My backlog of games to blog about has not lessened over 2023 - which is not a good thing! This was also a big year for playing games. Breakdown follows as: 2023 Number of different games played: 158. Of which were new (To me.): 77. Total number of gaming sessions: 577. 2022 Number of different games played: 139. Of which were new (To me.): 68. Total number of gaming sessions: 541. All the numbers are slightly up on '22, looks like I'm hitting peak playing! Most played games of 2023
Anyway - enough of that, I know the real reason you're here; for the influential, industry defining 3 Spellcaster & A Dwarf annual game awards!
Game of the year: Heat: Pedal to the Metal It wasn't a hard choice, when thinking about game of the year, this always immediately came to mind. This 50's/60's themed F1 game manages to provide players with some tricky decisions and risks to take using an elegant implementation of hand management mechanics. I'm a big fan of a certain other F1 game that's been around in some form or other for years and it seems blasphemous to think it but Heat: Pedal to the Metal is as good as Formula De/Formula D! There, I've said it! Disappointment of the year: Sushi Go!: Spin Some for Dim Sum It's not that this game is bad per se, it's just that it does not deliver any particularly new gameplay or as good a experience as its previous 2 iterations. Hard to believe, but it's just a bit meh considering the pedigree it originates from. It doesn't help that it's central premise (Or gimmick if you're less kind!) also makes the game a bit fiddly to setup, teardown and sometimes play. Surprise of the year: Bandido There's a heavy dose of luck that can apply to Bandido and I'm not sure if ultimately it's a good game or not. Even so, Bandido distils a cooperative gameplay experience into a single deck of strangely oblong cards in a package so small it easily fits in a pocket. With rules so simple and intuitive that anyone can immediately grasp play. I play games with people who have varying levels experience in table top gaming and this has been a big hit with a couple of them, which is why we've played it so much in 2023. Honourable mention: Joraku Deluxe Set in Feudal Japan, Joraku is typically what you'd expect it to be; a game amount warring factions vying for influence and control. However, all of this is achieved with abstract, almost minimalist trick taking rules and delivered in a fantastic looking package.
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My massive backlog of games to talk about didn't lessen in 2022, only got worse. 2022 was a big year for playing games, bigger than 2021, which I thought was big enough! Below is the breakdown of games I played in '22 versus '21. 2022 Number of different games played: 139. Of which were new (To me.): 68. Total number of gaming sessions: 541. 2021 Number of different games played: 78. Of which were new (To me.): 46. Total number of gaming sessions: 333. Why have the numbers gone up so much? Two factors, 2022 saw the end of lockdowns and a full year of playing on Board Game Arena where not only could 5 or 6 games be easily played in an evening, some games could be played multiple times per session. Most played games:
Lucky Numbers, with it's simple, unpredictable, luck based and strategy mechanics replaced Lover Letter as our regular 'finisher' on Sunday nights. Now on to the industry-defining, glittering, 3 Spellcasters & a Dwarf annual game awards.
These are for games I first played in 2022, not necessarily games that were published in 2022. Game of the year: Cascadia Cascadia is a tile-placement game with fairly simple rules but a wealth of options, strategies and approaches to scoring points. Players have to manage and optimise multiple scoring vectors that use tiles and tokens but rarely do they get to draft both the tiles and tokens they need, forcing them into meaningful, compromising decisions. What more could you want? Disappointment of the year: Terminator: Dark Fate The Card Game This co-operative deck-builder had some interesting ideas but also seemed broken, so much so that we struggled to make any headway into the game. It felt like the game needed more playtesting and balancing. Surprise of the year: Akropolis Another tile-laying game! This time one with actual figurative multiple levels of gameplay! Simple rules, lots of decision and a quick playtime make this game a cracking package. Honourable mention: Parks For a long stretch of 2022 I thought that this worker-placement, resource-management game was going to be the game of the year until Cascadia came along. With limited workers spaces along the hiking trail, players are faced with trying to anticipate their opponents actions while also prioritising their own and gather the resources to buy point scoring cards. Parks also has some of the best components and artwork I've seen in a game for a while. 20th September 2022 Tuesday is here again and we're with the Woking Gaming Club at The Sovereigns in Woking. Recruit and assemble your citizens (Or heroes really.), build domains and vanquish foul enemies in this fantasy adventure themed dice rolling and tableau building game. What's in a game?
