I love the variety of games you get at Gen Con. There are the big name, high strategy games that appear on lots of lists but I have a soft spot for the slightly goofier titles and perhaps nowhere is that seen more than in the many different sorts of dexterity games. Twin City Games was showing off Dino Dunk! Deep Freeze, a sequel to their disc-flicking game of soccer with special disc powers. Asmadi had a cool preview of Mystic Curling Club, coming to Kickstarter soon. Finally, I got to see Yubibo in person at the Jelly Jelly Games booth. I think of it as a sort of one-handed cooperative Twister. Each of these publishers also had other games on display (Animals in Espionage, Innovation Ultimate, and Fixer, respectively) but it’s the dexterity ones that really captured my heart.

Twin City Games

Dino Dunk! Deep Freeze

Front and center of the Twin City Games booth was Dino Dunk, a sort of dexterity-based soccer game from 2018. It’s sold out, but Twin City is launching a Kickstarter at the end of September for a remake/sequel with an ice theme, Dino Dunk! Deep Freeze. The gist of Dino Dunk Is a sort of carom version of soccer/basketball involving teams of discs, with special powers, and an egg ball, all played on a nice roll-up neoprene mat.

Each player has several discs (1 large, 3 medium, 1 small) that they can flick around the board in an attempt to get the tiny dino egg (ball) disc into the lava crater. (The blue and red backstops are basically backboards you can bounce off if needed.) Players alternate every two flicks. If you “control” the egg on your turn you can also shoot it directly. A player can “pass” the egg by shooting it at another disc of their color. In that way, the disc can move down the field but remain “in control” of the active player. A player trying to steal control of the disc has to hit the egg without making contact with the opponent’s disc.

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At both ends of the alphabet and almost at both ends of the exhibit hall, I’m smooshing Bézier Games and Wise Wizard Games together in the same post anyway. Bézier had the kitchen-sink of mechanisms of The Game Makers on display. It is a huge game and was garnering a huge interest, not just because it allows players to literally “publish” in-game their favorite boardgames. Scream! is another take on Scram! but now with bluffing. Wise Wizard Games has more Star Realms – the very newest stuff is all digital (for now) but there’s also the kid’s (no reading required) version of Star Realms Academy and a core set and expansion for the rethemed Star Trek: Star Realms game. The core set is just a reskin, but the expansion has all new content including options to play multiplayer against a Borg player (or AI.) Other new stuff seems to focus on smaller is better. There’s a card drafting game containing a total of 9 cards, Elemystic. Finally Draconis 8 is a card/tile laying game where cards “fight” against cards on their four sides. Every card in Draconis 8 is different, and you will be able to scan them in and also have a digital version of them with whichto play.

Bézier Games

The Game Makers

Under a giant banner, Bézier Games was showing off their upcoming Kickstarter, The Game Makers.

It is a game about making games. The eye-catching part is that Bézier Games has managed to get permission to include a huge number (300+) of actual boardgames for players to create during the game. Once a game is produced, you can display its box in your own personal display case. It’s a mammoth game (expect a mammoth price, I suppose) and there’s a lot going on under the hood. Obviously, players are hoping to get all the resources together and produce some games, but it’s not just about money. Players can gain points for their display board of all their finished titles. There’s worker placement (cute little forklifts!) on a rondel, three sizes of dice for marketing (to increase endgame scoring), and piles and piles of resources. Resources and other do-dads can be used in multiple ways – improving your factory, your assembly line, your warehouse, your workers, etc…

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Another reliable color is the blue Kosmos booth. In addition to their popular line of Exit puzzle experiences (now with CATAN!) there were several other games on display. Astralis is a very fishy dice-drafting engine building game. The Crew: Family Adventure gives a very Uno-like vibe to The Crew. TowerBrix is a fun game of partial-information cooperative block-building. Marbelous is a sort of Tetris/Candy Crush take on a boardgame with, get this, marbles. Dice Words is a fast-playing Scrabble-like game with personal dice rather than a hand of tiles. Finally, the old 2-player game of Caesar & Cleopatra is back with a new edition, now with 100% less orgies!

