While we normally contribute more to full reviews, in the heady weeks just after SPIEL, everyone is playing as many games as possible – and frankly, spending more time playing games than writing!  Our writers have been contributing to a document where they give anonymous small reports on the new games that they’re playing.

These blurbs are meant to be anonymous; in part because given the rapid nature of these things, many of the games may have only been played once; and all comments below should be read with that important caveat.   Players will have changing reactions to games after multiple plays, and it certainly wouldn’t be fair to a game to write a review based on such small experience.

Of course, there is also benefit to see what some other gamers have thought about the games that they have already tried – and thus, we stick to this anonymous format of small first takes.  We will try to do a final one before the end of the year.

This year, we’ll try to organize the games in alphabetical order:

For part 1 of the recap, click here

For Part 2 of the recap, click here

For Part 3 of the recap – click here

3 Ring Circus – played one game solo… automata worked but had some confusing priorities. The game itself is gorgeous on the table, but the various icons are not always easy to suss out and the game wants you to do some VERY specific things in order to make scoring work.

5 Towers – bids were obvious most of the time and game did not impress

Ancient Knowledge – This was the one game I went into the weekend that I knew I wanted to play. I love games with card combos and tech bumps. Ancient Knowledge not only had those features, but came with a strong word of mouth. Unfortunately, the game looks unlikely to stand the tests of time for me, or even outlive the current era. All the powers and tech were in service of so little ado that I couldn’t bring myself to care. Players basically had two things to think about–points and knowledge. That could have been enough to power a short game, but this seemed to go on for ages.

Anunnaki: Dawn of the Gods – There is a decent game in here, and the action selection area (including its variable setup) occasionally leads to fun turns. But the production of this game! The player boards experienced very sharp warping right out of the box, the storage system is flawed, and the miniatures feel exceptionally cheap. Luciani has never let me down, so I needed to play this, but I’m disappointed by the overall result. Luckily, we have Nucleum to keep us warm at night.

Apiary – Like any Stonemaier game, I found this to be a plain and non-offensive game. No one is really going to upset anyone by playing and despite the lacquer, it’s a fairly vanilla kit-of-parts Euro as is so popular these days.

At the Office – Knizia roll’n’write that reminds me of Qwixx with a bit more theme. Not bad.

Barcelona – For me it is a miish-mash of actions and over-complex moving pieces most of which are virtually useless because almost all points come from placing citizens on the tracks to get VPs and scoring any old random building to get the lowest visible VPs -> in the last third of the game we were scoring 30-odd points a turn of which 20-25 or so came from the citizen track. The multipliers for the Modernism and the Cerda track scores were pretty low in comparison. In addition the whole theme while clearly driving the game elements did not at all come across in the actual game play which was just an abstract tile layer.

Boomerang: USA – drafting game with roll’n’write elements… liked it with two players.

Brass Empire – another rulebook that is badly organized (for a relatively straightforward deckbuilder). Just enough odd twists that aren’t well-laid-out on the cards to make it less than enjoyable.

Bubble King – cute theme for a real-time game… but a bad recipe draw at the beginning dooms your chances. Not interested.

Buffet Boss – a slightly more gamer-y take on stacking games… each player is working on their individual bowls of food. Really enjoyed this.

Builder’s High – I think I need a few more plays for an opinion to really settle in, but at first blush it was a bit too dependent on luck for me. It’s like a more fiddly version of Landlord.

Carry Me pig – blind bidding with whimsical theme but uninteresting gameplay.

Christmas Tree – set collecting game that worked well for us, despite most Christmas-themed games being horrible.

Come Sail Away – Probably my favorite of a (so far) mediocre crop of new games. I didn’t read the rule book, personally, but thematically one plays as a porter leading a conga line of passengers to various rooms in a ship. One of them always has a bag, and if you take them straight to their room you get a little bonus. Fill sections of the ship to score points and get other rewards. But by closing sections off you make it easier to leave some passengers disgruntled (definitely want to keep them gruntled). There’s also a little race element to fill certain amenities first. My only knock on the game is that having more doors on bonus cabins seems strictly better, and you can just get screwed by the random setup. I will house rule that next time I play.

