Dire Wolf was generating a lot of buzz about their new bag-building game, Invincible: The Hero-Building Game, based on the comic and Amazon series.* The procedurally generated Clank! Catacombs gets a Lairs and Lost Chambers expansion. Finally, the cute little denizens of Everdell reappear in the 2-player and/or solo Everdell Duo, which even features a co-op campaign. Oh, and I finally took a look at baby Everdell – My Lil Everdell.
Dire Wolf Digital
Invincible: The Hero-Building Game
Invincible: The Hero-Building Game is a cooperative bag-builder for 2 to 4 players (There’s a solo mode where you control two characters with one hand of cards.) Each player takes on the role of one of four teenage heroes from the Invincible comic (now also an Amazon cartoon.) The young adult superhero theme of the comics comes through in the game as players’ heroes grow in power throughout the game. Players begin the game with just a few powers and then draw cubes from a personal bag three at a time. These cubes are placed onto powers, activating the power when all its spaces are full. There are several colors and, of course, many of the spaces on powers are color-coded. There are six black cubes in the bag that act as any color. After placing their cubes, players may push their luck and continue to draw another set of cubes and place them until they draw a fifth black cube from their bag. That hero then crashes (too much power!) and is taken out of the fight for the round unless another player comes to rescue them. If rescued, the downed player may spend the rest of their drawn cubes but cannot draw any more. If a crashed player is not rescued by the end of the round, they’ll take more damage. Hero-building comes after the power activation phase. Once everyone is done drawing cubes, each completed power earns its owner determination points. These are used to play new powers from one’s hand, giving more interesting and more powerful options in the future. There are also some options to add more colored cubes into one’s bag. Play continues until the scenario is completed either by accomplishing the goals or losing due to the loss of too many bystanders or hero KOs. There are several scenarios in the box that can be played individually or played in sequence to reflect the first season of the Amazon series.
A Midsummer Night’s Dream is a ladder climbing game inspired by the eponymous romantic comedy created by William Shakespeare in the 16th century. Players take turns playing cards of the same level or exactly one level higher, or they can draw a wild card, the love-in idleness. When a player plays their last card, the remaining players lose score according to their hand card. The game plays several rounds, and when a player’s score drops below zero, the player with the highest score wins.
The great cities of the world are challenging each other to present the most beautiful festival imaginable. The closing fireworks ceremony, held in all cities, will be the final rose in the crown of the festivities. Can you shoot the right fireworks to victorious heights?
Deckbuilders continue to be a popular mechanic, present in both the interaction-heavy exploration and area majority Galactic Renaissance by Matagot and Slay the Spire: The Board Game by Contention Games. Slay the Spire is of interest as it is a roguelike dungeon crawl videogame that embraced deckbuilding and is now a cooperative deck builder based on the videogame. Rounding out today’s report is the shedding game Seers Catalog by Bézier Games and the 3D garden building Babylon which requires placing nifty plastic garden items on the highest levels to score big points.
Contention Games
Slay the Spire: The Board Game
Slay the Spire by Contention Games is a very popular video game that uses deckbuilding as the backbone of a roguelike game. These are games where a player goes on a little adventure, gaining abilities and powers until they finish the adventure or die trying. The roguelike part comes in when players are then able to store up some small abilities or powerups from one run to make future runs easier. There are a number of these roguelike games that also use deckbuilding as the main game mechanic for the adventure. The cooperative Slay the Spire: The Board Game is one of the most popular and the board game version tries to remain faithful to the original videogame while trying to make the game more streamlined for a non-digital experience. Cards are streamlined so that they require less juggling of various effects (requiring players to keep track of ever more balancing plates) and the cards are set up to try to minimize how often they all need to be shuffled – always a danger in a deck builder. Players begin with a set of cards that are weak but slowly improve their deck – each player buys/obtains new cards from their own source, distinguishing the various player “classes” from each other. During the game, players make their way through a branching dungeon encountering monsters, events, and even shops selling goods and services for gold collected from defeating monsters. Combat has players playing their cards against the current enemy. Cards are laid out in a grid with each player responsible for their own column of incoming cards. To keep players on their toes, enemies will often roll a die to see what particular attack they will use at any given time. Once an enemy is defeated, players get to choose one card from a set of three to add to their deck. I believe in my notes there are currently four classes in the game: Ironclad, Silent, Defect, and Watcher – listed from simpler to more complex. The game has been well-received so far, quickly selling out at the convention.