Component quality is the usual good quality you'd expect from a modern game like Valeria: Card Kingdoms. Card quality is fine as are the card tokens and the player boards. Wooden tokens for resources are always a welcome addition. The dice are plastic and feel a little 'square' but they have indented numbers which is good. Valeria: Card kingdoms features good art throughout. Cards are well illustrated with colourful chunky pictures of heroic citizens and intriguing domains, my favourite though, is the artwork for monsters that brashly depict menacing enemies. There's quite a lot of iconography throughout the game, from types of heroes and monsters, to terrain types and ability icons. For the most part, they are fairly intuitive - matching the roles on citizen cards to the requirements on domain cards is obvious but some of the abilities, particularly on domain cards are a bit esoteric and will require some looking up in the rulebook. I don't think it's especially beginner or casual friend but by no means is it a gamebreaker either. How's it play? Setup
On to play In Valeria: Card Kingdoms, players will be rolling dice to activate cards to accumulate resources which in turn can be spent to acquire more citizen cards, domains and monsters. The game follows the usual turn structure of the active player taking their actions before player progresses to the player on their left. During a turn, the following phases occur.
Endgame Play in Valeria: Card Kingdoms continues until any 1 of 3 game ending criteria is met, which are:
A player can earn VPs from a variety of sources.
Points are tallied, highest score wins! Overall
I'll start by saying I quite like the implementation of the fantasy theme both in presentation and execution. It is slightly abstract but gathering a band of heroes to go off and fight monsters and build domains feels good. Like many engine and tableau building games, there's a distinct early game in Valeria: Card Kingdoms about players building up their tableau, in this case with citizen cards and a late game about gaining increased resources to acquire monster and domain cards as well as VPs. However, because players get 2 actions during their turn, there's some opportunity for optimised actions, card synchronicity and thus meaningful decisions. Getting the right citizen card can lead to getting a domain card for example. Getting a good domain card early can be a big boon dependant on its ability. This means there will be a fairly constant flow of cards being drafted from the central area. Players will find themselves competing to get the cards they want as quickly as possible and is the game's primary form of interaction between players. In fact: Thanks to every card having an ability that can be activated in other players' turns and also being able to read the dice both individually and as a pair making card activations more common, means the game generally flows quite rapidly. Players will often have something happening outside of their turn. Like many drafting games, there's a higher level of play here that comes from watching what other players are doing and potentially trying to stymie them. The addition of duke cards messes with this though, providing players with unique and unpredictable objectives. Valeria: Card Kingdoms is a solid iteration of the dice rolling, card activating, tableau building game style and players of those games will be on familiar ground here. To compliment this, there's also a couple of innovative touches to do with reading the dice and card activating that make the game fresh. Despite its brisk playtime, the game does has a fairly involved setup process and also an abundance of iconography which makes for a slightly steep learning curve. Don't that put you off though. Valeria: Card Kingdoms is well worth a try. 18th September 2022 We're on Board Game Arena for some gaming goodness. Use your deductive reasoning to... Break the code, a puzzle-like game of logic and elimination. Caveat: We've only ever played Break the Code digitally. What's in a game?
There's little to no art in the game and to be honest, the game is a fairly abstract almost puzzle-like game that doesn't really need it. Presentation wise, it's clear and easy to understand. Break the Code also has no iconography unless you count numbers. There's nothing here that would prove an obstacle to players. How's it play? Setup The setup for Break the Code differs some what between a 2 player count and a 3-4 player count. The setup here is for 3 players.
