“You’re one of the ancient gods, revered and feared by a young civilization. With your help, your people are going to thrive and prosper. However, other gods also want their share of the glory. Will you be able to surpass them and be the highest deity?”
Roberto Fraga has a history of making games that use reflections as a main component of play (Princess Jing immediately comes to mind) – and in Reflecto, the idea is used in a word game. According to the rules, the game is set in the seventh story of Hans Christian Andersen’s fairy tale “The Snow Queen”. After a long journey, Gerda found Kai alone in a frozen pond. The Snow Queen agrees to save him if Gerda solves a puzzle of matching frozen letters and words. In this game, players take on the roles of the Snow Queen and Gerda – trying to either complete their own word or guess what their opponents word is.
Salad Master is a competitive game where players try to use their knowledge of the nutritional properties of different types of vegetables. It is a companion game to Meat Master, which we looked at last week – which has players working with meat sources instead of plant sources.
In Garden Nation, players take on the role of one of 4 factions of garden denizens; each working to have the most influence over the garden. The garden itself is made up of 7 territories, in a familiar hex pattern, and each of those territories has 7 action spots, which mirror the orientation of the larger territories. The territories are numbered, and they are randomly placed in the frame. Each player gets a scoreboard, the building pieces in the matching color, and each is dealt 4 secret missions, of which they need to keep 2 different ones. A display of 4 common projects is placed on the board. The torticrane is placed near the board; you will use it soon. A starting player is chosen, that player starts their population counter at 38. All other players start at 35. The starting player places their turn order marker on the first spot of the turn order track, and the other players place theirs next to the track.
Dice Conquest is a 2022 Wizkids release, new to many at SPIEL 2022, that puts the players together on a team of Heroes fighting off creatures, trying to get to Kalterstorm the Dragon. If they are able to defeat this boss monster, they win. If any of the Heroes dies at any point on this quest, the whole team loses!
The game offers 8 different heroes to choose from, and players can choose who they want to play with. Each hero comes with a special ability written on the bottom of the card. Heroes also have a special Critical Hit ability that comes into play whenever the player uses a die with his Critical Hit number showing.
I’m such a sucker for boardgame themes (he says sarcastically). I absolutely love the flavor text on the first page of the FYFE rulebook: “FYFE is an abstract tile laying game for 2 to 5 people by Kosch”. Perfect. Tells me everything I want to know about the game! Based on the components, there is a beachy feel to the game with a board that looks like a beach, scoring surfboards and seashell lucky charms. But, interestingly, no story to go with it at all.
“The aim of the game is to fill your player board with tokens and scoring boards to maximise as many scoring opportunities as possible. A game lasts exactly 25 rounds. The player with the most victory points at the end of the game will be the winner.”
