20th June 2023


It's a Tuesday evening and we're with the Woking Gaming Club at The Sovereigns for some gaming goodness.

Game of the night was Dice City: Create a city in this engine-building dice game! I don't about you but dice rolling is the best way to build any municipality!

Like most modern games, the component quality in Dice City is good and there's nothing bad here. While the cards are average, the boards and tokens feel sturdy, the tokens in particular are pleasantly chunky and tactile.
I would've preferred wooden dice to the plastic ones provided but they are good quality, having well rounded corners and deep pips.

There's a definitely a bit of a fantasy theme to the slightly cartoony and cheerful art style found in Dice City. It's colourful and eye-catching with a good variety to the art too, illustrations on both the large player boards and cards doing a good job of depicting their subject material with detail but without cluttering up the components. Even the art used on the resource tokens looks easy to see and detailed.
All the this lends the game a vibrant and bright presence on the table.

All the iconography in Dice City is easy to understand and is logical. Players should not have any trouble understanding anything here.

How's it play?
Setup

• Cards: To create the central drafting area, sort all the cards as follows.
  Base cards: First, sort all the lumber mill, mine, quarry and regular army cards into each of their 4 types and place the 4 decks face-up in a row.
  ​Location cards: Shuffle all the location cards into a face-down deck and deal 8 face-up alongside the base cards.
  Bandit cards: Sort the bandit cards into their 3 types and put a stack of each with cards in each stack as per player count.
  Trade ship cards: Sort the trade ships into their 3 types, then put out a stack of each type with cards in each stack as per player count.
• First player: Determine a starting player.
• Roll the dice: Every player should roll all 5 of their dice and place them on their player board accordingly.
  E.g., rolling a 5 on the yellow die means placing it on the 5 column in the yellow row and so on.

On to play
In Dice City each player will spend their turn resolving the 5 dice that have been placed on to their board. Essentially giving them 5 actions; this will give them options to gain resources and then buy cards or trade ships and launch attacks as per the dice results etc.
Dice City uses a typical player order with the active player fully resolving all their dice before play proceeds to the player on their left.
The active player's turn has several phases and goes as follows.

• Dice phase: The active player resolves the dice on their player board one at a time in the order they chose. A die is resolved by removing it from the board, then the active player can perform one of the following actions to resolve that die.
  Use space: Probably the most common action in the game. Once a die is removed from a space, the action on that space may be used. This can provide them gain or trade resources or allow them to generate army strength or gain VPs etc.
  Move die: this allows the active player to move a die elsewhere on their board.
  Reactivate space: Certain events can deactivate a space on a player board (More on this below.) and the active player can use the die removal to reactivate a deactivated space.
  Discard cards: Once per turn the active player may discard any 4 of the 8 location cards and draw new ones to replace them.
  Pass: Also once per turn the active player may pass an action to gain a pass token. Why is that useful? Glad you asked.
  • Additional actions: During the dice phase, pass tokens can be spent to gain extra actions. 2 pass tokens must be spent to gain an extra action, although this can be done multiple times in a single turn. The actions are as follows.
    Gain resource: The active player can gain the resource of their choice.
    Increase army strength: The active player may increase their army strength by +1.
    Force re-rolls: This bonus action forces all other players to reroll one of their dice!
• Attack phase: The active player may have generated army strength during the previous phase and it can now be used during this phase to 'attack'.
  To make an attack, the active player must have an army strength equal or higher than their target's defence value (In which case they can attack!). Furthermore, if the active player's army strength is high enough, it can be split among multiple target to attack them all.
  Army strength does not carry over from round to round and any unspent strength is lost at the end of the active player's turn.
  It should be noted that if a card doesn't have any defence value, it cannot be attacked.
  There are 3 types of attack that can be made.
  Bandit cards: Successfully attacking a bandit card allows the active player to claim it, adding its VPs to the player's total at the game end.
  Resources: The active player may target another player's resources (Which that player must have kept between their turns.), a successful attack will allow the active player to steal 1 or more of them depending on the army strength allocated to those attacks.
  Location: The active player may attack a location belonging to another player. A successful attack on a location will 'deactivate' it, consequently a deactivation token is placed on that location which now cannot be used until the token is removed.
• Building and trading phase: Now the active player can spend resources they have acquired. Unlike army strength, 1 of each of the 3 types of resource can be kept between turns.
  Build locations: The active player may build as many new locations as they can afford. However, when a new location is built, it will cover the current location which will be discarded.
  Trade ship card: Alternatively, resources can be spent to acquire a trade ship card.
• End of turn: Once the building and trading phase has finished, the active player's turn is over.
  Army strength: This reverts to 0.
  Resources: the active player can keep 1 of each resource.
  Pass tokens: Any number of pass tokens may be kept between turns.
  Roll dice: The active player rolls their 5 dice and places them as required on their player board in preparation for their next turn.
  Next player: Play now progresses to the player on the active player's left.

Endgame
​Play continues until one of the following criteria is met.

• All bandit cards have been acquired.
• At least 2 stacks of trade ship cards have been acquired.
• The location deck is empty.
• Optionally: If at least 2 rows of a player's player board has been covered with location cards and none of them contain a deactivation token, then that player may choose to trigger the game end.

Regardless of how game end is triggered, play progresses until all players have had equal turns.
Player now calculate their VPs which can come from the following sources.

• VP tokens.
• Location cards.
• Bandit cards.
• Trade ship cards.

