The last day is always a bit sad but a last chance to wander the halls and pick up on the games not yet seen. Today started with a blast as we finally got a table to try out Planta Nubo and I was very impressed. The game feels refreshing and original and despite Uwe Rosenberg being credited as co-author I’m pretty sure he is not the main designer here.

The game revolves around a “let’s build a forest in the clouds” theme. Each player has a board in front of them with a grid into which you must fit polyominoes with the usual stuff – bonuses if you cover certain spaces; some spaces which must be uncovered and so on. What makes the game interesting is that an action selection mechanic – which involves placing tools in the spaces between a grid of tiles surrounded by various coloured and shaped polyominoes – allows you to take polyominoes and when placing them you will populate them with matching-coloured cubes (one per square on each polyomino). Each cube must be cleared off which can be done by delivering to objective tiles (crates of 4-cube flowers being balloon-shipped out of town – these crates are either on a shared board or on your player mat) with the cubes having to match the objectives. Clearing spaces allows you to place woodland tiles; these tiles give you points or energy income and can be flipped for end game points (points are oxygen in the theme of the game).  Talking of energy: this can be gained in many ways and this is where the game starts to get interesting: the energy immediately moves a die which starts at value 1 and circles around your player board. As it moves it passes cards which you can buy from the board and adds a power-up to them in the form of a button or a battery. Both kinds of cards then give you bonuses when activated at the cost of one of these power-ups, and of course only when certain actions are taken, or at the end of the round. You have the ability to buy more of these cards during the actions, in competition with other players, and there is quite a range of them to buy. The die itself may also be powered up which makes the cards more powerful, and the very steps the die moves on can also be upgraded to yield energy.

There are a number of other clever elements to the game, such as flower pots, where you can store cubes to get them off the board, and compost tiles, which allow you to get a cube of your choice onto the board; there are also other features such as a robot which you can charge during the game and which allows you to take certain actions which otherwise would not be possible, as well as allowing you once per round to action two tiles that you place a tool next to instead of one. The round ends when you’ve used three of your four tools, the last tool is then placed in a matching column on the board to give you a specific bonus action. Since tools cannot be used next to  tiles where the same tool has already been used, there is an element of juicy interaction as you try to plan which tools to use where and when to use them before somebody else uses the same spot.

All in all the game left a very good impression on me, even though we only got through about half a game before we had to stop. The game was out of stock – probably a sign that testers had enjoyed it! – but from what I’ve seen so far, it was very smooth, original, engaging and looks like it will be getting a lot of plays.

Other games purchased today include “Five Peaks”, a mighty game packed into a little box for only €30, where the inserts double as component holders. Very neat. I didn’t actually play this at all, but it looked good and came highly recommended from two German gamers.

I also checked out a number of games from Korean company Playte. “Oh! meow Bow” is a cat and dog themed shedding game which I realised I’d actually already tried at the Gathering and which didn’t really light my fire as it didn’t add much – essentially you can add to a play by someone else instead of trying to beat it. They did have a lovely edition of “High Society”, the old Knizia game with revamped artwork done first by Osprey and I picked up an extra copy. Unfortunately “Dance of Ibexes“ and “Sardegna” were on the BGG preview list but not at the fair.

Company Kendi have a lot of small box games but many are roll and write which doesn’t get a lot of play at my club. Having already got the terrific looking “Draft and Write Records” – themed around rock bands and recording and touring, which looks like it will be a lot of fun – I was a bit saturated with roll and write games so I skipped over 3 of their new releases but took Ku-Ka-König which is a card game along the lines of “Majesty: For the Realm” in which you place multiple columns of 3 cards on the table and simultaneously for them, then arrange them in front of you to collect sets, with final points determined by the card properties, each card being different. If a bid is tied then one card is removed and the tied players go again. It looks light and interesting but not yet played.

Well Spiel has  rushed by and it’s time to go back to real life. Thanks for listening!

One PS: in my quick review of 5 Towers yesterday I forgot to mention two things: firstly the 8’s and 9’s are special as the 9 can be played on any card except a tower too; and any card can be played on an 8 (so lower cards can be played too). Secondly, the cards almost all show Easter Egg references to famous movies – very cute!