As my christmas activity, I wanted to play all advent calendar games and write some impressions to figure out which ones I want to buy or recommend to others, so I figured I might as well post that result for all of you 
As for my rating scale:
Very Good - Incredible experiences, everyone should give it a try
Good - Very good games, would enjoy playing it any time, even if I might have some nitpicks
Okay - Decent games, but seem flawed to me. Still enjoyable enough with friends or if you enjoy the genre. Usually a few mechanical issues I dont agree with.
Meh - Seem very flawed to me, and barely enjoyable. My opinions are obviously subjective, so there will be people disagreeing with me.
Here is a more or less complete games of my personal ranking: https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/ ... edit#gid=0
During the month, I also played some more random games for the first time, I'll post them below the calendar posts.
Have fun reading and happy new year!
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Day 1: Oasis New Hope (Okay)
Its a relatively simple sequence collecting game, which has horrible rule explanations. So here is my try: You want to create a sequence of cards from 12 to 0, and every turn you have different move options like adding to the sequence, drawing 2 cards from the deck, drawing 1 card from the tray, or buying an assistant/equipment for extra abilities. Playing multiple cards at once is faster, but it might take you a few turns to collect the cards you want, while you are theoretically in danger of the opponent stealing your cards. That creates a bit of a push your luck/risk reward, but ultimately plundering often felt like a wasted move and it was faster to just get cards out. This game desperately needs more variations/siderules to make it more varied. More equipment cards, random events, anything that would make you change up your strategy a bit. As it stands, its fun enough as a time waster to learn it once, but nothing I will ever go back to.
Day 2: A Gift of Tulips (Good)
This game on the other hand is a deviously simple lightweight majority collection game.On two actions per turn, you decide if you place a card in one of four stacks: Your hand (to increase final scoring), your opponents hands (to get instant points), score ranking (guaranteeing "your" flowers to give the most points) or secret score ranking (potential for more points). I can easily see people discounting this game for feeling too random, but considering the light rule set, there is a lot of potential bluffing and tactical maneuvering going on here that absolutely will make a huge difference in play strength. From the base feeling it reminds me a bit of the "classic" card collection games like Hanafuda or Rommee, but its a nice spin on the collection mechanics that I havent played before. Quick to play, easy to learn, more than meets the eye. Neat.
Day 3: Trike (Okay)
There is nothing really wrong with Trike, but even among abstract strategy games, its not among the most interesting ones. Its a solid little puzzle that I can see myself playing with someone for 30 minutes in real life with a nice wooden board, though, because a round can be super quick within like 1-2 minutes. You move the meeple in a straight line and place your colored stone there. If the meeple cant move anymore, you count who has the most surrounding stones and that player wins. Easy. You need to make sure your opponent cant lock you into a corner with his stones, which is rather rewarding to puzzle out, but I wont ever pick this up online again, especially because the online implementation just doesnt look pleasing enough, compared to all the other games. (Sorry, Trike)
Day 4: Hanamikoji (Very Good)
I honestly wouldnt be surprised if this is the best game to come out of the entire calendar. You need to win majorities over each Geisha by having the most cards on their pile. Every round, you have 4 actions, all of which you need to use, like discarding 2 cards. The problem? Two of those actions you NEED to use are actions that give your opponent cards. So it becomes excruciatingly interesting to figure out in which sequence you want to approach this and if you want to focus simple Geisha majority or a point score as the win condition. Simple rules, deep strategy. I love this. It looks great, is a perfect fit for BGA and as I said, I will pick this up. Its a great game for 2 people spending some time puzzling over a tight little challenge.
Day 5: Yokai Septet (Good)
Its a 2v2 trick taking game, where you win by either winning four 7s or by forcing your opponents to take 7 tricks without four sevens. That makes for a very interesting balance as you always need to judge which goal might be more realistic to achieve without talking to your opponent. I really enjoy trick taking games, especially ones that allow for some unspoken strategizing based on the game state. Nothing really wrong with it, but also not seeing too many new ideas here. If you like trick taking games, you'll enjoy it.
Day 6: Biomos (Good)
This is wild to me. This game only has a 6.1 average rating on BGG and I believe the worst rating out of the games I posted about so far. I need more eyes on this, because I do not understand why. Every turn you pick a biome and slot it around your planet. You can move them left and right, but never remove them again and need so slowly work towards the point cards on either side. You also get a single extra bonus action that allows you once to place a stone elsewhere. Rules done for the basic version, but the advanced version allows you to change certain biomes if you place them accordingly (like if you have a sand next to something else, you can turn that also into a sand) Its simple, approachable, has some challenging decisions to maximize for points in the advanced version. Whats not to love here?
Granted, playing it in 3p or 4p is admittedly worse, because you only have a limited playing space, so having another player screw up your plans completely throws of any "fair" plannable balance in my opinion. But as a very easy to explain family game for kids, where thats not an issue, its great. And as a 2P, its a smooth play or pretty thinky with the advanced version.
This game is ... kind of a really fun puzzle? In 2 player mode at least. I would love for someone else to check this out as well, because my first impression after a few rounds is that this game is a bit misunderstood because of its simple aesthetic and rules.
Day 7: 24/7 (Okay)
This isnt a bad game, its just not a very exciting one. Its scrabble. With numbers. Instead of building words, you build sets of numbers, either a sequence, triplets or totals of 7 or 24. It works. There is some worthwhile puzzling to be had, but ultimately, you just go through each line/row, check how much the totals are and if one of your tiles fits or not. Of course there is some metagaming involved, where you can set up future turns or double moves (if my opponent gets one, i get the other) and block the opponent from getting other certain moves, but in actual play, there was very often a pretty obvious move that was the best answer, which just straight up gave the most amount of points. It does feel like a lighter scrabble, something more akin to the "feel" of rummy, that I might play with non boardgame grandparents basically. I can totally see this being a hit for some people, but yeah, a bit too *checks release date* ...2007, I feel.
Day 8: Diceathlon (Meh)
I am not saying this often about boardgames, but this game feels... miserable and I dont even think it necessarily needs to be that bad. Its a roll and write, where you roll dice, pick a number and then put it into a category on your drawing sheet. At the end of the game, you compare the results of your categories (typically highest or lowest amount) to your opponents and check who won more categories. The first problem is already that most of my games ended in a draw, because if you focus on different categories than your opponents, a 3:3 draw becomes very likely. There is also one category that you always should go for first and whoever wins it has a HUGE bonus to not losing the game. I think in 6 games, the player who got the category first didnt lose 5 times. Its completely disheartening to know after 1 minute of playing that you already might be at a huge disadvantage because of random dice luck. And so the game just ends up feeling bad and makes you feel bad along every step of the way. Really weird design balancing decision.
Day 9: Daybreak (Good)
Special little game that absolutely deserves some attention, even if there are some caveats. Its somewhat of an engine builder with some Pandemic style cooperation challenges thrown into the mix, where each card you draw is a potential action that get stronger with the cards you played previously to the same stack. Some actions require you to discard, so cards are actions and resources simultaneously. At the beginning of the game, the world is screwed and you will use actions to bit by bit create more green energy, remove carbon emissions and handle random devastating world events like wildfires. I love the presentation and theme and its surprising how its dynamic changes once you go from single to multiplayer. If you are one of the soloplay people, absolutely gives this a whirl. Its a fun puzzle to figure out and challenge yourself to beat at least once, or even once more on a higher difficulty.
In multiplayer its a very talkative cooperative game about putting out all issues on everyones player board at once. Every player plays a different country with a different set of starting challenges to overcome. Suddenly you need to think about 2,3 or even 4 states burning up our atmosphere, while also having more cards from everyone to account for these challenges. It feels very much like Pandemic in that regard, even if the situation is a good bit more complex than Pandemic usually is.
So where is the issue? My issue is part of the game design and balancing that rewards the same strategy for every single challenge: The more cards you have, the more actions you can take. Actions are good. So ... you will play all the cards that get you more cards, and more after that. It feels a bit like a cheap way out for such a complex topic and the first few times playing it alone or with friends are guaranteed to be fun if you enjoy this type of cooperation that can unfortunately often lead a bit to "one player plans/decides for all"-syndrome and I am doubting the longevity a bit once you figured out the most basic way forward.
Still absolutely worth checking out, especially as a singleplayer challenge!
Day 10: GOLDblivion (Good)
This one was surprisingly enjoyable, at least for the few games I played on BGA. On top of the classic deck builder formula (buy cards from the market that give you more currency in the future), this game had some added spice through dice combat with gold hoarding dragons and a continuous drain on your deck built into the main mechanics (You are removing a card from your deck every turn for more resources). Compared to other deckbuilders that just get more random constantly, this one actually became a lot more consistent as you could kinda count on what you would draw every turn, which was a really fun and interesting take on the deck building mechanic.
It was always enjoyable to build up those engines, get building with permanent abilities and get more powerful. However, because of the interlocking systems, there isnt much flexibility here to change the base set of cards, so each does become similar rather quickly on top of feeling a bit too long for what it is. I probably wont go back to it, but it was definitely fun the first few times around.
Day 11: 101: The Match (Okay)
Another game that "works", but is a bit unexciting. Its a set collection game with the main twist being the middle card draw area, where the backside of each card shows the "range" of the number it could be. You then draw those cards to create poker hands in each row/colum and you get a point for each row/colum where you have a more valuable hand than your opponent, which incentivizes you to keep an eye on your opponents cards. The value comparison mechanic saves this game, as it allows some more puzzling about which cards you might want and also make sure your opponent has less of a chance getting the ones he needs. But overall, its still just not engaging enough to just collect 1-5 and maybe the game would have been more interesting if it allowed a few more card combinations or maybe a randomized set of bonus point requirements. (like maybe even/uneven sets giving extra points in one round, while in another you get points for rows above 25 points). And I now know why most of these games tack a nice theme with flowers/animals on top, because numbers really... arent exciting.