Exit: The Game – Adventures on Catan

As part of the 30th anniversary of CATAN, KOSMOS is bringing out a Catan version of their Exit series. For the most part, the new Exit the Game: Adventures on Catan is what you might expect. It is a one-use home version of an escape game. The overarching plot line has players making a new home for themselves on the island of Catan. They will explore the island, come across narrative characters (who they may even trade with!) All in all, supposedly a sort of cosy vibe to the whole Exit series / escape room line.

Astralis

Australis is a 2-4 player game of managing your own private ecosystem in the East Australian Current. The central mechanic has players choosing colored dice to determine what sorts of actions they will take. White dice power an engine building mechanic by allowing players to tuck in cards for future benefits of a specific color. Yellow provides fish (monies, in the game or other resources. Blue dice move your turtles along (go turtles!) Purple dice have to do with corals – a part of the game reliant on area control (and are the tiebreaker for things), while red dice help determine who gets to pick first each round. Feeding fish garners points, moving your turtle along the path gets points (depending on where you land.) At the end of the round, everyone rolls their dice and every die showing the lowest number gets thrown back into the center. In other words, you get to keep all your higher numbered dice for the next round.

The Crew: Family Adventure – Marooned in Paradise

In Family Adventure, all the players have been shipwrecked on an island and over the course of 35 different missions, the players must cooperate to all make it home. Unlike the previous games in The Crew series, Family Adventure is not a trick-taker. Instead, players must play out cards by following the previous player’s color or number. Rather than just try to get rid of their hand, players must work together to play cards in specific ways. Each game (of 35 missions) is different. One might require a specific card to be played in the first four cards, maybe other cards are played in an order, and so on. To help players, there are some special abilities that can come into play. One in particular is the ability to skip a turn. Of course, it is a limited resource so the strategy that comes in is to decide when to use it. A primary intent of the game is to bring a sort of The Crew style gameplay into a younger, family oriented setting.

TowerBrix

Another cooperative game, in TowerBrix, players try to assemble a small tower of blocks. However, each player has a specific requirement (like no purples on the bottom or yellows can’t touch blue) but they can’t say what it is (in fact, all building is done without talking.) The game starts by giving each player a single rule to obey and then the difficulty ramps up by giving players multiple requirements at once. The rules cards also come in several difficulty levels and there is a second, completely different deck of rules (which add in a single grey brick) that can be brought out once players get familiar with the first one. There’s also a solo mode where you take a bunch of rules and see what kind of tower you are able to pull off.

Marbleous

Marbleous is a 1 to 4 player (surprise) marble game involving a bit of spatial reasoning as one tries to connect three (or more) marbles orthogonally. Players take a card showing three marbles. They then take those marbles and drop them onto their marble ramps, allowing them to roll to the bottom. They can be placed vertically or horizontally. If three or more of the same color are adjacent, they “pop” and are removed. Players are then awarded a scoring card from the tableau. The cards are set up in a grid corresponding to ball color (whites are wild) and the number of balls actually popped and when a player’s marbles pop, they take the appropriate card. It is immediately replaced. If the removal of popped marbles causes further adjacencies to “pop” a player can continue to collect scoring cards until they stop “popping.” Making exceptionally large groups can award bonus marbles to be dropped. There’s an advanced variant, players get a star when popping two or more groups during a turn which awards extra points at the end of the game but also gives some flexibility in choosing scoring cards during the game. Most points scored, wins the game (if you hadn’t figured that out…)

Dice Words

Dice Words is a fast-paced game of creating words out of dice covered in letters. Players roll their seven dice and then try to create a word. Players get up to three rolls, setting aside any letters they want to keep. After rolling and creating a word, players score points for each letter in their word (like Scrabble) with bonus points earned for making a 5,6, or 7 letter word.

There is one final factor. Four “ice dice” are also rolled at the start of the round and are displayed in a nice little ice-cube tray. Players want to match those ice dice letters in their created word. (To be clear, you can’t use the ice dice to provide letters in your word, you have to have rolled them on your own, private set of dice.) Players score their word point value multiplied by the number of ice dice matched. If you don’t match even one ice die, you score zero. Matching the same ice die letter twice has no additional benefit – only unique matches matter. The game has dice for up to 4 players, but could easily be expanded to more players with additional sets.

