From the back of the box:

Save  marine animals from the fishing nets. The more nets you manage to empty by the end of the game, the better your score will be.

• Play an action card.

• Move the animal cards.

• Free the newly formed groups of marine animals.

A rather underwhelming description for a very engaging game, and to be honest, I’m not a nature gal so this didn’t immediately grab me. But I needed a game to get free shipping, and boy howdy, was I pleasantly surprised! Let’s dive into it (see what I did there?)

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Rebuilding Seattle

• Designer: Quinn Brander
• Publisher: Wizkids
• Players: 1-5
• Age: 12+
• Time: 60-120 minutes

“The great fire of 1889 has burned down most of downtown Seattle, and you are the city planner tasked with rebuilding it. Manage economic resources to improve neighborhoods, erect new buildings and iconic landmarks, and address the needs of an ever-growing population to make Seattle better than ever!  In Rebuilding Seattle, you’re responsible for managing the zoning and expansion of a major neighborhood! Each round your population grows, and you can either build a new building, expand into a new suburb, activate an event, or build a landmark, before earning profit based on your neighborhood’s commerce. You’ll buy building types from a shared market, looking to find shapes that fit your grid and types that fit your strategy. Triggering citywide events can change the tide of the game, offering points, money, and expansions for the players ready for it. You can even enact laws to give yourself the advantage! At the end of the game, whoever’s neighborhood has earned the most points wins.“

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Roller Coaster Rush

• Designer: Scott Almes
• Publisher: Pandasaurus Games
• Players: 2-4
• Age: 10+
• Time: 15-30 minutes
• Played with review copy provided by publisher

In short: “Welcome to Roller Coaster Rush, a coaster-building game with oodles of kinetic fun! Your goal is to design and construct the best roller coaster for your investors’ theme park! At the start of each game, you design a model coaster using the blueprints you have available. During the game, you’ll attempt to actually construct your model by winning auctions for the track pieces you used in your design. If you lose an auction on one of your own blueprints, you’ll have to take that track out of your coaster – but if you win someone else’s blueprints you’ll get to add a new track to make your coaster bigger and better. Along the way, you can demo your model coaster for investors to see how well it works and earn some extra money for auctions. At the end of the game you get to unveil your fully constructed roller coaster and run it for the public. You earn victory points based on how far your marble makes it down the track. The player with the most points wins!“

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