Czech Games Edition was once again in their handy room across from the exhibit hall. It’s a great place to drop in and try out their games and I love that they open up at 9 am – a full hour before the main hall. I was able to get a rundown on the new deduction/resource game Little Alchemists. App driven like its older sibling (Alchemists), it doles out similar gameplay over the course of a seven level campaign that starts very basic and slowly adds in new mechanics. Snatch It! is a take-that card game of frogs competing for food which is accomplished by creating stacks of similar cards. I was hooked by the giant kitten arms and had to check out Fish & Katz – a sort of simultaneous slapjack to claim sets of fish cards. Look for the Codenames app to finally release in September and finally, we have SETI: The Search for Extraterrestrials. This is a meaty Eurogame full of resources, cards as actions, tech trees, shared effort to unlock alien tech, and a very nifty central board full of rings that can be explored but also rotated to mess with the other players. 

Little Alchemists

As its name implies, Little Alchemists is a lightweight game along the lines of the original Alchemist. Who doesn’t like exploring the hidden depths of one’s grandparents’ basement? I suspect your grandparents’ chemistry set is much more interesting than what you could get today. Little Alchemists is all about mixing up ingredients to see what you get. Once you’ve made some potions, it’s time to sell them! Just make sure to use those big, sad eyes to get a good price. Players have a selection of various ingredients but do not know what they will get when they mix. Like its older sibling, Little Alchemists uses an app as part of the gameplay. The app can also serve as a tutorial to get players into the game. During the game a player scans a pair of ingredients into the app and is informed of what they get when combined. Players can secretly note the result behind their player screen while everyone else just knows the final potion. The first part of the game is simply getting ingredients, scanning them, and trying to figure out the combinations (they’re different every game.) The second part of the game has customers arriving. Players each get a chance to create the correct potion to sell the customer, earning coins if successful. (Coins are used to buy more ingredients from the market, although players also get two random ones per round.) Once all customers have come and gone, the game ends. The player with the highest number of coins wins the game. Little Alchemist is sort of a legacy game, designed to teach the game and slowly add some complexity. The game has seven chapters (each in a handy little cardboard box) and, depending on the final result of a game, the app will tell players when they’re ready to move to the next chapter. Hopefully, without spoiling anything I can say that the first chapter teaches the extreme basic concepts of the game and needs only to be played once. Further chapters may need to be played more than one time to progress. Chapter 2 is actually when the deduction part of the game comes into play. Players start using the app to try and sort out the various ingredient combinations. The third chapter introduces new ingredients and customers and starts to bring in some lightweight eurogame elements. The game plays 2 to 4 players and is listed at ages 7+, but that is primarily due to the components and could easily work well with even younger gamers – who are allowed to play with an app of course..

Snatch It!

Snatch It! comes to CGE through their German language partner. It’s a 3-6 player take-that sort of party card game where each player is a frog, trying to gobble up food before the storks get ahold of it. Players either snatch the food from the communal pond or try to steal food from other players. The deck of cards consists of orange (crawler) cards, purple (flyer) cards, and blue (swarm) cards. Cards also have a number, 1 to 6 for orange and purple and all blue cards can be 0 or 7. The game starts with six cards in the center. To capture another card (from the pond or another player’s stack) one must play a card of the same color (orange or purple) and exactly the same number or 1 number higher.  Swarms can capture or be captured by the other colors but it can’t capture itself (by playing a swarm of a matching number.)  When a card from the middle is snatched, the stack of 2 cards are moved into your personal area. You may instead play on top of another player’s stack – if so, the stack is now moved into your area. You may not look at the contents of the stack. A player can defend their stack by playing a valid card on top of the attempted-stealer’s card. If so, the stack stays but the stealing player gets a consolation card from the deck. In addition to stealing or snatching, a player may swallow a stack. This is done by placing a personal stack on top of a card in the middle of the table ( using the top card of the stack to follow stacking rules.) Once captured, the entire stack of cards is now placed face-down next to the player and are not eligible to be stolen. One final action option is to play a card into the middle of the table (perhaps for later), but only if that card cannot validly snatch or steal another card on the table. Once the table or everyone’s hands are empty, the storks come. Players refill their hand and then choose a card to lay on the table. These are shuffled and one is flipped up as the Bait card. Each player’s largest stack of that color is “eaten”. Then the rest of the bait cards are flipped up to fill the middle and a new round of snatching and stealing begins. The game continues until the Last Bite card is revealed. Players get to keep all their stacks as well as their eaten cards. Purple and orange cards are worth 1 point while blue swarm cards are worth 3. I have to give the game props for one of the coolest setups I’ve seen in a card game. At the start of the game, the Last Bite card is inserted into the stack using a measurement tool on the corner of one of the cards. Insert it into the deck at a location close to the line for that number of players… very cool!

SETI: Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence

SETI has 1-4 players looking for intelligence out there in the deepness of space. Rather than lean into a sci-fi future, it is set more in the current-day. To set up the game, players select two (out of a possible 5) types of intelligent signals to search for in the game – things like a suspicious asteroid or a far off radio signal. Each type of intelligence will add a different mechanic to the game. The mechanic will kick in during the game only after the alien tile is unlocked. Players must work together (although it is not a co-op game) to look for three different types of signals using their resources – money, resources, and cards. Players take turns selecting actions (sometimes getting a bonus action) until everyone passes. Options include launching probes – these are placed at the center of the board which is actually several concentric, turning circles. These probes can slowly be moved outward to other rings on future turns. Another option is to put probes next to a planet. This action is cheaper if there are already other people there.  This action grants different rewards depending on the location. In orbit, a player gains resources; on the planet itself, will gain points and can help unlock various upgrades; only one player may place on the planet’s moon (which requires technology) which grants better returns than the other two locations. Yet another option is to look at the outer rim with telescopes. This involves the nifty circular board with the slots for discs. Players put out their data cubes here and when one is filled the player with the majority gains an alien discovery. The wheel spins whenever a player gets a tech upgrade. One layer is rotated and players might have the chance to push others into an asteroid field – which is more difficult to leave. As one might expect, it is a technology-heavy game with lots of upgrades available (purchased with reputation) for probes, telescopes, or a player’s personal board. Players each have their own deck of cards which can be spent as an action. They can be discarded for resources, spent to do the mission listed on the card, or used to increase a player’s income in future rounds. An exchange market is available in case a player just can’t get the resources they need, they will still be available but at a premium. There’s an option to add in goal cards if players wish. The game should be out at Essen, with a US release in December.

Fish & Katz

Originally out in 2020, but releasing in the US in 2024, Fish & Katz has 2-6 kittens playing slapjack using little kitten paw socks slipped over their finger like a finger puppet. Several fish cards are laid out on the table and on the count of three everyone slaps their paw-finger onto the card of their choice. Cards are then distributed only to players who had the only paw on a card. If two or more players choose the same card it is discarded and no one gets it. Cards in the middle are replaced and one again everyone chooses simultaneously. The goal is to get a set of three or more of the same fish card. Once someone has earned two sets of different fish the round ends and players score. The fish cards have different distributions, with the more common cards worth fewer points as a set. Play goes over several rounds until a player reaches the set score needed to win. CGE had a giant-sized version of the game they were showing off and I made sure my sons came by to give it a whorl. 

Extra Large Games

CGE typically brings some XXXXXL sized games for people to try out. I need to give Galaxy Trucker a spin sometime. Under Falling Skies looked almost like a huge arcade game, and I’ve already mentioned the giant-sized version of Fish & Katz.