Wouter & Ymke 
In Bubble and Shadow, we’re making pacts between magicians and mortals, exchanging moons, silver coins and bubbles while trying to end each round with the right combination. I say “right” rather than “best”, because collecting more isn’t always helpful here. Too many bubbles can remove you from scoring completely, and even a healthy pile of silver can eventually become a problem.
There’s a slightly unexpected literary connection too, as Bubble and Shadow takes inspiration from W. Somerset Maugham’s The Moon and Sixpence. You don’t need to know anything about the novel, though, and honestly, we weren’t discussing Somerset Maugham around the table. We were mostly wondering why someone had just handed us another bubble when we very clearly didn’t want one. So, what exactly are we signing up for?
Bubble and Shadow is one of Broadway Toys’ new releases for Spiel Essen 2026. If you’re heading to Essen, Broadway Toys has also opened pre-orders for the show, with pickup in Hall 2 at booth D610.
👥 2-5 players, ages 10+
⌛ Playing time: 30 minutes
📝 Designer: Kai Zu
🎨 Artwork: Zhonghao Yang
🏢 Publisher: Broadway Toys LTD (review copy provided)
Gameplay Overview
A game of Bubble and Shadow lasts for a maximum of three rounds, with players trying to collect the most soul tokens. At the start of each round, everyone gets six pact cards and secretly draws eleven price tokens, which stay hidden behind their player screen. Three special pact cards are placed face-up in the middle of the table. Most of the price tokens come in three types: moons, silver coins and bubbles.
On each turn, one player is the magician and chooses another player to become the mortal. The magician either plays a pact card from their hand or exchanges one of their cards for a public special pact card and immediately plays that instead. You can’t choose just anyone. The mortal has to be one of the other players with the fewest pact cards in front of them. Once the pact has been completed, that mortal becomes the magician for the next turn. As a small thematic detail, the first magician is chosen by comparing the clocks printed on the player screens with the actual time. It’s completely unnecessary, but I rather like it.
Each pact card shows two sides of an exchange. The mortal decides which side points towards them, with one important restriction. If they can fully pay only one of the two prices, they have to choose that one. They can choose freely when they can afford both sides, or when they can’t fully afford either. The two players then pay each other as much of the required price as they can.
Everything exchanged during a pact is public. Tokens you receive are placed in front of your screen where everyone can see them, while whatever you still have behind your screen remains hidden. Both sets of tokens belong to you and can be used for later payments. More of each player’s situation gradually becomes visible without ever revealing the full picture.
Once everyone has four pact cards, the round ends and all price tokens are revealed. First, if you have more than six silver coins, each silver above six also counts as a bubble for the first comparison. The player or players with the most bubbles are removed from the rest of the scoring and receive no soul tokens. Of those remaining, whoever has the fewest silver coins receives one soul and leaves the resolution. Finally, the remaining player with the most moons gets three souls, while everyone else still involved gets two. If only one player remains after an earlier step, that player immediately receives three souls.
Two-player scoring works differently. Both players stay involved and can earn one soul each for having the most moons, most silver coins and fewest bubbles. Ties count, and meeting all three conditions gives you one additional soul. Silver above six still counts towards your bubbles for that comparison. After scoring, the price tokens and pact cards are refreshed for another round, while earned souls remain. The game ends after the third round or when someone finishes a round with more than five souls, with whoever has the most souls winning. There’s also a separate Complacency variant for three to five players, but I’d leave that until everyone is comfortable with the standard game.
Artwork & Components
The first thing that caught our attention was definitely the pact cards. They’re large, sturdy, colourful and filled almost completely by mirrored illustrations of magicians, mortals and various strange-looking characters. There’s a tarot-card feel to them, with dark backgrounds mixed with purple, blue, orange, pink and gold. Because there’s no central board, everyone’s growing collection of pact cards also becomes most of what you’re looking at once the game gets going.
I particularly like the player screens. The outside shows misty nighttime streets, while the inside puts you in a magician’s room or workshop. They’re not just decorative, since you actually need them to hide your tokens. I like that the two sides almost feel like the outside and inside of the same world. The little clocks used to decide the first player are a nice detail too, even if you’ll only pay attention to them for about ten seconds at the start of the game.
The main price tokens are chunky plastic chips, with gold moons, purple bubbles and grey silver coins. They’re easy to recognise and pleasant to handle, which helps when they’re constantly being passed around. You also get 30 clear, crystal-like soul tokens and 21 special price tokens. Some of those special tokens flip between two resources when traded, while others change before scoring. An apple, for example, counts as a moon during play and then becomes a bubble before resolution.
