Thunderworks Games and Dead Alive Games both had several more light to medium-weight games to show off. Most of them were card-based in some way.

Thunderworks has Fliptoons which is a sort of deckbuilder but players flip up cards in a 2×3 grid to see their results. Citizens of the Spark is a bit deeper. Players claim cards from the center, place them in their own area, and can then use the card abilities which are more powerful if a player has more of that type of card. Emerald Skulls is a push your luck die-rolling game as you place rolled dice on a skull from teeth up to forehead. Finally, there will be two expansions for Tenpenny Parks launching this fall. One entitled Innovation with more “stuff” and the other expansion a two-in-one, Winter Lights and Spooky Nights. Each of those have a bit of a holiday theme. Other news includes a big-box Cartographers Adventures game and a smallish box that’s kind of a mashup of roll player and a Call to Adventure-style game.

Meanwhile, the Dead Alive Games booth had the tick-taking game Lunar Skyline. It’s trick, as it were, is that all cards have two suits, you just have to follow either one. Kittens in Space is a shedding uno-like game where players can manipulate which of four piles their opponent can use on any given turn. Cat Rescue, a game of cat tile placement with “tile pushing” is back in a second edition which now includes rules for competitive play. Finally, an expansion for Lunar Rush, Innovations, adds in a fifth player and five asymmetric factions to your Lunar Rush game.

Thunderworks Games

Fliptoons

Fliptoons is a sort of mini-deckbuilding game for 1 to 4 players, coming out September 16th. The cards in the game are cartoon actors and they are played out on the table as part of some sort of production, attempting to earn fame (VPs) for the studio (player.) To start their turn, a player will shuffle their deck and then deal it out into a 2×3 grid.

The flipped cards will have fame and various special abilities. Many (most?) special abilities rely on the cards location or its location relative to other cards – vaguely similar to how a slot machine might work. After playing out one’s cards, a player takes two actions. These include buying a new card or or “firing” one of your old ones (for 5 fame.) You may do the same action twice or one of each. Cards are bought from a central market and their price depends on the slot in which they rest (3,4,7,10,15.) However, cards are always reordered from “weakest” to “most powerful” so you might get a good card at discount but shouldn’t get one for a total steal.

The game continues until someone manages to get 30 fame in a single flip on their 2×3 grid. They then earn a +3 fame token (for the last flip) and everyone has one final flip. The best score on that final flip wins the whole game. The solo game has players given a set number of cards to work through and the goal is to pull off a 30 point flip before running out of cards.

There are quite a few “powers” for the cards, again mostly either affected by or affecting a card’s neighbor. Examples include: An alligator will “eat” the card to the right (removing it from your deck for “free” – hope you didn’t want it.) A snake will grab a random card from the draw pile and add it to your deck. Skunks let the player with the least fame “fire” a card for free. Rabbit cards stack. A played monkey card moves up to the top. If you have a caterpillar (which I think is one of the starting cards) the butterfly card will get rid of it. For easy reference, each card also indicates how many of that card are in the game deck.

At the convention, there was a mini expansion for the game: Big Button Mini-Expansion. This gave players a button card at the start of the game. It allowed a player for one free “do-over” during the game, if their 2×3 grid just isn’t cutting the mustard. The expansion also adds in an axolotl mechanic card who can “fix” your button so that you can use it again. While I have not yet played a full game, it seems to me that having a do-over button would do wonders to help limit the occasional bad-luck. I don’t see why players wouldn’t house-rule that everyone gets a button, even if they don’t have the expansion.

Citizens of the Spark

Released on August 6th, Citizens of the Spark has one to five players acquiring animal cards from a central 3×3 tableau. These are placed in a player’s area, resulting in a bit of engine-building throughout the game. On a turn, a player selects one of the three rows of cards in the center and adds them to their personal area. Cards in one’s personal area are stacked into groups of identical cards. (Games use around 7 to 10 different card types per game, selected from 30 possible creatures.) As a player gets more of the same type of card, the engine-building part of the game comes into play.

After taking cards from the center, a player may play a card from their personal area. The strength of the card action is almost always related to the number of cards of that type in one’s area. Thus, playing a card from one of your larger stacks will be very powerful, but it also makes that stack just a little bit less powerful. When a specific animal card is played, every other player may also play a card of the same type of animal, gaining its benefit based on the size of their personal stack (not the active player’s.)

There are a huge number of creature cards (30) to choose from when setting up a game. The rules give a list of eight different suggested card sets from which to choose, depending on what the players are looking for: a first game, lots or no player interaction, etc…

Emerald Skulls

Emerald Skulls is a lightweight push-your-luck dice rolling game for two to six players (with an expansion that takes it to eight.) The active player rolls a bunch of dice (players can earn gems in the game and spend them to start with more dice in a round) while the other players will be making bets on the active player. The currency in the game is gems and the game lasts until the central pot of games is gone. Players are trying to build a skull out of their dice pool, placing dice in increasing order from bottom (teeth) to top (skull eye.)

