Gen Con 2024 – NorthStar, Keymaster, and Sea Cow Games

Posted on August 14, 2024 by Matt J Carlson

Long ago there was Agricola. Since then, many nations have risen and fallen, many sets have been collected, many workers have been placed, and many VPs have been scored. Now, we have once again circled back to farming. I come to you with no less than three farming games in one post. Keymaster’s Harvest has you worker-placement managing your crops. Sea Cow Games’ Flock Together has you and your fellow chickens banding together to protect the farm from predators. NorthStar Games Studio has you planting crops in the mountains of Peru as you manage alpacas and the crop market to your advantage. If farming isn’t your thing, Keymaster also has a nice Parks: Roll & Hike sequel to their successful PARKS. NorthStar has a pattern-matching moon-collecting game Biomos and they were showing off their Evolution 2.0 style game, Nature, heading to Kickstarter in mid September. 

Sea Cow Games

Flock Together

I was happy to see the 1-5 player co-op Flock Together appear in the exhibit hall after my last-minute interview from the end of Gen Con 2023. It’s been sent out to Kickstarter backers and is now in distribution. Flock Together is a chicken-themed cooperative adventure. Everyone plays as one of 11 unique chickens (with their own special powers) and they band together to ward off the invading predators (of which there are 10.) Over the course of three seasons, players repel predator attacks (using 2 of 8 possible actions per turn), and predators that aren’t dealt with will grow in power. Both the chickens and the predators are managed using cool, spiral-bound booklets. As players “level up”, all they have to do is turn the page. However, the bad guys also get to level up if they aren’t kept in check. The fancy chicken-die that looks like a chicken from certain angles was back, along with all the other nice bits. It is supposed to move along at a fast clip, clocking in at 25 minutes per player, even with all the leveling up and story progression.

Continue reading →
Posted in Convention Report, Gen Con, Reviews | Tagged , , , , , , , , | Leave a comment

Dale Yu: Review of Metrorunner

Posted on August 14, 2024 by Dale Yu

Metrorunner

  • Designer: Stephen Kerr
  • Publisher: Thunderworks Games
  • Players: 1-5
  • Age: 14
  • TIme: 30-90 minutes
  • Played with copy provided by publisher

Being a runner in Mirror City’s underworld ain’t easy, but you’re determined to make a name for yourself amidst all the opportunities a dystopian future has to offer. After all, you’re the sharpest hacker in your district, right? Keep a wary bio-enhanced eye over your shoulder as you ride the Metro, though, because other runners are determined to cut in on your action!

Metrorunner is a competitive worker-movement and resource-collection game for 1-5 players set in a high-tech neon future featuring a tile-puzzle mini-game. Circling the districts of Mirror City on the Metro line, you compete for resources as you race to fulfill contracts for the ruthless and greedy mega-corporations. Grow your influence and gain reputation, squeezing every credit you can from corrupt factions, while you secretly steal their data for your home district!

Carefully plot your path around the city to avoid and cut off other runners, while taking opportunities to use your skills and upgrades to hack into network nodes. Manipulate the circuitry of a central tile grid, cleverly altering the pathways of an ever-changing puzzle to breach the firewalls.  Secure your influence and notoriety by completing tricky jobs across the city, hijacking black market tech, and spending your hard-earned credits wisely. Only then will you rise above the competition, earning a coveted place within the power struggle of Mirror City.  At the end of the line, will you win the respect of the underworld, or fade into obscurity?

Continue reading →

Posted in Reviews | 1 Comment

Gen Con 2024 – Avalon Hill and the Horrible Guild

Posted on August 13, 2024 by Matt J Carlson
Talisman Alliances Figures

No, that’s not the lead-in to an obscure fairy tale. It’s the boardgame publishers Avalon Hill (AKA Hasbro) and Horrible Guild. They just so happen to be near each other (in time, not necessarily in space) at my Gen Con visit. Avalon Hill is continuing its line of Talisman, HeroQuest, and Betrayal while the Horrible Guild was also offering up games on the lighter side of the spectrum. I was able to check out Spotlight, Flower Fields, and the soon-to-be-Kickstarted Railroad Tiles.

Horrible Guild

Spotlight

The answer card shows you the locations you missed.

One friend was jumping up and down with excitement as I explained Spotlight, a 1-5 player game based around a sort of competitive Where’s Waldo hidden pictures search. Each player is given a sheet full of people and things crowded together in what one might call a standard setup. A playing card is then flipped up displaying a specific character. All players then have a limited time in which they can scan their card to count how many times that character appears – they do not have to be in the same pose as on the card! To make things more difficult, the boards are set up to be entirely black and one can only “see” the underlying characters using a special wand that you can move around giving one the feeling of controlling a spotlight (thus the name.) At the end of time, players guess how many times that character occurs and score points depending on how close they are to the correct answer. Players do not have identical boards, although the frequency of the characters are the same. Once players become so familiar with the characters that they remember the frequencies, the game has a mechanism to play using only 3 of the four quarters of their game board. The game also has a cooperative mode. Dice and cards are used to track a “moon” mechanism and players must keep scoring to stay ahead of the moon. Players are allowed to “share” their progress in order to help others catch up. Some of the cards providing the search subject are flagged with a heart symbol – indicating those are particularly good if you’re playing with a younger audience. The players’ spotlights actually come in two sizes. Flipping over the spotlight makes a significantly smaller field of view. This can increase the difficulty of the game, and could be used as a handicap against those pesky players who are just too good. Of course, reducing the timer is another great way to make the game harder.