​
Points are tallied, highest score wins.

Overall
​Dice City is not the first game to use dice-activations in a engine-building game with a city creation theme and while how the dice work on the board is an unusual mechanic, players will be familiar with a lot of the other concepts presented here.

They will need to adapt to both what their dice results give them to work with and what is available to draft from the location cards. Luckily players have some agency with the results in the form of dice-manipulation which can help but generally, they'll looking for ways to increase the efficiency of their player board and unlike a lot of game of this type, Dice City begins will a fully fleshed out beginner engine. Every die roll will always produce a result of some sort, so players will looking to increase the effectiveness of their results.
Ultimately, players will be looking to do things quicker than their opponents.

Something that Dice City does well is provide 2 clear avenues to accruing VPs - resources that can be used to improve a player's city or to buy trade ship cards, while army strength can be employed to defeat bandit cards or hinder other players' cities.
This adds an element of direct interaction - unusual for a game in this style with the ability to steal opponents' resources and deactivate their locations - especially locations with dice on them!
There's also a higher level of play where players can look at what's effective on an opponents board and target those spaces, even if they don't currently contain a die.
Additionally, a further element of player interaction are pass tokens which can be spent to make opponents re-roll dice.

Mechanically, Dice City is pretty straightforward with reasonably light rules that also generally provides players with meaningful decisions to make, both resources and army strength can have multiple uses and will give players options to think about.

I found Dice City to be an OK game and I hate saying a game is OK because it's a bit of a cop-out when trying to discuss games but that's exactly what Dice City is - OK.
Other than the possible direct interaction between players it doesn't do anything particularly different or special or new.
However, having said all of that, it also doesn't do anything badly and is a game that plays well enough to be engaging that I can't fault. Ultimately, while I found the game's presentation to be good, Dice City doesn't really standout for me.

If player interaction is something your big on or find important, Dice City has it and is a worth a look if you want a dice-driven city building game.
Conversely, some people don't like the confrontational element the direct interaction adds to the game. So 

I will happily play Dice City if someone else chooses it but it wouldn't be my first choice.

15th June 2023

Thursday night gaming in Aldershot continues with Formula Dé Mini.
Race around famous F1 tracks in this cut-down version of a classic racing game.

As the name might suggest, Formula Dé Mini is a smaller iteration of classic racing game Formula Dé which is itself re-iterated by Formula D.

I'm not going to do the usual blog for Formula Dé Mini because of it's similarities to Formula D. Instead I'll just list how it differs.

• Track: The tracks in Formula Dé Mini are smaller, not only in physical size but also in scope. The Formula Dé Mini tracks only have 1-stop corners and the track is only 2 lanes wide.

Component quality in Formula Dé Mini is comparable to the original Formula Dé. The boards are well made as are the tiles, cars, tokens and dice.
Using plastic gold discs for life points seems a little strange to me but they're as good as anything else for tokens.

The board features the same fantastic and detailed art that was found on the boards from Formula Dé .

​There's a little bit of iconography on the board but that's about it. Since Formula Dé ​Mini lacks the 6 types of resource from Formula Dé , all the icons and symbols related to those are gone, making this game easier to understand.

How's it play?
Formula Dé Mini retains most of the mechanics from the other games, playing almost identically: Read the Formula D blog for an overview of how it all works.
 
Formula Dé Mini broadly only differs in 2 ways, although many of the optional rules have been removed.

Firstly; the 6th gear is missing which makes sense considering the Formula Dé ​Mini tracks are somewhat smaller and it isn't really needed. It also removes one of the riskier  (And longest to count!) gear dice from the game, making the game slightly less complex.

Secondly, all of the types of resources (Gearbox, brakes, fuel etc.) have been removed and replaced with a single universal resource - the aforementioned life points.
Each car in Formula Dé Mini is given 16 life points at the game start.
Overshoot a corner? Spend life points instead of tyres.
Need to skip a gear? Spend life points.
Collide with another car or take engine damage? Spend life points and so on. you get the idea.
The game becomes notably easier and quicker to manage with a single resource.

Removed rules include those for weather conditions tyres as well for custom cars.

Finally, it's definitely worth mentioning that Formula Dé Mini is completely compatible with both other previous iterations of the game. That means all of the previously published tracks can be used with the Formula Dé Mini dashboards and components. Additionally, if you have the original Formula Dé core game, then the 6th gear dice can optionally also be used in Formula Dé ​Mini with those tracks.
​Excellent!

Overall
It seems obvious that the goal of Formula Dé Mini was to create an iteration of the original that was both easier to learn and faster to play and I think it succeeds at both.

Formula Dé Mini is somewhat easier to learn and play and is also a lot more forgiving in that regard.
The occasional mistake like having a car overshooting a corner by a lot of spaces might well cripple or eliminate that car in the full versions of the game but here, it would instead just cost more life points - although if a car loses all it's life points, it will still be eliminated.
The removal of the multi-stop corners from tracks that come with the game removes one of the more finicky aspects of the rules. This means the remaining rules are reasonably straightforward to learn and several of them are situational and might not even occur during the game.

Is Formula Dé Mini quicker to play? Yes, especially when using the supplied smaller tracks but even when using the 'full-sized' tracks play will a little faster. Reducing the resource management from 6 to 1 resource makes decisions quicker.
Even so, players will be faced with similar decisions to the full games. I'm impressed with how Formula Dé Mini manages to retain the 'feel' of the full sized games.
It's always fundamentally been a game about how much players are willing to push their cars through the corners and how much risk they're willing to take to do so, this hasn't changed. Sure, Formula Dé Mini may take the edge of that risk but it's still always there.

