Czech Games Edition has announced that Codenames: Pictures will get a pre-release at Gen Con 2016. This is a follow up to Codenames – their best-selling, Golden Geek Award and Spiel des Jahres winning 2015 title.

Codenames: Pictures uses similar mechanics to the original game, but with a few differences:

• There are nicely drawn pictures instead of words.
• The grid is 5 × 4, instead of the original 5 × 5.
• The rules for valid clues are simpler.
• Each agent now has its own individual image underlining the spy theme.

The 280 black-gray-white pictures have been carefully picked and designed for interesting game play. The pictures usually contain two or more elements that create witty combinations, tell interesting stories, leave some space for imagination, while still being relatively simple for good playability.

They are the work of great artists like Tomáš Kučerovský, David Cochard, and others.

What are these strange symbols on the map? They are coded locations where spies must contact secret agents!

Two rival spymasters know the agent in each location. They deliver coded messages telling their field operatives where to go for clandestine meetings. Operatives must be clever. A decoding mistake could lead to an unpleasant encounter with an enemy agent – or worse, with the assassin!

Both teams race to contact all their agents, but only one team can win.

The game will be pre-released at Gen Con (CGE room 121, 4^th–7^th August). If someone wants to be sure you get a copy and becomes one of the very first owners of the game, the pre-order form could be used.

As a bonus for this event, you will get five additional agent and bystander tiles, enabling you to play with the original Codenames grids.

The general release date is September 2016 and will also be available directly from CGE at Spiel in Essen in October.