Our Experience
Our first round involved quite a bit of “this seems good?” followed a few turns later by “oh… apparently not.” We understood how to make a pact without much trouble. What we didn’t really understand was what we wanted from one. We treated the tokens a little too much like resources that were simply nice to collect. Moons looked useful. Silver certainly didn’t look dangerous. Then we reached scoring.
One of us became particularly comfortable with a growing pile of silver until we counted it properly. Apparently, we’d all forgotten what happens after six. From then on, we spent much more time comparing our collections with everyone else’s instead of simply looking at what we had ourselves. Early on, as the magician, we’d usually pick a card because one side gave us exactly what we wanted. Of course, the mortal would choose the other side whenever possible. Later, a pact where we were reasonably happy with either result suddenly looked much better. Being the mortal was different again. Sometimes there was an obvious choice. At other times, choosing one side would tell everyone else a little too much about what we could afford.
Previous payments soon became something we tried to remember. Someone had already handed over three bubbles. Someone else had received two moons and hadn’t spent them yet. We never reached the point where we knew exactly what was behind everyone’s screens, but we started making guesses. A few pacts were played partly because we wanted the exchange and partly because we wanted to see what somebody could actually pay. Sometimes that confirmed what we thought. Sometimes it mostly confirmed that we’d remembered everything incorrectly.
Knowing what we wanted to happen didn’t mean our cards would cooperate. Someone clearly didn’t need another moon, yet the cards weren’t helping with that particular problem. We also became less excited about getting our own collection into what looked like the perfect position too early. There might still be several pacts before scoring. It doesn’t take long for a comfortable pile of tokens to look rather different. We’d look at what had just changed, check our cards again and often discover that the idea we had two turns ago was no longer particularly relevant.
Four players worked best for us. There was enough happening between other players to make those exchanges worth following, while we could still remember some of it. We added the special price tokens later, as the rulebook suggests, and I’m glad we did. By then, apples changing before scoring and tokens flipping between different resources were easier to take in because we already knew what the normal moons, silver and bubbles could do to us. I wouldn’t have wanted to learn all of that at once.
Our Thoughts
You can be fairly sure somebody doesn’t want another bubble and still have absolutely nothing useful to put in front of them. That’s an important part of Bubble and Shadow for us. The visible tokens and previous payments give you something to work with. Whatever remains behind the screens is still unknown, and the pact cards in your hand decide what you can actually do with the information you have.
It can be frustrating. You might know exactly who is in a good position and have a hand of pact cards that does very little about it. Another exchange can help that player before your next turn, sometimes without either person particularly intending to. Players who like planning several turns ahead and expect a good read of the table to give them a fairly reliable result may struggle with that. There were certainly turns where the useful move simply wasn’t available.
The theme is much stronger in the artwork than it is once you’re actually playing. Calling the two sides magician and mortal makes sense for the pact system, and the screens and illustrations establish that world before the first card is played. A few turns later, our conversations were mostly about who could afford which side of a pact and whether someone really needed another moon. The connection to The Moon and Sixpence didn’t become much clearer to us either. Anyone coming mainly for the strange characters and supernatural setting should know that underneath all of it is a fairly abstract game about exchanging resources and trying to judge where everyone stands.
I also wouldn’t automatically treat it as a light filler just because the box says around 30 minutes. The individual actions aren’t difficult. It helps to follow exchanges that don’t involve you and remember at least some of what has already moved around, though, and with someone who wants to calculate every possible result before offering a pact, turns can slow down. After a full game, we generally felt satisfied rather than immediately wanting another. There can also be rounds where someone falls quite far behind in souls, which isn’t much fun when there’s still another round to play.
We’ve come away positive about Bubble and Shadow. I like looking at someone’s visible tokens, trying to remember what they paid earlier and then handing them a pact where either answer is acceptable to us. We got noticeably better at doing that after our first game without ever feeling completely sure about everyone else. With a group that enjoys watching what everyone else is doing and doesn’t mind having their plans disturbed, there’s plenty here that worked for us. Just maybe don’t get too attached to your silver.
📝 We received a copy of Bubble and Shadow from Broadway Toys LTD.
Bubble and Shadow is only one of the games we’re looking at ahead of Spiel Essen 2026.
Find the rest of our pre-Spiel coverage here.
