There were several interesting abstracts due to come out at the Essen show this year, but I didn't make it there myself. I'll be filling out these notes as I get more details about the games that I missed seeing in person and add links to review as soon as I've had a chance to find and play them.
Mondriaan 2020
A simple and quick tile-laying game in which players lay modern-art styled tiles to match and extend coloured regions on the board. Has been playable online for a while, but was just recently published in a physical form.
Schokoly
This is an extension of last year's Scho K.O., a fast tile-layer game with chocolate graphics where players vied to create the largest connection region in their own light or dark chocolate squares. Schokoly adds a third colour of chocolate and added separate special pieces that allow or prevent the laying of a second layer of chocolate.
Shibumi
And several other interesting games from Nestorgames released in the run-up to Essen. Shibumi is a game system with multi-coloured balls stackable in a 4-3-2-1 pyramid, an arrangement that will be familiar with anyone who has played Gigamic's Pylos. Several games have already been created for the system.
Talat
Orginally published as Drei, this game was invented as a specifically 3-player abstract game in which players each play on two of the three available boards, choosing which of their two opponents to move against on each turn. This seems a very niche game, but I'm looking forward to seeing how it plays.
more to come as I get more information.