Playte Spiel 2025 releases – 2 games (Depot, Layer Puzzle) and 1 awesome accessory (Railway Chips) – sun 28 sep

Posted on September 28, 2025 by Dale Yu

Playte is one of the Korean companies that has caught my eye over the last few Spiel fairs.  From their own website: “We make games, plates that can be played anytime, anywhere, with anyone, as long as there is a plate. The Playte team strives to elevate board games so they are more relatable, convenient and sophisticated.Gameology Inc. is a company that published the Playte brand, located in South Korea”

What originally brought this company to my attention were their miniaturized versions of classic games, especially a lot of Alex Randolph titles.  Last year, we reviewed Taxi Over from that line.  The company also has a number of original titles, Orapa Mine being a great example.

The company has a number of new releases planned for the 2025 Spiel Fair, and I will take a quick look at two of them as well as a gaming accessory that has become a staple on my game table.

Dale Yu: Review of Depot

Depot

The rapidly growing e-commerce business.  Our depots are in full operation today.  Your sorting work is indispensable to ensure that packages are delivered on schedule.  You will be in charge of the delivery of goods to the depots.  The goal in Depot is to get rid of all your cards before the other players.  You can reduce your hand by playing a card with a higher value than the previous player.  Even if the number is smaller, you can still play cards if the combination contains more cards.

Players are dealt a hand of 8 or 9 cards (based on player count).  A display of storage cards is made next to the deck, with cards of the same rank being placed in a single column.  The cards in the Storage area are always organized in ascending order. There are 80 cards in the deck with values of 1 (most prevalent) to 8 (least prevalent). 

On a turn, a player must either play cards from their hand or pass.  If all players pass in a row, the round ends.

When a player plays a card, he must play a set that either all have the same number or are in sequential order.  However, the number of cards that can be played is limited by the Storage area.  If you play matching ranks, you can only play a number of cards equal to the number of cards that match in the Storage.  If you play a run, you can only play a number of cards equal to the longest run in the Storage.  

Furthermore, your play must be stronger than the previous player.  In general, more cards is always stronger than fewer cards.  In sets of the same number of cards, strength is determined by the sum of the cards in the combination.   Once a legal play is made, the combination of the previous player is discarded.

If a player chooses to Pass, they first choose a rank of cards from the Storage and take them all into their hand.  Then, they take a differently ranked card from their hand and add it to the Storage.  In the case where they don’t want to give up a card, they can flip up the top card from the deck and add it to the Storage.  Finally, if necessary, more cards are drawn from the deck until it returns to its designated number of cards.  When you pass, you are not out of the round completely, you can jump back in on a later turn as long as the round continues.

Again, the round ends when all players pass in succession. The player who played the final combination in the previous round starts the next round.  Before this happens though, one additional card is added to the Storage from the deck – thus, the Storage grows by one card each round. 

The game is won by the player who is able to play all of their cards first.

My thoughts on the game

From my rules read, Depot sounded quite intriguing – a shedding game but with a constantly evolving set of play rules.  The game starts out a bit slow as the original size of the Storage is only 4 cards, and more often than not, this leads to plays of no more than 2 cards at a time.

The Storage definitely evolves, but usually not in a direction that allows for larger plays.  The reason for this is because it rarely makes sense for the current player (who has already passed) to improve the ways in which the following players can play.  As the goal is to go out first, it generally doesn’t make sense to make a play that lets other people play more cards.

Sure, at the end of the game, you might try to play defensively against someone who looks like they may go out – by adding a card to the Storage that might let someone else win the current trick – but other than that, it seems unlikely for this to happen.

So, instead, the ability to play only improves with a good random flip from the deck.  As the rounds progress and the Storage size increases, there is a better chance that the random card matches or connects something in it.  

As you collect cards, I might counsel you to be wary of making too big of a set or run in your hand.  While taking trip 2s might seem like a great idea, don’t forget that you won’t be able to play them as a set of three cards unless the Storage allows it.  Otherwise, you have a pair of 2s and a single 2, neither of which is overly great.

All that being said, it’s still not uncommon for the game to end early just due to luck of the draw and probably some good drafting from either the storage or the top of the deck.  There is a certain amount of handbuilding early on as each time you pass, you get to try to craft your hand into something a little  bit better.  To date more than half of my games have ended in the early rounds just as things were starting to get interesting.

The components are well done, and the graphics fit in great with the shipping theme.  The cards really do look like Amazon boxes, with scuffs, stickers, packaging tape and barcodes festooning the cards.  Depot is an interesting take on shedding games, and one that is worth trying out if you are a fan of that style of game.


Ratings from the Opinionated Gamers

  • I love it!
  • I like it. Dale Y, Lorna
  • Neutral. John P
  • Not for me…

+-+-+-+-+-

Dale Yu: Review of Layer Puzzle

Layer Puzzle

During the 5 rounds of this flip and write puzzle game, players mark the shapes on the transparent layer card with an “X” according to certain conditions. After the game ends, the goal is to minimize the number of empty cells when all layer cards are overlapped.

