dV Games will always have a soft spot in my heart due to their bestselling Bang! Card game. I’m a big fan as long as players understand it’s a fast-moving game. I brought the game to my school and the students were so addicted that they could eat lunch and play two games during their 25 minute lunch hour. It was nice to see the (now classic) Bang!:The Bullet release from a while back that included the base game and three or four expansions but I hadn’t seen the Bang! Dynamite Box released a few years ago that contained everything ever made for the card game. All that Bang! Said, the dice version has its own new collection, Bang!: Dice Explosion that collects all of that version’s expansions as well. Other games in the booth coming soon include Lost in Adventure: The Labyrinth which is a co-op exploration game where players look at location cards to gather clues to interact with items and characters. Until Proven Guilty is an app-driven game of examining evidence cards to find which evidence is the actual incriminating stuff. An app handles the trial, giving feedback as to whether evidence presented matches the case or not. Fans of the tile collecting and laying Bonsai will want to know about Bonsai: Wabi Sabi which has several modules that can be added to the game, including everything needed to add a fifth player. Finally, we have Rumblebots – a deckbuilder version of the popular Auto Battler videogame genre. Players build up their bots, send them into battle, gain resources, build them up (or add more bots) through six rounds to declare a final winner. There are similarities to Challengers! but I don’t know enough details of Rumblebots to make a comparison.

Lost in Adventure: The Labyrinth

Lost in Adventure: The Labyrinth is a cooperative game that has players placing cards to move and interact with the environment (the Minotaur labyrinth in this case) as a single character (controlled by all) investigates things.  In a choose your own adventure style, players can move to new locations between cards and interact with characters and items. Location cards show available interactions which will lead to more cards, etc… Players have to maintain their Courage as a sort of game-ending tracker while they are trying to fulfill prophecies and gain favor which serve as points. The game will be out in September, runs about $20, works with 1-6 people and takes about an hour to play. Due to the way the cards come into play, one might be able to play it another time or two before maxing out all it has to offer. As you could guess by the name, there should be more Lost in Adventure games in the future.

Until Proven Guilty

Until Proven Guilty is another narrative cooperative game loosely based around novels, TV, and videogames with a trial theme. Here players are trying to win over a jury by playing evidence cards. The game uses a web app and a cute little cardboard jury box to track how well you’re winning them over to your side. Players flip over a card from a deck of (about 20-ish) cards and look at them to try to find incriminating evidence.  Players suggest evidence (from cards) that they think is incriminating to the app. If that is correct, some jurors will flip over to the blue side. If the evidence is not correctly applied, jurors flip to the red side but players get another hint as to which evidence is going to be useful.  The game also releases in September

Bang!: Dice Explosion

Bang! The Dice Game takes the sheriff & deputies vs outlaws formula and boils it down to a dice-chucking game. The method has changed, dice are now healing and doing damage instead of cards, but the hidden role problem is still present – who are your friends and who are your enemies? Yet another game coming in September, Bang: Dice Explosion is a dynamite-shaped container with the base dice game, the two previous expansions (Old Saloon and Undead or Alive), and one small mini-expansion called The Brave 4, which consists of four new characters to play – Flint Westwood, John Pain, Big Spencer, and Teren Kill. 

Bonsai: Wabi Sabi

Coming sometime in Q4, Bansai: Wabi Sabi is an expansion to the base game of cultivating bonsai trees through tile acquisition and placement. This expansion consists of several different modules that can be mixed and matched to modify the base game. Shitakusa Tiles double the scoring of goal tiles, there are new goal tiles, pieces to include a 5th player, new types of Zen cards, and a set of solo challenges.

Rumblebots  

Coming down the pike sometime next year, Rumblebots is a deckbuilding version of the popular Auto Battler style of videogame. In these games, players choose and send out characters to battle autonomously, earning resources when they win and lose. Players then use the resources to recruit and improve their characters to prepare them for another round. Over the course of six rounds, Rumblebots has players constructing their bot and then battling it out with the other robots. The most common resource is scrap which is used to build new bots and upgrade existing bots. During the battle phase, the last robot standing wins an award of crystals which can power up bots, upgrade one’s workshop, be used to look-ahead in decks, or be turned into additional scrap. Some other features in the game include critical hits – four of them will often automatically win a bout – and transforming bots. Some will transform into a more powerful version under specific conditions – for example, if it is the last bot left. The game handles 2-4 players and runs about an hour.

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