Stonespine Architects

• Designer: Jordy Adan
• Publisher: Thunderworks Games
• Players: 1-5
• Age: 10+
• Time: 45-60 minutes
• Amazon affiliate link: https://amzn.to/3NkzRtY
• Review copy provided by publisher

Dungeon-crafting is an ancient minotaur art that you’ve studied for a decade under Master Hortgully. To demonstrate your skill, as your final project you must carve your own perilous labyrinth into the base of the Stonespine Mountains.

Stonespine Architects is a card-drafting game in which 1-5 players compete to construct the most dangerous labyrinth.

Players simultaneously draft and play cards to expand their dungeons, one chamber at a time. Follow a unique blueprint and a variety of scoring challenges. Choose between mapping a path through your underground passages, placing key elements in your rooms, or searching for extra treasure.

Spend gold between rounds to customize your labyrinth with monsters, traps, treasures, and secret passages. At the end of four years, the player with the most perilous dungeon will earn the title of Master Architect!

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Harvest 

• Designer: Trey Chambers
• Publisher: Keymaster Games
• Players: 1-4
• Age: 10+
• Time: 30-60 minutes
• Amazon affiliate link: https://amzn.to/3BIdQ5K  
• Played with review copy provided by publisher

Salutations, neighbor, and welcome to Furroughfield, the Commonwealth of Free Beasts! Ours is a budding farm town with soil ripe for planting.

In Harvest, you take on the role of a farmer, each with their own unique penchant for working the land, and choose a farmhouse with its own special round-to-round benefit. Each round, you draft sunrise cards that give you a one-time income and determine turn order for the round. Following that turn order, move your wheelbarrows around town to gather resources that you’ll use to manage your fields. Plant seeds, tend the land, and harvest crops to make money and score points. Clear land to expand your farm, and construct buildings that make your land more efficient and give you endgame bonuses. By the end of harvest season, the farmer with the most points wins!

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EXIT: The Hunt THrough Amsterdam

• Designers: Inka and Markus Brand
• Publisher: Kosmos
• Players: 1-4
• Age: 12+
• Time: 1-2 hours
• Amazon affiliate link: https://amzn.to/4gWdGrs

The EXIT series was one of the original puzzle-game franchises to hit the market when the escape room game craze took off a few years ago. To date, my family and I have been able to play all of the ones released here in the US, and this is a series that we continue to look forward to future installments. While there are many worthy competitors in the genre, the EXIT series is possibly the best known of the bunch – due in part to the initial set of games being awarded the 2017 Kennerspiel des Jahres award. Continue reading →