Dale Yu: Review of Nautilus Island

Nautilus Island

  • Designers: Johannes Goupy, Theo Riviere
  • Publisher: Funny Fox
  • Players: 2-4
  • Age: 8+
  • Time: 20 minutes
  • Review copy provided by publisher at GenCon 2023

You are shipwrecked on a mysterious and deserted volcanic island. In the wake of a storm, you come across a grounded and abandoned submarine: The Nautilus. You must explore it from top to bottom, and will need to collect as many objects as you can to ensure your survival, repair the submarine, and leave the island before the other castaways.

During their turn, players move their Castaway marker in a column and then choose between collecting object cards from the column or place down cards from their hand to start a collection. Storing objects allow players to claim bonus and/or porthole tokens before their opponents and get victory points. When a column is empty, the game ends. Player with the most victory points wins the game.

—description from the publisher

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Gen Con 2023 – Cephalofair

Cephalofair, the little booth with the big boxes was once again present and showing off the recent Frosthaven, the Gloomhaven RPG, and a revamped Gloomhaven, 2nd Edition. Combined and shoved into your trunk, they will be sure to reduce your car’s overall range. On the other end of the spectrum (size and thankfully, price) comes a new Gloomhaven entry: Gloomhaven: Buttons & Bugs, which was shown still in a preproduction stage.

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Gen Con 2023 – Flock Together

It was literally my last few steps of the convention. I was underground and headed south to my car when I came upon a brightly colored booth with assorted colorful pieces in bowls. The inhabitants (Sea Cow Games) issued a challenge. They could explain their upcoming game in 30 seconds. Challenge accepted! I stopped for a few minutes to check out Flock Together, a chicken-themed cooperative adventure, coming to Kickstarter on September 12th.

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Gen Con 2023 – Wise Wizard Games

Wise Wizard Games keeps the ball rolling with more Star Realms (Star Realms: Rise of Empire) and Hero Realms (Hero Realms Dungeons), but isn’t afraid to bring out completely new games. The superhero dice-building Kapow! smashes a quick comic-book fight into just a few minutes, while the deckbuilder Robot Quest Arena has players driving (and fighting) in fast playing robot-head to robot-head action.

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Dale Yu: Review of Broad Lines

Broad Lines

  • Designer: Piero Modolo
  • Publisher: Cranio Creations
  • Players: 3-8
  • Age:7+
  • Time: 15 minutes
  • Played with copy provided by Publisher

“A cooperative party game that will draw you crazy!”

In this party game, one player is the Critic, and their job is to guess the word which is being drawn by the Artists.  The deck of word cards is shuffled and the Critic takes a card and places it in a stand, so that only the Artists can see it.  The Critic now chooses a number between 1 and 6 (or uses some convenient common cubic randomizer object), and the number chosen determines which word will be used this round.  If any of the Artists objects to the word (usually this is because you’re playing with kids and they aren’t sure of the meaning), then choose a different word.

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Gen Con 2023 – Bézier Games

Bézier Games was back in a “big” way (see below) showing off the upcoming Colossal Cat in the Box and the Maglev Metro map compilation Maglev Maps: Expansion Volume 1. Headed the other direction, the small box card game Scram! packs a 1v2 up to 3v3 team game into a handy, tiny box.

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