On to play The objective in Break the Code is to deduce the value and colours of the 5 tiles in the central area before anyone else. This will be done by asking other players questions (Using the questions on the question cards.) about their own tiles and then by matter of elimination discovering which tiles are in the central area. Break the Code uses a traditional turn order with the active player resolving their turn before play progresses to their left. On their turn, the active player can choose 1 of 2 actions.
Player count There are a couple of differences in setup and player according to player count.
Endgame If all question cards have been used and no one has made a correct guess, all players lose! Additionally, if all player make incorrect guesses, then again, all players lose. When a player makes a correct guess, the end of the current round is played out, the game ends and they are the winner. There is a chance however, that other players may also make a correct guess with their last action. In which case, all players who guessed correctly are declared winners. Overall
There's not much to say about the mechanics of Break the Code, it's a very straightforward game that is essentially a multiplayer puzzle; ask questions and eliminate extraneous numbers until you are left with only the correct numbers. Since questions are solely based on the available cards it means there can be a need for a bit of lateral thinking and trying to gleam information from awkward questions. I suspect that if players got to ask the questions they wanted, it would end a game quickly or break it! It's also vital to listen to answers given to other players' questions. Players first eliminate their own tiles which leaves them with about 10-12 more tiles to eliminate. They must cross-reference multiple answers to get the information they need. E.g., They may learn a player's first tile is a black number, then they may learn it's a odd number, then they may finally learn it's a 1 and so on. Conversely, players will sometimes get a lot of information quickly, e.g., learning the tile in the E column is green means it must be a 5 and that it is also the highest number a player has behind their screen. It's this kind of reasoning that drives Break the Code and if that sort of fairly heavy puzzle orientated game play doesn't appeal to you, then this is one to avoid. Myself; I quite like puzzles but I'm not so sure about a multiplayer one, it's not something I feel lends itself well to multiplayer. I will add that we did play it online and over voice chat which could make it feel somewhat disjointed compared to face-to-face.. Having said that, I did enjoy Break the Code but found once I had 'broken' the code, there was very little motivation to go back to it another time. 8th September 2022 It's a Thursday evening, it's Aldershot, it's time for some gaming goodness. Channel your inner Laurence Llewelyn-Bowen and Kevin McCloud as you attempt to build your... Dream Home in this drafting, set collecting game. What's in the game?
Component quality is the usual good standard found in most modern board games. The cards are fine, the board and tokens are constructed from sturdy cardboard. The first player token is chunky and made from wood, it's obviously a bit of a gimmick but it's the kind of gimmick I'm a sucker for! Dream Home has fantastic artwork throughout. The Illustration used on the home board is good, however, the standouts are the cards and tokens which feature excellent colourful and distinct depictions of home spaces. Interestingly, many cards will feature children hidden among the furniture. This is more than just a aesthetic choice which will be explained below. Most information is conveyed via text and there's no iconography that needs learning. How's it play? Setup This is the setup for 4-player games, in game with lower player counts, some cards will be discarded after being placed on the game board.
On to play Dream Home is played over exactly 12 rounds and players will be putting room cards on to their personal game board to build their home and gaining resource cards. This is done by drafting pairs of cards from the same column, that is, 1 resource and 1 room card - except for the leftmost space, in which case they acquire a room card and the first player token. Turn order is slightly different to the usual here: The player with the first player token goes first and play progresses to the left until all players have taken their turn. However, it's possible that the first player token will change hands during a round, consequently, in the following round a new turn order would be established. During their turn, the active player takes the following actions.
Endgame Dream Home is played over 12 rounds and after the last round, the game goes to scoring. There are various avenues to earning VPs.
