August 2024
Games I played for the first time this month, from worst to best, along with my ratings and comments.
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Landmarks – 4/10Â
The impact of Codenames on the world of party gaming really can’t be overstated; its influence is still being seen in an endless stream of pale imitations. The latest such pretender is Landmarks, a co-operative word game in which a clue-giver must guide their team through a hex map to a secret location.
The clue-giver draws a card, which contains a starting location, ending location, and various rewards and penalties along the way. The card also includes three starting words, which are written on hex tiles and placed adjacent to each other. Then, the clue giver writes a single word of their choice on a new hex tile, and the other players choose where to place it on the board based on how it connects to the existing words.
On the face of it, this might seem like an interesting challenge, but the problems become apparent almost immediately. Consider the situation where a clue is given that ties into only one of the words on the map. In this case, there are two equally possible locations for that word to be placed, because of how hexagons work. Then, once placed, a single word connected to that clue has three possible locations. So even if you are correctly guessing the one-word clues, your rewards and penalties will be very random and your path may go the complete wrong direction.
That’s fine, you say, I’ll just make sure that all my clues tie two words together. But there are problems with that approach as well. For one, it’s slower. You have a limited number of tiles you can place before you lose, and taking a more methodical path all but guarantees failure. But more importantly, the shape of the hidden path often requires one-word clues to be given, such as when the rewards are on an edge.
Landmarks has some reasonably good, if not entirely original, ideas, but it completely botches the execution. It demands just as much creativity from the clue-giver as Codenames does, but without commensurate rewards. It is likely to leave both the clue-giver and clue-guessers frustrated as even the satisfaction of winning is undermined by a feeling that you just kind of got lucky.
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Oh My Pigeons! – 4/10Â
Oh My Pigeons! is a take-that card game that also includes dozens of plastic pigeons. Be the first to get nine pigeons onto your bench and you win.
On your turn, play a card, then refill your hand to three. Cards will add pigeons to your bench or take them away from others in various quantities. Many cards simply allow you to roll the die, which usually also adds pigeons to your bench or steals them from others.
But a third of the time, the die will roll a bird poop symbol, which means you flick it towards another player’s bench, and they lose all pigeons that fall off. Why do the pigeons flee from pigeon poop instead of a dog or something? Probably so the designer could include poop. How can you flick the die towards a player across from you when you are supposed to keep the deck of cards and pigeon supply in the middle of the table? No clue, but the rules aren’t concerned with such trivialities. We’re being wacky here, remember?
At its best, Oh My Pigeons! is fast-playing and generates cheers and jeers. But at its worst, and more common, it overstays its welcome as pigeons are added and removed arbitrarily and interminably. A slight change of pace for the Exploding Kittens crowd, but more serious gamers will probably have Hi Ho! Cherry-O flashbacks.ÂÂ
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Things in Rings – 5/10Â
Things in Rings is a party game based on Venn diagrams. Using loops of string, a Venn diagram is created, but the category of each loop is only known to one player. The goal of the other players is to get rid of all the cards in their hands, which they can only do by placing them into the diagram correctly.
On your turn, place one of your cards (depicting an everyday object) into the diagram where you think it belongs. The knower will then tell you whether or not that is correct. Obviously at the beginning of the game, this is a complete shot in the dark. But by observing the answers from other players’ cards, you may start to deduce the categories. If your card was placed in the wrong location, draw a new one. But if you were correct, you don’t redraw, meaning you get closer to emptying your hand and winning.
Both the categories and the objects are provided by cards, and they do generally seem well-designed. There is a wide variety of items that helps you suss out the wide variety of categories, which could be size or use of the object, or even something about the composition of the word itself. And yet, even after a few plays where you know the possible categories, most people we played with found the game more frustrating than fun.
The components provide you the option to do a triple Venn diagram, but even doing a double proved mentally taxing. Not just on the players who can inadvertently be led down the wrong path, but even to the knower, who often struggled with the subjective nature of the categories. And while you can play with just one ring, that’s hardly a Venn diagram; you might as well just be playing Twenty Questions since “yes” or “no” become the only possibilities.
I am sure that with practice and under certain circumstances, there have be very enjoyable sessions of Things in Rings. I’ve also been told that the co-operative mode may work better, as players can openly discuss their theories about why a certain answer was given. There are good ideas here. But ultimately, this game ends up being the poster child for “not as much fun as it sounds”.