Deductio – another enjoyable light deduction game that has a bit of gaming to it. If there are four players and one has a secret number that I have narrowed down to 50/50, do I take a guess, possibly handing the point to the next person? Or do I not and then not have a chance at that point if the next two players play the 50/50 game?

Dogfight!: Rule The Skies in 20 Minutes! – simple abstract game of dogfighting

DroPolter – New Oink that is a Geistblitz with some additional dexterity of maneuvering the objects in your hand. Tough, especially once the bells (points) get added to your hand. The ring is especially tricky to deal with! Not a big fan, but appreciate its existence.

Evacuation – gosh, I felt so punished by this game. There is some interactivity — more than Nucleum — but I felt pummeled by the game itself far more than any of my opponents. Was not for me, but I would like to play again soon to see if I learned any lessons.

Extravaganza – Thematically, a game about drag queens having a lip sync dance off is unique and amazing. We chuckled and snorted a few times while pulling out the cards with the various moves: “open for business”, “pound the pavement”, “crouching tiger, hidden snake”. Sadly, that’s where the enjoyment ended. The rulebook, while presented with comic book simplicity, left a lot to be desired. I still don’t know what we’re supposed to do with step 2 of setup. Once we muddled through and got under way the whole thing just clunked and wheezed. I would have pushed through to give it its fair due, but the others were so bored of it that we ended probably halfway through.

Fit to Print – Speed layout game. For context, I generally hate these kinds of games–quickly grabbing pieces from a common pool and trying to find the ones you’ll want/need later. This was on the better side of those kinds of activities, but still it is not for me. It was only because it was short that I agreed to try in the first place. Not sure why I played a second time. Maybe I thought having an idea of what was possible would help? Maybe I wanted to try it with the more advanced rules? I did win the second game, but didn’t enjoy it any more.

Flamme Rouge BMX – Flamme Rouge, only MUCH shorter. Great for families.

Footprints – a sort-of race game, sort-of points game. Sort of fun.

Fruitoplay – Simultaneous blind trick taking game with an interesting scoring mechanism: your score for a round is the suit with the most fruits times the suit with the fewest, The twist is that suits with zero fruits aren’t part of that equation, so the optimal situation is taking nearly all the cards of one suit and none of the other, the fruits on which would get squared. However, in practice the blind play is a little too random, I felt, and my one play left a bit of a sour taste in my mouth. There is some there there, though, and I would try it again.

FTW?! – Such a clever little game. In that realm of “how has this never been made before?” and a lovely arc to playing out a hand. I see this as an instant timeless classic in my library and want to play again. right. Now.

Havalandi – Knizia finds yet another way to lay tiles on a board to create scoring patterns… this time with balloons. Works fine but not particularly compelling.

House of Cats – a single solo play of level one… straightforward roll’n’write with custom dice. (Might have more going on with the higher levels.)

How Dare You? – Wits and Wagers type questions in the Liar’s Dice universe. One player asks a question with an integer for an answer, then gives a guess that they think is below the correct answer. Play goes around the table, with people either raising the previous guess or saying it’s too high. For the latter the answer is revealed and the loser gets the card with some negative silly geese heads on it. That synopsis would put the game soundly in my wheelhouse, though in practice it didn’t roll as smoothly as I’d want. One major problem is that anyone can declare that the previous answer was exactly correct. If they’re wrong they not only lose the challenge but end the game prematurely. That’s meant to be a cute nuclear option edge case that in theory should be rarely used, but all of our plays ended this way. If I buy the game (and I might) I will also house rule this away. I’ve given up on publishers playtesting enough to fix their own rules, I guess.

Infiltraitors – Group deduction game that did reveal some cool strategy over the course of a play. We did the first non-training scenario, and only read ahead to some of the more complex/difficult ones to come. While I would definitely play again, and can almost justify buying it, I’m not sure some of the later scenarios would be any fun.

Ito – cross The Mind (which I detest) with Fun Facts (which was not fun)… you can guess what I think of this one.

KINMO – a little too much take that for me.

Ku-Ka-Konig – simultaneous drafting game that was incredibly fun with 4 players. Recommended.