Continue reading →
Posted in Convention Report, Gen Con, Reviews | Tagged , , , , , , , , | Leave a comment

Dale Yu: Review of Koala Rescue Club

Posted on August 13, 2024 by Dale Yu

Koala Rescue Club

Postmark Games has found a nice little niche for itself in publishing little print-and-play roll-and-write games available at reasonable prices.  We’ve covered a number of them in the past:  Voyages, Scribbly Gum, Waypoints, Aquamarine.

In this newest installment: Welcome to Koala Rescue Club! Koalas are an endangered species so it’s our job to protect them. In this roll and write game, you will plant new trees for koalas to live in and then rehome them safely. Each turn, a die roll determines which configuration of trees or koalas you can draw. Fill in areas to score points, and complete rows and columns to claim special bonus actions. Volunteers will help you by changing the shapes you can draw, and skybridges will open up new areas to plant in. And don’t forget to build hospitals to keep your koalas healthy!

Continue reading →

Posted in First Impressions, Kickstarter, Reviews | Leave a comment

Gen Con 2024 – Restoration Games: Chaotic Cars, Catapults, & Turtles

Posted on August 12, 2024 by Matt J Carlson

If you want to regress into your 80s childhood (you’re welcome to join me there if that’s too far back for you) look no further than Restoration Games. The folks who brought you an amazing remake of Dark Tower, followed up with Thunder Road, and are now releasing the chaotic, literal smash-em-up castle game, Crossbows and Catapults – along with more Thunder Road and everyone’s favorite martial arts turtles.

Crossbows and Catapults (Fortress War & Castle Battle)

Back in 1983, the classic Crossbows and Catapults game had two kids each build a castle out of plastic blocks and then smack the snot out of each other (the castles) with plastic ammunition fired from tiny almost-realistic catapults and other bits of plastic warfare. The premise was fairly straightforward – knock the other guy’s stuff down and hope they don’t do the same to you. It would be simple to just injection-mold some blocks, tie a few plastic beams together with rubber bands to make a catapult, and boom – instant kids classic. However, that’s not how Restoration Games rolls. Just like their masterwork of the Tower in Dark Tower, they engineered the heck out of this (at first glance) kid’s game. Let’s start with the blocks. Yes, you want them to stack really well and not just fall over easily, but you ALSO don’t want them to fall over too easily. The result are castle bricks that interlock well, but are also destructible when hit by the little plastic ammunition. (I believe there are more types of castle blocks, as well.) The catapults are designed with springs rather than rubber bands, so they won’t snap or break over time. There are even little screws that can be adjusted to change the angle at which the catapults launch their missiles.  There’s an expansion that even brings a trebuchet and a ballista to the mix. Another expansion adds more blocks for building the castle. However, I’m not sure how feely available those expansions will be. If I’ve now woken up your inner child I will have to disappoint you by saying that the game was available at Gen Con but won’t see stores until October 2nd. Also, there are two distinct versions of the game. One version called “Crossbows and Catapults: Castle Battle” is a smaller, less expensive mass-market version handled by Goliath Games. The full, royal treatment version of the game is called Crossbows and Catapults: Fortress War. Fortress War has everything that is in the Castle Battle version, plus more stuff – so the two can be combined if you wish.

Continue reading →
Posted in Convention Report, Gen Con, Reviews | Tagged , , , , , , , | 2 Comments

10 Questions About The New Era of Heroscape

Posted on August 12, 2024 by Mark Jackson

While I wasn’t able to attend GenCon and the events celebrating the return of Heroscape after fourteen years, I did have the privilege of receiving review copies of the first wave of releases… and so, it’s time to answer some questions. 

Luckily for you, gentle readers, I’ll be assisted in this by my two sons – both who grew up playing Heroscape and are now gamers in their own right. Braeden is 23 and Collin is 19… and between us we have 50+ years of experience at the game.

Over the last month, we’ve had the opportunity to play 12+ games with the newly released material.

Before we get started, let me note for those of you who’ve been living under a gaming rock for 20 years that Heroscape is a miniatures skirmish combat game played on a board constructed out of plastic terrain pieces. Since the theme is a battle for dominance in world where the Valkyrie Generals can recruit warriors from multiple times & dimensions, there is a wild mixture of heroes & squads – aliens & Matrix guys & Braveheart & dragons & robots & kung fu monks & gorillas with guns, to name a few. And it’s one of my favorite games…

What exactly did Renegade Game Studios release for Heroscape this summer?

While the pre-orders are shipping out now and those who attended GenCon had access to the new stuff, the rest of the gaming world has to wait for the street date of the wave one release – August 29.

There are actually five items in this release:

Braeden playing Heroscape earlier this summer (pre-Age of Annihilation)
Continue reading →
Posted in Commentary, Reviews | Tagged , | 4 Comments