Purrfect Place

• Designer: River Kang
• Publisher: Korea Boardgames
• Players: 2-4
• Age: 8+
• Time: 20 minutes
• Played with review copy provided by publisher

Swap, flip, and stack the cats! Move cat cards from the sofa to the shelf, or the shelf to the playtime area. Make two rows match with each other and score minus(-) points. The player with the lowest score wins a bottle. Collect two bottles to triumph in this adorable and strategic cat game!

• Packed with irresistibly cute (and totally relatable) cat illustrations.
• Easy-to-learn gameplay with a clever stacking twist for added depth.
• Stacking: Score double minus(-) points and an extra turn, but only at the risk of a big penalty!

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Time Trouble

• Designers: Carlo A Rossi and Alessandro Zucchini 
• Publisher: Hans im Gluck
• Players: 2-4
• Age: 9+
• Time: 25 minutes
• Amazon affiliate link: https://amzn.to/4kcbXjd
• Played with review copy provided by publisher

In the co-operative family game Time Trouble, you navigate four lovable characters through different levels by placing transparent cards on top of each other. Your goal is to catch the Fluffys that are messing up the timeline. With each level, you travel through time to overcome new challenges. Together you must coordinate your actions and use the characters’ abilities to succeed — but you have only a few seconds to carry out your plans!

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Rainbow

• Designers: Mito Sazuki
• Artist:  別府さい (Sai Beppu)
• Publisher: allplay
• Players: 2-6 (2p variant in the rules)
• Age: 7+
• Time: 10-20 minutes (3 min per player)
• Played with a copy I bought

A restaurant game is a game you pull out when with friends to pass the time, especially with those who prefer gaming to small talk or want to learn a new game and play it in ten minutes.

Born as Neon (2010), Rainbow is a game that mixes the runs and sets of a climbing game like Tichu with the once-around of a trick taking game  All in ten minutes.

We play one hand and score it up, so it is legitimately short enough to play between ordering and getting your food in many restaurants.

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Rainbow

• Designer: Miko Sazuki
• Publisher: allplay
• Players: 2-6 
• Age: 8+
• Time: 10-20 minutes
• Amazon affiliate link: https://amzn.to/3T0y53U
• Played with review copy provided by publisher

Rainbow is a card game with some climbing characteristics where you strive to have the most points.  The 60 card deck is a simple one, ten copies each of values 1 to 6.  The deck is shuffled, and then N cards are laid out on the table as the initial scoring display – each card is worth VPs equal to the number on it.  The rest of the deck is dealt out evenly with any remainders being discarded unseen.

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The winners of the Meeples Choice Awards for the 2024 calendar year have been announced.  The voters’ three favorite games from last year are:

BOMB BUSTERS
ENDEAVOR: DEEP SEA
SETI

The votes for all three of the games were clustered closely together.  Finishing 2 votes back of the winning games were Civolution and The Gang, with The Fellowship of the Ring Trick Taking Game one vote behind those two.  Harmonies, Let’s Go! To Japan, Slay the Spire, and Tales of the Arthurian Knights made up the rest of the top 10.

Congratulations to the designers of the winning games:  Hisashi Hayashi, Carl de Visser/Jarratt Gray, and Tomas Holek.  This is the second MCA award for both Hayashi (who won in 2016 for Yokohama) and the de Visser and Gray team (the original Endeavor won all the way back in 2009).  On the other hand, SETI is not only Holek’s first MCA win, it’s more or less his first published game (he released his first three games last year at Essen).  Congratulations go as well to the games’ publishers:  Cocktail Games, the partnership of Burnt Island Games and Grand Gamers Guild, and Czech Games Edition.