So how does Formula Dé Mini stack compared to the full versions of the game? The answer is; pretty good actually.
When I heard there was a version of Formula Dé ​that removed all the resources, I was pretty sceptical and sort of assumed that it would overly simplify or 'infantilise' the game but that wasn't the case. What you have is genuinely a quicker easier version of the game to play.

On a intellectual level I feel Formula Dé/Formula D is the better, more satisfying game to play.
On visceral level though, I found Formula Dé Mini very enjoyable to play. Some of the more challenging elements are gone but it means you can now blast round the tracks safe in the knowledge that you have some more wiggle room to mitigate those bad dice rolls!
It's an arcade racing game compared to a sim!

If you're looking for a quicker version of the game to play - or a way to introduce Formula D to players, this will definitely do the job.

While Formula De Mini remains long out of print, the still available Formula D utilises these simplified rules in its beginner game.
Alternatively, if you've got the original Formula Dé ​, you can simply acquire a bunch of tokens and play it that way.

I generally wouldn't choose Formula Dé Mini over the other versions but it's still a great game.

9th May 2023

It's a Tuesday and we're at The Sovereigns with the Woking Gaming Club​ again.

This means we're in for a rootin'-tootin' time with western themed frontier town building board game Tumble Town.

Tumble Town has quite a few noteworthy components and the single biggest and most important one is the dice: They're well made with nicely rounded corners with deep pips and feel good to handle
The dice tower is a large component and unsurprisingly, it's constructed of fairly sturdy card. I guess it's a bit superfluous but since there will be a lot of dice rolling, it does prove useful and looks reasonably nice as much as a card dice-tower can look.
Also superfluous is the cactus shaped first player token but again, it adds to the presentation
The card tokens are pretty average quality while the cards feel fairly sturdy and have a 'linen' finish.

​The artwork used particularly on the building plan cards looks a western style is thematically good but straightforward which I think it needs to be as it represents the dice/buildings. This makes the artwork look a little repetitive against the fairly nondescript desert background but again, since objects that appear on the background are relevant to gameplay, it's beneficial to have clear, easily interpreted artwork.

Tumble Town uses icons to represent special abilities and scoring opportunities, it also uses colour/shape to represent the different type of building that can be built AND uses letters/symbols to indicate further requirements to constructing buildings.
That's not the end of though! The town boards have icons to do with dice manipulation and placement.
It seems like quite a lot and initially it will probably have players referring to the rulebook or reference cards. Luckily, it's pretty easily learnt especially since the icons don't all apply to the gameplay at the same time with a split between card abilities and building requirements.
Seasoned gamers won't have any problems here.

How's it play?
​Setup

• ​Drafting area: All the building plans will go into a central drafting area in the centre of the playing area.
  • Plan end cards: Put out the plan end cards in a column with 1 at the top and 3 at the bottom in the central drafting area.
  • Building plan cards: Player count will determine the number of planning cards of each type used.
    Sort planning cards into their respective types, shuffle them into face-down decks and remove cards as required.
    Then place each deck face-down on top of its respective plan end card.
    From each deck deal 4 cards face-up in a line.
  • Dice: Player count also determines how many dice are used. Sort them by colour and remove dice as required.
    Remaining dice should be placed in the central area.
• Players: Give each player the following which should be setup as described.
  • Town board: Select which set of town boards to use and give one to each player.
  • Horse card: Shuffle the horse cards into a face-down deck (That being with the scoring side face-down.). Randomly deal 1 to each player. Players are free to look at their horse card but they should keep the scoring criteria hidden from their opponents.
  • First player: Determine a starting player.
  • Starting dice: Players now draft their starting dice, this depends both on player count and position in the turn order.
    Note: Whenever a player acquires any dice for any reason, they should be immediately rolled.
  • Setup: Players should put their town board in their personal playing area. Then they should place their horse card below the town board at the midpoint between the left and right edges. Finally place the dice that were drafted (And rolled.) on the available warehouse spaces on their town board.

On to play
In Tumble Town, players will be drafting cards and dice in order to construct buildings and create the main street of their western town.
The game follows a usual turn structure of the active player resolving their actions before play progresses to the player on their left.
Each player's turn is broken down into 4 phases.

