The Easter Escapade

• Designer: Jonathan Chaffer
• Publisher: Grand Gamers Guild
• Players: 1-4
• Age: 13+
• Difficulty Rating: 2/3
• Time: ~60 minutes on the box; 27 min in reality 
• Played with review copy provided by publisher
• Weblink – https://grandgamersguild.com/collections/holiday-hijinks

The egg hunt is in disarray. Can you crack the case?

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Ingenious

• Designer: Reiner Knizia
• Publisher: Kosmos
• Players: 1-4
• Age: 8+
• Time: 45 minutes
• Played with review copy provided by Thames&Kosmos

In Ingenious, a.k.a. Einfach Genial, players take turns placing colored domino-style tiles on a game board, scoring for each line of colored symbols that they enlarge. The trick, however, is that a player’s score is equal to their worst-scoring color, not their best, so they need to score for all colors instead of specializing in only one or two.

In more detail, the game includes 120 domino-style tiles, each consisting of two hexes; each hex has one of six colors in it, with most tiles having different-colored hexes. Each player has a rack with six tiles on it, and on a turn a player places one tile from their rack onto two empty hexes of the game board. (There are a few spaces with pre-printed icons on them).  The size of the playing area increases with higher playing counts.

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Sidequest: 7th Sea

• Designers: Jakub Caban and Bartosz Idzikowski
• Publisher: Board & Dice
• Players: 1-4 (would not recommend more than 2)
• Age: 14
• Time: 60-90 minutes on box.  84 minutes in actual time in my solo play
• Played: once with review copy provided by publisher

  

Hurry! From what you’ve heard in the inn the Dragonsteel Shield can be found in Nüllrode, but the Inquisition is already on their way! You’re lucky they chose to use the roads – you can overtake them using the shortcut. A few hours, two terrified settlements, and one totally honorable saber duel later, you are here. The village looks boring, but there is an old, pagan chapel, seemingly sealed tightly. Sneaking in is not an option, so it’s time to get these doors open!

Get inside the chapel and reach for treasure before others! SideQuest: 7th Sea is an escape room-style game set in the world of well-known TTRPG system 7th Sea, published by Chaosium.

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Tesseract

• Designer: James Firnhaber
• Publisher: Smirk and Dagger
• Players: 1-4
• Age: 14+
• Time: 60+ minutes
• Played with review copy provided by publisher

The Tesseract appeared in our skies six days ago, over the exact magnetic north of the planet. It was the size of a city block. Since that time it has been condensing, collapsing upon itself. It can now fit into the palm of your hand. Our world’s best minds must now find a way to contain and control the reactions of this alien artifact, or its exponentially increasing destructive power will remove our planet from existence, reconfiguring our space and time to the extra-dimensional needs of its creators. Can you and your team work together to shut down the Tesseract, or will humankind simply be a blip in the grand scheme of the universe? Time will tell.

Tesseract is a compelling, cooperative dice-manipulation game for 1 to 4 players. The focal point of the game is a block of 64 dice, the Tesseract, which sits at the center of the board on a raised platform. Players will remove cubes to place in their individual labs, transfer them as needed to others, adjust the cube’s values and, importantly, isolate the cubes into the containment matrix, neutralizing them.

To Contain a cube a player must have in their lab 3 or more cubes all of one value (a Set) or in sequence (a Run), either all of one color or having none of the same colors. By filling the containment matrix completely (24 total unique dice) they will stop the reaction and win the game. But if the Tesseract has its last cube removed beforehand – or if 7 breaches occur, the game is lost and our world ceases to exist. Asymmetric character abilities include a passive, ‘always on’ ability and a unique action that is only available to that player. Research cards earned during play help give players an edge, as do the even more powerful Containment cards, unlocked from the matrix. Tesseract is a very challenging co-op game, with lots of replay value built into the number of characters and various threat platforms which govern the difficulty. The game scales remarkably well and has a solo mode that is every bit as engaging. The tension mounts quickly as the Tesseract sheds cubes at the end of every player’s turn, primes them and potentially causes Breaches to occur, bringing us closer to disaster.

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