Ku-Ka Konig – The other Reinhard Staupe game I played. It’s…ok? Answers the question “what if you played Sushi Go with simultaneous drafting instead of passed around the table?” I think I’d still rather Sushi Go and even that is a low bar to clear.

Kutnà Hora: The City of Silver – I was looking forward to this… but it felt kind of flat. Mechanically, everything works – but I don’t need to play it again. (Hint: the mining element of the game is not an equal source of points to the city-building part of the game… concentrating on the mines is not a path to victory.

Lucky First Incense – Challengers-like… playing cards into tableau to fight for position – I’d rather play Challengers.

Lunar Laser Frogs – betting on dice (by throwing cards into the box) that was more fun than it deserved

Maudit Mot Dit – neat clue-giving word game burdened with nutball penalty card system

Monster Hide and Seek – double-sided memory game… I am just too old for this

Moon River – puzzle-piece implementation of Kingdomino. Scoring is more complicated and potential for AP downtime is greater as well.

Mycelia – deck-building with training wheels and an over-produced randomizer… would be interested in trying again with the “advanced” cards.

Nanatoridori – A simple shedding game where you can’t reorder your hand, but you can play sets from and return cards to it anywhere you like. The activity was fun, and there were a couple small aha moments, but in the end I can only see returning to it as a way to pass some time. There was no real wow factor or seeming depth.

Nekojima – Pretty, but fairly unremarkable otherwise.

New Eden – buy and use techs to make money and points in a deep sea station. You need divers and oxygen to get to the newer/better tech that is appended to the outer reaches of your complex. The fiddliest bit was tracking damage, both the current value and what you needed to be under by the end to qualify for end game scoring. The game works fine but left me wondering what it was about it that needed to be published. It has nothing I can’t get better from dozens of other games.

Nova Roma – a really cool central mechanism where there is a 4×4 grid seeded along the top and left with 8 different tasks. Place your piece on the grid to take those two actions. If you have more than one piece in a row, that action is stronger. Most of the ‘mini-games’ are not that exciting, but it all works really well.

Nucleum – I don’t think 3-player is a good count for this. In our game we felt super spread out with only two players vying for buildings and mines. It is not a game that I was expecting to enjoy (I didn’t), but the action selection system is one I found quite clever. Keep the action tile for its abilities or build with it for only one-time use.

Nucleum – Played this for a second time and I can now say with confidence that I love it.  The decisions between using Action tiles as rail links or keeping them in your supply, getting buildings and power elements onto the board, maintaining your Action tile supply, figuring out how to power your buildings, managing the Achievement board–it’s all great stuff.  Lots to think about and I’ve by no means mastered it (particularly the scoring), but it only took a game to get to the point where I think I know what I’m doing.  Seems to scale very well for 2-4 players.  This is currently my game of the year and I can’t wait to play it again!

Oh My. Orchids! – very pretty set-collecting game. OK.

Perspectives – like Sherlock Holmes: Consulting Detective if you cut the clues into pieces and wouldn’t let people show them to each other. Excruciating.

Planta Nubo – the rulebook is eccentrically organized and the gameplay is not particularly inspiring. The theme does not help connect the various elements of the game… and our three player game was 3 hours long. One positive note: the energy track is a cool idea. Will not play again.

Pocket Farm – puzzle-y game built out of cards overlaying each other. Don’t need to play it again.

Prey Another Day – simultaneous play that leads to relatively random results

Rebel Princess – Fairy tale princess card game where winning the hearts of princes is what you want to avoid. I had fun playing it, but it just felt a little too frothy, even for a light trick taker with special player power (which were not balanced, fwiw). Got a wide range of opinions at our local con including some happily ever after type love, but I personally felt once was too much time spent upon it.

Rebel Princess – trick-taking with twists that was not enjoyable.

Robot Quest Arena – take Star Realms; add cute robot sculpts & board play; shake well and serve. I liked it.

Sea Salt & Paper (with the expansion) – first play for the game and we just threw the expansion in. Nice set collection game with push-your-luck elements.

Secret Number – deduction-ish game that really relies on you guessing early with not enough information. Pass.