Different locations on the board can hold different numbers of dice. However, once a player starts to add dice to an upper level, they cannot go back and add them to a lower level. A player may place any number of teeth (1’s and 2’s) and even unlimited nose dice (3’s.) However, a skull can only have two eyes (5’s) and one forehead gem (a 6.) Players earn gems for each die placed (more gems for higher-level dice) but if they can roll a “perfect” skull (3 teeth, a nose, two eyes, and a forehead gem) it is a big score.

It’s possible to earn rerolls for future use, usually from getting dice into the nose. Players can “pick their nose” and remove a dice from the nose slot to get a reroll. Of course, you only have two nostrils, so you can’t do that more than twice in a run.

Tenpenny Parks

Sometime this fall will be a Kickstarter campaign for two expansions to the Tenpenny Parks game. The Innovation expansion adds in more “stuff” in general but probably a bit more on the technical side, making the game just a bit more crunchy or closer to a medium-weight game.

The second expansion has two parts: Winter Lights and Spooky Nights, both themed around the obvious holidays. Winter Lights has players giving each other “gifts” (positive things to your opponents) and receiving the benefits of advancing along the Cheer Track. Basically, the track alternates between giving an opponent a benefit and gaining one yourself. Lots of stuff involves trees in the park, including some tree-ples included in the expansion which are decorated for the season. The Spooky Nights expansion has ghost meeples (ghosteeples?, gheeples?) that provide a secret bonus, indicated on their bottom. The bonus is only discovered after a player convinces one to get on one of their rides. The expansion also included haunted rides, which are cheaper than their non-haunted fellows. When put all together there are new rides, new boards, new stuff in general and it can all be used together or separately in a game.

Upcoming News – Cartographers Adventures and “Questline” (name may change)
Cartographers Adventures is “coming soon.” It is a big box, story-driven version of Cartographers where layers will be playing through different maps. The game will have co-op vibes but will still have a winner of some type. Another game will be a small box (Emerald Skull sized) game that plays a bit like Roll Player but has a sort of storytelling aspect.

Dead Alive Games

Lunar Skyline

Lunar Skyline is a trick-taking game for two to six players. One of the tricks here is that every card has two suits (as shown on the hexagonal color wheel card below.) Players only have to follow one of the two suits when playing their cards in a trick. There are no trumps, and if you can’t follow either icon, you get to smuggle a single card into your personal pile – which counts as a trick for you.

At the start of the round, players must give up one of their cards as their bid. If a player makes their bid, they get to pick up a point card. (Earning an extra point if this matches their bid card.) This happens as soon as a player makes their bid, so making your bid early is better. However, every card over your bid will also cost you -2 points.

Players may also use a bonus module for the game that introduces bonus points depending on icons appearing in your “resources” (won tricks) at the end of the round.

Kittens in Space

Kittens in Space 1-6 players, on Kickstarter in August) is a little bit like a multi-deck game of Uno. It’s a small box, casual game of card shedding. There are four stacks of cards and players are placing cards either up or down by no more than two (ie +/- 1 or 2) numbers. There is a horizontal card that displays a – (adopt em) and a + (rescue em) which governs whether you are playing upward or downward.

In the example above, you could play below the 9 (either a 7 or 8) or above the 4 or 5 (anything from a 5 to 7.) You play once on each stack but can play on multiple stacks as long as they are on the same side as the dividing card. After taking a turn, a player moves the +/- card to any stack on which they played a card. Players who can’t play at all, must draw a card.

There is a way to play solo vs an AI. The AI basically trashes and/or plays on the various stacks to get in one’s way.

Cat Rescue (2nd Edition)

The second edition of Cat Rescue (1-4 players, out in September-ish) takes the co-op nature of the first edition and adds in a way to play the game in a competitive mode. However, players can still play the game in solo or cooperative mode if they wish.

The main idea is to add cats into a 4×4 grid, representing the cat shelter. They must always be played adjacent to a cat already in the shelter. Players are trying to get 3 cats in a row with the same background color. When that happens, the middle cat gets flipped upside down signifying that cat is well-adjusted and ready for its forever home. This is done by pushing the upside-down tile off the edge of the board. (Pushing unflipped cats off the board is bad, and I believe the game ends in a loss if too many leave.) In the competitive mode, players get points for cats they rescue.

Oh, did I mention that every time cats are added to the board, they are inserted into the middle so that all the cats get pushed around? There is a token that always is located on top of the most recently placed cat. When looking to place the next cat, it cannot end up on the same row or column as the previous one (ie. where the token is located.) The token also indicates the last direction pushed, so players can’t push cats in the same direction twice in a row.

Lunar Rush: Innovations

Launching on Kickstarter soon, Lunar Rush: Innovations is an expansion to the base game that adds in more “stuff” (of course) and five asymmetric factions, including a way to play with five players.

If you’re unfamiliar with the base game (I failed to get a rundown on it) here’s the BGG blurb:

Lunar Rush is a simultaneous-play Euro-style board game that combines time-based resource management, market economics, bidding, and tableau/engine-building into a refreshing new genre. You play as one of Earth’s four major corporate conglomerates, competing to mine the Moon for the newly-discovered “wonder materials”, lunethyst crystals and lunarium ore.

So now you know…