Points are tallied, highest score wins. In the case of a tie, the player with home board showing the most children on the cards wins! Overall
Dream Home strikes a balance between ease of play and depth. Players will be faced with the conundrum of having to build outwards before building upwards. It might not seem like much but it's unlikely that players will get all the cards they need at the time they need them. The larger room sets will score more points per card but unless a player gets the right cards at the right time, it's likely that they will have to leave gaps when collecting bigger sets, which can make it tricky to build upwards. The drafting mechanic also provides players with a meaningful choice. Again, it's unlikely that players will always get the 2 cards they want, often they will need to compromise on which resource and room card to take as well as adapt to circumstances as they are occur. Finally, the first player mechanic is also interesting. Gaining the first player token feels costly because the player only gets a room card but it can play dividends in the following turn. There will times when going first can be extremely useful. Conversely going last can be painful as the last player will only ever have a choice of 2 columns to pick from. None of this is ever too complicated, the sets are never too big and intricacies that can arise from syncing resource cards such as décor cards with room cards is never too complex. Dream Home also doesn't outstay its welcome. Being played over 12 rounds keeps it moving along briskly and provides a fairly concise experience, unless you're playing with a sufferer of analysis paralysis! It's fair to say that Dream Home is a lightweight and accessible iteration of the 'draft-and-place' multiple components, set collecting mechanic seen in quite a few games. This accessibility along with it's top-notch presentation means that it's probably a good game to play with younger participants or more casual gamers. For me though: While I feel that Dream Home does provide a good experience for younger and more casual gamers, I'm not sure it has long term appeal to more dedicated gamers. I enjoyed the game but it's fairly simplistic nature means I'm not sure how often I'd like to play it. The gaming totals for August '22 are below. Less sessions were played in August, but the variety of games was higher, no doubt partially due to 12 first plays! Total games: 45 Different games: 35 First plays: 12 Tuesday 2nd at The Sovereigns with the Woking Board Gaming Club
Wingspan Thursday 4th at Simon's Cascadia - First Play! Switch & Signal - 4 Friday 5th at Aldershot The Crew: Mission Deep Sea - 32 Heckmeck - 12 Trails - First Play! Sunday 7th on Board Game Arena Regicide - 9 Splendor - 19 Cloud City - 14 Stella - Dixit Universe - 2 Railroad Ink - 16 Can't Stop - 21 Lucky Numbers - 37 Tuesday 9th at The Sovereigns with the Woking Board Gaming Club Isle of Cats - 2 Thursday 11th at Aldershot Dungeon Decorators - First Play! Love Letter - 59 Sunday 14th on Board Game Arena Parks - 11 Potion Explosion - 13 Loco Momo - 11 Love Letter - 60 Can't Stop - 22 Lucky Numbers - 38 Tuesday 16th at The Sovereigns with the Woking Board Gaming Club Jaws - First Play! Wednesday 17th August - Simon's Raiders of Scythia - First Play! Thursday 18th at Aldershot Heroquest - First Play! Saturday 20th on Board Game Arena Tranquility - First Play! Race for the Galaxy - 17 Sunday 21st on Board Game Arena Forbidden Island - 13 Noah - First Play! Chromino - 2 Codex Naturalis - 23 Love Letter - 61 Martian Dice - 20 Lucky Numbers - 39 Friday 26th at Farnborough Heckmeck - 13 King of Tokyo - 9 Jump Drive - 10 Saturday 27th on Board Game Arena Dungeon Twister - First Play! Sunday 28th on Board Game Arena Burgle Bros - First Play! Carcassonne - 9 Loco Momo - 12 Railroad Ink - 17 Can't Stop - 23 Lucky Numbers - 40 Tuesday 30th at The Sovereigns with the Woking Board Gaming Club Scout - First Play! The Crew: The Quest for Planet Nine - First Play! 30th August 2022 Tuesday night gaming with the Woking Gaming Club continued with The Crew: The Quest for Planet Nine. The Crew: The Quest for Planet Nine is actually an earlier iteration of The Crew: Mission Deep Sea which I've already blogged about and the two games are more or less identical. Read about The Crew: Mission Deep Sea here and it'll give a good idea how The Quest of Planet Nine plays. As such I'm not going to do a full write for The Crew: The Quest for Planet Nine, instead I'll just note one area of difference between the two. Task cards: These are much more straightforward in The Crew: The Quest for Planet Nine. All the objectives are exclusively about acquiring certain numbers in certain colours, e.g., blue 7, yellow 2 and so on. Consequently, The Quest for Planet Nine is a bit more straightforward, this makes it perhaps a little easier to play as it does not present players with having to deal with more left-field tasks like 'I can only win the first and last hands'. The upside is that it has greater accessibility and will be easier to play with people who aren't so heavily into games. If I had to choose between this and The Crew: Mission Deep Sea, I'd choose the latter 100% of the time.
