Pegasus Spiele is delighted that Bomb Busters has won the German game award “Spiel des Jahres”
Friedberg, July 22, 2025: On July 13, the Spiel des Jahres jury announced which titles will receive the German game award for Game of the Year, Core Game of the Year and Children’s Game of the Year in 2025. The cooperative deduction game Bomb Busters by Hisashi Hayashi, published by Pegasus Spiele, convinced the members of the expert jury to name it as Game of the Year 2025.
The award was presented at a ceremony in Berlin on 13 July and is the sixth time that the world’s most important award for board, card and parlour games—the so-called red meeple—has visited Friedberg. Pegasus Spiele is delighted to have won this coveted game award once again after the great success of Dorfromantik – The Board Game, which was honoured with Game of the Year in 2023.
In Hisashi Hayashi’s family game Bomb Busters, two to five players aged ten and over, take on the role of a bomb disposal team. Their task is to work together to defuse dangerous explosive devices, without blowing everything up! In each challenging mission, the team will put its powers of deduction and communication skills to the test. To safely defuse a bomb, identical pairs of numbered cables must be identified and cut, without ever cutting a red wire or making too many incorrect guesses. The difficulty is that each player can only see their own cables, so must deduce the location of the other matching cables by skilfully exchanging clues and drawing clever conclusions. Through careful coordination, strategic thinking, and teamwork the explosion can be prevented!
The Spiel des Jahres jury said the following about Bomb Busters:
“In “Bomb Busters” we grow with the tasks. Step by step, we learn the ABC of bomb disposal. Using logic and a pinch of interaction, we deduce the correct pairs of numbers. The special comic look gives the threatening topic the necessary lightness. This welds us together as a team and we can later try our hand at a variety of missions that throw previous thought patterns overboard.”
Bomb Busters offers 66 replayable missions that become increasingly challenging. Five secret surprise boxes with new rules and game materials constantly expand the gaming experience. When working to disarm each bomb, the cables are only ever cut in the figurative sense. Nothing is destroyed and all the game material remains intact. With mischievous illustrations by Dom2D, straightforward but ever-evolving game mechanics, and high replay value, Bomb Busters is a must for anyone who doesn’t lose their nerve when the tension builds and wants to work together to save the day.
