Dale Yu: Review of Suspicion

Posted on September 4, 2016 by Dale Yu

 

Suspicion

  • Designer: Forrest-Pruzan Creative
  • Publisher: Wonder Forge
  • Players: 2-6
  • Ages: 10+
  • Time: 20-30 minutes
  • Times played: 4, with review copy provided by Wonder Forge

suspicion

Suspicion was one of the games that caught my eye while walking through the halls of GenCon 2016. My interest in the game stems from a number of reasons. First, the game was centrally located at a booth that had the Alea and Ravensburger logos proudly displayed on the back drop. Second, the art deco style illustration on the cover was very appealing. Finally, the sign next to the game which proclaimed “Now available at Target” made me look – there is definitely a great movement of hobby games to the mass market, and clearly Target is leading the pack in this. There are a number of games which are Target Exclusives, and that’s certainly a great motivator to go there and look for new games. Continue reading →

Posted in Essen 2016, Reviews | 5 Comments

Dale Yu: A Knizia Twofer:  Brains (Pegasus), Schotten Totten (IELLO)

Posted on September 3, 2016 by Dale Yu

 

At GenCon 2016, I got a surprisingly high number of small games.  While I am still trying to keep to our usual once-a-day posting schedule, I am going to combine some of these games together as some of the mini-games lead to mini-reviews.  Today, I have two games from the good Dr. Knizia, a solitaire puzzle game on one hand and a reprint of a classic two player duel on the other.

Brains (Japanischer Garten)

  • Designer: Reiner Knizia
  • Publisher: Pegasus Spiele
  • Players: 1
  • Time: ~5 minutes per puzzle

Brains

Brains is a new puzzle/game from Dr. Reiner Knizia. This game is set in a Japanese Garden – and a brief search on Google shows that there are multiple Japanese Gardens in Germany and Austria, the largest of which is in Kaiserslautern.  In any event, in this game, the player will try to arrange up to 7 tiles on a puzzle board following the rules/restrictions given on that board.

There are 50 different puzzles included in the game, 5 tiers of difficulty with 10 puzzles in each. The puzzles themselves are grids of anywhere from 1 to 6 tile spaces.  You have seven possible tiles to use to solve each puzzle.  Each of the tiles has a number of different paths represented on them, and you will place them on the board according to the rules for each puzzle – these are found on the exterior of the tile space on the puzzle board.    Continue reading →

Posted in Essen 2016 | 4 Comments

Dale Yu: Essen 2016 (P)review of Fabled Fruit (2F)

Posted on September 2, 2016 by Dale Yu

 

Fabled Fruit

  • Designer: Freidemann Friese
  • Publisher: 2F (distributed by Stronghold Games in USA)
  • Players: 2-5
  • Ages: 8+
  • Time: 10-20 minutes per game
  • Games played: ~10 with preview copy at the Gathering of Friends 2016

fabled fruit

I first encountered this game at the Gathering of Friends back in April 2016 – we found Friedemann just after he had finished breakfast, and as usual, he had a box of his new games with him.  He gave us the elevator pitch of the game – it’s a card game where you collect stuff, and it has a legacy-like component to it…  As Friedemann is in my mind one of the masters of game design – as he is able to incorporate many different types of mechanisms in his games – I was intrigued to say the least. Continue reading →

Posted in Essen 2016, Reviews | 1 Comment

Stellar Conflict – Taking Light Speed to Warp Speed (Game Review)

Posted on September 1, 2016 by Mark Jackson

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  • Designers: James Ernest & Tom Jolly (Light Speed) Anastasios Grigoriadis & Konstantinos Kokkinis (developed Stellar Conflict)
  • Publishers: Artipia Games & Stronghold Games
  • Players: 2-4
  • Time: 10 minutes
  • Ages: 10+
  • Times Played: 9 (with review copy of provided by Stronghold Games) 19 (with personal copy of Light Speed)

 

Once upon a time, there was a little tiny game company that published a whole lot of little tiny games in envelopes that tended to have odd but enjoyable themes with gameplay that usually lasted long past the actual point of enjoyment. (I’m talking about you, Kill Doctor Lucky and Renfield) There were flashes of design brilliance (Button Men, Brawl, Fightball) and genuinely inspired lunacy (Deadwood, Give Me the Brain). And then there were the abject failures (U.S. Patent No. 1)… and then there has to be a category lower than “abject failure” for garbage like Devil Bunny Needs A Ham.

That little tiny company (better known as Cheapa** Games) also put out a line of Hip Pocket Games. Along with the aptly named Very Clever Pipe Game (which would h
ave been more clever and better served by being printed in color rather than greyscale), they published Tom Jolly’s Light Speed, a real-time game that literally took longer to score than it did to play. Continue reading →

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Vikings on Board (Game Review by Chris Wray)

Posted on August 31, 2016 by Chris Wray
  • Designers:  Charles Chevallier, Catherine Dumas, Pascal Pelemans
  • Publisher:  Blue Orange
  • Players:  2 – 4
  • Ages:  8 and Up
  • Time:  30 to 60 Minutes
  • Times Played:   4

VikingsonBoard.png

Vikings on Board is a family-friendly strategy game that was released at Gen Con 2016 in limited quantities.  The game sold out its allotment each day, and it seemed popular.  The goal is to get points from shipping goods and betting.  The game offers an interesting combination of majorities (you can only grab goods if you’re winning the ship) and worker placement in a medium-light to medium-weight package. Continue reading →

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Dale Yu: Essen 2016 Preview of Deus: Egypt expansion

Posted on August 30, 2016 by Dale Yu

Deus: Egypt

  • Designer: Sebastien Dujardin
  • Publisher: Pearl Games
  • Players: 2-4
  • Ages: 14+
  • Time: 60-90 minutes

deus egypt

In this first expansion to Deus, one of my favorite games to come out of Essen 2014, players now get to play as if they are in Dynastic Egypt.  While this is termed as a single expansion, it might be better to consider it as a box with six expansion modules.  The reason for this is that Deus: Egypt is actually six sets of 16 development cards; one for each color in the base game.  They can be added in piecemeal or they can be used to completely replace the cards from the base game.

 

As the cards are meant to be interchangeable with those of the base game, it follows that the rules of the base game are essentially intact.  The changes that come from Deus: Egypt are simply rules that are added onto that basic framework.  Some of the new cards have a “1X” action at the very top of the card; this optional action comes into play only once – when you play the card to your tableau – though you can choose whether to enact the “1X” action before or after the main action written on the bottom of the card.

 

I think that I would consider each color as a separate module because each comes with new expansion rules that are specific to that color of cards.  In some cases, there are also new game components that will be added to the game if the corresponding card deck is used.

Continue reading →

Posted in Essen 2016, Preview | 1 Comment