I stopped by Lucky Duck Games to check out their Paper App Dungeon, of which I’d heard good things. It has a reprint soon. I stuck around to look at Nestlings, a very pretty game of trying to feed your baby birds, filling in a little pie flower as you feed. Quartz: The Dice Game is a roll three times and take the actions shown to mine/steal/give away your gems. Captain Obvious is a party game where you try to make a sentence so obvious that you could fill in missing words. Finally, Tranquility: The Ascent is a stand-alone sequel where you cooperatively play square cards in a diamond orientation trying to build them up into a 9 layer mountain shape before you run out of cards. The catch lies in the fact that you often have to discard cards in order to play one.

Nestlings

Nestlings is a dice placement, resource drafting game where players are birds trying to gather resources over four different biomes. Each side of the board is its own biome, complete with stacks of colored discs (matching the biome) displaying various types of food. Players are trying to feed their nestlings but each nestling can only be fed by specific types of food – bugs, worms, seeds, et… During play, players roll their biome dice and then take turns placing them onto one of the four biomes on the board. Once all dice have been placed, the biomes are resolved. The player with the most dice at a location (ties broken by who got there first) gets to take one of the food disc there AND they get to discard one – possibly getting rid of something the next person wants. If they are locked out of what they really want, a player can put dice into the center area which allows them to pick food up from anywhere on the board – but only after everyone else has gone. When a bird is fed, a player will get a little pie “wedge” to add to their flower-looking wedge-tracker. Filling up a complete section of your tracker will grant a bonus while filling up the entire tracker awards 12 points at the end of the game. Meanwhile, during the game there are some shared goals. The first player to reach them scores points. Later players can also score that goal but for fewer points. After four rounds, the game ends. Players also score points for sets of resources gathered and points based on the progression of their pie pieces. Players are also assigned a secret nest goal for more points, which is revealed at the end of the game. 

Paper App Dungeon

I’ve heard some good things about Paper App Dungeon so I was interested in taking a look at the game. The next reprint of the game should be out in late September. Paper App Dungeon is a small spiral bound booklet consisting of pages of randomized mazes that are navigated by rolling a 6 sided die. Roll the die, move that far in a straight line, and then interact with anything along that line – monster, treasure, teleporter, etc… Each page in the booklet is a new “floor” to be explored. Treasure collected can be turned in for items at shops that are spread throughout the book. Part of the charm of the game is that the pages are randomly generated and thus every booklet is unique. The other festive item is a six-sided pencil provided with the game that also serves as a d6. The back of the booklet has a handy way to track a player’s stats over time – including how many times they die as they go through the book!

Quartz: The Dice Game

A 3-6 player game that follows the same general gameplay as Quartz – players are dwarves trying to mine for crystals. In Quartz: The Dice Game, players roll dice and reroll some or all the dice two more times (a total of 3 – unless you have a reroll token) to get the sides they want. The icons on the dice then determine the actions a player can take. If a player has multiple faces of the same type, that action is more efficient. Actions include mining for crystals (drawing them from a bag), stealing crystals from others, storing crystals in a safe chest (to prevent stealing), or giving away “bad” crystals to your opponents. The game is played for 6 rounds and players score their crystals at the end. Different colored crystals have different values but bonus points are earned for sets. The player with the fewest gems stored in their chest at the end of the game will also incur a loss of points.

Captain Obvious

A party game for 4 to 10 people, Captain Obvious has players writing a sentence on their hidden board based on a word on the trigger card and a die roll to determine the sentence length. As per the name, it is best to write a sentence that is totally an obvious statement. Players then pass their board to the left and that player will now erase one of the words on the card. It can’t be the word of the round, nor can it be something like an article (the, an, etc…) Players then try to guess the word with the writer and guesser gaining a point for a successful guess while the “eraser” player gaining a point if no one can guess the original written sentence. Look for it around the end of September.

Tranquility: The Ascent

A stand-alone sequel to Tranquility, Tranquility: The Ascent is also a cooperative game with 1-5 players playing cards to a central tableau. Here, the square cards are placed as diamonds in order to create rows that slowly create a pyramid. A bottom is formed that can hold nine cards, so if the pyramid is filled it will have 9 rows once the tip top card is added to the board. Cards are added to the tableau from left to right or a card can be placed to start a higher row – which then will also be filled left to right. Each card represents one of three terrains and has a number from 1 to 12. A card cannot be placed horizontally next to another terrain card of the same type. When a new card is placed, the active player must discard a number of cards equal to the difference of the current tile and its neighbor. Placing a 5 next to a 3 would require a discard of 2 cards. Finally, the cards are numbered 1 to 12 and cards must be greater than or equal to the row number. To win, the entire mountain needs to be completed by placing a Summit card at the very top. In addition to the summit cards, there are a few special cards. Bridge cards can be placed or placed adjacent to without discarding any cards. However, they must eventually be replaced before the game is complete. Campfire cards can steal cards from lower lower rows on the mountain and place them on top. If a player is ever unable to play a card, they must discard two cards instead. If players manage to complete the entire mountain pyramid before they run out of cards, the game is won. The game comes with three modules to complicate the game. Mostly, they add additional objectives or obstacles in the vertical direction that must be managed.