In addition to everything else associated with it, Essen represents the unofficial end of the annual game award season. We’ve already mentioned the a la carte results which were announced there. A newer tradition is the revelation of which of three nominated games won the Deutscher Spiele Preis award. The top 10 finishers were announced earlier, but the order of the top three were held back until last week. We now know that the DSP winner is SETI, designed by Tomas Holek and published by CGE. Endeavor: Deep Sea takes the second spot and Bomb Busters finishes third. The complete DSP top 10, together with their designers, is listed below.
SETI – Tomas Holek
Endeavor: Deep Sea – Carl de Visser, Jarratt Gray
Bomb Busters – Hisashi Hayashi
Castle Combo – Gregory Grard, Mathieu Roussel
Faraway – Johannes Goupy, Corentin Lebrat
Civolution – Stefan Feld
Blood on the Clocktower – Steven Medway
Slay the Spire – Gary Dworetsky, Anthony Giovannetti, Casey Yano
Apiary – Connie Vogelmann
Dune: Imperium-Uprising – Paul Dennen
Best Children’s Game:Â Little Alchemists – Matus Kotry Continue reading →
The last day of Essen saw us rush in to grab a game of Kavango and boy was it a highlight.
Kavango is a medium weight game designed by husband and wife Matt Brown and Zara Reid, who are British but have lived and worked in Botswana until recently, with Zara being a conservation expert. The game theme feels extremely authentic as you draft animal cards, placing them gradually in your display as you use your specialist, money raised and your skills to build up your wild life reserve. Each card is individual and hand drawn by Matt, but this is not some vanity project but a proper game which runs smoothly in an hour. Over three rounds you draft cards and pass, trying to collect the right animals to build your ecosystem and allow other animals to flourish while also introducing local producers (insects, trees, grasses and fish) and donating to climate and local charities to assist you. Each round you draft and play 10 cards and try to raise donation money and points by meeting objectives. As the rounds progress the cards you draft are harder to play and the objectives harder to meet, but complexity remains at the medium level and the game is just a joy to experience. Each card also tells you about the animal pictured and an advanced version gives you personal objectives linked to symbols in the card text. The retail version has great components and good quality boards too.
We were gushing about the game by the time we finished and immediately bought a copy.
Thanks for reading along with us during SPIEL – now time to play games and write reviews!
Create a strange world inhabited by puzzling creatures. At each creation restriction mistake, dangerous Tzimimes will appear. Obtain the most Stars as you create a world made of 16 cards as you watch for the Tzimimes trying to devour your cards.
Each turn, draft 3 cards then play, alternatively, your cards, one by one in your world, orthogonally adjacent to a card that was previously played in your game area. Several types of lands have playing restrictions. If they are not met, the card is played face down, Tzimimes side facing up and does not score any Stars at the end of the game. Other lands have binding play effects. Some cards will add vertical and horizontal scoring.
In Strange World, you have to do your best with the worst. Indeed, with a tight draft of 3 cards, your opponents will certainly give you cards that are not so simple to play in your game area. But from the optimization of these restrictions comes the gaming fun.
In The Elder Scrolls: Betrayal of the Second Era, players take on the role of adventurers travelling across the world in search of adventure. Over a series of three sessions, players increase in power, eventually gaining enough strength to engage in a final battle in the last session. The game map forms a framework for players to explore as they encounter peaceful or (more likely) antagonistic/combat encounters. These could be simple 1-room combats or a more involved dungeon-crawl type experience. Because the entire game is only three sessions, players increase in power significantly over the course of a single play session, providing a strong sense of building power (and tension.) Based off of a very popular line of role-playing videogames, The Elder Scrolls: Betrayal of the Second Era (TESBotSE) has a vast amount of source material available. Players who love combat and upgrades will enjoy the character growth (and its huge number of options) while story-oriented players should find satisfaction in the depth of background in the world. Fans of Chip Theory Games will know what to expect in the box – lots of dice, maps, and cool poker chips making a game that may even survive a trip to the bathtub. TESBotSE has been out for a bit less than a year but there is already a crowdfunding effort for a 2nd printing and several new expansions to the base game (along with a mammoth storage option to go with the mammoth game…) It ends October 31st.
The Elder Scrolls: Betrayal of the Second Era Designers: Josh J. Carlson, Michael Gernes, Logan Giannini, Ryan Howard, Salem Scott, Josh Wielgus Publisher: Chip Theory Games Players: 1-4 Ages: 14+ Time: 2-4+ hrs per session (review copy provided by publisher)
TESBotSE plays in two different modes. The first is an over-arcing storyline where the players’ party roams around on a map, interacting with towns, quests, or initiating encounters (both peaceful/story-based and combat-oriented ones.) The second mode kicks in during those combat encounters. Players maneuver around and fight in a hex-grid layout. This could be a single large room, a cavern exploration that is built up while you play, or (typically a final boss) a large set piece area with multiple linked map tiles. The game is huge and involved in many ways so I will only describe it in broad terms here, enough so that my evaluations will make sense. Feel free to visit more in depth reviews if you need to figure out the details. (Note: there is a pretty good detailed tutorial book that comes with the game that can also be downloaded here.) The basic process is a daily movement around the game map, which may or may not result in a combat situation. Since player powers lean heavily into combat options, expect combat situations more often than not.
Saturday at the fair is its usual crowded and loud self. So many people crammed into the halls – made worse this year because of the bad weather; so no one is standing around in the open spaces. I must say that this is the first Spiel in a few years to be this late in the month, and man, the relentless Arctic-like winds are really quite strong!
I’m taking a break between meetings to try to get a little update up here – it may be more pictures than words, but that’s the best I can do from my phone!
Let me start first with the teaser picture from my Ravensburger lunch
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This is the 65th anniversary of Amazing Labyrinth, and they have other projects as well. There is a legacy-looking version coming to crowdfunding next year as well (in collaboration with Awaken Realms) – called Labyrinth Chronicles.
Played with the review copy provided by the publisher
Neuroshima Hex is a tile-placement skirmish game with a very clever initiative system. First published in 2006, it has numerous fans who collect each expansion army as it comes out. This new version is a great entry point because Neuroshima Hex plays best as a two-player game, and this edition comes with two distinctive armies and a neoprene playmat that travels well. If you like it, you can add more armies, or just keep playing it as is.
Neuroshima Hex is played on a hex grid. The goal of the players is to destroy the enemy’s HQ, each of which starts with 20 health. HQ health is tracked on the playmat. The game can also end with neither HQ being destroyed, in which case, the player with the higher HQ health wins.
To start, each player chooses an army (Steel Police or Beasts), determines which army will go first, separates their special tiles with double-sided art (HQs and a few other special Beast tokens), and in turn order places that army’s HQ on the grid. When the player playing the Beast army places their HQ, they also place their special Cerberus tile next to it. Both sides then shuffle their remaining tokens face down and start the game.Â