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Nekojima – 5/10
ÂNekojima is a dexterity stacking game with the whimsical theme of cats walking on power lines. Players will be asked to add a pair of ersatz telephone poles, connected by a rope, to the board. Then they may also be asked to hook a cardboard cat onto that rope. If you make the structure fall, you lose.
The board is divided into four sections, and a roll of the dice will tell you which sections your poles must occupy. It is also possible to stack poles atop one another, creating an even more unstable situation. You would always like to create such situations for the other players, but sometimes this can be a risk to your own chances of success.
There are many dexterity stacking games out there with basically these exact same rules. Stack stuff, don’t let it fall. Games like Bandu and Junk Art have added neat little twists to the genre, but no such innovation exists here. So your enjoyment of Nekojima will likely hinge on how much you appreciate the high-quality components and unconventional theme.
The couple plays that I had seemed to end quite suddenly. This might seem like it goes without saying, but it really does have a markedly different feel than something like Jenga, where the tension builds as the players see the structure getting more and more precarious. It’s so lightweight and fast-playing that I wouldn’t mind giving it another go. But it’s rather ho-hum compared even with competitors in the same genre.ÂÂ
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Circus Flohcati – 6/10Â
Even someone who plays as many games as I do is likely to have a few gaps in their oeuvre, and until recently, Circus Flohcati was one of those for me. A new edition has recently been printed, but the original publication was way back in 1998 (the “late 1900’s”, as the kids say). Back then, this was a pretty well-regarded filler game. So does it hold up?
Interestingly enough, there was a very similar game that came out a year earlier called Kleine Fische (Small Fish), later republished as Duck, Duck, Bruce. And that’s one that I’ve played quite a few times, never knowing that the two share so much of their design. Both games involve a deck of numbered cards in many different colors. At the end of the game you will only score your highest card in each color. On your turn, you flip cards from the deck one at a time until you either stop and get a card or else flip a card of a color that is already on the table, in which case you get nothing. That’s a lot of similarities for two pretty simple games.
But Circus Flohcati only allows you to ever take a single card from the table. Duck, Duck, Bruce allows you to take every card if you don’t bust, meaning there is more variability in your turns. This also solves the problem of low cards languishing unwanted on the table; you get them for free anyway. Circus Flohcati solves the “unwanted low cards” problem in a different manner: by allowing you to group same-numbered cards into sets of three and score them as 10 points per trio, regardless of their color and number.
Circus Flohcati also provides an alternate endgame condition (both games end when the deck runs out). If a player has all 10 different colors in hand, they can declare the end of the game and get a point bonus for doing so. This does create an interesting alternate axis to consider when deciding what card to take.
The games are similar enough that its hard to really rank one over the other. Nor does a collection really need both (or even one, for that matter). There really isn’t anything to object to here. It’s just hard to displace later games in the space like No Thanks! or Sea Salt & Paper.ÂÂ
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Bark Avenue – 6/10Â
Bark Avenue is a gateway-weight game in which you try to become the best dog-walker in New York City. You will travel around the blocks of the city, picking up dogs, walking them around the neighborhoods and parks, and then returning them home once they are tired out. Whoever can walk the most dogs and keep them the happiest will be the winner.
If this theme is appealing to you, you will no doubt be enamored of the scores of named and illustrated dogs, each with different stats reflecting their personalities (speed, favorite activities, compatibility with other dogs, etc.). Unfortunately, the game automatically cycles through these pups so quickly that its difficult to plan ahead of your turn where you’d like to go pick one up.
Once you have a dog, you will move about the city for a set number of turns before the dog is tired (this varies by dog). You will also hopefully engage the dog in one of it’s favorite activities (fetch, swimming, or peeing), take a picture of it, and make sure it poops. For each of these three that your dog performs, you will get an extra tip when the dog is returned. Your money is points, but you may wish to then spend some of it to purchase coffee (giving you extra actions) or dog treats (letting you ignore the negative traits of your dogs).
As you complete walks, you will unlock additional abilities, such as extra actions and the capability to walk up to three dogs at a time instead of two. These various bonuses must be unlocked in a set order, which is a bit of a missed opportunity as letting players choose the order would have injected strategy without any additional rules overhead. But as it stands, the abilities aren’t balanced enough to simply house-rule ordering them as you choose.
