The Four Doors

• Designer: Matt Leacock, Matthew Riddle, Ben Pinchback
• Publisher: Happy Camper
• Players: 1-5
• Age: 10+
• Time: 30 minutes
• Played with review copy provided by publisher

Beneath a mystical light tower, an ancient Hollow has re-opened, releasing a horde of evil spirits known as the Shadow Veil, who threaten to cover the land in everlasting darkness.  Your challenge in The Four Doors is to collect the relic from behind each door, then gather everyone at the beacon in order to light it.

Join a band of daring adventurers on a quest to retrieve the four sacred relics hidden beyond the doors of a mystical light tower.  Work together to unite the relics and ignite the beacon – before the sinister Shadow Veil engulfs the tower and the doors are sealed forever!

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The summer of 2025 is clearly the season for refreshed versions of classic games.  Earlier this month, I looked at the new versions of classics such as Ticket to Ride and Catan.  Now, CGE have release their new versions of Codenames and Codenames Duet.

Codenames is one of my favorite word/party games, especially because I can play it on their wonderful phone app.  Getting a daily dose of wordplay has reignited my interest in the physical game.

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The Polish-based Lucky Duck Games was out in full force with several good looking titles in constant play. The most colorful was probably Potions of Azerland where players make potions to sell, or to drink themselves for other benefits. Players bid for priority in five actions at once. The actions then proceed in order with high bidders getting a better benefit. In the worker-placement Critter Kitchen, players are again gathering ingredients, this time to make different food courses to satisfy the critics and score points. Temple Code is a quick card-based game of group Mastermind as players use uniquely designed cards to try and deduce their personal 3-symbol code. Finally, We’re Sinking! had the loudest portion of the booth where players were welcome to help each other save their boat while fighting off enemies. Of course, everyone is also a pirate so perhaps they could spare a moment to pick up some personal loot. Whoever has the most loot wins… unless the ship sinks, then the player who helped the most wins.

Potions of Azerland

Potions of Azerland has players gathering the ingredients for potions to make and sell to waiting customers. But wait! Sometimes drinking your own potions will give you the edge you need to get ahead of your competition. Players have to juggle collecting, brewing, selling, and even upgrading their potions as they move through the game.

Each round, players will secretly bid for a series of five actions. The high bid for each action gets the best use of that action. It is essentially five auctions occurring simultaneously. The various actions are then resolved in order, everyone performing the first action, then everyone the second, etc…