Each player gets a layer card set (numbered 1 thur 5), A-D tokens, shade cards in their color, and a dry-erase marker.   A deck of shape cards is created.

Players start by placing the Level 1 and 5 card in front of them.  A start player is chosen.  The top Shape card is flipped over and the start player uses one of his lettered tokens to choose one of the shapes on the card.  The letter on the token designates which quadrant he will start drawing on his layer 1&5  card.  Going clockwise around the table, players now place their same lettered token onto an available shape.

The chosen shape must be drawn on the player board. At least one section of the shape must be in the designated quadrant, but it can extend into other quadrants.  The shape cannot go off the board. The shape cannot overlap other shapes drawn on this particular layer.

When all players have drawn their shape, the process is repeated with another card. This occurs four times so that all players have used each of their letter markers.  The start player moves clockwise during rounds, and at the end of each round, the new starting position is determined by gold coins collected in the previous round (from the cards)  The completed layer is now covered with an opaque covering  board (players also have four of these).

This process is completed four times, using each of the four numbered transparent boards.  The fifth round uses the Layer 1 card from the first round; this layer is retrieved and a truncated two shape round is played on this board, still following all the same rules otherwise.

When the final round is complete, players then stack all four of their cards together.  Players score -1VP for each blank space seen and get +1 VP for each coin taken.  The highest score wins. There is no tiebreaker.

My thoughts on the game

This is a challenging amalgam of flip and write (sort of) mixed with a memory game.  Each player gets four transparent boards, and you use them one at a time.   Each round has four turns, and you’ll generally draft a shape each round to draw into your board.

While it seems like the game would be super simple and easy – let me tell you – it’s apparently ridiculously hard to remember where you drew your shapes in an earlier round!  By the end of the game, I am usually just hoping for the best as far as to where I’m drawing in my shapes.  Go ahead and laugh at me… but just wait until you play the game yourself, and then we’ll see who is laughing… :)  

The math here is fairly interesting.  All of the polyominoes are four squares in size.  You will get four or five opportunities to draw one of these shapes into each quadrant – and if you keep the shapes in the quadrant (though you are not obligated to do so), you will be placing at least 16 Xs in each quadrant (that has 16 spaces).   

This math makes the decision on taking the +2 gold coins challenging.  On one hand, you’re losing the opportunity to place 4 Xs on your quadrant.  But, you’re getting back 2 of those VP via the coins AND you’re likely improving your turn order for next turn.  The rules say that whoever gains the first decision token gets to choose who starts the next round, but man, I can’t see any situation where that person wouldn’t choose themselves. 

One part of the math that doesn’t work for me though is the discrepancy between the number of rounds and the number of cards in the deck.  There are not quite enough cards in the deck to play a full game, and it is mildly frustrating to have to shuffle the cards for the final rounds.  Seems like it could have been easy enough to have enough cards to go around.

Layer Puzzle is a nice filler level X and write, and the memory aspect definitely turns this into a challenging game.  I definitely see myself playing this through the winter.


Ratings from the Opinionated Gamers

  • I love it!
  • I like it. Dale, John P
  • Neutral.
  • Not for me…

+-+-+-+-+-+-

Railway Chips

Railway Chips is a great gaming accessory that has become a fixture on my game table.  In this box, you get two small chip holders, each holding 60 sturdy plastic chips.  One of my big pet peeves is having to deal with flimsy paper money pieces in games.  These chips can be used in place of that or as scoring markers or for anything else you need to keep track of.

The denominations range from 1 to 500, and there are definitely enough 2 players to meet any situation, and with aggressive coloring up, enough for 4 players.  (I will probably end up getting a second set to have enough for every occasion!) 

The chips are 22mm in diameter and 2.5mm thick. They feel great in your hand, and are small enough that you can hold a meaningful amount of them in your hand if you need to keep your bank hidden.

This would make a great stocking stuffer for the gamer who might have everything already (or whose game collection is unknowable – so you’re always afraid to get them a game they may already have!)

Highly recommended to have around the game table!

 Thoughts from other Opinionated Gamers:

Fraser: There are 8 denominations which are worth mentioning: 1, 2, 5, 10, 25, 50, 100 and 500.  The 2 is good, the 25 is not so good for someone who has not grown up in the USA or potentially other places that use a 25.

I remember doing a maths exam at university where there was a question about the best currency set a bunch for of random amounts and it was 1,2, 5,10, 20, 50, 100, 200…

Until your next appointment

The Gaming Doctor

 

About Dale Yu

Dale Yu is the Editor of the Opinionated Gamers. He can occasionally be found working as a volunteer administrator for BoardGameGeek, and he previously wrote for BoardGame News.
This entry was posted in Essen 2025. Bookmark the permalink.

Leave a Reply