Day 12: Roll into Town (Okay)
Another roll and write about building a small little town. As most roll and writes do seem to blend together for me and you likely know the drill what they are by now, here is my one good and the one big bad I came away with: I really enjoy that the game has a inherent growth mechanism on the board. Where most roll and write games let you draw things and those are pretty final, this one has a mechanic where the woodcutter harvests the wood around it (erasing the tiles), but they can regrow depending on how many woods you have around those areas. That is neat and not a mechanic I have seen in these games yet that actually feels meaningful and interesting to work with.
However, also unlike other roll and write games, the game really has barely any interaction, not only with the other players but with its own dice. You can pretty much make a plan of what type of city you want to make and then just draw it. Because of the jokers and different exchanging abilities, there is hardly any emergent puzzle, which makes it feel a bit too shallow.
Day 13: Dog Park (Good)
Very adorable set collection /auction game with some slight engine builder touches. Every round you get to adopt/take care of 2 more dogs. Every dog has a certain ability, be that giving more points, giving more resources etc. You try to balance how expensive dogs are with what they give you. I just played a round where I had multiple dogs with effects that pop whenever they pick up a ball, chaining nicely. The dogs are adorable, the competition is a very tight and exhilarating race and the game really doesnt do anything wrong. I definitely recommend checking this out and playing a few rounds until you understood the concept well enough. However, I feel like the dogs/bonus effects/endgame scoring feels a bit too limited/repetetive. I really would like to test the new expansion thats supposed to release next year that adds a new layer. if that releases on BGA, I'll be there day one and hope it adds more variety.
Day 14: Tiny Epic Defenders (Okay)
It took quite long to finally win a round of this cooperative game on standard difficulty. Every turn you draw a card that decides if a region gets damaged or if you get to heal the regions. When its your turn, you typically try to run around healing areas, or use your heroes ability or the ability on the cards to position yourself better/heal yourself/affect the draw/discard pile. Defeating special monsters gains you magical items and every region has a double side so the exact constellation changes enough to be a bit of a puzzle every game. The idea is very neat and I did enjoy it as a challenge, as it was pretty much the most fulfilling coop experience I had on BGA yet, because me and my team players bonded heavily against the ridiculous RNG. And that is also the main issue, I tried 3 times with a player that played really well and we got screwed over majestically (like a boss that appeared at the end that we were unable to do damage to at all), while a round I just played with someone who made quite a few mistakes, but we were really lucky with some draws/discards and bonus reward items.
If someone wants to cross this off their list of games to get a win for, i might play it again, but otherwise its a bit unfortunate that a game system that feels quite nice just falters that heavily under balancing and RNG.
Day 15: DEI: Divide et Impera (Very Good)
Hm. All the best impressions start with "hm.", right? The game is an area control game without much direct conflict. Its more about recruiting units, which by majority rule can block paths for your opponent. You also collect resources, buy cards that allow you new actions for upcoming turns, all the while you have some nice little challenges to work on that give you points and even more improvements for your actions.
The game is very thinky. You "only" need to pick a card to play each turn, which most of the time activates 2 actions, like moving, gathering resources, building bridges/camps/elevators. After 3 turns, you get to fulfill a victory point condition and repeat until the game ends after 12 turns.
Akin to Ark Nova, its not really a longwinded progression, but more of a "race" to get the most victory points within the very limited amount of turns.
There is a LOT I like about the game. The permanent unlocks and extra abilities are super cool and change how every game plays, the hand building mechanic gives a very clear sense of progression with stronger actions, you feel like you have a good amount of freedom with what type of strategy you want to try, the moment to moment strategic challenges are very engaging with the unique commanders all feeling incredibly impactful and I didnt even mention the flexible victory point conditions yet, which is something I have never seen before and absolutely adore. (You can decide when and how you want to fulfill a condition, which changes the amount of points, its subtle, but a really unique idea).
So why the "Hm."? First of all, the game was incredibly annoying to learn. No BGA tutorial certainly didnt help, but neither youtube video tutorials nor the rule book were much of a help. Because of the limited turns, you also kinda need to preplan as much as possible to get a decent payoff from your moves, as every move you make will fundamentally change your options down the line (For example if you dont go for the easily accessible early game resource, you might not be able to buy a lot of the corresponding cards). This is very paralysis analysis inducing and it is easily the worst case of players needing a lot more time than allotted than in other games that I have encountered so far.
The game could also really use some more varied maps, but that might just be a me-thing, as I am not too fond of arena games that always use the same map. Most of my issues are BGA related: The game is very good, but it loses a bit of its appeal through the implementation on BGA. There are some weird implementations with action confirmations, not having an undo for a misclick is INCREDIBLY harsh and potentially loses you the entire game, sometimes the icons are impossible to see, the 3D board has an amazing table presence for the real thing which obviously is missing online and the game has a bit of symbol salad issue, where many symbols arent easily explained/understood.
Its a special game and you need to be in the market for that kind of experience, but if you ARE the person to enjoy these type of strategic optimization puzzles, you will love the unique aspects of it. Definitely see myself playing more of that down the line and picking it up if I ever see it on a sale.
Day 16: Vault: A Solitaire Dice Game (Okay)
Vault: A Solitaire Dice Game is... a solitaire dice game. You roll the dice and add or subtract numbers to cross off the totals in the grid. If you manage to finish a row/column, you get the amount of gems, unless that particular gem vault has already been deactivated if you were too slow solving the vault grid.
The puzzle itself is okay, definitely worth trying for a single playthrough, but there isnt enough to keep my attention for multiple playthroughs. Its too easy (I managed to beat it and open all vaults with a round to spare on my first try) and the general puzzle isnt varied enough as you will very likely do the exact same approach every single game. Perfect example for an "okay" game.
Day 17: Ticket Gagnant (Okay)
This game is ... weird. Definitely playable for some easy going family game fun, but I dont even know where to start with this one. Its basically a racing/betting game, where you play movement cards (more on those in a bit), to affect the horse positions on which you bet on. Betting correctly (which horses are in the top 3, which position did they get?) gives you points, so you need to carefully try balancing moving your preferred horses in front, while moving uninteresting horses back.
While the general game idea is solid, the game is just too random. Those movement cards? They can either move a horse a certain amount of spaces forward, backward or sideways, or they position a certain horse behind/in front of another certain horse denoted on that card. That has 2 weird effects: The game becomes too random and unpredictable. First off, it is entirely possible that your opponent gets strong movement cards, while you only get bad ones. That happened to me in half of the rounds. Your opponent will be able to judge things much better than you are, because you have no good card to move things forward. In those moments, it ultimately just feels unfair. On the other hand, because of the "move this horse to another horse"-card, if you have the right card left over, you can completely pull back a horse that was leading 10 spaces all the way to last place, which just feels bad for the progression you tried to work for.
On the other hand, I really enjoyed the ideas for the different track layouts, the game looks rather nice irl with the horse pieces and the randomness is a bit of an equalizer for some lighthearted back and forth banter.
This game makes me appreciate the mechanics around the racing progression in Heat a good bit more. There is a fine line between these systems feeling too random, too predictable or not satisfying enough and Ticket Gagnant kinda ends up having some more or less minor missteps in all three areas, while Heat successfully balances them all.
Day 18: Envelopes of Cash (Very Good / Good)
This one's a doozy and I really, really, really (did I say "really" already?) like the unique mechanisms and how they slot into each other. First game I kinda need to give 2 ratings for, mostly for playing it solo (Very Good) or multiplayer (Good) for reasons explained further down. So, what is this? Its a Euro Game/Engine builder, where you create the most promising college football team in the US within 12 rounds/months by travelling around the country and recruiting players. At its core, you buy cards in a draft and play them with resources, which in turn affect how efficiently you buy players in the future. Players and cards make you points and who has the most points wins. Easy, right? Well, no. And here is where things get super interesting and Envelopes of Cash sets itself apart from any other game I know:
Every turn you throw 6 dice, 1 for each colour. You can pick two dice to gain as resource, but here is the kicker: You can either take half the die amount as resources NOW or invest them into the future for their full amount. The larger the die number (1-6) the further away that investment is. The game is only 12 months long, so if you pick a 6, you might potentially need to wait a long time without that investment, but you also have a long time to prepare for the turn where you potentially get a large chunk of resources. And that is an insanely satisfying puzzle. Will you prefer to take half investment now for a player you need to recruit now in the city where you are currently at? Should you prepare some resources for a city you will visit in the next 1-2 turns? Or will you invest big, making it uncertain if you need the resources on the turn where you get them, but take the time and chance to look for a juicy upgrade card that you can get and play for sure at that point?
Oh and resources not spent in a turn go to waste. Yes, exactly. Its a bit mad. So you need to optimize the heck out of it. "Hm, I have 2 green resource in two months, but no card to play that will use that resource, should I hope waiting for a green card to pop up, or maybe its worth taking a detour so I know I will be in the territory where I can buy a player with green resources, but then again, I actually need a different player for my bonus rewards for which I could only use the 2 green to exchange them to a different resource or maybe I'll allocate the green resources as travel points after my next turn." Oh yeah, you can exchange resources for another resource at a rate of 3:1 (and a money), but thats always a crap deal, so what this game really is about is about optimizing the income/spend for 12 months, while building up your little recruitment engine allowing you to gain money, move faster or buy players/cards for cheaper.