• Draft card: The active player may take any building plan from any of the rows. They then place the card to the left of their horse card - all unconstructed buildings are placed left of their horse.
  Once a card has been drafted it is replaced by a card from it's corresponding deck unless depleted.
• Draft & roll dice: The active player now takes dice as indicated by the back of the card from the deck of cards on the row where they drafted the card. If that deck is empty, then the plan end card will indicate what dice they can take. If there are not enough dice, then they draft what they can.
  Remember, when dice are drafted, they are immediately rolled.
• Construct buildings: The active player may now construct ​any number of buildings they choose to, provided they can meet the requirements.
  • Requirements: All buildings have 2 types of condition that must be met in order to construct them.
    Shape & colour: Each building plan will display the shape of a building using a number of dice with specific colours. The player must have that number of dice in that colour to construct that building. E.g., a building may need 2 grey and 2 black dice or 3 gold dice.
    Values: The top of the building depicted on the building plan will also display the values that these dice must have. E.g., this might mean all dice must be even or total value of dice must be less than 20 and so on.
  • Poor construction: The active player may create a poorly constructed building if they so choose but it comes with a cost of having to take one or more penalty tokens.
    Ignore colour: The active player cannot ignore the number of dice required to construct a building but may ignore the colour condition. However, EACH die that does not met the required colour means the player must take a penalty token.
    Ignore value: For EACH die that does not match the required value, the active player must take a penalty token.
    Remember, every penalty token acquired loses a player 2VP each.
  • Move building plan: The building plan card of any constructed building should now be moved to the right of the horse to indicate so. Any power it posses becomes immediately available to use. Speaking of powers....
  • ​Powers: All building plan cards have 3 types of 'power'.
    Some powers only activate at the game end. Typically, these provide avenues to scoring VPs.
    Others are triggered only once when the building is constructed.
    Finally, some powers can be used once round. Powers are used during this phase.
    Gold pan: Additionally, players may also use the gold pan abilities. This means a player may discard to 2 dice of the same colour or same number to get 1 or any other colour. They may also discard a single gold die to get a die of any other colour.
• Place construction: During this phase the active play now places the dice used for the constructed building on to spaces on either side of main street on their town board in the shape depicted on that building's plan card.
  Positioning dice on the town board can be important as many spaces will have conditions that if met, will provide bonus VPs.
  Mirroring: It should be noted that buildings can be mirrored - that is the relative positioning of the dice that make up the building can be flipped from left to right - which can prove advantageous to gaining VPs.
  Store/discard dice: Once the active player has finished construction they must store any remaining dice on their warehouse. If they have more dice than warehouse space then they must choose dice to discard until they are at their limit.
• End of turn: Place now progresses to the player to the left of the active player who now becomes the new active player.

Endgame
The end game is triggered when the supply of at least 2 types of dice drops to 2 or less. Play progresses until players have had equal turns, then goes to scoring.

There are a variety of ways to score VPs in Tumble Town.

• Constructed buildings: VPs will be earned from constructed buildings.
• Powers: End of game powers on cards can also score VPs according to their requirements.
• Horse card: Players should reveal their horse can and score it's requirements.
• Penalty tokens: Each penalty token acquired by a player will lose them 2VPs.

Points are tallied, highest score wins.... and they can declare themselves.... The Best in the West!

Overall
Tumble Town is strong thematically. I like how players construct their town from the dice they draft and it visually builds up over the rounds. It also looks quite eye-catching and has a good 'presence'. Just don't play on a wobbly table or with clumsy players!

Mechanically the game is fairly good. It mixes drafting, getting the dice results needed and an element of engine building.

I found use of the warehouse crucial, not only will players need to store dice between turns to construct the larger buildings, players will find themselves looking for buildings that match the dice they have stored. Because being able to draft a building and knowing that it can already be built by dice on the warehouse spaces is both reassuring and efficient.
While having to use whatever the result is of dice that are rolled is not a disaster by any means, there is a degree of luck involved which can stymie a player - although that is mitigated somewhat by being able to alter or manipulate the dice. Additionally, players don't have to construct a building the turn they acquire it, it's entirely possible to construct multiple buildings in a turn.
When it comes to buildings, players will find themselves having to choose between the ones that give them a power or additional resources to improve their engine and point-scorers. It's that classic balancing act between increasing abilities or increasing VP opportunities.
There's also the balance of taking building plans and gaining dice. Tier 1 buildings are fairly easy to construct as they generally only require 3 dice - which is how many dice a player gets to also draft in their turn.
The tier 2 & 3 plans generally require 4+ dice, additionally the tier 3 plans make a lot of use of the gold dice.
Finally, there's also a degree of having to adapt to what dice are available - and consequently the results of what are rolled plus what cards become available.

The game is a bit of a race to draft dice and use them well, it makes efficient play important. In the first game played I managed to construct 6 buildings by the game end which nearly completely filled my town board.
It means that a game can theoretically be completed in as few as 6 turns if the right dice rolls come up! This makes the game play quickly.

I'm not sure how I feel about this relatively short play time. It can feel like the game is over just as it starts to get going and is perhaps a little unsatisfying. But this forces players to think hard about their choices and the aforementioned need for efficiency which is a good thing.
​
While Tumble Town is a sort of light-to-midweight game that has a nice western feel and theme it's probably a bit too obtuse with it's engine building and dice manipulation rules for casual players.
Dedicated games who like those mechanics will find enough depth to engage the grey matter.

It could be argued that Tumble Town is a little gimmicky with its conceit of using dice to actually construct the buildings but it's a fairly unique mechanic as far as I know and I thought it added to the experience and despite the game leaving me wanting it to go on a a bit more, I found it enjoyable.

2nd May 2023

It's a Tuesday and we're at The Sovereigns with the Woking Gaming Club​ for a game of Long Shot: The Dice Game.

Component quality throughout Long Shot: The Dice Game is good.
While not actually horse-shaped, the horse tokens are chunky, made of wood and feel satisfyingly weighty to handle.
The dice are plastic and not wooden (Which is always my preference.), they still feel solid and well made, additionally their icons are not printed and are shaped in relief.
Since this is a roll-and-write game, many of the components such as the player boards and horse cards can be written on. They are sturdy as you would expect. As is the race track board.

The game also makes good use of bright solid colour, everything is brash, colourful and eye catching. There's also a definite humorous element to the cartoony artwork and illustrations that matches the game's luck-driven light gameplay.

