Some of my favorite moments are stumbling across zany things in some of the smaller booths. They are often something that’s been out a few years but I’ve just not seen (or at least remember) them before. Hobby Japan is always good for something small and different. Guessocracy: Roll & Vote is a party game of insta-memorizing the pips on a group of dice. Phase Shift had Widget’s Workshop where players try to build robots using clear cards displaying their body parts. They also had Drop Drive, a space-faring game with all the trimmings (pirates, mining, planets) but almost everything is dropped onto and scattered all over the board at some point or another. The role-playing folks at Paizo were announcing Pathfinder Quest. Part boardgame, part role-playing adventure, it was promoted as having a wealth of branching options for a boardgame of this type.
Hobby Japan
Guessocracy: Roll & Vote
In Guessocracy: Roll & Vote, three to six players battle it out to memorize collections of dice after only glancing at them for three seconds. To start the game, a set of dice are rolled into a box, after three seconds, a cloth is draped over the top to hide the dice.
Players then use their dials to secretly vote for which die face is the most common (majority) and which face is the least common (minority.) Players then reveal their majority dial. All players in the majority of voters (ie. the most commonly voted number, even if it might be wrong) score a point. However, another player can object to this and grab the “objection” handle. Players then do the same with the minority dials – with a different “objection” handle if someone disagrees with the general consensus.
The dice are then revealed. If no one objects, the majority voters all get a point. If the objector is correct, they get a point instead. However, if someone objects and is wrong (turns out the majority is correct) the objector loses 3 points instead. This scoring happens for both the majority dials and the minority dials.
Clearly, that’s not enough for some people and they want more chaos. “THREE SECONDS? I can memorize a complete Shakespear sonnet in three seconds!” Well, you can change things up with sets of orange and/or green cards. In general, the orange cards add a bit of chaos to the game – analyze the dice with only 1 eye? You must walk around the table while looking at the dice?
Green cards are generally going to make things harder for the group. Green cards might have you analyze the dice (for 3 seconds!) but ignore green dice with even numbers, or mentally flip all blue dice to their opposite side, etc…
Phase Shift Games
Widget’s Workshop
Widget’s Workshop is a two to five player game of building robots using gear-cards with a transparent middle. Each card is gear-shaped with a solid color grey on the outside and a transparent middle that contains one body part – left/right leg, left/right arm, and a body (with attached head.) Players are trying to put together three complete robots.
Fun fact, once your robot is completed, you can look at the letters around the top of the robot to find out its “name.”
To set up the game, all the gears are simply mashed together and then dropped onto the table. Some will be face-up, some upside-down, and many of them will lie on top of each other. On a player’s turn, they can pick up any one face-up gear or pick up two face-down gears and choose one. In addition to simply completing a robot, players also get points for matching symbols, found on the outer ring of the front of any gear. (You will, of course, need to splay out a finished robot to see the symbols on each card at the end of the game – you don’t need them actually showing while the robot is “built”…) The game is currently in the fulfillment stage, and should be available in the near future.
Drop Drive
The game that caught my eye in the booth was Drop Drive, released back in 2023. It’s now also available in a “Deeper Space Edition” – which has a previous expansion and some upgraded bits. Drop Drive is a two to four player game of space travel and trading with a heavy emphasis on most things being “dropped” onto the playing field in order to generate completely new tactical situations.
To start the game, block out a border to your play area and drop all the bits and bobs of the game into the middle. This is done onto a curved dome so that the pieces will scatter everywhere. You can see the results in the photo above, ignore the grey linked chain that’s used for measurement.
Players each start with a unique ship, created by putting front and back starter ship cards together. The ship above has a pretty crazy speed, but not much room for cargo. As players progress in the game, they can buy additional ship parts which will then slip between the two starting ones making a longer, and better, ship.
To navigate, players will drop their ship onto the board and then use a linked chain to plan out their path. Faster ships get to use more links. Once you’ve lined up your links how you like, your ship will basically pick up anything it passes over. There are pirates to battle (you can also fight other players’ ships), salvage to identify, asteroids to mine, explore anomalies, and planets to visit.
Eventually, you’re going to want to fly to one of the planets on the board and do some wheeling and dealing. Basically, you trade in resources that the planet wants and get in-game monies (which are also used as points, so spend wisely!) Collecting asteroids, exploring, delivering goods, etc… will often end up with a reward of cards. Players draw a number of cards (based on their ship) but then only get to keep one of them. Cards give all sorts of bonuses. One might find passengers (provide various bonuses), space critters (build a collection to score points), and ship upgrades (that you slide into the middle of your ship and provide another length of your drive chain.)
Each planet has a market for goods and when the last market demand token is met all ships immediately land on a planet (and can sell/purchase if willing and able.) Players get points for any collected alien specimens, combine that with any money left over from the game, and a winner is declared!
Paizo Publishing
Pathfinder Quest
Crowdfunding on September 16th, Pathfinder Quest is a cooperative, one to four player “GM-less” adventure game loosely based on the Pathfinder role-playing game, which is, in turn, based around the 3.5th edition of the Dungeons & Dragons roleplaying game. Players take on the role of one of four characters (with lots of customization) as they go on adventures, making decisions, etc, etc… There are two books in the box, used to take a set of players through eight or so of the twelve possible adventures in a complete play-through. The Adventure Book contains the main story bits while the Challenge Book is used to generate some of the contests involved as well as indicate some of the results. There are a lot of forking options. Most (all?) story decisions have at least four options available, sending players down new branches of the story tree. Combat within the game is a simplified version of the Pathfinder RPG combat. The game will come with pawns, but there will be options (that word again) on the crowdfunding campaign for players to add miniatures in order to bling out their game.