Due to the randomness inherent in which dogs are drawn from the deck, it’s not possible to have some kind of scripted opening that you can follow. Given that, it’s a shame that the designers also chose to include random events and negative dice rolls which can occasionally completely hose your turn. The designers seemed to recognize that planning ahead on other players’ turns is a good design choice (especially given what a multiplayer-solitaire type game this is). Yet the randomness of events and dice rolls combined with how quickly the dogs cycle to the discard pile makes this difficult to ever do.
Bark Avenue is a game that is simple enough for families to enjoy and yet charming enough that more serious gamers may have a soft spot for it. Like a rescue dog, it may be a bit rough around the edges, but it’s still likely to win your heart in spite of that.ÂÂ
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Gnome Hollow – 6/10Â
Tile-laying games have come a long way since Carcassonne, but the recently-released Gnome Hollow bears some striking similarities to its predecessor from a quarter century ago. Though employing hexagons instead of squares, Gnome Hollow likewise has players competing by building roads and enclosing areas to gain points. And those in-progress areas are claimed by placing a meeple (in this case a gnome-shaped one) onto them until they are completed.Â
On your turn, you will place two tiles from a face-up selection of eight. You would think that this would lead to more interesting choices than Carcassonne’s simple draw-one-play-one paradigm, but in practice this updated system seems to teeter between analysis paralysis and frustration that, even with eight choices, none of them do what you want. Still, Gnome Hollow is comparatively less cutthroat, with the gnome meeples restricting other players from adding onto your claimed roads without your permission.Â
When a road is complete, it will yield the mushrooms depicted on its tiles. These mushrooms can be cashed in for points, but doing so requires one of your two gnome meeples to go to market, which may not be ideal if they are both currently guarding in-progress roads. This could create difficult choices on paper, but in reality it’s not usually difficult to find an opportunity to go to market, such as immediately upon completing a road.Â
Completion of a road also grants a reward based on the number of tiles comprising said road. This reward consists not only of points, but of some type of bonus involving extra mushrooms, additional tiles, etc. These rewards are tracked on an easy-to-use magnetic player board, a fun alternative to the dual-layer boards that have become commonplace.Â
The game ends somewhat abruptly, with no partial credit given for incomplete roads or unsold mushrooms. This is but one of the ways that, despite a solid foundation for a game, Gnome Hollow feels just a bit unpolished. I’m not as negative towards this game as I probably sound, and a 6/10 is a respectable enough rating, but I can’t help but feel that this game represents a missed opportunity. It’s difficult to point at any change or innovation that this game offers to the tile-laying genre, and what few it has seem to be a mixed bag. Perhaps further plays will bring these to the surface though.ÂÂ
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Cascadia: Rolling Rivers – 6/10Â
Cascadia: Rolling Rivers is a roll-and-write sequel to Cascadia, but they don’t share much except the name and theming. A closer point of comparison is probably The Clever Games, which, like this game, include a combination of shared and personal dice as well as the ability to chain lots of combos in a row as the game goes on.
The dice depict five different animals, and you will spend the animals rolled to acquire various habitats. This is a bit thematically jarring, as it makes more sense for your habitats to attract animals to them, rather than the other way around. And indeed, original Cascadia does this more sensibly.
From the four shared dice and your two personal dice, you will select one type of animal rolled, and take all animals of that type. All other things being equal, you would always choose the animal that appears on the most dice, but this is tempered somewhat by which habitat you intend to buy. This is always an interesting choice, often coming down to playing an efficient long game by banking large quantities of animals versus playing less efficiently, but ensuring you can buy a new habitat every turn (the main way you score points).
As with all dice games that intend to be strategic, there are ways to mitigate the randomness. There are no re-rolls, but there are various ways to spend resources to convert one type of animal to another. This works, strictly speaking, but it is the most complex part of the game and really demands that every player at the table understands what they are doing. Attempting to guide multiple newbies through their conversion options each turn would grind the game to a crawl.
