The con is over but I still have scraps of photos left. Let’s take a few last gasps of effort to cover those stragglers I left behind. It’s now the lightning round and we’ll start the last few 25th Century Games has more of the party game Green Team Wins and the tile-placing Donut Shop. Alley Cat Games sold out of the polyomino furniture decorating Happy Home and the cute Pusheen: The Stacking Game! (a speed stacking game.) I happened to cross paths with Bézier Games again to look at the hidden-information (to the player!) trick taking game Xylotar and the new deluxe edition of Rebel Princess. Blue Orange Games had their next game in the roll & write Next Station line, this time in Paris with a giant center station and Parisian monuments that can connect for extra points. Mattel had the adult fast-talking game of Bad Interviews where players try to convince the Manager player that their random hand of Qualification cards match the current job opening. Rock ‘Em Sock ‘Em Robots Fight Cards is basically slapjack with inflatable boxing gloves put on the players’ hands. In Pictionary vs. AI, players try to draw well enough for an AI to figure out the meaning of their picture. There is also a new Anniversary Edition to the award winning co-op Ghost Fightin’ Treasure Hunters that also includes a 1 vs many game mode. Finally, Moose Games managed to attract my boys with their sold-out Pickleball Blast! – a dexterity game of smacking a pickle on a rod back and forth. I stayed in the booth to also get a rundown on Wild Flowers where players place petals down on a central board to form flowers, hopefully earning lots of bonus points by fulfilling specific goal cards in their hand.

25th Century Games

Donut Shop

Our very own Jeff Allers has created Donut Shop for your sweet gaming pleasure. Players are trying to arrange the donuts in the common display case while also trying to fulfill orders (sprinkles earn bonus points.) A player first adds a donut to the display case, earning points for connecting donuts of the same type. They may then “box up” donuts by placing one of their order cards on top of the matching donut arrangement on the board, earning extra points, of course. Just don’t play the game on an empty stomach!

Green Team Wins: Holiday Party

Green Team Wins is a party game where one tries to match the most common answer chosen by the group. If correct (the most popular answer in the group), earn a point and join the Green Team. Incorrect answers relegate you to the Orange Team. If you are already on the Green Team and are correct, you gain a bonus point (for a total of 2 points for that round.) Play until 15 questions are read and find the winner. Holiday Party, of course, adds in holiday themed questions like “What’s the perfect holiday cookie shape?” etc…

Alley Cat Games

Happy Home 

Happy Home has players decorating their house using polyomino furniture tiles. Points can be earned by placing sets of furniture in a room as well as fulfilling objectives. Furniture is obtained by moving your coupleeple (couple-eeple) along the Shop track. Jumping ahead to particularly desired furniture can be done, but gives a big advantage to the other players. The active player is always the player who is last along the Shop track.  

Ada’s Dream

Ada’s Dream is an engine building game of building engines with Ada Lovelace. Players Dice are taken from a central rondel or are used to fulfill an action (depending on the color of the die.) Taking dice has a fun little mechanism where you pick a die to move and then can spit-out and claim a die of a lower value. Cards can then be played which moves one up the appropriate research track. The cards are a bit of a limited deckbuilder. You can gain new, more powerful ones but they replace one of your others. The main goal is to fill up your personal machine board, earning points for filled rows and columns as well as many of the various activities you can also get up to during the game.

Pusheen: The Stacking Game!

Pusheen is reimplementation of Kittin, which is a racing stacking game. A card is flipped and then players race to recreate the image shown by stacking up their little wooden animal meeples. For those unaware, Plusheen is a little cartoon cat, popular on the interwebs, found as stickers and plush toys, often appearing on various social media. 

Paper Dungeons: A Dungeon Scrawler Game

Alley Cat Games had the base game and a few of last year’s expansions of this roll & write of dungeon crawling. One aspect I like is that you not only move around through the dungeon but you also use the dice to level up and improve your explorers. The Side Quest Expansion adds in stuff that makes the game harder, like deadlier traps, stronger bosses, and “lieutenant” monsters.

Rome in a Day

Rome in a Day is another last-year’s games based around each player putting things into two piles and then players choose amongst all the available piles. Players are trying to place specific buildings next to their associate terrain, multiplied by the number buildings for each type of lands.