Its amazing. I love it. Oh and I kinda hated playing it a bit. Whats up with that? Well, because its such a satisfying puzzle, it feels very, very rushed to be limited to 1,30 minutes for your move. Its also a game, where most players will pretty much use all time in their turn, so its a rather long game with a lot of downtime, which you also cant really preplan much, as it depends a lot on the available resources. If the game takes an hour, you will sit there for half an hour, not doing anything. I dont know why, but it annoyed me a bit more in this game than in others. All the while, you would actually WANT more time for your own moves, making this a bit of a downtime madness. The game is also clearly not really balanced around 2 players, where they dont even affect each other, but I imagine playing this with 4 players is more like downtime hell. I feel like the game would actually be better and more easily played if it was semi-solitaire and rounds played simultaneously, with some slight interaction effects, like maybe the card drafting or higher player purchase costs.
Enter: Solomode. Rectifies all of these issues, gives a decent challenge, a satisfying puzzle experience, you can just think as much as feels interesting to you and pretty much all gameplay systems work/affect themselves the exact same way (the Ai also takes aways some player spots, as other players would).
I love, love, love the 12 turn investment system, the unique theme, the random element in player acquisition and the set aquisition bonus points for getting full teams/regional teams. I really wishthe multiplayer felt a bit more smooth and seamless, but its absolutely worth checking out.
Day 19: Zefiria (Okay)
Its another cooperative puzzle game, where you sort numbers from lowest to highest, similar to Tranquility that I also commented on on the first page of this thread. It really put into perspective just how well the design of Tranquility works. So how does Zefiria work? A collection of cards numbered 1-25 get randomly shuffled and your task is sorting them back in order. This task is made much, much harder by you having very specific rules about which cards you can exchange. You have a token that moves around the cards and one wind power is for example allowing you to exchange a card that has the same colour, while another wind power allows you to exchange cards with the same symbol or that are adjacent to you.
If you play it with another player, your task then is to slowly move closer to a sorted shape within 6 rounds without directly communicating. The puzzle "works", but its a bit "off". I saw many people trying and failing (including me) multiple times trying to win even once. Its not a game that you can play on the side like Tranquility that adds more depth and challenge as you want it. Its a baseline challenge and the only thing helping you is the random setup. I am not sre if I just managed to win 1 round, because the starting setup felt significantly easier than the ones I had before, which... seems like a rather big flaw for such a game to have such a huge variety in non adjustable difficulty.
So the game feels a bit unfair more often than not, feels a bit unsatisfying as you often wont get to even finish the sorting before the game ends and doesnt have the variability of Tranquility for example. The game does tickle the puzzle part of my brain, though and there are some cool combinations to think about with the different player powers (when to exchange cards). Worth checking out if you have someone who already enjoys these type of games with you and you want more challenge, but otherwise I might look into other options.
Day 20: Ticket to Ride: Europe (Okay)
I am honestly surprised that I like Ticket to Ride Europe a lot more than the standard Ticket to Ride. This is actually a game I wouldnt mind that much playing as it rectifies some of the most egregious game design issues I had with the base Ticket to Ride. So for those who dont know, in this game you start with route destinations on a map, that you try to connect with train routes. To do that, you can collect differently coloured train cards in sets that correspond to the colour requirements of any given route you are looking for.
The big issue I have with Ticket to Ride is how uneven and frankly unfair the experience can be if your opponent correctly predicts the main route you are going for and blocks you entirely, making the game entirely unsatisfying. In the picture above, I was green and you see me doing a triangle in the middle blocking red from connecting his routes. That led to red not achieving a big chunk of his route cards and royally screwed him, while I won with 128 to 45 points. However, in this game he would have a counter measure that he didnt know about, because I assume he didnt play the tutorial for the changes to the Europe version.
In Europe, he could have built train stations in any city to borrow one of my train routes for his route destinations, which is an amazing change. Building that train station loses you points, so there is a clear trade off and still an advantage for blocking your opponent and forcing them to build a train station. That sounds like a small change, but oh my god, this makes Ticket to Ride actually playable for me.
The other smaller change I really like is train routes having different activation requirements to them, which actually makes you think a little bit more about whats happening on the map. There are tunnels and ferries that dont just require the standard x amount of cards, but the specific joker cards or additional random cards you might need to throw away, making them more high risk/reward tracks.
So I like this a good bit more, but the game is still a bit too simple minded in most actions for my taste. Because of how the card drawing works, you are incentivized to draw 2 random cards from the card stack with a chance to draw 1 or 2 joker cards, compared to either drawing 2 non joker cards from the open cards or only 1 joker card and end your turn. That means that its still the most optimal decision often to just spend 5 turns in a row just drawing 2 random cards. Thats still what you end up doing 50% of the time and its just a waste of potential game depth and interesting decisions, which is really what the main thing is what any board game should be offering.
So yeah, not every game needs to be a polished gem and less involved family games have their place in the hobby and this game actually is a decent game for that purpose. I am still shocked.
Day 21: Skate Legend (Okay)
Its a push your luck game that has a really unique theme and art (counting skateboard tricks), has some cool mechanics for different cards you play (like drawing more cards, playing cards or turning some cards from card piles around) that keep the game actively engaging, while also failing at some of the more basic push your luck mechanic staples, namely feeling good about being lucky.
Every turn you play a card unseen from a pile, It can be a card of either of 4 colors. Every turn you get to decide if you want to take your points or continue. if you continue and accidentally hit the third card of any color, you "fall" and dont get any point for that round. The player that stays in the longest, gets the bonus card for that round, potentially allowing a higher score next round.
I really wanted to like it, as I also enjoyed Incan Gold/Diamant, but after several plays it became clear that this sensation of lucky draws and success never happened. Compared to Incan Gold you can screwed over early with 2 cards of the same colour and that disadvantage seems a bit too punishing for something that happens so often. Incan Gold alleviates that by everyone having the same main cards, so everyones luck and judgment of the situation has the same foundation, making it feel like it was YOUR fault for not getting your points, not because the game threw a bad random chance at you.
There are some mechanics to alleviate some bad draws, but ultimately it still feels like too much of an advantage if the enemy crashes, similarly to how having less cards always feels like a huge boon, considering the max amount of cards to not repeat is 8. Ultimately, its not the best game, but the presentation and charme does carry its weight a good bit, so i could see people stil enjoying the base loop of just relatively decision free playing cards as long as there is no immediate danger and just chugging along with the game on the side.
Day 22: Kulami (Good)
So straight up front: This game is very good and the only reason I downranked it to "Good" is the BGA presentation, which is incredibly unexciting. I would love to play this with a real copy or a more fancy version online, though. Whats Kulami about? Every turn you place a marble of your color, then your opponent plays a marble in the same row or column of the marble you placed. You switch turns until someone cant make any more moves and the player with the most points through majorities on the tiles wins. (e.g. 6 tile gives 6 points if you have the majority)
I know, I know. This sounds boring and like every other abstract game ever, but it really only scratches the surface of how adjustable the game experience is to make it suit your preferences, which is honestly surprisingly original. First up, you can use different map setups. Any tile you can reorder for entirely different layouts (non rectangular, like star shapes or just entirely irregular). This doesnt only change the game, but makes the game harder/easier or even shorter if thats what suits your play preference, on top of naturally having an almost infinite setup of game boards, which almost no abstract game has.
Additionally, you can use different scoring options (the largest continuous area or line scoring for every diagononal or orthogonal line at least 5 stones long) or even combine scoring options, making every decision as complex as you want and less a direct "this option looks obviously better than this" like many simple abstracts might have. I am severely impressed by this game. The base decisions are very engaging and the way this game allows for customization of the game experience is pretty ingenious and once you add more scoring rules to the mix the game still keeps is simple accessibility, but becomes a deviously crafted and absolutely marvellous puzzle.
I love it.
Day 23: Exit Strategy (Meh)
This on the other hand, is a pretty annoying abstract game. You start in one corner of the board and need to make your way to the opposing side of the board. You either can move 1 space or put up 2 borders somewhere on the board that blocks yourself and your opponent to build a maze that potentially traps and stops him, but not yourself.
There is some strategy involved in 2P, but it just devolves into making impossibly long corridors for the other player which decides the outcome of the game the moment you start building the walls, even if the game ends 15 minutes later after placing all walls. Its ... weird. You can play it with 5 other people, which at least makes it a bit more random fun, but the problem here is that its so unpredictable with people potentially ganging up on someones path and ultimatately just making you decide who gets to win, instead of the "best" player winning.
I really dont know how to turn this into a proper and actually interesting game, the entire premise seems very flawed. I would be curious to see if someone turns this into a good game concept somehow.
Day 24: 15 days (Okay)
I am feeling a bit conflicted about this game. I pondered pushing it to the "Good" category, so maybe read on if a rather pretty and somewhat interesting set collection game might be relevant to your interests. In this game, you try to collect sets of 1-6 for four colours. Any card you play also costs cards as currency to play them. If you can play a card in order, it costs 1, whereas a card played in between other cards (You already played 4/6 before and now play the 5 of that colour) costs you 2 cards, so the game rewards playing in sequential order.
However, what changes that setup a good bit and rewards non-sequential playing (and I quite like) is the set of card powers that you can gain by first reaching any set of 3 cards of the same colour and anytime you add another card (so the 4th to 6th card after that). The card powers are rather impactful and fun to get as they straight up improve all actions you can take, be that drawing more cards or paying less to play them. That has some really neat strategical implications where you might push nonsequential card sets that cost you more in future rounds, but allow you to tactically unlock a card power that can support you in the current rounds.
It is VERY important to keep the opponents situation in mind as well, as he could potentialy take your power away if he gets a sequence after you did. All of that is a lovely little competition balancing timing, current benefits and endgame scoring opportunities. I quite like it, but I see two main issues currently: 1) The game could really use more random different card powers Hanamikoji style, so its a more interesting choice what to go for, instead of more or less just taking whatever comes first naturally. And more importantly 2) The game highly benefits any player stalling and blocking the other player from gaining the powers, which I dont think is a very pleasant dynamic that currently seems like the best strategy to me that ultimately means I will just wait for my opponent to unlock any card ability, and then immediately the turn after take it away from him.