You are the head of a fiefdom and its future is in your hands. Will you develop agriculture with fields and mills? Or will you become a pious church-builder or prefer to feast in your sumptuous palaces? Develop your lands in your image and become the most influential lord in the kingdom.
In Middle Ages, you explore the essence of medieval urban life through eight distinct tiles: fields, farms, villages, forts, markets, barracks, churches, and palaces. Each tile features its own scoring system, yet it’s linked to others, offering a rich and immersive gaming experience. Unleash strategic maneuvers, from daring assaults on rival fiefdoms to reserving tiles for future use. Harness the power of tactical combinations to amplify your income and pave your way to triumph!
*Back from a brief hiatus, here’s more Gen Con coverage:
I hope I’m forgiven for occasionally mixing up my blue-themed German publishers, they both put out some excellent games. This time around we’re talking Kosmos – home of the Exit series. In addition to new Exit (and Exit Kids) titles, there was the poker co-op The Gang, temple-building Nunatak, co-op art-buying Belratti, and a kid friendly Dodo game with the slowest moving marble I’ve ever seen. Over at the Friendly Skeleton, the booth folks were going all-in on their games, including demoing one of their newest while wearing a raccoon suit. Trash Talk has players mind-meld around a pile of junk, Speed Colors wants to know whether you are able to color within the lines, solitaire-like Crystallo is expanded, and one of my favorites of the show, Flickering Stars has players flicking ships and missiles to conquer the galaxy.
Friendly Skeleton
Trash Talk
The Friendly Skeleton (formerly known as Deep Water Games) booth had the best pitch-creature of any booth in the exhibit hall, a friendly raccoon ready to introduce passersby to the co-op mind reading game, Trash Talk. It was released last year, but if you’re unfamiliar with it, two teams are given identical sets of random trash objects – and I mean trashy. There’s a cheap plastic Slinky, an even cheaper plastic car, a glass bead, a honey spoon, some weird plant thing, and even a “working” cocktail umbrella. Play starts with identical sets of three objects and three cards are revealed. Both teams assign a piece to each card and then they are revealed. The goal, of course, is for both teams to match up their trash exactly the same. Success leads to a match of matching greater numbers of matching objects – all the way up to a final 10-card matching session. Of course, players are allowed – and even encouraged – to BYO trash to the game.
Gen Con 2024 – Dire Wolf Digital, Starling Games
Dire Wolf was generating a lot of buzz about their new bag-building game, Invincible: The Hero-Building Game, based on the comic and Amazon series.* The procedurally generated Clank! Catacombs gets a Lairs and Lost Chambers expansion. Finally, the cute little denizens of Everdell reappear in the 2-player and/or solo Everdell Duo, which even features a co-op campaign. Oh, and I finally took a look at baby Everdell – My Lil Everdell.
Dire Wolf Digital
Invincible: The Hero-Building Game
Invincible: The Hero-Building Game is a cooperative bag-builder for 2 to 4 players (There’s a solo mode where you control two characters with one hand of cards.) Each player takes on the role of one of four teenage heroes from the Invincible comic (now also an Amazon cartoon.) The young adult superhero theme of the comics comes through in the game as players’ heroes grow in power throughout the game. Players begin the game with just a few powers and then draw cubes from a personal bag three at a time. These cubes are placed onto powers, activating the power when all its spaces are full. There are several colors and, of course, many of the spaces on powers are color-coded. There are six black cubes in the bag that act as any color. After placing their cubes, players may push their luck and continue to draw another set of cubes and place them until they draw a fifth black cube from their bag. That hero then crashes (too much power!) and is taken out of the fight for the round unless another player comes to rescue them. If rescued, the downed player may spend the rest of their drawn cubes but cannot draw any more. If a crashed player is not rescued by the end of the round, they’ll take more damage. Hero-building comes after the power activation phase. Once everyone is done drawing cubes, each completed power earns its owner determination points. These are used to play new powers from one’s hand, giving more interesting and more powerful options in the future. There are also some options to add more colored cubes into one’s bag. Play continues until the scenario is completed either by accomplishing the goals or losing due to the loss of too many bystanders or hero KOs. There are several scenarios in the box that can be played individually or played in sequence to reflect the first season of the Amazon series.
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