Gardlings

• Designer:Kristian A Østby and Maria Østby 
• Publisher: Alion
• Players: 1-4
• Age: 8+
• Time: 20 minutes
• Played with review copy provided by publisher

Cleverly build your garden. Harvest gems and enrich your seed bag with new, amazing creatures so your next garden can grow even more abundant. Combine the unique abilities of your creatures, and be the first to acquire the victory trophy. Each round in Gardlings, all players simultaneously build their garden in front of themselves. You do this by drawing and placing tiles from your bag. You may stop drawing tiles at any time because if you draw too many gnomes, they will steal gems from you. At the end of the round, use any gems you matched in your garden to buy a new tile, then return all of your tiles to your bag to prepare for the next round. Each tile features potential ways to match gems, as well as a creature with a special ability. Your garden will grow larger and better each round, and the puzzle of placing tiles will become increasingly complex. The goal of the game is to match enough gems to buy the victory tile.

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The Yellow House

• Designer: Geonil
• Publisher: Mandoo
• Players: 2
• Age: 8+
• Time: 30 minutes
• Played with review copy provided by publisher

In The Yellow House, inspired by artists like Van Gogh and Gauguin, you’ll engage in debates about which elements are most crucial in the arts.\

Your goal is to empty your hand during these debates. On your turn, you can either play a card to make a claim, or strengthen your arguments by discarding cards if the topic you bring forth is not stronger! With cunning, you’ll be able to say the final word and, that way, win the debate of the century!

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3 Of a Kind

• Designer: Tim Eisner
• Publisher: Weird City Games
• Players: 2-8
• Age: 10+
• Time: 25 minutes
• Played with review copy provided by publisher

What is the scariest zoo animal?
The happiest item in a junk drawer?
The most dangerous fruit?

3 of a Kind is a competitive party game of thinking alike, where players try to write matching answers to wild questions. Each round, players select a Category and 3 different Adjectives. Each player writes one answer for each Adjective in the selected Category. The more players who write the same answer as you, the more points you get! 3 of a Kind plays with 2-8 players and offers near infinite variations of Adjective/Category combos to tickle your brain. Each game is played over 6 rounds and lasts 20-30 minutes.

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Shadows (Masters of Crime)

• Designers: Lukas Setzke, Martin Student and Verena Wiechens
• Publisher: Kosmos
• Players: 1-6
• Age: 16+
• Time: 2-4 hours
• Amazon affiliate link: https://amzn.to/40M3Qmw 

Incognito is a cooperative deductive murder mystery game where players must solve puzzles, follow clues and make decisions to solve a case. They do this using the included deck of cards, 12 hidden realistic clue documents, and the Internet. Through a choose-your-own-adventure mechanism, players make decisions that influence the course of the game and lead to solving the case in the end. One by one, they enter different realistically designed locations and encounter the various suspects. Then they choose from a menu of different ways to deal with the situation and receive points based on their decisions. Complex puzzles and escape room elements must be solved in order to progress further in the case.

The theme/backstory: “An assignment awaits you in Amsterdam. You must break into the famous Bachmann Gallery and steal a mysterious painting. Before you can do this, you must scour Amsterdam’s underworld for a team capable of carrying out such an operation. You will also scout out the gallery, inspect building plans, hack security systems, and plan your theft. Every decision you make affects how the story develops. In addition to the high-fidelity game materials, the use of real online maps, emails, and websites draws you deep into the story. Can you pull off the million-dollar heist of the century?”

The game is closely intertwined with the real world, and players have to keep using traditional apps like Google Maps or Wikipedia to gather information. Writing emails, detailed web pages and cell phone calls are also part of the immersive gaming experience.

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