The game's iconography is a bit of a mixed bag.
The player board is a busy looking affair with lots of stuff presented to the player and definitely can feel a little intimidating. However, in practice, it's not that bad. Much of the information is conveyed through numbers/colours. There are a handful of icons but for the most part they are easily understood after a round or two.

How's it play?
Setup

• ​Game board: Put out the game board into the central playing area.
  Horse tokens: Put out the horse tokens in their starting positions on the track.
  Horse cards: Select 1 of the 2 sets of horse cards or alternatively, cards can be chosen from both sets - provided only 1 of each number gets selected.
  Then put out the cards face-up into the central playing area.
• Players: Give each player a player board.
  Starting cards: Shuffle the starting cards into a face-down deck and randomly deal 1 to each player.
  Each player should then mark off their starting setup on their player board as dictated by the starting card. This will include marking off some spots on the concession bids and adding a couple of starting bets on their board.
  Finally, each player should note $12 in the allotted spot.
• First player: Determine a starting player.

On to play
Money counts in large amounts. Long Shot: The Dice Game is all about winning the most cash, this is done not just by players only betting on the winning horses but also 'manipulating' the outcome of the race.
Long Shot: The Dice Game sort of has a traditional turn order but since players get to act in all other players' turns, it's only relevant for rolling the dice which is done by the active player.
Each turn basically has 2 phases.

• Roll the dice: The active player rolls both dice at the same time. This will determine which horse moves and how many spaces it moves.
  ​Move horse: Take the horse token that matches the colour/number that was rolled on the horse, then move it a number of spaces forward that is indicated on the movement die (Which will be 1-3 spaces.).
  Secondary movement: Now check for secondary movement.
  Look at the horse card that matches the horse that was just moved and check which other horses have been marked off on the secondary movement bar: All marked off horses should be moved forward 1 space.
  Finishing: After a horse has crossed the finish line, it should be moved to it's finishing position on the side of the board.
  Finish line: If any horse that has to be moved is already past the finish line, do not move it.
• Actions: This is where the bulk of the game occurs and each player can perform exactly 1 action from a choice of 5. This is done in turn order with the active playing acting first.
  • Bet: A player may place a bet on the horse indicated on the horse die, this can be for $1-3.
    Finish line: A horse past the finish line cannot be bet on.
    No bet line: As the name suggests, once a horse passes the no bet line it cannot be bet on unless the betting player has acquired that horse's helmet.
    Free bets: during the game, players may acquire free bets, these follow the same rules as usual bets.
  • Buy: A player may buy a the horse that matches the result on the horse die provided it has not already been bought by another player.
    Finish line: Once a horse has crossed the finish line, it cannot be bought.
  • Concession: A player may mark off a spot on their concession grid which matches the result on the horse die.
    When a row or column is completed, the player crosses off one of the bonus boxes below the concession grid and gains its benefit. This may include extra money, a free bet, marking off a helmet or jersey and moving a horse forward or backward. It should be noted that a horse cannot be moved across the finish line this way or in fact moved backwards across it either.
  • Helmet: The player may mark off the helmet for the horse that matches the result on the horse die.
    As mentioned above, this allows the player to still place bets on a horse past the no be line.
  • Jersey: A player may mark off the jersey on a horse that matches the result on the horse die.
    When a horse's jersey is marked off, the player may also mark off another horse on that horse's secondary movement bar. This means there will be more secondary movement when that horse is moved again.
    Additionally; when both the helmet and jersey for a horse has been marked off, the player gains extra cash at the game end.
• Additional rules: There are some additional rules that can apply during the game.
  • Horse ability: Each horse has a special ability which can be applied during the game. However, only the owner of a horse has access to this ability and choose when and whether to trigger it - although some abilities will have specific timing.
  • Horseshoes: If at any time a player cannot take an action because of the result on the horse die (Because they've taken all the available options for that horse I guess.), then they can cross off a horseshoe to use it as a wild result. This allows them to mark off something for any other horse.
    If all 3 horseshoes are marked off when the player cannot take an action, then they spend their action to clear a mark off of one of their horseshoes.
• End of round: Once all players have taken their action in turn order, the round is over.
  The die are passed to the player on the left of the current first player who now becomes the new first play. They begin a new round by rolling the die.

Endgame
Once the third horse has crossed the finishing line and been placed on it's finishing spot, the end game is triggered, the current round is completed and the game then goes to scoring or winnings. There are numerous ways to accumulate cash.

• Finishing place: The owner of a horse earns cash according to its finishing position. This of course only applies to horses that finished 1st-3rd and will earn $15-$35 accordingly.
• Bets: Players now calculate their winnings from bets from each horse they bet on, this will depend on where the horse finished and how much was bet on it.
  1st - 3rd place: Multiply the bet placed on a horse by its finishing odds.
  E.g., if a horse came in 2nd place and had 2nd place odds of 4/1 and the player had placed a bet of $6, then that horse pays out 4x6; $24.
  No bet line: If a horse has crossed the no bet line but not the finish line, it pays out at 1/1, i.e., the player gets back what they bet.
  Other horses: If a horse has not crossed the no bet line, then the player has lost their bet.
• Sets: Each matching set of helmet and jersey for a horse that a player has will earn them $5.
• Cash: Any unspent cash is counted.
• Abilities: Some horse abilities may also money.

Cash is tallied, highest value wins.

