Review of Parks

Posted on February 12, 2020 by Joe Huber

Parks

Designed by Henry Audubon and published by Keymaster Games

The Game

I set a lot of gaming goals.  Almost every year I set at least one goal for myself, and it’s not uncommon for me to set additional goals during the year.  For example, last year after I’d met my goal of playing all of my favorite games – those I rate a 9 or 10 – at least once, I decided to set a goal of playing them all at least one more time.  But I don’t really have any big, long-term goals for playing games; the closest is my goal of playing 2038 in 2038.

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Patrick Brennan: Game Snapshots – 2020 (Part 4)

Posted on February 11, 2020 by pfbrennan

It’s a wonder that Patricio can even play games. First, survive bushfires. Next, swim out of 100-year floods. I’m guessing locusts are next week’s report.

The cream of the crop are the games I’ve played more than twice each year over the last 5 years. For those who’ve been reading along over the last few years there won’t be much surprise, but for the record, for the years 2015-19, they are:

All of which I rate a 9 or 10, as you’d expect.

There are only two other games in the running to join the list for this year:

The Game – this is its first year of eligibility, and

Schnappchenjagd – this has had multiple plays every year since 2000 with the sole exception of 2015, so it’ll be taking its rightful place once more among the elite.

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Dale Yu: Review of Rumble Nation

Posted on February 10, 2020 by Dale Yu

Rumble Nation

Designer: 与儀新一 (Shinichi Yogi)
Publisher: Hobby Japan
Players: 2-4
Ages: 10+
Time: 20-40 minutes
Times Played: 4 times with review copy provided by Hobby Japan, 5 plays with first edition (by 77spiele)

Rumble Nation was a highly anticipated SPIEL 2019 game for me; I had been introduced to the original release (then called Tenka Meidou) by James Nathan; but, of course, like all of the great JP games of his that I have played, it was essentially out-of-print and quite unavailable by the time that I learned about it!

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Posted in Essen 2019, Reviews | 1 Comment

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

Posted on February 9, 2020 by Brandon Kempf
  • Designer: J. Alex Kevern
  • Artist: Chris Ostrowski
  • Publisher: Renegade Games
  • Players: 2-4
  • Time: 45-60 minutes
  • Times Played: 5

Sentient (adjective): able to perceive or feel things

Sentient is a dice manipulation puzzle. An ever changing puzzle at that. In the game you are going to be purchasing sentient robots and then attempting to calibrate them to best suit your needs. 

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Brandon Kempf – Surviving the Purge 7

Posted on February 8, 2020 by Brandon Kempf

Over the next few months, instead of going with my Three Games articles, I am going to take a look at my collection and try to discuss why certain titles survived the great purge of 2019. During this process I may take a look at some games that didn’t survive, but only as a measuring stick for what did survive. Since I am silly, like a lot of gamers, I use Ikea Kallax shelves to display the games that we own. This makes it pretty easy to break things down cube by cube, so that’s what we’re going to do, twenty-four cubes, plus a top shelf for games that don’t fit in the cubes, over the course of a few months. I hope you enjoy!

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Opinionated Gamers – First Impressions of Fuji Koro

Posted on February 6, 2020 by Dale Yu

Fuji Koro

  • Designer: Jerome Demeyere
  • Publisher: Game Brewer
  • Players: 1-6
  • Age: 12+
  • Time: 90-120 minutes

From the publisher, the story behind this cooperative or competitive game: “Mount Fuji is on the verge of erupting. Red hot lava will soon consume the three secret Seien-ji (聖煙寺), sacred temples hidden deep in the bowels of the volcano. The Shōgun is determined to preserve the precious heritage and sends his most noble and gifted samurai warriors on a quest inside the volcano to retrieve the valuable goods. After a grueling climb through snowstorms and treacherous rocky terrain the samurai find the entrance that leads down into the cavern. The volcano rumbles and the walls start shaking! The floor underneath their feet crumbles and our brave samurai fall into the huge cavern that contains the three temples, which are slowly sinking into the smoldering lava.

It is now up to our heroes to explore the cavern and find as many of the relics, sacred scrolls, and monks as possible, to bring back safely to the Shogun before the volcano erupts and all is lost forever.”

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Posted in Essen 2019, Reviews | 1 Comment