Surviving the Purge: Indigo (Game Review by Brandon Kempf)

Posted on March 7, 2020 by Brandon Kempf
  • Designer: Reiner Knizia
  • Artists: Eckhard Freytag, Walter Pepperle, Stefan Wingen & Betty Yao
  • Publisher: Ravensburger Spieleverlag GmbH
  • Players 2-4
  • Time: 30 Minutes
  • Plays: 22

By 2013, my family and I were playing a lot more board games. It had become our thing to do. We had an eight-year-old daughter who at that time enjoyed hanging out with mom and dad far more than hanging out with friends, and a two-year-old who was just hanging around whether she liked it or not. It was about that time that my focus in games kind of shifted a bit — they became a bit more family oriented and less oriented to my wife and I, or other adult friends and family. In other words, less Game of Thrones: The Board Game and more Indigo. 

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Dale Yu: Review of La Viña

Posted on March 6, 2020 by Dale Yu

La Viña

  • Designer: Jose Ramon Palacios
  • Publisher: Devir
  • Players: 2-5
  • Age: 8+
  • Time: 45-60 minutes
  • Played with review copy provided by DEVIR

The story in the rulebook for La Viña is that the previous owner of the vineyard has gone off to the great wine bar in the sky, and he wanted to leave his vineyard to the player who could make the best wine from this grapes; thus a competition is held to determine the winner.  (hey, I don’t make this stuff up, I just write about it).

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Posted in Essen 2019, Reviews | 2 Comments

Dale Yu: First Impressions of Monster Baby Rescue!

Posted on March 5, 2020 by Dale Yu

Monster Baby Rescue

  • Designer: Vladimir Suchy
  • Publisher: Rio Grande Games / Delicious Games
  • Players: 2-5
  • Age: 9+
  • Time: 20-40 minutes
  • Times played: 2, with review copy provided by Rio Grande

I’ll be honest with you, when I first heard about this game, which was the moment that I opened the shipping box from Rio Grande, I wasn’t quite sure what to make of this game… The cover has a cartoony Basilisk on it, and the back cover text is: “EMERGENCY!! A magic portal has opened on Maple Avenue, and your neighbors have sighted monsters.  Cute Monsters. Baby Monsters.  Authorities desperately need someone to care for them until they can be returned to their dimension. WON’T YOU HELP?”

Umm, let’s just say that this picture and blurb doesn’t really sound like my sort of jam.  But, being the intrepid game reviewer that I am, we still gave the game a try, and despite the unusual theme, there is an interesting game inside the box, though the appearance might not lead you to believe that…

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Posted in First Impressions | 5 Comments

Bites (Game Review by Brandon Kempf)

Posted on March 4, 2020 by Brandon Kempf
  • Designers: Brigitte Ditt & Wolfgang Ditt
  • Artists: Filip Gavril & Anca Gavril
  • Publisher: BoardGameTables.com
  • Players: 2-5
  • Time: 20 minutes
  • Times Played: 6 (1 Double Bites)

BoardGameTables.com has been attempting to establish themselves as a preeminent purveyor of board gaming tables, accessories & more recently as a board game publisher over the past couple of years. The most recent board game release from BoardGameTables.com is Bites, which was originally released as the game Big Points nearly twelve years ago. Big Points was more of an abstract, with colorful pawns moving from colorful disc to disc. It looked very much a product of its time and this new version, Bites, looks every bit a product of this Kickstarter era, but does it play like a game of the past? Or the future? 

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Posted in Reviews | Tagged , , , , , | 5 Comments

Dale Yu: Winter Puzzles #2 – Luna: The Shadow Dust (Steam), Cain’s Jawbone (not-a-book yet), The Heist: Chasing Hahn (game), The Puzzleboat (website)

Posted on March 3, 2020 by Dale Yu

OK, well it’s been a surprisingly temperate winter so far, but this is still the main time to stay indoors and keep myself busy.  There are a lot of different forms of entertainment, and I’m going to run down the different things that have kept me busy this winter so far. This is the second installment of winter puzzling activities.

Luna: The Shadow Dust

  • Developer: Lantern Studio
  • Publisher: Application Systems Heidelberg
  • Played on Steam on my PC
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Posted in Reviews | 6 Comments

Dale Yu: Winter Puzzles #1 – Deckscape: Behind the Curtain (game), 404 (book), The Cult Experience (book)

Posted on March 2, 2020 by Dale Yu

OK, well it’s been a surprisingly temperate winter so far, but this is still the main time to stay indoors and keep myself busy.  There are a lot of different forms of entertainment, and I’m going to run down the different things that have kept me busy this winter so far.

Deckscape: Behind the Curtain

  • Designers: Martino Chiacchiera, Silvano Sorrentino
  • Publisher: dv Giochi
  • Players: 1-6
  • Ages: 12+
  • Time: 60 minutes
  • Times played, 1 – with review copy provided by dv Giochi
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Posted in Reviews | 2 Comments