Overall
With it's colourful presentation, Long Shot: The Dice Game fits its theme well. Players will be putting bets on horses, then watching and hoping those horses win.

While there are various ways to accumulate cash (Buying horse that win! Getting sets and completing concession lines.). Probably the single biggest method for gaining money is betting. 
There's more to it of course, since players will also have the opportunity to influence the outcome at least to some degree. This means they need to balance their actions between betting and other options.

The game provides various avenues to achieving this. Chief amongst these I think, is the secondary movement bar. A player can pick a horse bet on early and heavily, then spend actions marking its number off other horses' secondary bars. This means that the picked horse will move more often when other horses do so.
Players can also cross off lines on their concession grid to move horses (Or gain other benefits.).
Using helmets in conjunction with the no bet line can provide an alternative way to score big wins on bets. Players can spread their bets and hope to get bets several top 3 finishing horses. and getting helmets for horses is useful here. It allows players to bid on horses right up until their on the finish line and the finishing order is more apparent.
One last thing to mention is the odds, the lower numbered horses on the inside of the track have to move less to pass the finish line, this is reflected in the odds, which are shorter for these horses.
The number 8 horse (The titular ling shot.) pays out more or less twice as much as the number 1 horse for finishing in the top 3.
The provides some asymmetrical opportunities for players and real risk-and-reward mechanics to choose from.

While actions other than betting will probably pay out less, it's unwise to ignore them. They are still a source of money, useful benefits and influence over the game.

There's also a higher level of play going on; all information is open and it's possible to try and anticipate what other players are trying to achieve. If it seems like another player is betting heavily on a horse for example, other players may also bet on that horse to 'piggy-back' off its success.

Long Shot: The Dice Game is a fairly light game that is easily understood and accessible with a theme most people will find relatable. Although, it has to be said that luck and dice rolls can play a big part here; which to be fair, feel appropriate for a game about betting on horse racing.
I'm sure that the gambling theme and luck driven gameplay wont appeal to everyone but treat the game as just some fun and not to be taken too seriously (Much like actual gambling I would suppose.), then you'll probably have a good time.

I found it to be a lightweight but enjoyable experience.

30th April 2023

Another Sunday is here and we're logged into Board Game Arena for an evening of gaming goodness.

Roll over! Fetch! Beg! Sit! Spots is game about collecting Dalmatians, only not 101 of them but only 6 in this push-your-luck, dice rolling game about dog tricks.

Caveat: We've only ever played this game digitally.

What's in a game?

• ​Dogs cards: Each dog card will depict 1 or more Dalmatians or other dogs with spots in the artwork. These spots are positioned so that they resemble the spots found on a die and have boxes surrounding them to emphasis this. Some dog cards also display a paw - which is used to acquire treat tokens.
  Finally each dog card is double-sided with a grey side used during player and coloured side used to track scoring. The coloured side also omits the die boxes.

• Treat tokens: These tokens are shaped like stylised dog bones.
• Dice: Spots uses a whole bunch of normal six-siders.

Spots uses very stylised cartoony artwork throughout. Much of it is humorous which suits the game's lightweight nature well and is also style that I like.

There's minimal iconography in Spots and what there is of it, is easily understood.

How's it play?
Setup

• Trick tiles: Players can elect to use a predetermined set of trick tiles or choose a random selection, although the 'Howl' & 'Roll Over' tiles are always mandatory.
• Players:
  Dog cards: Shuffle the dog cards into a deck and deal 2 to each player. These should be placed with the grey side up.
  Treat token: Give each player 1 treat token.
  ​Dog yard tile: Give each player a dog yard tile.
  Die: Give each player a single die, which they should then roll and 'bury' (Burying a die or dice means placing them on the dog yard tile.
• First player: Whoever buried the highest value die becomes the first player.

On to play
In Spots players are attempting to place dice on the relevant spaces on their dog cards without going bust.
Spots uses a traditional turn order with the active player performing their action before play progresses to the player on their left.
In their turn the active player may perform 1 of the following 2 actions.

• Perform trick: The active may choose to undertake a 'trick', this involves the following.
  • Trick tile: The active player picks any face-up 'active' trick tile and resolves the action(s) on that tile.
    Usually this involves rolling one or more dice in some manner, sometimes it may involve something else.
    Then: Frequently a trick will have a secondary THEN action which the player may perform after the first action.
    Additionally, some trick tiles allow the active player to gain a treat token, speaking of which....
    Treat tokens: The active player may spend a treat token to reroll all dice. This can be done as many times as the player has treat tokens.
  • Flip trick: Once a player has completed the actions on a trick tile, they must flip it to the other 'used' side.
    Reset: If once a player has flipped a trick tile to the used side and only 1 tile remains active, then all tiles should be returned to the active side. Thus a player will always have at least 2 trick tiles to choose from during their turn.
  • Place dice: Most tricks require the active player to roll a number of dice and place them on dog cards. Once the active player has finished rolling dice, they may be placed on dog cards with dice boxes that contain matching values. E.g., a '3' can go on a box displaying a '3'.
    Burying: Any dice not placed on dog cards must be placed on the dog yard tile, this is called 'burying'.
    Going bust: If at any time the total value of dice placed on the dog yard tile exceeds 7, then the active player goes bust and the following occurs.
    End turn: The active player's turn immediately ends!
    Wipe all dice: All dice on all cards and tiles are removed and returned to the central supply!
• Score dogs: Instead of performing a trick, the active player may score all their completed cards.
  The active player removes all dice on the completed cards and returns them to the supply.
  All completed dog cards are flipped to their 'completed' sides.
  Draw new cards: For each dog card that is scored, the active player draws a new dog card from the deck and places them grey-side up.
• End of turn: Once the active player has performed their action, player progresses to the player on their left.