Due to that, the game is more suited to 3+ players, where the randomness of any round to round decision gets weighted more heavily compared to the unpredictability of locking more than a single other player out of those card powers. So I might be leaning to a "Good" in 3+ and an "Okay" in 2 player mode,I suppose and overall deciding on "Okay", because of the missing variety in game setup and a bit of an annoying bug wiht the undo functionality in the current BGA version (dont press undo). Still, its a lovely little game that I can easily see enjoying with other people.
Day 25: Spirits of the Forest (Okay)
Competetive puzzle game that is apparently a remake of a 20 year old game called Kardinal & Koenig (and another one called Richelieu), in which you collect icons of 9 different suits. If you get more icons of a particular suit than your opponent, you get as many points as you have icons. If you dont even get a single card of any suit, you lose 3 points. You can only take cards from the far left or far right and every player has 3 crystals that you can put on any card in the game and if your opponent takes a card with your crystal, they need to remove one of their crystals from the game, effectively making them a soft wall for any chosen card.
The core mechanic works really well. There is definitely a good puzzle here, blocking opponents, making sure you get majority of icons, potentially grabbing some minor token bonusses and deciding when its worth sacrificing one of your crystals to take a card that your opponent blocked. However after you understood how to prioritize the cards, there isnt a whole lot of relevant decisions and most of the card picks in the first half of the game just more or less pick themselves. The latter half of the game is a bit more interesting because of the point salad of 12 different suits (even if that gets a bit messy at times), but again, thats mostly just a matter of deciding which majority might be more relevant now.
The game also falls a bit on the repetetive side with the exact same starting setup, which makes this game feel ike a solid base for a more varied game/expansion, but instead of just reimplementing the game, I would love to see someone expanding it a bit in the next try. There is also a solo mode in the real game, which looks like a nice little challenge, but that is unfortunately not available on BGA. I definitely understand how its a rather classic design that people appreciated and reimplemented over the years, but its a bit unfortunate that the small expansions and bigger expansion that recently released isnt in this version to show how this concept can evolve and pull in modern gamers as well.
Day 26: Kmakici Family's greatest teatime (Meh)
Set collection game with a shared collection space. Whenever you have put the 5th character on the board, you can take a random token. Collect 4 different token icons on the backside and you win. Alternatively, if no one gets to 5 characters, the player who passes first needs to take a token on their frontside as minus points. If by the end of the token track, no player has gotten 4 different token backsides, the player with the most points wins.
The game is very luck based. There is a tad bit of strategy here, deciding when to pass early, when to gather more cards and which hands are worth pushing to force your opponent to pass, but overall you can basically win/lose the game immediately by drawing/not drawing some of the special cards.
The card design is hideous and ... I really dont like this game, but I am surprised to see that I am still probably a good bit more kind to it than most. Most people think its entirely random and completely pointless, which is... not true. There is a bit of balancing your future options involved, but the decisions are not fun. The game is not fun and its very likely that the game will be decided just by a card draw more often than not.
Its still bad, just not THAT bad. But yes, dont play this.
Day 27: Bag of Chips (Okay)
its more or less a "bid your luck" game, in which you draw 13 chips and during the course of a match, you will remove objective cards (like: "There are more purple than red chips" or "There are at least 6 green chips") from your hand until the final remaining cards define your score, 2 as plus points for you, 1 as negative. That forces you to judge cards by their winning and losing potential. Every turn you get more chips and a clearer picture which of your cards might be achievable. The way your knowledge about the shared deck evolves and improves/lowers your chances of winning reminds me a lot of Poker, but its just a good bit more random unpredictable fun.
There are quite a few issues I have this this mechanics wise, from very unfair card draws, to railroading player choice to an extent where it feels like there is only ever really 1 obvious choice or how the 1 card that loses you points rarely ever matters, because the point values feel so arbitrary in the context of any given round. The point values are probably based on the likelihood of them being achieved, but most of the time, you just win 80 to 10 or something, so what does it matter if you have a minus card that subtracts 20 points?
Its a party game and to be honest, I can easily see this being a great hit at many social gatherings, where people gather round the chips and yell and jubilate when their rare point card actually pays off with the last chip draw. As a quick party game, its fun enough and I probably will play a few more rounds tomorrow as its a quick and simple palate cleanser.
Day 28: Pook (Okay)
Its a short competetive puzzle game, in which both players need to make sure that the playing area has more of their own faction characters. To do that, you have a hand of cards that you can either play on the backside for money or on the front side for their character abilities if you can afford them with enough money tiles already placed in the same row/column before. The game lives from you planning and balancing using the character abilities, blocking certain spots and flipping/unflipping cards. Sometimes you might want to play an opponents card for example, so you can flip a different adjacent card for whatever reason.
As you never know which money cards your opponent places down, the game quickly becomes a bit of an involved game of memory, where you want to remember the placement of your own units, or even low value enemy units, in case it gets important to limit your opponents access to money for his recruits. The round to round puzzle isnt bad, but its really hard to make any future plans as you really have no idea which cards your opponent might have access to, which... frankly means a lot more flipping cards randomly in trial and error and seeing what sticks.
Aside from the generic theme, this is another one of those games that seems fine, but kinda doesnt feel polished enough for a real fun player experience. Its a bit... eh, and comparing it directly to something like Nova Luna shows how much of a gap in game design there is between games like this. The puzzle works,but its a bit of a weird one that I didnt enjoy particularly much because of its unpredictability that doesnt really give you any sense of progression.
Day 29: Stockpile (Very Good)
Its a stock market game that looked a bit daunting at first but is actually pretty approachable, while offering plenty of mean speculation fun, especially for 3-5 players, but 2 player works fine, even if the more unpredictable nature of the game doesnt shine as brightly with a limited player count. This game is all about buying low and selling high and compared to other similar games with that dense of a topic, it manages to stay quick to play and very beginner friendly, while offering plenty to balance and decide on. Every turn, you bid on up to 5 share piles, which contain random shares of the 6 companies in the game. Once you have managed to successfully bid on stocks, you can decide to sell them or keep them for future rounds.
There are 2 aspects that make this game incredibly good and add spice and strategy to the feeling of success: The first is the reward of successfully selling high, its not just a gradual increase and nickel and diming your way to success, but companies can go bust or even explode in value, which honestly makes you feel like a professional trader predicting the market and reaping the rewards. The second is that those piles you bid on, because they are set up by every player each turn. You get 2 cards, and place a card faceup and one face down, sort of representing insider knowledge in certain investments, affecting how much you might value certain piles. That in turn can be a bluff or affect how others think you value that particular secret knowledge and increase the bids again.
You seriously dont do a lot more than putting cards on piles, bid on them and deciding to sell some shares when the time is right. But the base puzzle to judge your opportunities is such a darn good representation of stock market dynamics and distilling it into a 5-7 round 1 hour game. Add the alternate board on top of that base puzzle, which replicates different potential for the companies and different ways how they need to be judged and valued on a turn by turn basis.
The game is unfortunately not available anywhere, I already sent the publisher an email asking if it will be available again, because this is a niche that nothing in my boardgame collection fills quite as well. Its accessible, offers plenty of excitement, plays fast and has some modules/addons to make it a ton more devious. I love this game and you should definitely check it out.
Day 30: Megalomania (Okay)
Its a spicy trick taking game, with card abilities and different missions every turn. It works fundamentally like every other trick taking game. You need to win a certain amount of tricks every match, you get points for that and at the end the player with the most points wins. However, at the beginning of each round you get to decide between a combination of crystals and cubes on top of your cards. Cubes allow you to adjust your card values by 1, whereas crystals allow you to use the card power of a card once. A 1 for example (if you spend your precious crystal) can be activated to set the starting player for the next trick, whereas a 2 can be activated to be played on any colour if you so wish.
There are 15 numbers, each of which having a different power, which frankly opens up a level of customization and strategy that I have never seen in any trick taking game. Compared to the autoplay that most trick taking games fall into, this game is very much deliberate in every single turn, making every decision matter and keeping the game exciting right to the end. On top of that, you have different missions that randomly acivate each game. Ranging from "Win exactly 3 tricks" to "Every trick you get is a minus point", there is quite a bit of variety that tasks you to rethink, reevaluate and restrategize with your potential options and power cards.
The game has a relatively low rating, and despite me giving it only an "okay" mostly for technical implementation and bugs, this is a really good 2 player trick taking game, where the additional card abilities and missions offer some really interesting turn by turn decisions. Usually with more players, these trick taking games get better and more reliable, but I am wondering if this works agains the games favor, as more players means more card abilities and that pretty much whacks any planning and prectability over its head. Knowing your opponent is limited to 2 card powers and judging which card powers you can use, but he cant, is a very, very interesting dynamic however.
Unfortunately the BGA implementation is a bit bugged, with not accepting certain moves/abilities in specific combinations and the time settings are almost immediately throwing even experienced players into disqualification, but to be honest, I think this game does something rather special with its card abilities that is absolutely worth checking out with a friend.
Day 31: Cosmos Empires (Okay)
Its another dice rolling game in which you get resources based on the cards you put out for any particular number you rolled. Cards have different abilities, allow you to change dice rolls, buy more cards or just allow for different combintions to score points. The games mechanics work fine, but despite it having 10 cards in the card draw, the game still feels very luck based in that a certain cards being clearly better than others. If your opponent manages to get a better start, you will have a hard time getting back into the game if your opponent has more resources to remove important cards for you.
The base mechanics are fun and allow for some satisfying combinations. If the game had more variety and some balancing update to make sure the game feels a bit more evently fun for all players, this could be pretty neat. But as it stands, Space Base is just a direct upgrade and the recommended game.
