Played with review copy provided by Taiwan Boardgame Design
Run Animals, Run!! is a game on this year’s SPIEL list from Taiwan Boardgame Design – though it appears to have been initially released in 2017. In this game, which is subtitled “Zoo of Depression”, players represent various animal species in Taiwan, fighting for survival in the forest while facing the threat of human destruction. Players try to complete their individual missions to score points, and the game ends when a player has reached 20 points (thereby winning the game) or when a player’s graveyard is filled or their species goes extinct, at which point players compare point totals to see who has won.
This may seem like an odd post to lead off the end of this week with. Friday, I’ll post my biannual piece about titles I’m looking forward to at Tokyo Game Market (TGM) – which takes place on Saturday and Sunday. This time, I’ll (finally) be going in person! For this first trip, I’m expanding Friday’s piece into three separate articles. Friday’s will be what it usually is. Tomorrow I’ll talk about various parts of my preparation – such as how I research which games I’ll buy and what my packing plans are. But today, we’re going to talk about the TGM catalog.
This probably seems like an odd place to start, but there are some captivating bits of the catalog from afar, and I had to know what it was like. What role it could play in preparation. Traditionally, I’ve seen advertisements for each booth at the fair posted to Twitter. They look something like this:
For a long-tail chaser like myself, my mind wonders at what sort of stealth titles may be in the catalog from booths which aren’t on Twitter or don’t add their information to the Game Market website.
Perhaps in the west, the catalog is best known as your admission ticket to TGM. It is available at local game stores and other such places in the weeks leading up to the show. Traditionally, the ticket to the show was built into the cost of the catalog and entrance to the show was simply holding a copy of the catalog aloft as you walked in with throngs of others doing the same.
At this point in a pandemic, things are different. Tickets are now electronic. The catalog comes with a big yellow warning that it is no longer a ticket.
Exit: The Game Advent Calendar – The Mystery of the Ice Cave
Designers: Inka and Markus Brand
Publisher: Kosmos
Players: 1+
Time: 5-10 min/day x 24 days
Played with review copy provided by Thames and Kosmos
Advent calendars are a well-entrenched tradition in Germany. Each October when I head to Essen for SPIEL, the stores are already jammed packed with Advent calendars of all types. The first printed Advent calendar originated in Germany in the early 20th century with Gerhard Lang. When Gerhard was a little boy his mother made him a calendar with 24 small candies attached to cardboard, one for each day before Christmas. Lang grew up to operate the Reichhold & Lang printing company where he printed the first Advent cardboard calendar with 24 little pictures. A few years later, the company printed the first calendar with the little doors that everyone loves to open. The first chocolate Advent calendar appeared in 1958, but it was in 1971 that Cadbury joined the race and launched its own version in the UK. Cadbury produced Advent calendars intermittently from 1972 to 1986, but it wasn’t until 1993 that they finally became a mainstay.
Well, thus far in its short existence, Unexpected Games has provided the gaming public with games that are well…. unexpected. Their first game was The Initiative, and this game was hailed as a breath of fresh air to the co-op puzzle solving genre. Thinking about what to do as a follow-up, as stated in a designer diary, “Not only did I need a good game, I needed something unexpected. One of our studio’s guiding principles is to create new experiences that do not supplant games that already exist, but offer something fresh and exciting. For our second title, it was essential that the game provided a different experience than The Initiative. I worried that releasing another cooperative puzzle-solving game as our sophomore effort would typecast the studio into making “only those types of games”.I had always wanted to do a game with a courtroom theme, so I took some time to explore this idea.” And, the result is Voices in My Head – which we reviewed earlier this year.
In 2020, I published a pretty massive review of the Unmatched game system here on the OG… including a substantial bit of writing about how it compares to Star Wars: Epic Duels, the out-of-print mass market game on which it is based. (Important fact that may summarize that portion of the review: I am still more than willing to sell my lovingly used copy of Epic Duels to finance further Unmatched purchases.)
Since my last review of a physical box of Unmatched goodness, Restoration Games has managed to release four (4!) more boxes of stuff… turning this system into an honest-to-goodness juggernaut of head-to-head card-based combat. Today, I’ll be attempting to give a sweeping overview of those boxes for both the Unmatched fans and for those who are new to the game system.
In addition, a small group of us took some time to rate the difficulty level of all the currently available characters… and I’m including that as a special bonus for those of you who read to the end of the review. (All part of the friendly Opinionated Gamers customer service, right?!)
I will note that my sons and I were playtesters on three of the four boxes (we did not playtest the T-Rex) as well as some boxes that are yet to appear. (I cannot begin to express how cool one of the upcoming sets is… but I am sworn to secrecy.)
A final reminder: each box functions as a stand-alone game as well as a part of the Unmatched game system.
Betta is a new game from Jeux Synapses; a company that hit our radar with Coatl. In this game: “Today’s your first day of work at Bette’s Pets, everyone’s favorite pet shop. You were expecting to learn how to stock shelves and operate the till, but Bette bought a boatload of bettas. In order to boost sales, Bette’s come up with a way to make a game out of it, and she’s going to award points based on how well you follow her instructions.
You need to arrange the bettas in 3×3 displays. Customers are most drawn to 6 particular patterns. Use your arrangement ideas (your tiles) to make these patterns pop! Plus, customers love seeing a lot of one color in a display. The more you fill a display with your color, the better your bettas are going to sell. Once the displays have been filled, or everyone runs short of arrangement ideas, the task is done and whoever has the most points wins!”
Tokyo Game Market: the Catalog
This may seem like an odd post to lead off the end of this week with. Friday, I’ll post my biannual piece about titles I’m looking forward to at Tokyo Game Market (TGM) – which takes place on Saturday and Sunday. This time, I’ll (finally) be going in person! For this first trip, I’m expanding Friday’s piece into three separate articles. Friday’s will be what it usually is. Tomorrow I’ll talk about various parts of my preparation – such as how I research which games I’ll buy and what my packing plans are. But today, we’re going to talk about the TGM catalog.
This probably seems like an odd place to start, but there are some captivating bits of the catalog from afar, and I had to know what it was like. What role it could play in preparation. Traditionally, I’ve seen advertisements for each booth at the fair posted to Twitter. They look something like this:
For a long-tail chaser like myself, my mind wonders at what sort of stealth titles may be in the catalog from booths which aren’t on Twitter or don’t add their information to the Game Market website.
Perhaps in the west, the catalog is best known as your admission ticket to TGM. It is available at local game stores and other such places in the weeks leading up to the show. Traditionally, the ticket to the show was built into the cost of the catalog and entrance to the show was simply holding a copy of the catalog aloft as you walked in with throngs of others doing the same.
At this point in a pandemic, things are different. Tickets are now electronic. The catalog comes with a big yellow warning that it is no longer a ticket.
But let’s find out what’s inside!
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