No, gentle reader, “PlayMode” is not the phrase I mutter to myself when I’m getting ready to host a game night. Though the name does remind me of this classic bit from the underappreciated Disney film BOLT…
PlayMode is a new gaming accessories company building inserts that improve storage and gameplay… and their first offering out of the gate is for Dune: Imperium – Uprising. Their goal is to create inserts that work to store the game AND also make it easier to set up and play.
The folks from PlayMode were kind enough to send me a copy of their PlaySystem to review using my own copies of Uprising and the Bloodlines expansion. Let’s take a look at what they’ve created… and maybe muse a bit about storing and organizing game components.
It is the year glork-too-vleep, or mid-20th century according to Earthling time. We recently stumbled across this planet called Earth and discovered intelligent, albeit primitive, life. The most intelligent and valuable of these specimens are the creatures known as cows. Alas, for our galactic goals we must settle upon the second-most intelligent form of life on Earth: the human being. These creatures are just intelligent enough. Their brains appear eager to be molded, and their civilization perfect for our siloing.
Aliens have come to silo humans — brainwash, steer, and preserve human civilization — for their cosmic purposes! In SILOS (Secret InterLopers from Outer Space), players control competing factions of aliens who abduct and brainwash humans and cows while secretly invading their community. Players tussle for majority influence in the key locations of this small town as they seek to activate location powers and control human specimens for societal power.
Players take turns repositioning their alien figures and activating an event card. The objective is to collect a complete set of humans: politicians, government operators, influencers, and professionals. A complete set will earn a player a societal power emblem, and the first player to earn five emblems wins the game. Cows are particularly valuable and thus count as wild tokens toward forming a complete set. SILOS is a remastered edition of Reiner Knizia’s Municipium.
Welcome to the elegant city of Florimelle, where a grand beautification effort has begun. In Fountains, you’ll become a master Fountaineer tasked with transforming Florimelle’s gardens and plazas by creating the most magnificent Fountain the world has ever seen. Fountains is a take-and-make game in which each player starts with a round fountain that features a spout and room for four features.
When I was a kid, our version of a “fight with playing cards” (to borrow the tagline from Postmark Games) was War. For those of you who never had the pleasure (and I use the word loosely), both players simultaneously flip over the top card of their deck and the high card takes the lower card. Repeat ad nauseum.
52 Duels is decidedly not like that.
Instead, the good folks at Postmark Games (Matthew Dunstan and Rory Muldoon) have taken the basic idea from their successful playing card-driven solo dungeon crawler (52 Realms: Adventures) and crafted a head-to-head dueling game with real decisions and clever mechanics.
And they fit it all in a couple of pages of rules and a few print’n’play character sheets.
For those of you who are new to Postmark Games, all of their designs are print’n’play. In other words, you’re buying the right to print copies of the various game elements for you and your other players. The physical elements you have to provide are simple – in the case of 52 Duels, you need two decks of regular playing cards. (Other games require d6s and a pencil/pen, while 52 Realms: Adventures needs a deck of playing cards plus a couple of small cubes.) There’s no cutting out cards or constructing a board – each game element is a single sheet of paper.
Additionally, each Postmark game has had additional content released for it over time – new maps for Voyages, Aquamarine, and Waypoints; new dungeons and characters for 52 Realms: Adventures. As a backer of all of their projects, I can attest to the quality of the later content.
OK, enough about Postmark’s business model and high quality – let’s talk about 52 Duels.
In Shadow Cards, players secretly predict how many points they want to score in that round. Before each trick-taking round, two cards from their hand are chosen, whose value also determines the points to be scored. The question always arises: Do I set aside the high numbers to score a lot of points at the end, or do I keep them to make it easier to win tricks during the game? Those who combine instinct and strategy can prevail and win after three rounds.Â
 Dive into daring battles with 2 to 4 heroes as you face off against ten unique and intelligent boss monsters! What makes it special: All bosses are controlled by an app that dynamically responds to your actions. At the start of each battle, their tactics and abilities remain a mystery. Uncover their weaknesses, discover how to defeat them, and claim powerful loot cards to upgrade your deck and unlock new abilities!
Boss Fighters QR is a cooperative fantasy campaign game where players battle against ten unique boss monsters that react tactically to their actions. This hybrid game combines elements of a classic card game with a digital app to create an interplay of strategic deck building and dynamic boss battles. The Scan&Play mechanic of Boss Fighters QR allows the game to instantly recognize player cards as they are scanned, which then triggers challenging responses – to the players’ choices, in real time.