There is a lot of variety in this small box, including multiple ways to play that vary significantly. And some are simple enough to be more accessible, even with the complexity of conversion sequencing. But there is also a good bit of fiddliness and rote arithmetic here, especially in how resources are tracked. It’s not the cleanest design, but it’s still one I’m happy to play. It’s just that I can’t recommend it to everyone unreservedly, like I can with some roll-and-writes.ÂÂ
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Comic Hunters – 6/10Â
Comic Hunters sets out to do for drafting what Modern Art did for auctions. Which is to say, it explores several different types of drafting in a single game. Thematically though, the players here take on the role of Marvel comic book collectors rather than art snobs.
Getting the comics into your collection is a two-step process. First you have to draft the comics (in various ways), but then once a few rounds of drafting are finished, you have to pay to put the comics into your collection. This is done by discarding other comics from your hand. So if you have a 1-cost, 2-cost, and 3-cost comic, it can be a tough choice to decide if you want to discard the 1 and the 2 to pay for the 3 or rather discard the 3 to pay for the 1 and the 2. Cards in hand at this point are usually in the neighborhood of a dozen or so, and a good bit of the playing time is taken up with players waffling on which comics to give up to pay for other ones. Typical set collection scoring is used.
But the star of the show is the drafting. It takes four different forms, each tenuously themed to a location at which one might purchase comics. First is the “store”, which is a classic pick-and-pass style draft, using four-card hands. Second is the “flea market”, where players choose between adding a comic to a row or taking all the cards from a row, a la Coloretto. Third is the “auction website”, where players outbid one another using a “secret stash” which turns into points at the end of the game if unused. And finally there is the “convention”, in which rows and columns are drafted from a grid, with some twists. None of these are earth-shattering innovations, but they are all enjoyable. Still, I do get some sense that if they had focused a bit more on honing just one of these to perfection, the game might have been the better for it, more on the level of something like Dog Lover/Cat Lady.
Finally, I’d be remiss if I didn’t mention the component quality, some of which is bad to a level rarely seen in modern games. We’re talking about wafer-thin cardboard tokens that can’t be punched out without leaving ugly cardboard fuzz around the edges and that fly off the table if someone breathes too hard. True, the game has an affordable MSRP, but even considering comparably priced games, it’s still quite an outlier.
Comic Hunters is a solid game that just slightly misses the mark in a few aspects. Comic book lovers who are willing to overlook these foibles (and likely do some homemade upgrades to their components) will find this game very appealing and receive no judgment from me. Excelsior!
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Habitats – 7/10Â
An animal-themed tile-laying game isn’t exactly a rarity these days, but Habitats manages to distinguish itself from Cascadia and the like in a few different ways. The most obvious of these is by adding an element of grid movement to its tile draft. Instead of simply picking the the tile you want from a selection of face-up options, you have to drive your wooden Jeep to that tile. Your Jeep can only move one space forward, right, or left, meaning you have at best three choices and at worst only one (when stuck in a corner). But if you find yourself stuck in a corner, it can only be because you deemed it a worthwhile position to put yourself in on the previous turn. This element of performing pathing at least a few turns ahead is the main distinctive here.
When you do select a tile, it is placed into your personal tableau, adjacent to at least one other tile. You would generally like to create areas of similar terrain types, but each terrain also includes an animal on it with preferences about what types of tiles it wants to be adjacent to. It’s possible to both score the animal points on a tile and also use the terrain type of the tile to score a different animal, but you certainly can’t do both of these things with every tile you place. Knowing what to give up on and what to continue striving for is highly tactical and requires constant adaptability based on the available tiles.
Because tiles can’t be moved once placed, an animal that has met all the adjacency criteria is guaranteed to score points. Points aren’t tallied until the end of the game, but you can mark that this animal will score by placing a scoring token on it. This is convenient, as it avoids confusion at a glance about whether or not a particular animal still needs anything else adjacent to it. The conundrum here is that using a generic cardboard token for each animal is by far the simplest way to do this. Yet the game alternatively offers sixty-eight wooden meeples, each one unique, to be placed upon the matching completed animal. Finding the specific one each time adds unreasonable length to the game for no gameplay value. And yet… are you really going to just leave them in the box? They represent the vast majority of the table appeal that Habitats has. Oh, did I mention that they are sold separately, nearly double the cost of the game, and don’t really fit in the box?