As for my rating scale:
Very Good - Incredible experiences, everyone should give it a try
Good - Very good games, would enjoy playing it any time, even if I might have some nitpicks
Okay - Decent games, but seem flawed to me. Still enjoyable enough with friends or if you enjoy the genre. Usually a few mechanical issues I dont agree with.
Meh - Seem very flawed to me, and barely enjoyable. My opinions are obviously subjective, so there will be people disagreeing with me.
Here is a more or less complete games of my personal ranking: https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/ ... edit#gid=0
During the month, I also played some more random games for the first time, I'll post them below the calendar posts.
Have fun reading and happy new year!
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Day 1: Oasis New Hope (Okay)
Its a relatively simple sequence collecting game, which has horrible rule explanations. So here is my try: You want to create a sequence of cards from 12 to 0, and every turn you have different move options like adding to the sequence, drawing 2 cards from the deck, drawing 1 card from the tray, or buying an assistant/equipment for extra abilities. Playing multiple cards at once is faster, but it might take you a few turns to collect the cards you want, while you are theoretically in danger of the opponent stealing your cards. That creates a bit of a push your luck/risk reward, but ultimately plundering often felt like a wasted move and it was faster to just get cards out. This game desperately needs more variations/siderules to make it more varied. More equipment cards, random events, anything that would make you change up your strategy a bit. As it stands, its fun enough as a time waster to learn it once, but nothing I will ever go back to.
Day 2: A Gift of Tulips (Good)
This game on the other hand is a deviously simple lightweight majority collection game.On two actions per turn, you decide if you place a card in one of four stacks: Your hand (to increase final scoring), your opponents hands (to get instant points), score ranking (guaranteeing "your" flowers to give the most points) or secret score ranking (potential for more points). I can easily see people discounting this game for feeling too random, but considering the light rule set, there is a lot of potential bluffing and tactical maneuvering going on here that absolutely will make a huge difference in play strength. From the base feeling it reminds me a bit of the "classic" card collection games like Hanafuda or Rommee, but its a nice spin on the collection mechanics that I havent played before. Quick to play, easy to learn, more than meets the eye. Neat.
Day 3: Trike (Okay)
There is nothing really wrong with Trike, but even among abstract strategy games, its not among the most interesting ones. Its a solid little puzzle that I can see myself playing with someone for 30 minutes in real life with a nice wooden board, though, because a round can be super quick within like 1-2 minutes. You move the meeple in a straight line and place your colored stone there. If the meeple cant move anymore, you count who has the most surrounding stones and that player wins. Easy. You need to make sure your opponent cant lock you into a corner with his stones, which is rather rewarding to puzzle out, but I wont ever pick this up online again, especially because the online implementation just doesnt look pleasing enough, compared to all the other games. (Sorry, Trike)
Day 4: Hanamikoji (Very Good)
I honestly wouldnt be surprised if this is the best game to come out of the entire calendar. You need to win majorities over each Geisha by having the most cards on their pile. Every round, you have 4 actions, all of which you need to use, like discarding 2 cards. The problem? Two of those actions you NEED to use are actions that give your opponent cards. So it becomes excruciatingly interesting to figure out in which sequence you want to approach this and if you want to focus simple Geisha majority or a point score as the win condition. Simple rules, deep strategy. I love this. It looks great, is a perfect fit for BGA and as I said, I will pick this up. Its a great game for 2 people spending some time puzzling over a tight little challenge.
Day 5: Yokai Septet (Good)
Its a 2v2 trick taking game, where you win by either winning four 7s or by forcing your opponents to take 7 tricks without four sevens. That makes for a very interesting balance as you always need to judge which goal might be more realistic to achieve without talking to your opponent. I really enjoy trick taking games, especially ones that allow for some unspoken strategizing based on the game state. Nothing really wrong with it, but also not seeing too many new ideas here. If you like trick taking games, you'll enjoy it.
Day 6: Biomos (Good)
This is wild to me. This game only has a 6.1 average rating on BGG and I believe the worst rating out of the games I posted about so far. I need more eyes on this, because I do not understand why. Every turn you pick a biome and slot it around your planet. You can move them left and right, but never remove them again and need so slowly work towards the point cards on either side. You also get a single extra bonus action that allows you once to place a stone elsewhere. Rules done for the basic version, but the advanced version allows you to change certain biomes if you place them accordingly (like if you have a sand next to something else, you can turn that also into a sand) Its simple, approachable, has some challenging decisions to maximize for points in the advanced version. Whats not to love here?
Granted, playing it in 3p or 4p is admittedly worse, because you only have a limited playing space, so having another player screw up your plans completely throws of any "fair" plannable balance in my opinion. But as a very easy to explain family game for kids, where thats not an issue, its great. And as a 2P, its a smooth play or pretty thinky with the advanced version.
This game is ... kind of a really fun puzzle? In 2 player mode at least. I would love for someone else to check this out as well, because my first impression after a few rounds is that this game is a bit misunderstood because of its simple aesthetic and rules.
Day 7: 24/7 (Okay)
This isnt a bad game, its just not a very exciting one. Its scrabble. With numbers. Instead of building words, you build sets of numbers, either a sequence, triplets or totals of 7 or 24. It works. There is some worthwhile puzzling to be had, but ultimately, you just go through each line/row, check how much the totals are and if one of your tiles fits or not. Of course there is some metagaming involved, where you can set up future turns or double moves (if my opponent gets one, i get the other) and block the opponent from getting other certain moves, but in actual play, there was very often a pretty obvious move that was the best answer, which just straight up gave the most amount of points. It does feel like a lighter scrabble, something more akin to the "feel" of rummy, that I might play with non boardgame grandparents basically. I can totally see this being a hit for some people, but yeah, a bit too *checks release date* ...2007, I feel.
Day 8: Diceathlon (Meh)
I am not saying this often about boardgames, but this game feels... miserable and I dont even think it necessarily needs to be that bad. Its a roll and write, where you roll dice, pick a number and then put it into a category on your drawing sheet. At the end of the game, you compare the results of your categories (typically highest or lowest amount) to your opponents and check who won more categories. The first problem is already that most of my games ended in a draw, because if you focus on different categories than your opponents, a 3:3 draw becomes very likely. There is also one category that you always should go for first and whoever wins it has a HUGE bonus to not losing the game. I think in 6 games, the player who got the category first didnt lose 5 times. Its completely disheartening to know after 1 minute of playing that you already might be at a huge disadvantage because of random dice luck. And so the game just ends up feeling bad and makes you feel bad along every step of the way. Really weird design balancing decision.
Day 9: Daybreak (Good)
Special little game that absolutely deserves some attention, even if there are some caveats. Its somewhat of an engine builder with some Pandemic style cooperation challenges thrown into the mix, where each card you draw is a potential action that get stronger with the cards you played previously to the same stack. Some actions require you to discard, so cards are actions and resources simultaneously. At the beginning of the game, the world is screwed and you will use actions to bit by bit create more green energy, remove carbon emissions and handle random devastating world events like wildfires. I love the presentation and theme and its surprising how its dynamic changes once you go from single to multiplayer. If you are one of the soloplay people, absolutely gives this a whirl. Its a fun puzzle to figure out and challenge yourself to beat at least once, or even once more on a higher difficulty.
In multiplayer its a very talkative cooperative game about putting out all issues on everyones player board at once. Every player plays a different country with a different set of starting challenges to overcome. Suddenly you need to think about 2,3 or even 4 states burning up our atmosphere, while also having more cards from everyone to account for these challenges. It feels very much like Pandemic in that regard, even if the situation is a good bit more complex than Pandemic usually is.
So where is the issue? My issue is part of the game design and balancing that rewards the same strategy for every single challenge: The more cards you have, the more actions you can take. Actions are good. So ... you will play all the cards that get you more cards, and more after that. It feels a bit like a cheap way out for such a complex topic and the first few times playing it alone or with friends are guaranteed to be fun if you enjoy this type of cooperation that can unfortunately often lead a bit to "one player plans/decides for all"-syndrome and I am doubting the longevity a bit once you figured out the most basic way forward.
Still absolutely worth checking out, especially as a singleplayer challenge!
Day 10: GOLDblivion (Good)
This one was surprisingly enjoyable, at least for the few games I played on BGA. On top of the classic deck builder formula (buy cards from the market that give you more currency in the future), this game had some added spice through dice combat with gold hoarding dragons and a continuous drain on your deck built into the main mechanics (You are removing a card from your deck every turn for more resources). Compared to other deckbuilders that just get more random constantly, this one actually became a lot more consistent as you could kinda count on what you would draw every turn, which was a really fun and interesting take on the deck building mechanic.
It was always enjoyable to build up those engines, get building with permanent abilities and get more powerful. However, because of the interlocking systems, there isnt much flexibility here to change the base set of cards, so each does become similar rather quickly on top of feeling a bit too long for what it is. I probably wont go back to it, but it was definitely fun the first few times around.
Day 11: 101: The Match (Okay)
Another game that "works", but is a bit unexciting. Its a set collection game with the main twist being the middle card draw area, where the backside of each card shows the "range" of the number it could be. You then draw those cards to create poker hands in each row/colum and you get a point for each row/colum where you have a more valuable hand than your opponent, which incentivizes you to keep an eye on your opponents cards. The value comparison mechanic saves this game, as it allows some more puzzling about which cards you might want and also make sure your opponent has less of a chance getting the ones he needs. But overall, its still just not engaging enough to just collect 1-5 and maybe the game would have been more interesting if it allowed a few more card combinations or maybe a randomized set of bonus point requirements. (like maybe even/uneven sets giving extra points in one round, while in another you get points for rows above 25 points). And I now know why most of these games tack a nice theme with flowers/animals on top, because numbers really... arent exciting.