Endgame
As soon as any player has scored their 6th dog, they immediately win the game.

Overall
Spots' light-hearted artwork and amusing theme fits its lightweight gameplay quite well.

Mechanically there's not too much to say about Spots. It's a push-your-luck game in which players choose when they want to take risk.
As with all games of this type, luck plays a significant part here and players must learn to recognise good luck and mitigate bad luck.
Often this takes the form of giving players extra opportunities to roll dice after the initial roll, usually in the form of THEN actions.
Players must decide how many extra rolls to make and if they can deal with bad results, i.e', bury dice without going bust. Going bust feels quite harsh in Spots as it not only wipes the progress of the current turn but all current progress which makes pushing luck a tricky decision.
Having said that, this is a game that plays quickly and lost progress can be recovered reasonably fast.

Another aspect of luck that will affect players are related to trick tiles. Players will frequently find that their choices of available trick tiles will be limited due to the rules for flipping them and occasionally they'll have a choice of all 6!
I guess there could be a higher level of player about players trying to plan moves ahead and when tiles become active again but generally, it's a case of 'you take what you're given'.

There is an area of concern for me though which is to do with the distribution of numbers on the dog cards potentially effecting game balance.
If a player has cards with 4s, 5s & 6s, it means they'll end up burying dice showing 1s, 2s & 3s.
But if they have cards with 1s, 2s & 3, it means they'll be burying 4s, 5s & 6s which are much harder to deal with than the lower numbers and will be more likely to make a player go bust.
Since dog cards tend to have multiple numbers, if the numbers are well distributed then perhaps this won't occur. I will add that some cards also can gift treat tokens to players when scored which may make them more useful.

However, despite what I've written above, I don't think this is much of an issue. Spots is a light, fun and luck driven game - just roll the dice, take the chance, have fun! If players are looking too deeply into the balance of number distribution on cards, then they're probably playing the wrong game.

I'm not so sure that dedicated gamers will find much to engage with Spots, there are definitely some meaningful decisions to make but also significant amount of chance at play.
With its fun theme and light gameplay, Spot is clearly aimed at a family audience and also younger players. With being fairly quick to play, it also serves as a reasonable filler game.

1st April 2023

We're at Wogglecon 7 for a day of gaming fun. Second game of the day was Sagrada which means 'sacred' in Spanish.
Gaming and Wogglecon are definitely sacred but is Sagrada all about creating stained glass windows through the medium of dice-placement, albeit with dice that look quite glassy!

The most noticeable component of Sagrada are the bright colourful dice. They are well made, rounded and translucent with a 'gem' type finish.
Usually I have a preference for wooden dice but can see why the game uses this type as it's a great fit the stained glass window theme.
The player board with it's recessed grid works well when used with the window pattern cards which slide smoothly into place and dice which happily set in their spots.
The cards are the standard you'd expect off of a modern game and the inclusion of glass beads is a nice touch.

The game's art direction continues the theme of stained glass windows. There's lots of brightly coloured glass panes shown on the player boards and round tracker. White much of it is just abstract shapes, it's very colourful without obscuring important detail.
It also lends the game a eye catching quality all of which I like.

For the most part, the game's iconography is easily understood.
Some of the objective cards and tool cards might require explanation or looking up in the manual but this doesn't really affect the flow of play and isn't an issue.

How's it play?
​Setup

• Player board: Give each player a player board.
  Window pattern cards: Give each player 2 pattern cards. Each player should then choose 1 to keep and discard the other out of play. The chosen pattern card should then be slid into the player's board, this will display the pattern cards colours and numbers through the board.
  Favour tokens: Give each player a number of favour tokens as indicated by the pattern card they took.
  Private objective card: Shuffle the private objective cards into a face-down deck and deal 1 each to every player, players should keep this card hidden from their opponents.
• Public objective cards: Shuffle these into a face-down deck and deal 3 into a central playing area.
• Tool cards: Shuffle the tool cards into a face-down deck and also deal 3 face-up into the central area.
• Dice: Place all dice into the bag and give it a good shake.
• Round tracker: Place the round track into the central playing area.
• First player: Determine a starting player.

On to play
In Sagrada, players will be placing dice on to their player board in an attempt to match the criteria on the public/private scoring cards while also meeting the requirements dictated by the pattern cards.

The game utilises something of a typical turn order but during each round every player will have the opportunity to draft 2 dice; although only 1 at a time.

