Dale Yu: Review of Australis

Posted on December 31, 2025 by Dale Yu

Australis

  • Designer: Alessandro Zucchini & Leo Colovini
  • Publisher: Kosmos
  • Players: 2-4
  • Age: 10+
  • Time: 60 minutes
  • Amazon affiliate link: https://amzn.to/43Guqi5
  • Played with review copy provided by publisher

Stand your ground in the East Australian Current where you have to make your way as a sea turtle!  You have a chance of winning Australis only if you have a wide range of strategies. Choose the right dice cleverly to form growing schools of fish and settle corals on different coral reefs. At the end of each phase, you will compete with your dice in an exciting contest. Which of you will be the best in this ecosystem of incredible diversity?

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Dale Yu: Review of Point Galaxy

Posted on December 30, 2025 by Dale Yu

Point Galaxy

  • Designers: Molly Johnson, Robert Melvin, Shawn Stankewich 
  • Publisher: AEG
  • Players: 1-5
  • Age: 10+
  • Time: 15-30 minutes
  • Amazon affiliate link: https://amzn.to/4ofH7qY
  • Played with review copy provided by publisher

Point Galaxy takes the same simple concept of drafting cards and building the best combinations, and adds new layers of sequence building, set collection, and racing towards objectives to the mix – making the game easy to learn, but challenging for everyone!

Rules are simple: Take any two cards from the dynamic market and add them to your expanding galaxy. As you place cards, create solar systems by arranging planets in numeric order and earn bonuses by collecting suns, asteroids, moons, rockets, and research projects to score the most points!

There are over 140 unique double-sided planet/space cards, so you can create a completely different galaxy each and every time you play!

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Posted in Essen 2025, Reviews | 2 Comments

Alison Brennan: Game Snapshots – 2025 (Part 33)

Posted on December 29, 2025 by Dale Yu

Last one from me for the year so let’s cover some 2025 stats:

–          310 new-to-me titles

–          424 different titles

–          818 plays

–          SETI was played for the most minutes

–          The Crew: Mission Deep Sea was played the most times (all on BGA)

–          Faraway and Harmonies were played the most f2f (these are also available on BGA)

 

New-to-me games played recently include …

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Dale Yu: Review of Four Corner Detective

Posted on December 26, 2025 by Dale Yu

Four Corner Detective

  • Designer: Yoshihisa Itsubaki
  • Publisher: itten
  • Players: 1-5
  • Age: 6+
  • Time: 15 mins
  • Played with review copy provided by publisher

Guess the four-digit number with your fingertips.  Four Corner Detective is a new tactile card game in which players examine the cards not by sight, but with touch to decipher the four-digits. Each player is given a card, where they touch the curved corners using their fingertips. Write down their predictions and depending on their guesses aim to score the most points. Can you use your fingertips to solve the mystery?

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Opinionated Gamers Quick Takes 2025 – Part 2

Posted on December 25, 2025 by Dale Yu

 

 

Happy Holidays to everyone!

As the year comes to a close, another Quick Takes column

We’ve started a tradition of writing a group document with very short takes on the games that we play.  Of course, you’ll not get as much info as in a full review, but as our reviews likely won’t start for awhile, you can at least get a glimpse into what we think about certain games.   The OG writers can leave their initials at the end of a comment if they want attribution…

We’ll post this to the blog every few weeks to give some thoughts on each game.   Here is the next installment on what we think about the games from Spiel 2025

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Dale Yu: Review of Formidable Farm

Posted on December 24, 2025 by Dale Yu

Formidable Farm

  • Designer: Friedemann Friese
  • Publisher: 2F
  • Players: 1-4
  • Age: 10+
  • Time: 30-45 min
  • Played with review copy provided by publisher

In Formidable Farm, you tirelessly try to fulfill the wishes of the village population for field crops.  At the start of the market day, you set the number of trades you need to fulfill until the evening. Initially, you do not know the details of the village population’s wishes, and you can only work through the trades one after the other.

The village population follows simple rules for all their wishes: If you supply the needed field crops, you will get a reward. If a customer wants tomatoes, they give you two bags of wheat. If you organize a hoped-for sheep, the customer trades your surplus cucumbers for pigs. For two cucumbers and a bag of wheat, you immediately get details for another three wishes.  If you have delivery problems, you can make additional trades at the market to get needed rewards. You also can use each of your fulfilled trade cards to pay for advantages.

If you are the first to fulfill the wishes of the village population, you win Formidable Farm and enjoy an early end of the work day.

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