Day 12: Roll into Town (Okay)
Another roll and write about building a small little town. As most roll and writes do seem to blend together for me and you likely know the drill what they are by now, here is my one good and the one big bad I came away with: I really enjoy that the game has a inherent growth mechanism on the board. Where most roll and write games let you draw things and those are pretty final, this one has a mechanic where the woodcutter harvests the wood around it (erasing the tiles), but they can regrow depending on how many woods you have around those areas. That is neat and not a mechanic I have seen in these games yet that actually feels meaningful and interesting to work with.
However, also unlike other roll and write games, the game really has barely any interaction, not only with the other players but with its own dice. You can pretty much make a plan of what type of city you want to make and then just draw it. Because of the jokers and different exchanging abilities, there is hardly any emergent puzzle, which makes it feel a bit too shallow.
Day 13: Dog Park (Good)
Very adorable set collection /auction game with some slight engine builder touches. Every round you get to adopt/take care of 2 more dogs. Every dog has a certain ability, be that giving more points, giving more resources etc. You try to balance how expensive dogs are with what they give you. I just played a round where I had multiple dogs with effects that pop whenever they pick up a ball, chaining nicely. The dogs are adorable, the competition is a very tight and exhilarating race and the game really doesnt do anything wrong. I definitely recommend checking this out and playing a few rounds until you understood the concept well enough. However, I feel like the dogs/bonus effects/endgame scoring feels a bit too limited/repetetive. I really would like to test the new expansion thats supposed to release next year that adds a new layer. if that releases on BGA, I'll be there day one and hope it adds more variety.
Day 14: Tiny Epic Defenders (Okay)
It took quite long to finally win a round of this cooperative game on standard difficulty. Every turn you draw a card that decides if a region gets damaged or if you get to heal the regions. When its your turn, you typically try to run around healing areas, or use your heroes ability or the ability on the cards to position yourself better/heal yourself/affect the draw/discard pile. Defeating special monsters gains you magical items and every region has a double side so the exact constellation changes enough to be a bit of a puzzle every game. The idea is very neat and I did enjoy it as a challenge, as it was pretty much the most fulfilling coop experience I had on BGA yet, because me and my team players bonded heavily against the ridiculous RNG. And that is also the main issue, I tried 3 times with a player that played really well and we got screwed over majestically (like a boss that appeared at the end that we were unable to do damage to at all), while a round I just played with someone who made quite a few mistakes, but we were really lucky with some draws/discards and bonus reward items.
If someone wants to cross this off their list of games to get a win for, i might play it again, but otherwise its a bit unfortunate that a game system that feels quite nice just falters that heavily under balancing and RNG.
Day 15: DEI: Divide et Impera (Very Good)
Hm. All the best impressions start with "hm.", right? The game is an area control game without much direct conflict. Its more about recruiting units, which by majority rule can block paths for your opponent. You also collect resources, buy cards that allow you new actions for upcoming turns, all the while you have some nice little challenges to work on that give you points and even more improvements for your actions.
The game is very thinky. You "only" need to pick a card to play each turn, which most of the time activates 2 actions, like moving, gathering resources, building bridges/camps/elevators. After 3 turns, you get to fulfill a victory point condition and repeat until the game ends after 12 turns.
Akin to Ark Nova, its not really a longwinded progression, but more of a "race" to get the most victory points within the very limited amount of turns.
There is a LOT I like about the game. The permanent unlocks and extra abilities are super cool and change how every game plays, the hand building mechanic gives a very clear sense of progression with stronger actions, you feel like you have a good amount of freedom with what type of strategy you want to try, the moment to moment strategic challenges are very engaging with the unique commanders all feeling incredibly impactful and I didnt even mention the flexible victory point conditions yet, which is something I have never seen before and absolutely adore. (You can decide when and how you want to fulfill a condition, which changes the amount of points, its subtle, but a really unique idea).
So why the "Hm."? First of all, the game was incredibly annoying to learn. No BGA tutorial certainly didnt help, but neither youtube video tutorials nor the rule book were much of a help. Because of the limited turns, you also kinda need to preplan as much as possible to get a decent payoff from your moves, as every move you make will fundamentally change your options down the line (For example if you dont go for the easily accessible early game resource, you might not be able to buy a lot of the corresponding cards). This is very paralysis analysis inducing and it is easily the worst case of players needing a lot more time than allotted than in other games that I have encountered so far.
The game could also really use some more varied maps, but that might just be a me-thing, as I am not too fond of arena games that always use the same map. Most of my issues are BGA related: The game is very good, but it loses a bit of its appeal through the implementation on BGA. There are some weird implementations with action confirmations, not having an undo for a misclick is INCREDIBLY harsh and potentially loses you the entire game, sometimes the icons are impossible to see, the 3D board has an amazing table presence for the real thing which obviously is missing online and the game has a bit of symbol salad issue, where many symbols arent easily explained/understood.
Its a special game and you need to be in the market for that kind of experience, but if you ARE the person to enjoy these type of strategic optimization puzzles, you will love the unique aspects of it. Definitely see myself playing more of that down the line and picking it up if I ever see it on a sale.
Day 16: Vault: A Solitaire Dice Game (Okay)
Vault: A Solitaire Dice Game is... a solitaire dice game. You roll the dice and add or subtract numbers to cross off the totals in the grid. If you manage to finish a row/column, you get the amount of gems, unless that particular gem vault has already been deactivated if you were too slow solving the vault grid.
The puzzle itself is okay, definitely worth trying for a single playthrough, but there isnt enough to keep my attention for multiple playthroughs. Its too easy (I managed to beat it and open all vaults with a round to spare on my first try) and the general puzzle isnt varied enough as you will very likely do the exact same approach every single game. Perfect example for an "okay" game.
Day 17: Ticket Gagnant (Okay)
This game is ... weird. Definitely playable for some easy going family game fun, but I dont even know where to start with this one. Its basically a racing/betting game, where you play movement cards (more on those in a bit), to affect the horse positions on which you bet on. Betting correctly (which horses are in the top 3, which position did they get?) gives you points, so you need to carefully try balancing moving your preferred horses in front, while moving uninteresting horses back.
While the general game idea is solid, the game is just too random. Those movement cards? They can either move a horse a certain amount of spaces forward, backward or sideways, or they position a certain horse behind/in front of another certain horse denoted on that card. That has 2 weird effects: The game becomes too random and unpredictable. First off, it is entirely possible that your opponent gets strong movement cards, while you only get bad ones. That happened to me in half of the rounds. Your opponent will be able to judge things much better than you are, because you have no good card to move things forward. In those moments, it ultimately just feels unfair. On the other hand, because of the "move this horse to another horse"-card, if you have the right card left over, you can completely pull back a horse that was leading 10 spaces all the way to last place, which just feels bad for the progression you tried to work for.
On the other hand, I really enjoyed the ideas for the different track layouts, the game looks rather nice irl with the horse pieces and the randomness is a bit of an equalizer for some lighthearted back and forth banter.
This game makes me appreciate the mechanics around the racing progression in Heat a good bit more. There is a fine line between these systems feeling too random, too predictable or not satisfying enough and Ticket Gagnant kinda ends up having some more or less minor missteps in all three areas, while Heat successfully balances them all.
Day 18: Envelopes of Cash (Very Good / Good)
This one's a doozy and I really, really, really (did I say "really" already?) like the unique mechanisms and how they slot into each other. First game I kinda need to give 2 ratings for, mostly for playing it solo (Very Good) or multiplayer (Good) for reasons explained further down. So, what is this? Its a Euro Game/Engine builder, where you create the most promising college football team in the US within 12 rounds/months by travelling around the country and recruiting players. At its core, you buy cards in a draft and play them with resources, which in turn affect how efficiently you buy players in the future. Players and cards make you points and who has the most points wins. Easy, right? Well, no. And here is where things get super interesting and Envelopes of Cash sets itself apart from any other game I know:
Every turn you throw 6 dice, 1 for each colour. You can pick two dice to gain as resource, but here is the kicker: You can either take half the die amount as resources NOW or invest them into the future for their full amount. The larger the die number (1-6) the further away that investment is. The game is only 12 months long, so if you pick a 6, you might potentially need to wait a long time without that investment, but you also have a long time to prepare for the turn where you potentially get a large chunk of resources. And that is an insanely satisfying puzzle. Will you prefer to take half investment now for a player you need to recruit now in the city where you are currently at? Should you prepare some resources for a city you will visit in the next 1-2 turns? Or will you invest big, making it uncertain if you need the resources on the turn where you get them, but take the time and chance to look for a juicy upgrade card that you can get and play for sure at that point?
Oh and resources not spent in a turn go to waste. Yes, exactly. Its a bit mad. So you need to optimize the heck out of it. "Hm, I have 2 green resource in two months, but no card to play that will use that resource, should I hope waiting for a green card to pop up, or maybe its worth taking a detour so I know I will be in the territory where I can buy a player with green resources, but then again, I actually need a different player for my bonus rewards for which I could only use the 2 green to exchange them to a different resource or maybe I'll allocate the green resources as travel points after my next turn." Oh yeah, you can exchange resources for another resource at a rate of 3:1 (and a money), but thats always a crap deal, so what this game really is about is about optimizing the income/spend for 12 months, while building up your little recruitment engine allowing you to gain money, move faster or buy players/cards for cheaper.
Its amazing. I love it. Oh and I kinda hated playing it a bit. Whats up with that? Well, because its such a satisfying puzzle, it feels very, very rushed to be limited to 1,30 minutes for your move. Its also a game, where most players will pretty much use all time in their turn, so its a rather long game with a lot of downtime, which you also cant really preplan much, as it depends a lot on the available resources. If the game takes an hour, you will sit there for half an hour, not doing anything. I dont know why, but it annoyed me a bit more in this game than in others. All the while, you would actually WANT more time for your own moves, making this a bit of a downtime madness. The game is also clearly not really balanced around 2 players, where they dont even affect each other, but I imagine playing this with 4 players is more like downtime hell. I feel like the game would actually be better and more easily played if it was semi-solitaire and rounds played simultaneously, with some slight interaction effects, like maybe the card drafting or higher player purchase costs.
