Alison Brennan: Game Snapshots – 2026 (Part 12)

Posted on March 23, 2026 by opgamers

 

 

New-to-me games played recently include …

COVENANT (2025): Rank 2072, Rating 7.8

Another bog box, big rules Euro. There are 12 actions to advance up tracks and engineer lots of chaining and bonus effects. Your actions are either dig (claim resources), buy buildings (for points), build buildings on the board (for points), clear enemies away from your buildings (for points). These are balanced so unless and until you specialise by buying action tiles, you’ll be doing each of them once each round. There are only 3 rounds. Uh huh. A key part of the game is triggering bonus effects that increase the action points of your 4 meeples which allows you to dig more, buy more, build more, kill more. I guess the replay is in finding that opportunity cost balance. It was fine to explore but I’ll confess I gradually cared less and less about hunting the best chains as the turns got longer.

 

Continue reading →

Posted in Sessions | Leave a comment

Dale Yu: Review of The Phantom of the Opera

Posted on March 22, 2026 by Dale Yu

 

 

The Phantom of the Opera

  • Designer: Geonil
  • Publisher: Korea Board Games
  • Players: 2
  • Age: 10+
  • Time: 20 minutes
  • Played with review copy provided by publisher

The Phantom of the Opera is a tense two-player trick-taking duel inspired by Gaston Leroux’s classic tale. One player is the Phantom, striving to compose a perfect musical score, while the other is Christine, trying to disrupt his melody and break free.

 

Continue reading →

Posted in Essen 2025, Reviews | Leave a comment

Dale Yu: Preview of The Color Monster Travel Edition

Posted on March 21, 2026 by Dale Yu

 

 

The Color Monster Travel Edition

  • Designer: Anna Llenas, Josep M. Allue, Dani Gomez
  • Publisher: Devir
  • Players: 2-5
  • Age: 3+
  • Time: 20 minutes
  • Amazon affiliate link: https://amzn.to/4aCIwEA
  • Played with review copy provided by publisher

Players in The Color Monster collaborate to help the Monster figure out his emotions. In turns, they roll the die that allows them to move the Monster around the board. When the Monster goes to a space with an emotion token, the player can pick it up and look for the right jar. The jars are all placed on shelves with their colors hidden. If the player chooses the jar which matches the color of the emotion, then they can place the emotion token into the jar. Otherwise, the jar goes back to the shelf as it was. In order to pick up an emotion token, players have to explain a memory or a situation in which they feel like the emotion they are picking up (Happiness, Sadness, Anger, Fear or Calm). The players can lose the game if the Monster gets too confused and they flip over too many mixed emotion jars, or win the game when the emotions are all placed in their correct jars.

  Continue reading →

Posted in Preview | Leave a comment

Dale Yu: Review of Fantastic Trails

Posted on March 20, 2026 by Dale Yu

 

 

Fantastic Trails

  • Designer: Jordy Adan
  • Publisher: NSV
  • Players: 1-4
  • Age: 10+
  • Time: 30 minutes
  • Played with review copy provided by publisher

Fantastic Trails challenges you to help ants through the forest by creating valuable trails that will cover lots of ground, ideally picking up honeydew along the way.

 

 

 

Continue reading →

Posted in Essen 2025, Reviews | Leave a comment

Dale Yu: Review of Tatsumi

Posted on March 19, 2026 by Dale Yu

 

 

Tatsumi

  • Designer: Jeremy Rozenhart 
  • Publisher: Adam’s Apple Games
  • Players: 1-4
  • Age: 10+
  • Time: 40 minutes
  • Played with review copy provided by publisher

In Tatsumi, the island celebrates you as their guardian dragon, their Tatsu. Your calling is to restore the elements on your island and renew good fortune for your people. Drafting resources, collecting sets, and scoring bonuses in Tatsumi relies on the position of your dragon avatar on the seaboard, creating a more immersive and believable abstract strategy experience. The seaboard randomizes and stages the entire game’s resources into a 3-dimensional central board so you can strategically look ahead planning when to collect and when to score.

The tile-placement in Tatsumi has a puzzly yet satisfying feel through a clever combination of engine-building, instant scoring, and elemental inspired end game tile-placement bonuses for you to maximize.  Each player may play with a symmetric setup for learning or competition, or a fully asymmetric island and dragon combination for tons of replayability.

Fans will appreciate the intuitive gameplay, elevated componentry, and additional features specifically developed to extend beyond gateway games in this genre for gamers that enjoy solo-play, symmetric and asymmetric combinations, and a multigame feel packed into a single box.

 

Continue reading →

Posted in Essen 2025, Reviews | Leave a comment

Dale Yu: Review of Troublebot

Posted on March 18, 2026 by Dale Yu

 

 

Troublebot

  • Designer: Shun Taguchi, Aya Taguchi
  • Publisher: Loosey Goosey
  • Players: 2-4
  • Age: 10+
  • Time: 15 minutes 
  • Played with review copy provided by publisher

Cause trouble – ’cause causing trouble is fun!

Troublebot is a lean, mean card game of many small but meaningful decisions. Whenever it is your turn, you get to pick up a new shroombot. Then you play one of the two shroombots in your hand and perform its action.

While most effects help you take care of your seedlings, some will cause the other players trouble. If you have the most valuable seedlings in the end, you win.

 

Continue reading →

Posted in Essen 2025, Reviews | Leave a comment