Beyond the Sun

• Designer: Dennis K. Chan
• Publisher: Rio Grande Games
• Players: 2-4
• Age: 14+
• Time: 90-120 mins
• Times played: 3, with review copy provided by publisher

Says the rulebook: “Beyond the Sun is a space civilization game in which players collectively decide the technological progress of humankind at the dawn of the Spacefaring Era, while competing against each other to be the leading faction in economic development, science, and galactic influence. The game is played over a variable number of rounds until a number of game-end achievements are collectively claimed by the players. The winner is the faction with the most victory points, which are obtained by researching technologies, improving their economy, controlling and colonizing systems, and completing various achievements and events throughout the game.”

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This is the first of a series of articles that will involve a bit of gaming history.  Okay, maybe a little more than a bit—it’ll cover 120 years!

In his classic book A Gamut of Games, Sid Sackson stated that it was a shame that archaeologists, who examine every aspect of ancient civilizations, including their food, clothing, jobs, religions, and courtship rituals, invariably pay no attention to the games they played.  Here at the OG, no such criticism can exist, although our focus is more on recent history than the ancients.  In order to examine that history, we have created a Gaming Timeline, composed of the games we consider to be notable or historically significant, covering the period from 1900 to the present.  All told, there are 172 games in the timeline and we’ll be writing about the significance of each of them in the weeks to come.

1900 was chosen as the starting point for three reasons:  1) it’s a nice round number; 2) a number of interesting games debuted during the first decade of the twentieth century; and 3) the frequency of interesting games debuts were far lower prior to 1900.  It just worked out well for multiple reasons, so we went with it.

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The Sherlock Files, Vol. II (Q System)

• Designers: Marti Lucas and Josep Izequierdo
• Publisher: Indie Boards & Cards
• Players: 1-8
• Age: 14+
• Time: about 60 min per case
• Played on copy provided by publisher

The Q System was a new series of puzzle games that I discovered at SPIEL 2018.  Or really, I should say that they discovered me. I hadn’t heard of them prior to the that show, and the publisher found me as I was wandering through the halls to give me copies of these games.  Each game is a single-play mystery – described to me as being like a Sherlock Holmes: Consulting Detective (SHCD) episode in a small box.  The original format had each case in a separate tiny 32 card box.  The newest incarnation (By Indie Boards and Cards) of the game has three cases bundled together in nice compact box.   This is the second set of three cases that Indie has done, and perusal of their webpage shows that a third collection is coming out soon. Continue reading →

Reviewed by Jeff Lingwall

• Designed by Dan Halstad
• Artwork by Chris Quilliams
• Published by Plan B Games
• 2-4 Players
• Playing time: 30-45 minutes

The Basic Idea

Recent years have seen a surge in nature-themed games. Wingspan covered birds, Photosynthesis covered trees, Trekking covered parks, and so on. To this burgeoning countryside collective comes Beez, a new game from Plan B. In Beez, players take the roles of geometrically-minded honey bees, which use programmed movements to gather nectar from a hexagonal field of flowers and then convert that nectar into point-scoring drops of honey. The gorgeous production and simple rules make the game eye-catching and family friendly, yet not everyone might find the programming and goal-juggling elements as “sweet.” 

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