It's not that this is a bad game (It's not.), it's just the gamer in me craves the greater variety and challenge Mission Deep Sea provides. If (Like a friend did.) you want something to play with the family over a holiday with some non-confrontational , still challenging but more accessible gameplay, The Crew: The Quest for Planet Nine is a good choice. 30th August 2022 It's a Tuesday evening and we're with the Woking Board Gaming Club at The Sovereigns to play trick-taking card Scout. Step right up, step right up friends. Prepared to be entertained and thrilled by the most death-defying, deck-dealing, trick-taking card game you ever set eyes on. What's in a game?
The quality of the cards in scout are average which is to say that they are what you'd expect of a modern game. The tokens feel sturdy and well made. While each card contain smudges of a pair attractive bright colours there's little artwork in Scout, what there is, is either monochrome illustration or stylised and slightly cartoony. It fits the loose circus theme well enough though. Only numbers are utilised in Scout, no iconography related to game play appears which means the game is easily understood. How's it play? Setup
On to play Scout is played over a number of rounds equal to the player count, i.e., if there are 4 players, there will be 4 rounds. Each round will consist of numerous hands of card being played, players will take turns trying to empty their own hands while also accumulating cards and dollars into their own playing area. The game uses a traditional turn structure with the active player acting and play progressing to the player on their left. Broadly speaking, the active player can choose 1 of 2 actions and a round consists of the following:
Endgame When a number of rounds equal to the player count had been finished, the game ends, the final round is scored and we go to final scoring. Points are tallied, highest score wins. Overall
Scout packs quite a lot of gameplay into quite a small package. At the heart of it, players are broadly speaking faced with 2 approaches towards a central conundrum: Should a player try and empty their hand or try and build up the size of the tricks in their hand instead? Both have advantages and drawbacks. A player emptying their hand is good because it minimises their losses if the round ends but playing small or single card tricks is a giving other players easy opportunities to score points by trumping them. There's also the fact that a player ending up with for example a single card in their hand can have trouble playing it. If someone else plays any 2 card trick, there's no way a single card can trump it. A player building up the cards and consequently the trick(s) in their hand can be hugely beneficial; playing a trick containing a large number of cards can end a round in that player's favour as not only do they not lose points for cards in card, they earn dollars for having their trick scouted. The big risk is that a round may end before playing the big trick, which could lose them a lot of points. There's also the possibility of working towards both, removing single cards or small tricks from a player's hand may create new tricks. All of this is of course contextual. The cards a player chooses to have in their hand will influence their decisions as well as the actions of their opponents. There's a higher level of play that comes from watching what others do and seeing if they are building up a trick or not - especially of they're scouting from small active tricks. Also quite often, when players also playing single card tricks, they're looking to combine cards into a bigger trick or looking to save a trick for later. The show & scout action is also very important, if an opponent has played a big, using it well can genuinely bring about a reversal of fortune. It means that players are always faced with meaningful decisions, playing and acquiring cards always has an impact. I've seen some criticism that there's a notable amount of luck in Scout - and there's some truth to that but truth be told; so do many games of this type, especially card games. Which is why playing multiple hands of cards over multiple rounds acts as a 'balancer'. There's also a quirk where the game is different according to player count. For starters; game length can dramatically change according to player count: Not only do more players mean there's more turns per round, there's also more rounds to go as well! That being said, Scout doesn't have a particularly long play time. A 5-player game takes in the region of an hour to play out. Hand size also varies quite with player count. In a 5-player game everyone starts with 9 cards, while in a 3-player game each player starts with 12 cards. It means that bigger tricks are more likely occur in games with a lower player count, something that players will want to take into account. Another minor quibble is that it's a little tricky to pick up some of the rules about trumping an active trick with a new trick of the same size. Minor grumbling aside though, I think Scout is an excellent trick taking card game that has a good amount of player interaction, gives players something to think about but can also provide some surprises. If trick taking card games are something you like, then Scout is a game that you should definitely try. 28th August 2022 It's a Sunday evening and we're logged into Board Game Arena for some gaming goodness. Burgle Bros is a cooperative tile based bank heist/caper game: Can you sneak through the building, dodge the guards, disarm the alarms, find and crack the safes. Time to find out in... Burgle Bros. Caveat: We have only played this digitally. What's in a game?