Bézier Games (Redux!)

Xylotar

I know I already wrote about Bézier Games, but I forgot that I visited the booth twice! Once early in the con but a second time with my boys. I couldn’t resist forcing my eldest to try out the Xylotar (he’s a percussionist, after all…) Xylotar puts a big twist on trick taking games. Players know the colors of their cards and the order of the cards relative to each other. However, they don’t know the actual numbers. Players have to suss out just what cards they have and how they should bid. Bidding is another surprise as it requires flipping up two adjacent cards and using one of the two numbers as your actual bid!

Rebel Princess Deluxe Edition

Bézier has republished this card game in a deluxe edition. It is more or less a trick taking game that occurs over five rounds, each round representing a day in a 5-day party. Each round has its own special rule. Players are trying to avoid getting marriage proposals, which maps on the game as trying to avoid taking tricks. Each player is a different fairy tale princess and has a special ability usable once per round. The deluxe edition upgrades some of the components, adds in 2 new princesses, 6 new round cards, some balance tweaks, and a new mechanism to help players catch up if they fall too far behind. (Surprise Note! Dale Yu just put up his full review of the game the same day as this run-down… go see it for more details…)

Blue Orange Games

Next Station: Paris

Blue Orange had the newest entry in the Next Station line of roll & writes. The Next Station line has players flipping up a Station card, drawing a line on their personal map board that connects to a station of that shape. Four different colored pencils are used and passed around so that each player will end up making four entirely different subway lines, one of each color. Points are scored for how many areas connect to a line, connecting French monuments, and stations that have more than one color connecting to them. The game can also be played with shared objective cards (2 picked from 5) that award a whopping 10 points to any player who completes them. Another module gives players immediate bonuses for reaching one of the four corner stations on the map. Every Next Station game has a set of bonus modules and they can be mixed and matched (as a set) with any of the Next Station games.

Mattel

Bad Interviews by Funemployed

Bad Interviews has (adult) players trying to use their Qualification Cards to make a case for why they should be hired for the job presented by the Manager. Hopefully, the humor comes from players doing their best to explain just how their ridiculous qualifications are relevant.  

Rock ‘Em Sock ‘Em Robots Fight Cards

Rock ‘Em Sock ‘Em Robots Fight Cards gives one player on each team an inflatable boxing glove. Cards are flipped until a matching one appears. They then, unfortunately, don’t get to smack the other player. Instead, they slap the offending card. Fastest smacker wins the cards and the glove is passed to the next players on the teams.

Pictionary vs. AI

I didn’t see it last year, but this version of Pictionary has players making a sketch of an object or an idea. Then players try to predict which image a neural network AI will pick as the drawing closest to the prompt.   

Ghost Fightin’ Treasure Hunters: Anniversary Edition

I’m a big fan of the original version of the award-winning  cooperative game.  This new version adds in a 1 vs many haunting mode that is not found in the original co-op only game. Unfortunately for me, it isn’t compatible with the Creepy Cellar Expansion. Either way, it’s a great coop game suitable for younger players but deep enough to be played by gamers.

Moose Games

Pickleball Blast!

I was lured to Moose Games’ booth due to the siren song of their Pickleball Blast!’s effect on my sons. It apparently affected others the same way, as it was sold out at the show. This is a little dexterity game where each player is given a gun-like flipper that smacks a paddle upward when pulled. This is then used to smack a literal plastic pickle towards the enemy. The pickle is on a stiff wire attached to the center of the board so it will swing back and forth in an arc between sides. Hit and flip your opponents three targets before they flip yours to win the game.

Wild Flowers

Wild Flowers has players placing one to three double-ended flower petals to the board each turn. Petals played on the board must match up with the flowers being created there (I seem to recall white petals are wild.) At any point in their turn, a player can place a bumblebee token on a flower to claim it. Bees on completed flowers earn one point at the end of the game. The big point earners are players’ objective cards. Each player has three Garden Cards with specific objectives like finishing a flower next to a purple flower, finishing a flower by placing two tiles in one turn, or finishing a pink flower somewhere in the middle of the board. These cards are worth 1 to 5 points when met, so are the main source of points during the game. When someone has finished off five of their own bee-occupied flowers, the game ends.