Enter: Solomode. Rectifies all of these issues, gives a decent challenge, a satisfying puzzle experience, you can just think as much as feels interesting to you and pretty much all gameplay systems work/affect themselves the exact same way (the Ai also takes aways some player spots, as other players would).
I love, love, love the 12 turn investment system, the unique theme, the random element in player acquisition and the set aquisition bonus points for getting full teams/regional teams. I really wishthe multiplayer felt a bit more smooth and seamless, but its absolutely worth checking out.
Day 19: Zefiria (Okay)
Its another cooperative puzzle game, where you sort numbers from lowest to highest, similar to Tranquility that I also commented on on the first page of this thread. It really put into perspective just how well the design of Tranquility works. So how does Zefiria work? A collection of cards numbered 1-25 get randomly shuffled and your task is sorting them back in order. This task is made much, much harder by you having very specific rules about which cards you can exchange. You have a token that moves around the cards and one wind power is for example allowing you to exchange a card that has the same colour, while another wind power allows you to exchange cards with the same symbol or that are adjacent to you.
If you play it with another player, your task then is to slowly move closer to a sorted shape within 6 rounds without directly communicating. The puzzle "works", but its a bit "off". I saw many people trying and failing (including me) multiple times trying to win even once. Its not a game that you can play on the side like Tranquility that adds more depth and challenge as you want it. Its a baseline challenge and the only thing helping you is the random setup. I am not sre if I just managed to win 1 round, because the starting setup felt significantly easier than the ones I had before, which... seems like a rather big flaw for such a game to have such a huge variety in non adjustable difficulty.
So the game feels a bit unfair more often than not, feels a bit unsatisfying as you often wont get to even finish the sorting before the game ends and doesnt have the variability of Tranquility for example. The game does tickle the puzzle part of my brain, though and there are some cool combinations to think about with the different player powers (when to exchange cards). Worth checking out if you have someone who already enjoys these type of games with you and you want more challenge, but otherwise I might look into other options.
Day 20: Ticket to Ride: Europe (Okay)
I am honestly surprised that I like Ticket to Ride Europe a lot more than the standard Ticket to Ride. This is actually a game I wouldnt mind that much playing as it rectifies some of the most egregious game design issues I had with the base Ticket to Ride. So for those who dont know, in this game you start with route destinations on a map, that you try to connect with train routes. To do that, you can collect differently coloured train cards in sets that correspond to the colour requirements of any given route you are looking for.
The big issue I have with Ticket to Ride is how uneven and frankly unfair the experience can be if your opponent correctly predicts the main route you are going for and blocks you entirely, making the game entirely unsatisfying. In the picture above, I was green and you see me doing a triangle in the middle blocking red from connecting his routes. That led to red not achieving a big chunk of his route cards and royally screwed him, while I won with 128 to 45 points. However, in this game he would have a counter measure that he didnt know about, because I assume he didnt play the tutorial for the changes to the Europe version.
In Europe, he could have built train stations in any city to borrow one of my train routes for his route destinations, which is an amazing change. Building that train station loses you points, so there is a clear trade off and still an advantage for blocking your opponent and forcing them to build a train station. That sounds like a small change, but oh my god, this makes Ticket to Ride actually playable for me.
The other smaller change I really like is train routes having different activation requirements to them, which actually makes you think a little bit more about whats happening on the map. There are tunnels and ferries that dont just require the standard x amount of cards, but the specific joker cards or additional random cards you might need to throw away, making them more high risk/reward tracks.
So I like this a good bit more, but the game is still a bit too simple minded in most actions for my taste. Because of how the card drawing works, you are incentivized to draw 2 random cards from the card stack with a chance to draw 1 or 2 joker cards, compared to either drawing 2 non joker cards from the open cards or only 1 joker card and end your turn. That means that its still the most optimal decision often to just spend 5 turns in a row just drawing 2 random cards. Thats still what you end up doing 50% of the time and its just a waste of potential game depth and interesting decisions, which is really what the main thing is what any board game should be offering.
So yeah, not every game needs to be a polished gem and less involved family games have their place in the hobby and this game actually is a decent game for that purpose. I am still shocked.
Day 21: Skate Legend (Okay)
Its a push your luck game that has a really unique theme and art (counting skateboard tricks), has some cool mechanics for different cards you play (like drawing more cards, playing cards or turning some cards from card piles around) that keep the game actively engaging, while also failing at some of the more basic push your luck mechanic staples, namely feeling good about being lucky.
Every turn you play a card unseen from a pile, It can be a card of either of 4 colors. Every turn you get to decide if you want to take your points or continue. if you continue and accidentally hit the third card of any color, you "fall" and dont get any point for that round. The player that stays in the longest, gets the bonus card for that round, potentially allowing a higher score next round.
I really wanted to like it, as I also enjoyed Incan Gold/Diamant, but after several plays it became clear that this sensation of lucky draws and success never happened. Compared to Incan Gold you can screwed over early with 2 cards of the same colour and that disadvantage seems a bit too punishing for something that happens so often. Incan Gold alleviates that by everyone having the same main cards, so everyones luck and judgment of the situation has the same foundation, making it feel like it was YOUR fault for not getting your points, not because the game threw a bad random chance at you.
There are some mechanics to alleviate some bad draws, but ultimately it still feels like too much of an advantage if the enemy crashes, similarly to how having less cards always feels like a huge boon, considering the max amount of cards to not repeat is 8. Ultimately, its not the best game, but the presentation and charme does carry its weight a good bit, so i could see people stil enjoying the base loop of just relatively decision free playing cards as long as there is no immediate danger and just chugging along with the game on the side.
Day 22: Kulami (Good)
So straight up front: This game is very good and the only reason I downranked it to "Good" is the BGA presentation, which is incredibly unexciting. I would love to play this with a real copy or a more fancy version online, though. Whats Kulami about? Every turn you place a marble of your color, then your opponent plays a marble in the same row or column of the marble you placed. You switch turns until someone cant make any more moves and the player with the most points through majorities on the tiles wins. (e.g. 6 tile gives 6 points if you have the majority)
I know, I know. This sounds boring and like every other abstract game ever, but it really only scratches the surface of how adjustable the game experience is to make it suit your preferences, which is honestly surprisingly original. First up, you can use different map setups. Any tile you can reorder for entirely different layouts (non rectangular, like star shapes or just entirely irregular). This doesnt only change the game, but makes the game harder/easier or even shorter if thats what suits your play preference, on top of naturally having an almost infinite setup of game boards, which almost no abstract game has.
Additionally, you can use different scoring options (the largest continuous area or line scoring for every diagononal or orthogonal line at least 5 stones long) or even combine scoring options, making every decision as complex as you want and less a direct "this option looks obviously better than this" like many simple abstracts might have. I am severely impressed by this game. The base decisions are very engaging and the way this game allows for customization of the game experience is pretty ingenious and once you add more scoring rules to the mix the game still keeps is simple accessibility, but becomes a deviously crafted and absolutely marvellous puzzle.
I love it.
Day 23: Exit Strategy (Meh)
This on the other hand, is a pretty annoying abstract game. You start in one corner of the board and need to make your way to the opposing side of the board. You either can move 1 space or put up 2 borders somewhere on the board that blocks yourself and your opponent to build a maze that potentially traps and stops him, but not yourself.
There is some strategy involved in 2P, but it just devolves into making impossibly long corridors for the other player which decides the outcome of the game the moment you start building the walls, even if the game ends 15 minutes later after placing all walls. Its ... weird. You can play it with 5 other people, which at least makes it a bit more random fun, but the problem here is that its so unpredictable with people potentially ganging up on someones path and ultimatately just making you decide who gets to win, instead of the "best" player winning.
I really dont know how to turn this into a proper and actually interesting game, the entire premise seems very flawed. I would be curious to see if someone turns this into a good game concept somehow.
Day 24: 15 days (Okay)
I am feeling a bit conflicted about this game. I pondered pushing it to the "Good" category, so maybe read on if a rather pretty and somewhat interesting set collection game might be relevant to your interests. In this game, you try to collect sets of 1-6 for four colours. Any card you play also costs cards as currency to play them. If you can play a card in order, it costs 1, whereas a card played in between other cards (You already played 4/6 before and now play the 5 of that colour) costs you 2 cards, so the game rewards playing in sequential order.
However, what changes that setup a good bit and rewards non-sequential playing (and I quite like) is the set of card powers that you can gain by first reaching any set of 3 cards of the same colour and anytime you add another card (so the 4th to 6th card after that). The card powers are rather impactful and fun to get as they straight up improve all actions you can take, be that drawing more cards or paying less to play them. That has some really neat strategical implications where you might push nonsequential card sets that cost you more in future rounds, but allow you to tactically unlock a card power that can support you in the current rounds.
It is VERY important to keep the opponents situation in mind as well, as he could potentialy take your power away if he gets a sequence after you did. All of that is a lovely little competition balancing timing, current benefits and endgame scoring opportunities. I quite like it, but I see two main issues currently: 1) The game could really use more random different card powers Hanamikoji style, so its a more interesting choice what to go for, instead of more or less just taking whatever comes first naturally. And more importantly 2) The game highly benefits any player stalling and blocking the other player from gaining the powers, which I dont think is a very pleasant dynamic that currently seems like the best strategy to me that ultimately means I will just wait for my opponent to unlock any card ability, and then immediately the turn after take it away from him.