The art direction for Burgle Bros has some unusual choices. Room tiles have detailed, realistic looking line art illustrations while on the other hand, characters are depicted with highly stylised and exaggerated cartoony art that looks like it's out of the opening titles of a sixties crime caper movie - which is appropriate. It's a weird clash of styles but in this instance it actually works quite well. There are a few icons that are used throughout Burgle Bros but they're all fairly easy to learn, a lot of the game's information is conveyed via text. How's it play? Setup
On to play The objective in Burgle Bros is to find and crack all 3 safes, gain 3 loot cards, then escape to the roof, all without being caught by the security guards. This is done by the use of action points (APs). In Burgle Bros, the active player spends their APs to perform certain actions. Then the security guard on their floor moves along their patrol route. Then play progresses to the player to the left of the active player. A turn is broadly speaking, broken down into 3 phases.
Endgame Play continues until 1 of 2 ending conditions are met. If a player has to discard a stealth token and they cannot because they've already used them up, then the burglar has been caught, players immediately and collectively lose the game. If the players manage to open all 3 safes, get the loot and all of the burglars off the top of floor 3, they collectively win. Overall
First thing to say is that we played Burgle Bros digitally and I felt there was a bit of a disconnect with the game because of this. In the physical copy, all 3 floors are laid out next to each other but the digital copy required visually switching between them. It means the digital copy can never feel as intuitive as the physical one. Anyway, on to the game. Players will need to balance the need to be cautious with the need explore and turn over tiles. Avoiding or neutralising the many alarms is good but so is reaching the objective as quickly as possible. That's because the real challenge in Burgle Bros is managing the movement and behaviour of the guard. This requires thinking ahead and I mean really thinking ahead! There's almost a puzzle-like logic to it but there's also the potential for a lot of randomness too! Players will need to anticipate where the guard will go (And when!) and at times try to manipulate the guard by deliberately triggering an alarm and the like. This is compounded by the fact that the more players there are on a floor; the more a guard may move. E.g., in a 4-player game, a player may think their meeple is 'safe' but if all players' meeples are on the same floor (And they will be in the early game.), the security guard will move at least 8 spaces before that player gets to act again, that's enough to cross an entire floor twice! It can become very hard to predict where the guard is going whenever a new patrol tile is flipped over - which can happen often when the guard moves a lot. I guess the solution to this is for players to get their meeples to other floors ASAP and this will slow down individual guards. From a gameplay perspective though, this feels a little counterintuitive. It turns what is meant to be a cooperative challenge into 3 sub-games with a only tenuous cooperative link between players. From a player perspective, it also feels somewhat counterintuitive. For players, the instinct will be to cooperate; opening a safe can be hard and adding dice to it is vital but also expensive in terms if AP. Multiple players will naturally want to quickly contribute as many dice as possible dice to a single safe to help each other open it sooner rather than later. This is certainly how we played Burgle Bros and in retrospect, that was probably a mistake, it seemed to be that the game punished players for playing this way. Personally I found it the intricacies of having to deal with so many alarms paired with just too unpredictable guard actions a little futile and frustrating to be enjoyable. I suspect that Burgle Bros probably plays best at a 2-player count and could be a good couples game if puzzle type gameplay interests you. 27th August 2022 It's a Saturday night and were logged in Board Game Arena for some gaming fun. Now that I think about it; a crossover game of Dungeons & Dragons and Twister would be pretty interesting. Unfortunately, that's not what Dungeon Twister is about. Instead we get a 2-player sort of chess-like game about manipulating dungeon tiles and running around them. Caveat: We have only ever played this online. What's in a game?
