Illumination: An Original Game about Medieval Manuscripts

Illumination: An Original Game about Medieval Manuscripts

 

By Mitchell Thomashow    

Illumination is a highly original, deeply absorbing, and wonderfully challenging new two player game. It’s the latest creation of the imaginatively fertile mind of designer Alf Seegert, who also happens to be a Professor of Fantasy Literature. It is elegantly enhanced by the fine production of Gryphon Games, and the exquisite art of Jake Seven and Claire Campin.

 

Here’s a brief synopsis. You are either a reverent or irreverent monk competing to illustrate three manuscripts, while also gathering ritual tokens to display at the local monastery. The theme is a charming and often whimsical dressing for what is a highly competitive abstract game. How does it work? 

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Brandon Kempf – Three Games of 2020

I have a lot of games. A lot of games that are on my shelves, or on my table being played, that I have told myself that I want to review at some point. For one reason or another, this doesn’t always happen. My goal here on The Opinionated Gamers is that I want to get about one review out per week, but I’d like to write about more games. So I’m taking a page out of Patrick Brennan’s playbook, and we’re going to start writing about games in threes, in snapshot form. This should be a good way for readers to get to know me and my gaming tastes a bit better, and also another way for me to talk about games that I maybe don’t really want to dedicate two thousand words to. Welcome to Three Games.

In an upcoming collaboration article, The OG is going to look at our favorites of 2020. Chris dropped his favorites the other day and I’m going to drop my favorite three of the year in a Three Games article. 

It was a weird year for a lot of reasons, and I think due to how things shook out, the games industry saw some really big booms with sales, but I think the games themselves suffered. Lack of playtesting and developing opportunities has to have hindered how things are done. Saying that, I think that there were some pretty good games released this past year, but the dropoff after the good games is more severe. No one wants to listen to my weird theories and ramblings, so lets get started with Three Games of 2020.

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Chris Wray: My 10 Favorite Games of 2020

While 2020 was (as expected) a down year in gaming, I still played about 60 games released last year, plus about 30 new expansions. The OG will have a big list of the group’s top games later this month, but I wanted to do mine in the form of a short list, with room for honorable mentions and my favorite expansions.

Without further ado, here are my top 10 games from 2020! Links are to my reviews.

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Dale Yu: Review of Magic Money

Magic Money

  • Designer: Zack Hiwiller
  • Publisher: Indie Boards & Cards
  • Players: 3-6
  • Age: 14+
  • Time: 30 minutes
  • Played on review copy provided by the publisher

In Magic Money, Merlin the Magnificent has passed away and left behind a marvelous menagerie of magical monsters for adoption.  You bid against your fellow wizards to take home adorable critters of all shapes and sizes.   The game itself is a series of auctions, each having the same three phases.  There is a deck of 21 creature cards which is shuffled, and then 9-12 cards are dealt into a face down pile; the unchosen cards are not used in this game.  Each player also gets a marker and a Ledger with a public side that shows any winning bids.  All players can view this public side at any time.  The other (darker) side is where you write down your losing bids.  This information is always kept secret from your opponents.

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Dale Yu: Review of Ravensburger Escape Puzzles (spoiler free*)

Dale Yu: Review of Ravensburger Escape Puzzles (spoiler free*)

I was first introduced to the Ravenburger Escape Puzzle line (then called the Exit Puzzle series) back on October 27, 2018 – https://opinionatedgamers.com/2018/10/27/dale-yu-friday-report-from-essen/.  The press package at the Ravensburger Play and Lunch included a copy for each of us.  We had a pretty decent time with this first puzzle, but frankly, I kind of forgot about them as they weren’t being released in the US.

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Calico (Game Review by Brandon Kempf)

  • Designer: Kevin Russ
  • Artists: Beth Sobel
  • Publisher: AEG and Flatout Games
  • Players: 1-4
  • Time: 30 – 45 minutes
  • Times Played: 4
  • Affiliate Link: https://amzn.to/2KQq6XT

We’re dog people, or rather, we used to be dog people. But back in September, something shifted in the Kempf family household, a cat joined the family, then in December another one. So I guess we’re cat people now(even though our youngest keeps asking for a St. Bernard). Being new cat people, we’re supposed to like things that have to do with cats right? Even tangentially with cats. We played Isle of Cats a couple times, we’ve been buying cat things, and now we’re playing a game sort of about quilts. Or rather a game where you are making a quilt and trying to attract cats. If there is one thing I have learned in our short time as cat people, it’s that cats love to sleep in comfy places, so this makes complete sense that if you make a quilt, they will sleep on it. 

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