Due to that, the game is more suited to 3+ players, where the randomness of any round to round decision gets weighted more heavily compared to the unpredictability of locking more than a single other player out of those card powers. So I might be leaning to a "Good" in 3+ and an "Okay" in 2 player mode,I suppose and overall deciding on "Okay", because of the missing variety in game setup and a bit of an annoying bug wiht the undo functionality in the current BGA version (dont press undo). Still, its a lovely little game that I can easily see enjoying with other people.
Day 25: Spirits of the Forest (Okay)
Competetive puzzle game that is apparently a remake of a 20 year old game called Kardinal & Koenig (and another one called Richelieu), in which you collect icons of 9 different suits. If you get more icons of a particular suit than your opponent, you get as many points as you have icons. If you dont even get a single card of any suit, you lose 3 points. You can only take cards from the far left or far right and every player has 3 crystals that you can put on any card in the game and if your opponent takes a card with your crystal, they need to remove one of their crystals from the game, effectively making them a soft wall for any chosen card.
The core mechanic works really well. There is definitely a good puzzle here, blocking opponents, making sure you get majority of icons, potentially grabbing some minor token bonusses and deciding when its worth sacrificing one of your crystals to take a card that your opponent blocked. However after you understood how to prioritize the cards, there isnt a whole lot of relevant decisions and most of the card picks in the first half of the game just more or less pick themselves. The latter half of the game is a bit more interesting because of the point salad of 12 different suits (even if that gets a bit messy at times), but again, thats mostly just a matter of deciding which majority might be more relevant now.
The game also falls a bit on the repetetive side with the exact same starting setup, which makes this game feel ike a solid base for a more varied game/expansion, but instead of just reimplementing the game, I would love to see someone expanding it a bit in the next try. There is also a solo mode in the real game, which looks like a nice little challenge, but that is unfortunately not available on BGA. I definitely understand how its a rather classic design that people appreciated and reimplemented over the years, but its a bit unfortunate that the small expansions and bigger expansion that recently released isnt in this version to show how this concept can evolve and pull in modern gamers as well.
Day 26: Kmakici Family's greatest teatime (Meh)
Set collection game with a shared collection space. Whenever you have put the 5th character on the board, you can take a random token. Collect 4 different token icons on the backside and you win. Alternatively, if no one gets to 5 characters, the player who passes first needs to take a token on their frontside as minus points. If by the end of the token track, no player has gotten 4 different token backsides, the player with the most points wins.
The game is very luck based. There is a tad bit of strategy here, deciding when to pass early, when to gather more cards and which hands are worth pushing to force your opponent to pass, but overall you can basically win/lose the game immediately by drawing/not drawing some of the special cards.
The card design is hideous and ... I really dont like this game, but I am surprised to see that I am still probably a good bit more kind to it than most. Most people think its entirely random and completely pointless, which is... not true. There is a bit of balancing your future options involved, but the decisions are not fun. The game is not fun and its very likely that the game will be decided just by a card draw more often than not.
Its still bad, just not THAT bad. But yes, dont play this.
Day 27: Bag of Chips (Okay)
its more or less a "bid your luck" game, in which you draw 13 chips and during the course of a match, you will remove objective cards (like: "There are more purple than red chips" or "There are at least 6 green chips") from your hand until the final remaining cards define your score, 2 as plus points for you, 1 as negative. That forces you to judge cards by their winning and losing potential. Every turn you get more chips and a clearer picture which of your cards might be achievable. The way your knowledge about the shared deck evolves and improves/lowers your chances of winning reminds me a lot of Poker, but its just a good bit more random unpredictable fun.
There are quite a few issues I have this this mechanics wise, from very unfair card draws, to railroading player choice to an extent where it feels like there is only ever really 1 obvious choice or how the 1 card that loses you points rarely ever matters, because the point values feel so arbitrary in the context of any given round. The point values are probably based on the likelihood of them being achieved, but most of the time, you just win 80 to 10 or something, so what does it matter if you have a minus card that subtracts 20 points?
Its a party game and to be honest, I can easily see this being a great hit at many social gatherings, where people gather round the chips and yell and jubilate when their rare point card actually pays off with the last chip draw. As a quick party game, its fun enough and I probably will play a few more rounds tomorrow as its a quick and simple palate cleanser.
Day 28: Pook (Okay)
Its a short competetive puzzle game, in which both players need to make sure that the playing area has more of their own faction characters. To do that, you have a hand of cards that you can either play on the backside for money or on the front side for their character abilities if you can afford them with enough money tiles already placed in the same row/column before. The game lives from you planning and balancing using the character abilities, blocking certain spots and flipping/unflipping cards. Sometimes you might want to play an opponents card for example, so you can flip a different adjacent card for whatever reason.
As you never know which money cards your opponent places down, the game quickly becomes a bit of an involved game of memory, where you want to remember the placement of your own units, or even low value enemy units, in case it gets important to limit your opponents access to money for his recruits. The round to round puzzle isnt bad, but its really hard to make any future plans as you really have no idea which cards your opponent might have access to, which... frankly means a lot more flipping cards randomly in trial and error and seeing what sticks.
Aside from the generic theme, this is another one of those games that seems fine, but kinda doesnt feel polished enough for a real fun player experience. Its a bit... eh, and comparing it directly to something like Nova Luna shows how much of a gap in game design there is between games like this. The puzzle works,but its a bit of a weird one that I didnt enjoy particularly much because of its unpredictability that doesnt really give you any sense of progression.
Day 29: Stockpile (Very Good)
Its a stock market game that looked a bit daunting at first but is actually pretty approachable, while offering plenty of mean speculation fun, especially for 3-5 players, but 2 player works fine, even if the more unpredictable nature of the game doesnt shine as brightly with a limited player count. This game is all about buying low and selling high and compared to other similar games with that dense of a topic, it manages to stay quick to play and very beginner friendly, while offering plenty to balance and decide on. Every turn, you bid on up to 5 share piles, which contain random shares of the 6 companies in the game. Once you have managed to successfully bid on stocks, you can decide to sell them or keep them for future rounds.
There are 2 aspects that make this game incredibly good and add spice and strategy to the feeling of success: The first is the reward of successfully selling high, its not just a gradual increase and nickel and diming your way to success, but companies can go bust or even explode in value, which honestly makes you feel like a professional trader predicting the market and reaping the rewards. The second is that those piles you bid on, because they are set up by every player each turn. You get 2 cards, and place a card faceup and one face down, sort of representing insider knowledge in certain investments, affecting how much you might value certain piles. That in turn can be a bluff or affect how others think you value that particular secret knowledge and increase the bids again.
You seriously dont do a lot more than putting cards on piles, bid on them and deciding to sell some shares when the time is right. But the base puzzle to judge your opportunities is such a darn good representation of stock market dynamics and distilling it into a 5-7 round 1 hour game. Add the alternate board on top of that base puzzle, which replicates different potential for the companies and different ways how they need to be judged and valued on a turn by turn basis.
The game is unfortunately not available anywhere, I already sent the publisher an email asking if it will be available again, because this is a niche that nothing in my boardgame collection fills quite as well. Its accessible, offers plenty of excitement, plays fast and has some modules/addons to make it a ton more devious. I love this game and you should definitely check it out.
Day 30: Megalomania (Okay)
Its a spicy trick taking game, with card abilities and different missions every turn. It works fundamentally like every other trick taking game. You need to win a certain amount of tricks every match, you get points for that and at the end the player with the most points wins. However, at the beginning of each round you get to decide between a combination of crystals and cubes on top of your cards. Cubes allow you to adjust your card values by 1, whereas crystals allow you to use the card power of a card once. A 1 for example (if you spend your precious crystal) can be activated to set the starting player for the next trick, whereas a 2 can be activated to be played on any colour if you so wish.
There are 15 numbers, each of which having a different power, which frankly opens up a level of customization and strategy that I have never seen in any trick taking game. Compared to the autoplay that most trick taking games fall into, this game is very much deliberate in every single turn, making every decision matter and keeping the game exciting right to the end. On top of that, you have different missions that randomly acivate each game. Ranging from "Win exactly 3 tricks" to "Every trick you get is a minus point", there is quite a bit of variety that tasks you to rethink, reevaluate and restrategize with your potential options and power cards.
The game has a relatively low rating, and despite me giving it only an "okay" mostly for technical implementation and bugs, this is a really good 2 player trick taking game, where the additional card abilities and missions offer some really interesting turn by turn decisions. Usually with more players, these trick taking games get better and more reliable, but I am wondering if this works agains the games favor, as more players means more card abilities and that pretty much whacks any planning and prectability over its head. Knowing your opponent is limited to 2 card powers and judging which card powers you can use, but he cant, is a very, very interesting dynamic however.
Unfortunately the BGA implementation is a bit bugged, with not accepting certain moves/abilities in specific combinations and the time settings are almost immediately throwing even experienced players into disqualification, but to be honest, I think this game does something rather special with its card abilities that is absolutely worth checking out with a friend.
Day 31: Cosmos Empires (Okay)
Its another dice rolling game in which you get resources based on the cards you put out for any particular number you rolled. Cards have different abilities, allow you to change dice rolls, buy more cards or just allow for different combintions to score points. The games mechanics work fine, but despite it having 10 cards in the card draw, the game still feels very luck based in that a certain cards being clearly better than others. If your opponent manages to get a better start, you will have a hard time getting back into the game if your opponent has more resources to remove important cards for you.
The base mechanics are fun and allow for some satisfying combinations. If the game had more variety and some balancing update to make sure the game feels a bit more evently fun for all players, this could be pretty neat. But as it stands, Space Base is just a direct upgrade and the recommended game.
Thanks a lot for all this work!
During december, I posted 2 impressions per day on average, but I probably will post some more here if you want to read along: