The Spiel Portugal game group has just announced its five nominees for its Jogo do Ano (Game of the Year) award. As opposed to most of the major game awards, which have been trending toward lighter and more accessible games recently, the JdA favors heavier fare. The group has been awarding the JdA since 2006. Last year’s winner was the excellent Barrage.
Here are the nominees for 2021, together with their designers. Congratulations to all the nominated games!
Dune: Imperium (Paul Dennen) Imperial Struggle (Jason Matthews, Ananda Gupta) On Mars (Vital Lacerda) Praga Caput Regni (Vladimir Suchy) Viscounts of the West Kingdom (Shem Phillips, SJ Macdonald)
Gamers have been preparing and training all their lives for the rise of the covid omega variant and the start of the zombie apocalypse; the time they finally take their rightful place as the saviours of the universe. Cue the music. Flash! (boom, boom, boom, boom) Ahh, ahh!! (boom, boom, boom, boom, boom, boom, boom, boom) He’ll save every one of us!!!
We’ve been in lockdown (aka zombie apocalypse training) for a few months now. Foreigners often think of Australia as a mini-States or a mini-UK because of the many commonalities. Here’s one cultural point of difference. At time of writing, the UK is averaging 37,000 cases and 100+ deaths per day and has lifted all lockdown restrictions. Similarly, the States are seeing 200,000 cases and 1500+ deaths per day. Australia is seeing 850 cases per day and 3 deaths per day and we’re in one of the harshest lockdowns in the world, with curfews in the hardest hit areas and police patrolling to ensure compliance. Continue reading →
I’ve written a good bit about my solo gaming over the last couple of years, both for the Opinionated Gamers and for my personal blog…
…so I decided that I’d continue that trend into 2021 by doing a solo gaming post every four months. What you’re reading is the second solo gaming post of this new year – the first is available at the Opinionated Gamers link in the paragraph above!
And even though I have (since being vaccinated) been out playing games with friends, there’s still been a LOT more solo gameplay over the past eight months – 37% of my gaming was solo. For comparison, the yearly total for 2020 was 19% and for 2019 was 6%.
I’ll repeat my same caveat as each previous report:
I know, I know – there are plenty of board game apps on iOS and Steam… and I own many of them. But there’s something really satisfying about physically playing a game: shuffling cards, moving pieces, seeing it all spread out in front of you.
So, what follows are my thoughts on a variety of solo games I’ve played over the past eight months – ordered by number of times I’ve played them in 2021. (Note: this is not necessarily how much I like a particular game for solo play – for example, I think Roll Player is a brilliant design but I have only played it two times this year… so far.)
Times played: 6, with review copy provided by Osprey Games
In Village Green, you are rival gardeners, tasked by your respective communities with arranging flowers, planting trees, commissioning statues, and building ponds. You must place each element carefully as time is tight and the stakes couldn’t be higher! Split your days between acquiring and installing new features for your green and nominating it for one of the competition’s many awards. Will your village green become the local laughing stock, or make the neighboring villages green with envy?
In The Loop, you are part of a group of Time Agents that will go back through the different eras of time to stop the nefarious plans of Dr Faux. The different eras of the time space continuum are seen in the seven wedges on the board, and in the center, you will find Dr Faux’s time machine, which is a cleverly disguised dice tower with three exit ramps.
Each wedge of the board gets its own sabotage tile (2 of which are face up at the start of the game). Your team’s goal is to meet the criteria on these sabotage tiles in order to cripple the time machine. If you are able to beat 4 sabotage tiles, your group will win! However, if you fail on a sabotage tile, that era of time becomes a vortex. If you create 4 vortexes, then your team loses. They will also lose if you try to make a vortex where there already is one. Dr Faux’s 7 card deck (one for each era) is shuffled and placed on the HQ board. There are 3 slots here, and they help track the progress of the game. The team must complete their task before the Dr Faux deck runs out for the third time!  This is the other way that they can lose the game.  There is a game mode tile – and before the game starts, the group should choose which mode they want to play this game and put the appropriate side face up on the board.Â
Times played: 1 with review copy provided by Ravensburger NA
Echoes is a new franchise of puzzle games by Ravensburger. They remind me a lot of the Adventure game series from Kosmos (also designed by Matthew Dunstan). For both, I am not sure if I classify them as games, they feel more like interactive fiction to me – but in the end, they are games on BGG, and I enjoy both of them regardless of which classification box they get smushed into….