Sensu – the fan cards are a neat design element… otherwise, just a set-collecting game

Sherlock in Time – Competitive deduction games are tricky because everyone figures out the answer at around the same time. Same here – the game works fine and is fun to play, but it might need a bit more game to it to move it out of the concurrent puzzle realm.

Similo Essen 2023 – one of the few “mind-meld” games that I actually enjoy

Spellbloom – a pretty AP + tactical dice manipulation game that is a bit too fiddly for me, but would be fun for optimizers.

Spellbloom – a really thinky dice manipulation and card drafting game where you have about 13 actions to fill a spellbook by using dice to gain spells, but exhausting those dice, then resting to revive them, but every spell has special powers or end-game scoring. Symbol/color/spatial matching, but not in a boring way. Free actions include using mana to manipulate dice +/-1, using dice from the general pool, or wiping a row or column of spells. You can also activate spells with mana from the general pool, which you then collect in your personal pool with the rest action and mana scores points at game end.  

SpellBook – solid design with great variability

Stich fur Stich – I can definitely see how people wouldn’t like this if they came in thinking “TRICK TAKER!” but I thought it was a nice, new twist on the Mastermind formula. Quite enjoyed it though woudn’t need to own it.

Sunrise Lane – I was the one person at the table who liked this better than Rondo (though the red/pink colors are WAY too close).

Terraforming Mars: The Dice Game – I’m a huge fan of Terraforming Mars… and I really like Ares Expedition (once you add the expansions)… but the dice game was just so-so. About the same length as Ares Expedition, but felt like I had less control.

The Academy – trick-taking game with arcane rules and extra twists. Don’t need to play it again.

The Choice – The new Reinhard Staupe game I liked best. I picked up a copy to give to my parents. Pleasantly quick little RNW with asymmetric player sheets that induce many groans when rerolls are chosen. I like those groans :)

Ticket to Ride Legacy – Yeah, it’s pretty great. The base formula is one of my favorites ever and there are a bunch of fun mini-game twists that arrive as new regions are unlocked. My only complaint is that those mini-games are often shortlived and don’t play into a larger narrative through the campaign.

Time Collectors – production suggests a MUCH longer game than the 15-20 minutes it took us to play… at its heart, a set-collecting game with dice manipulation.

Tipperary – A cute tile laying game with enough tangential goals to make it interesting but not so many that it feels like point salad. The quick pace and short playing time is probably the key to this being a winner.

Town 77 – A little like Qwirkle crossed with Deep Sea Adventure, but not as compelling as either. Play one of your pieces into a 7×7 grid, but no other piece in that row or column can have the same shape or color. And you must play orthogonally adjacent to a previously played piece. As the game goes on it gets harder and harder to find legal places to put your pieces. Additionally, you can intentionally shed your pieces as you go, since the goal is to have the fewest left at the end. However, this makes it even less likely for you to have something valid to do on your turn. Timing when to start shedding seems to be the key. It feels like I’d need a few runs to get a real sense for optimal play, but it didn’t grab me enough to want to get there.

Town 77 – logic puzzle disguised as a game. No thank you.

Unmatched Adventures – I get the fun idea and simple turns, but for those who love it, what elevates it above Sentinels of the Multiverse? the board? the IPs? Other? Yes, I played and sold Epic Duels, so I knew I was not the target audience.

Urbify – worker placement to build a communal city… some interesting ways to use workers but overall the game didn’t excite

World Wonders – A fun spatial game that is somewhat unforgiving – you need to plan and which new monument magically appears when an old one is taken can swing things. I wonder if a track of ‘upcoming monuments’ would generate too much AP  Pretty monuments, but the game is more than that.

Zero Hero – drafting game with No Thanks!-ish element (the zero tokens)… it’s OK

Zoo Vadis – Went into this thinking I would not like the added rules in the reimplementation, but you know what? They rock! The animal abilities add some great areas for negotiation. I think it’s a much better version of the older game, and the setting is far more fun to play in.

Well, that’s it for this year.  Hope these little snippets help you get a feel for some of the new games!

Until your next appointment,

The Gaming Doctor