Habitats has variable goals scored each round, fixed goals scored at the game end, and all the other things you’d expect from a gateway tile-layer. If you like Cascadia or Alhambra, you’ll find similarly enjoyable notes here. But the “meeple problem” is a microcosm for the overall feel of the game. Optimally, it may be better to pursue end-of-round goals instead of completing animal habitats. Yet players won’t find this as satisfying, and so are likely to be torn between making optimal decisions and suboptimal-but-more-fun decisions. Casual gamers will likely call Habitats a favorite, but more experienced gamers may notice those annoyances have them reaching for alternatives.
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Flip 7 – 7/10Â
There’s a new card game in town, demurely billing itself as “the greatest card game of all time”. Flip 7 combines the hit-me push-your-luck of Blackjack with the special cards from games like Uno. And while that pedigree doesn’t lend a lot of credibility to its lofty claims, Flip 7 nevertheless manages to be a pretty fun game.
The deck is primarily comprised of cards numbered 1 through 12. Higher cards are better because they give you more points. But each card’s rank also corresponds to its frequency (twelve 12s, eleven 11s, etc.) and you bust if you ever have two of the same card. On your turn, you can stop and keep the points you have so far, or hit and continue on. If you ever reach the titular seven cards, the round immediately ends for all players and you get a 15 point bonus. First to 200 points is the winner.
There are also bonus point cards (which score, but can’t bust you), freeze cards to stop other players, draw three cards to try to force other players to bust (or to quickly draw yourself to 7 cards), and more. These are well designed, and seem to provide catch-up opportunities even when all hope seems lost.
Flip 7 is the kind of game that everyone should probably own a copy of. It’s fast-playing (20 minutes), highly-accessible (no more complicated than Blackjack), and accommodates a virtually limitless player count. It’s the ultimate “throw it in your bag for the family reunion” kind of game. Gamers tend to call this type of game a “filler”, and it works as that, but it also really shines at bringing in players who might otherwise be intimidated by “those games of yours”. It really feels like an old classic, despite being brand new.ÂÂ
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In the Footsteps of Marie Curie – 7/10Â
Take on the role of a research assistant to one of the greatest scientists of all time! You will upgrade your laboratory and convert radioactive resources into even more radioactive ones. Eventually, Marie Curie dies of radiation poisoning (she’s tastefully depicted on her deathbed on the last space of the board) and whoever did the best job helping her is the winner. I’m not entirely sure if this darkly humorous tone is intended or not, as the artwork seems to play it totally straight. Still, the fact that when Marie herself is nearby, you need less radioactive material seems to tip the scales back towards the macabre.
On your turn, you will first drop a few cubes into the cube tower. Very likely, some will fall out as well, but there are no guarantees. Then, you may gather some of the cubes that have fallen out. The number of cubes you can gather and store from round to round is determined by how upgraded your lab equipment is. Converting these radioactive cubes into points is the primary path to victory.
After this, you will use your cubes to buy upgrades or perform research of various kinds. There are some set collection elements here, as researching the same topic multiple times grants ever-growing rewards. But you are limited in what you can research by a small selection of random cards. Between the fickleness of the cube tower and the unreliability of these card draws, short-term tactics are far more important than any overarching strategy.
In the end, the game is so lightweight and random that there is a very low ceiling on how much better you can get at it. But it still manages to be an enjoyable experience with a unique theme. There is something innately satisfying about unlocking rewards and progressing towards a more powerful setup, and it’s rare for a 30-minute game to deliver on this arc so well.ÂÂ
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Dungeon Kart – 8/10Â
Dungeon Kart is a newly-released racing game set in the world of the aggressively mediocre Boss Monster card game. Nevertheless, it rises far above its forebear in component quality, theme, fun, and most importantly, gameplay.
One of the satisfyingly elegant things about racing games is that the goal is so clear. Get to the finish line first. There are a decent amount of “serious” racing games, trying to simulate Formula One and the like, but there are also the very silly ones, often more concerned with destroying other cars. Dungeon Kart deftly walks the tightrope between these two, much like the Mario Kart video games it draws so much inspiration from. Yes, it’s primarily a race, and you can’t truly eliminate the other players, and yet the thrill of using a wacky item at the perfect time to sneak past the leader is very much present here.
Dungeon Kart maps are customizable due to their use of tiles, but there are quite a few recommended setups. This means the game makes use of the kind of route planning seen in similarly excellent racing games like The Quest for El Dorado and Cubitos, where the board itself presents various pathing options. And navigating these means weighing the trade-offs between going as quickly as possible or slowing down slightly to receive bonuses, while also contending with the interference that other players create in your optimal chosen path.
