rings: Fate of the Fellowship, huge-selling Asmodee hit Take Time and multiple Dice Tower Award winner Luthier to take the prize.
The Druids of Edora, Nippon: Zaibatsu, Recall, Sanctuary and World Order have been all additionally within the operating for this yr’s multiplayer award.
Whereas lacking out on the multiplayer award, Destiny of the Fellowship did safe a win in the perfect solo recreation class, beating out Benjamin Amorin’s Ace of Spades, Tyler Brown’s design Hercules and the 12 Labors and Jamey Stegmaier’s Vantage to the prize.
That outcome marked Leacock’s first IGA win in any class, 18 years after Pandemic earned him his first nomination in 2008. His different nominations have included Pandemic Legacy, which misplaced out to Mombasa in 2016, and Daybreak, which was crushed by Nucleum in 2024.
Hans im Glück’s Duel for Cardia, designed by Faouzi Boughida and Mathieu Rivero, took this yr’s award for finest two-player recreation.
That title beat a six-strong discipline which additionally included Trevor Benjamin and David Thompson’s design Moytura, Richard Borg and Adrien Martinot’s Star Wars: Battle of Hoth, Corentin Lebrat and Gricha German’s Tag Team, Israel Cendrero and Sheila Santos’ The White Castle Duel and Stegmaier’s Vantage.
The International Gamers Awards have been based in 1999 with the purpose of recognising excellent video games, their designers and publishers, with winners chosen by a world panel of board recreation critics.
Different earlier multiplayer winners have included Carnegie, Lost Ruins of Arnak and Root.