Dungeon Twister has bright and colourful artwork. The room tiles don't feature much in the way of illustrations but do have clearly delineated features. Artwork on the tokens and standees is that sort of chunky and cartoony fantasy style that has been used on a lot fantasy themed games over the last few years, it's a little bit of an unoriginal art direction - but to be fair, it's a style I quite like, so for me it's good. There isn't too much in the way of iconography in Dungeon Twister and I don't imagine it would provide any obstacle to playing. How's it play? Setup
On to play The objective in Dungeon Twister is to accumulate 5 Victory Points. A player can achieve this in 2 ways; by defeating opposing characters or by getting their own characters out of the opposite end of the dungeon from their starting side. Players take alternate turns becoming the active player, playing action cards and resolving them. This is done over 3 phases.
Endgame When any player earns 5 VPs, the end game is triggered. It is possible for the inactive player to score VPs in the active player's turn by winning combat which means the inactive player can potentially trigger the endgame. In any case, the active player finishes their current turn and the game goes to scoring. Points are tallied, highest score wins. Overall
Dungeon Twister is a fairly straightforward game but despite this I feel the game is a little cumbersome, there's quite a bit of exception-driven rules here. For example: No character can stand on a pit trap space except the thief or except a character with a rope token. If a thief standing on pit trap is wounded, they are killed, except any character carrying rope will not be killed, except if an opposing character comes and takes a rope - in which case the wound character is then killed. These are not gamebreakers by any means but they feel counterintuitive and may be obstacles to play. Until players are familiar with the rules, they'll be hunting through the rulebook to get clarifications, it's also likely players may forget some rules even exist! Players will need to employ quite of lot of tactics in Dungeon Twister and generally that's a good thing. Since there are 2 ways to score points, players will need to constantly assess the viability of both approaches. It means playing close attention to the positions of all characters, every one of which will have their own strengths and weaknesses. Characters that are strong in combat will tend to slow at movement. Players will need to exploit the strengths and special abilities while minimising exposure of weaknesses. This is especially true of combat. This neatly brings me to the game's main schtick, that is; rotating room tiles. Well planned use of rotating the tiles can be a game changer, it can trap or free characters, create blockages or short cuts, it can be used to move gear or move a correctly positioned character across the board, etc. It keeps the gameplay fresh and to a degree, unpredictable. It can be tricky to see the outcome of rotating of all tiles to all position. The rule where a player gets to place their opponent's tokens is quite interesting, it allows canny players to exploit the situation to trap opposing tokens but they will need to remember that a twist of the tile can change everything. Dungeon Twister provides players with meaningful decisions when choosing their actions and tactics. Yet somehow, I found it unengaging. Despite fairly extensive rules and a clever premise, Dungeon Twister felt a bit like a simplistic grid based wargame that involves direct confrontation and to be honest, it's not what I look for in a board game. Obviously, you mileage may vary, maybe a fantasy themed 1-on-1 combative game is right up your street but Dungeon Twister is not for me. |
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