As for the cars and racers themselves, each one is different. Every kart has slightly different stats and abilities while each racer has a special power they can activate by spending coins they’ve gathered from the track. These abilities don’t appear to be perfectly balanced, but a simple draft at the start of each race mitigates this to a degree. And some karts and racers will be more or less appealing based on the track being used.
Put simply, Dungeon Kart achieves its goals. It’s a tall order to bring the snappy gameplay of a video game to the tabletop, but it really works here. It accommodates high player counts without much downtime and generates the kind of thrilling finishes you’ve come to expect from quality racing games. It’s not an absolute must-play, and it certainly won’t change the minds of anyone in the “doesn’t like racing games” crowd, but the fun factor here is very high.ÂÂ
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Fortune and Glory – 8/10
ÂI am a fan of nearly every game Flying Frog has made, and Fortune and Glory is no exception. It doesn’t have the tactical play of the sublime Last Night on Earth nor the thrilling combat of Conquest of Planet Earth, but it nevertheless creates an immersive experience that rises far above what you might expect from just reading the rules.
Fortune and Glory is set in the world of Indiana Jones and other pulp explorers as they globetrot to exotic locales to find magical artifacts and kill Nazis. You’ll get items to increase your stats, make friends to aid you, escape from perilous encounters, and… make a whole lot of skill checks. Yes, much like Tales of the Arabian Nights or Agents of Smersh, this is a game that lives or dies on its theme. It is not suitable for tournament play and you won’t find novel and brilliant mechanisms here.
What you will find are cliffhangers. In what is probably the closest thing to innovation here, failing a skill check doesn’t really have disastrous consequences. Instead, it merely ends your turn and asks you to try again next time, leaving your character in cinematic limbo while you watch the commercial breaks that are the other players’ turns.
And there is an element of push-your-luck here, as attempting to navigate multiple dangers in a single turn risks all the glory points you’ve accumulated on that turn. Still, failure or even getting KO’d isn’t an enormous setback, especially if it’s happening to the other players as well. Schadenfreude is here in spades.
Like many other Flying Frog games, there are multiple ways to play. I’m sure that many people do enjoy the co-operative version, but I haven’t tried it. Prevailing opinion seems to be that I’m correct to prioritize playing the competitive mode, racing the other players for treasures, rather than the “all work together to defeat the villain” mode, which seems to have a bit more rules overhead and administrivia than is probably ideal.
Fortune and Glory delivers on its promise. It won’t necessarily reward strategic play or burn your brain with difficult decisions, but it does provide adventure and thrills. Enough that it even creates a craving to play it again and again. If it sounds like this wouldn’t be fun to you, you’re probably right. Now excuse me while I get back to robbing this Nazi zeppelin.ÂÂ
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Cities – 8/10
ÂPhil Walker-Harding adds yet another winner to his ever-growing stable of 30-minute games that still pack a punch when it comes to meaningful and interesting player choices. It’s certainly not the most creative title for a game, but its generic nature is actually rather fitting as you select a real-world city before each game, each with its own scoring rules. Build the best city within these parameters, and you win.
You start with one square tile in front of you, and will draft one additional tile in each of the game’s eight rounds. These nine tiles must be arranged into a 3×3 grid. Each tile depicts lakes, parks, and/or building foundations in one of four colors.
In addition to drafting these tiles, you will also draft plastic buildings for the foundations and decorations for the parks and lakes. The catch is that while a certain set of buildings might be much better than the others available, if you don’t have a foundation to put them on, they are lost. So the sequencing of what you take is just as important as the items themselves.
The final piece of the puzzle is that you are also drafting an endgame scoring card each round. So when the game ends, you’ve hopefully not only achieved the scoring goals of the particular city, but also maximized your points from the eight scoring cards you’ve taken. And of course, whether to first choose a scoring card over buildings, tiles, or features is another tricky decision.
Cities strikes an excellent balance between predictability and replayability. The variety in the city choices will keep you coming back for more, while your familiarity with the scoring cards will allow your planning skills to transfer from one game to another. My love for Summer Camp notwithstanding, this might be Phil Walker-Harding’s best game.ÂÂ
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Skyrise – 8/10Â
Skyrise is a new version of a game from 2008, Metropolys. Having never played that game, I can’t speak to their differences. What I can say though is that Skyrise really delivers on strategy while also having fantastic table appeal.