Caesar & Cleopatra

Caesar & Cleopatra has two players using identical decks of cards to fight over five different sets of patricians (cards.) Players earn 1 point for each card, a bonus 1 point for having a majority, another bonus point if you have all of a color, and two more points if you complete a secret personal goal assigned at the start of the game. The goal during the game is to play numbered cards to each of the patrician stacks. Players get to play one card face up and one card face down. After each turn, a “vote of confidence card” is flipped up to determine one of the stacks of patricians to evaluate. Whoever had the highest point total at that location gets to claim one of the patrician cards. The winner must then discard their highest card at that location and the loser will discard their lowest. Note, if a stack ever has a total of 8 total cards placed, it is immediately evaluated (and the winning player claims a patrician card.)

Players start with identical decks of cards, which are separated into numbered cards and action cards. Action cards can provide abilities like removing an opponent’s cards, eliminating a card from an opponent’s hand, mess with cards played on the table, or even canceling an opponent’s action card.) On a turn, a player can draw from either of their stacks, so they can focus on numbers or actions depending on what they need. One additional spin, if desired, players can actually set the order of their 13 action cards in their deck, so they will always know (if they remember) what action card is at the top of their action deck. Usually, the card used to pick a patrician to evaluate (the vote of confidence deck) is set aside face-up so that it isn’t chosen again. However, there is a card in the vote of confidence deck that reshuffles all the cards in the deck, making it possible to score the same patrician color again. In the new version of the game, some of the theme is toned down. The patrician cards no longer have proper names and the “reshuffle the vote of confidence” card is no longer titled the “orgy” card.

Exit the Game series

Since its initial, award-winning release years ago, KOSMOS has developed their escape-room-in-a-box line of “Exit the Room” into several different flavors. The basic Exit games contain a bunch of semi-linked puzzles that must be manipulated and consumed to figure out all the puzzles and reach a conclusion. KOSMOS has also launched a kids version, Exit: Kids for a much younger set. These are less linear, more like a bunch of puzzles, don’t require much reading, and can be experienced more than once – they can be played again. There is now an Exit: Family version of the game that bridges the gap in difficulty between the two. It contains two stories in one box, but like the older version, they are “used up” as they play so each can only be played once.

Exit: The Game – Venice Conspiracy

The Venice Conspiracy is a level 3 (out of 5) experience that has players trying to prevent someone from sinking the city. I was told there may be some nasty riddles to be solved…

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Exit: The Game – Advent Calendar – The Intergalactic Race

There is another advent calendar this year. It has Santa racing through the galaxy on his space-sleigh all for the good little boys and girls I suppose. If it isn’t obvious, the Exit advent calendars have a series of little puzzles, you complete one per day by punching out a little flap on the box. Between the contents of the little box and the pictures therein (and sometimes bits and bobs from previous boxes) to solve a puzzle for each day. Usually ending with some sort of more climactic puzzle at the end.

Exit: The Game – Kids: Midnight Spooktacular

Midnight Spooktacular is the newest kids version. Players are using 36 different large cards that combine in various ways in order to help a poor little girl get a spooky outfit for her upcoming party.

Exit: The Game – Family – 2 Escape Adventures

In the family Exit game, players take on the role of a set of animal superheroes. First they have to solve a mystery in a castle, and then they must go to a candy factory and figure out a mystery there.

Masters of Crime: Mosquito

Masters of Crime is less of an Exit game and more of a murder mystery type thing with a bit of a choose-your-own-adventure feel, complete with a nice big map to explore. The game brings in common phone apps like Google Maps and Wikipedia as part of the experience while players gather evidence, investigate crime scenes, and “interrogate suspects.” The new release, Mosquito, takes players on an Indiana Jones type adventure through the jungle and beyond. Note, this is NOT a puzzle game for the younger set. It is targeted at 16+, primarily for the types of content encountered. One might find a somewhat spicy romance plot (complete with novel) or come across a used condom in one’s search. See if you can match wits with the secret organization, “Mosquito” and find the treasure somewhere in Latin America before they do.