Playroom Entertainment will release Ilium, a new "big box" European-style board game, in late June or early July.  The new game, which was commissioned and will be first released by Playroom, has been designed by uber-designer Reiner Knizia.  Playroom president Daniel Rowen describes the game as "for game enthusiasts who enjoy Settlers of Catan or Ticket to Ride."  "It follows the European market as far as quality of play and the inventors," he said.   

Ilium is Playrooms second game in this category, which Rowen described as "games that play in just under an hour, have a lot of depth, and are for two to four players."  It's priced at $38, on the low side for the category.  Rowen explained that the pricing is important for Playroom's multi-channel strategy.  "Our products cross over into several segments, including the toy, educational, book, and gift markets," he said.  "We find that at a certain price point the toy market won't handle it at all.  We try to price competitively, and do that on all of our games."

Playroom plans to release about one new game in the category per year.  The 2007 release was Portobello Market.  Rowen said the company was very happy with the response.  "Portobello Market did really well once people started to play it," he said.