Set in a floating city of the future, but with a 1920’s aesthetic, it’s tempting to view the theme as steampunk. And while that’s not totally wrong, it’s much more art deco than sci-fi. Chunky, plastic skyscrapers will be placed throughout the city, granting control of the area to the player who built it, but also further increasing the eye candy.
Sections of the board are claimed with an auction mechanic. The starting player will choose a section of the board and place one of their cities into it, upside down. The bottom of each city displays a unique value, so ties are not possible. (This is a bit like the bidding tokens in Ra.) If no one outbids them, they flip the city right-side-up and now control that section of the board. But if another player does want to outbid them, they can only do so by placing a higher-valued building into an adjacent space. This is a fascinating twist, and one I haven’t seen before. It’s quite possible someone would gladly outbid you for the space you are on, but there’s no way to do that; all they can do is prevent you from taking the space you want by bidding (maybe too much) on a space next door that may not even be very appealing. The psychology and route-planning that this creates is magical.
There are points given at the end of each of the game’s two rounds based on who has the tallest buildings in each quadrant of the board. Control of various colored sectors and control of various symbols on the board are also sometimes considered, but these scoring methods are variable. This is a positive as I see it, as it means there is no script you can follow for the “best places” to control. Scoring is a bit of a point salad, but it doesn’t take long to add up and it creates just the right amount of wrinkles. I expect that Skyrise will be in my top five games of 2024 when all is said and done.
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August is Gen Con! I demoed or heard pitches for some offerings that I didn’t play a full game of, but still got enough of a taste to share a few thoughts. These also are discussed from least to most interesting to me.
 ÂAdventure Party – In roleplaying games, it is usually frowned upon to “metagame”. That is, to use knowledge your character would not have to gain in-game advantages. A typical example of this might be stating the exact die roll needed to pass a difficulty check or your exact number of hit points remaining, as opposed to “this looks pretty challenging” or “I’m close to death”.  The designers of this board game decided that metagaming would actually make a pretty fun game in and of itself. I think they were wrong.
A scenario is read from a card (e.g. “there is a brawl in the tavern”). One player rolls a d20 behind a screen. An 11+ is a success, while 10 or less is a failure. The player then describes, in character, what happened as a result of this. The other players must guess exactly what number was rolled based on this description. Points are awarded for correct guesses. This is repetitive and boring, and provides no real thrill even when guessing the number correctly.Â
Catch the Moon – A 20-minute stacking dexterity game, a bit like Animal Upon Animal or countless others. Nice components, but mostly bland in a world where so many alternatives exist.Â
Flickering Stars – An as-yet-unreleased space-themed flicking game with chunky plastic ships that can shoot various projectiles at each other. From just the demo, it’s difficult to see what this game does that similar games like Flick Em Up or Crossbows and Catapults don’t already do. And given the lavish components, including a large neoprene playing surface, I expect this will be cost prohibitive for a game that’s so lightweight. Â
The Gang – This is co-operative Texas Hold Em, in the footsteps of games like The Crew being co-operative trick-taking. Unlike The Crew, however, this is a much lighter affair that doesn’t really encourage teamwork in the same way. It’s much closer to something like The Mind, where its more about reading your teammates than playing the cards. It was fun enough, but I’m not convinced that all the fancy components and extra rules amount to much more strategy than Indian Poker has.Â
Nunatak: Temple of Ice – A 30-minute abstract game with lots of table appeal. Players collectively construct a pyramid out of cardboard platforms and frosted plastic supports. As they build, they also score. Seems to have tactics with setting yourself up for combos and blocking your opponent. I imagine this would get chaotic in multiplayer, but open to trying it sometime regardless.Â
Kraftwagen: Age of Engineering – I played a one-round demo of the game at Gen Con and found it pretty enjoyable. A typical rondel-type action selection, which is fun but not innovative. But the real decisions come down to sequencing. Almost every aspect of the game is a race against the other players, and you are constantly forced to choose between faster versus more efficient. I would like to play a full game and see how those dynamics change in the long run. I have my eye on this game.Â
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