• Round start: At the start of a round, whoever is the first play should take the bad and draw out a number of dice dependant on player order. This amounts to 2 dice per player plus 1 more. Then the first player should roll those dice and place them into the central playing area.
• Drafting: Each player will have the opportunity to draft 2 dice, first in turn order and then in reverse turn order.
  ​First player: Drafting always commences with the first player beginning as the active player. They perform their action(s) then play progresses to the player on their left and so on.
  Once the last player in the turn order has completed their turn, the order of play reverses, mean the last player now goes first with play progressing to their right and the first player going last!
  This means the first player has their 2nd action last while the last player has 2 actions in a row.
• Active player: Whenever someone becomes the active player they have the option of performing the following 2 actions in any order they see fit.
  • Draft die: The active may draft 1 of the available dice and add it to their window with the following placement rules.
    • Pattern requirements: Any die placed on a player's window must match the requirement shown on the pattern card. Thus a green die (Of any value.) must go on a green space and a die showing 4 (Of any colour.) must go on a space showing a '4'.
    • First die: The first die a player places in their window must be along the edge or in the corner.
    • Subsequent dice: All other dice placed in the window must now be adjacent a die already in the window, the can be diagonally or orthogonally.
    • No matches: When placing a die orthogonally adjacent to another die, it must be a different colour and number. A blue die cannot be placed orthogonally adjacent to another blue die. A '2' cannot be placed adjacent to another '2'.
  • Use tool card: The active player may choose to spend a favour token to utilise the ability on any of the tool cards. This can be be performed before or after drafting a die.
• End of round: Once the round has been completed; that is each player has had the opportunity to draft 2 dice, then the round has ended and the following occurs.
  Round tracker: Take the remaining die or dice and place them on the spot for the current round on the round tracker. All of these dice are now out of play.
  New first player: The player who drew the dice should pass the bag to the player on their left who now becomes the first player for the following round.

Endgame
Play continues for 10 rounds whereupon the game ends and goes to scoring.
VPs can be accumulated from several sources.

• Public objective cards: Players will score VPs by meeting the criteria of the public cards, it is possible to score a card multiple times.
• Private objective card: As with public cards, players can score VPs from their private cards, this too can be done multiple times.
• Favour tokens: Every unspent favour token is worth 1 VP.
• Empty spaces: Players actually lose VPs for spaces on their window no containing dice. Each empty space will cost the player 1VP.

Points are tallied, highest score wins.

Overall
Using translucent, glass-like dice to represent details of a stained glass window is a cool nice idea that fits thematically. It doesn't hurt that it all looks quite pretty when finished.

Mechanically, Sagrada is straightforward - drafting and placing dice to try and match objectives. The challenge facing players however, comes from managing the obstacles that will impede them.
Players will have to take into account both the requirements of their pattern board when placing dice and the placement rules and how they interact with each other.

E.g., placing a red die on a blank space orthogonally adjacent to a red space on their pattern board will mean now that no die can be placed on the red space - because it will be adjacent to the already placed red die.

Leaving spaces empty like this will cost players VPs.
It means players will need to anticipate which dice they place to avoid pitfalls such as this. They will need to pay attention to not only which dice they draft but since they draft 2 dice per round, the order in which they are drafted.
Additionally, players will need to manage having to draft dice they might not want at that time. This can be difficult because of the rule's placement restrictions.
There's also definitely a higher lever of play here that comes from seeing what dice other players will need and trying to gauge which opponents will take which dice and react appropriately.

There's not much more to say about Sagrada.
I guess some people may not like the low amount of interaction between players which only occurs when drafting dice but I don't have an issue with it. I will add that Sagrada sort of feels a little like a puzzle to solve than a game in itself and some people may not like this aspect. Again, it doesn't bother me.

Sagrada is easy to understand with its 'draft and place' mechanics but presents players with a not insignificant challenge: Since the game is played over 10 rounds and players can get 2 dice per round, it is possible to entirely fill a window but I don't think that is a simple proposition.
It feels kind of unremarkable as a game because it is so straightforward without bells and whistles or any gimmicks but in practice provides a solid, enjoyable gameplay experience which taxes the braincells a little and pushes players to make tricky decisions. 

3rd February 2023

Friday is here! I'm at the office in Woking for some after work gaming.

As the name might suggest, Formula D is a game based on Formula 1 racing - but with dice! It's also the spiritual successor to the fantastic Formula Dé, a game I played 'back in the day'.
How does it hold up? Let's see.

All of Formula D's components are good quality. The game board and player tiles feel sturdy, as does the player board.
While the cars are quite tiny, they are all well sculpted, colourful and overall look great.
I was a bit sceptical of having player boards with pegs and a groove for the gearstick but in practice works well enough and does away the need for pencils and erasers which were needed for the original Formula Dé.
Perhaps the only criticism would be for the tokens, which are a bit small and fiddly. However, there's no other way to fit them on the track so it's a bit of a necessary evil.

The player tiles feature some nice colourful art with F1 drivers on one side and street racers on the other side. The street racers have definite anime look to them.
But the standout artwork appears on the game boards which feature fantastic illustrations of their locales. A lot detail has been put into the art, you can even see crowds of people.

All the iconography on the track are numbers and arrows and are easily understood. The colours/shapes of the gears are also easy to understand.
However, the icons used on player tiles could be a little clearer, I think more stylised icons would have been more helpful.
Finally the positioning of the resource tracks on the player board could have been done differently to improve usability. Specifically, the gearbox, brake and engine tracks could have been put together, since these are spent when skipping gears - more on skipping gears below.

How's it play?
Setup
The setup and rules description here are for the standard version of the game using the F1 setup

• Players: Give each player a player board, holder and associated pegs and gearstick. Put the standard side of the board into the holder.
  Then give each player a player tile and the F1 car with colours that correspond to their player tile. Position the tile alongside the holder. Place the pegs in their corresponding positions as dictated by their player.
• Game board: Put out the game board with the F1 side-up.
• First player: Determine the order on the starting grid and place each player's car in the relevant spot.
  This can be done by players rolling the black 20-sided die.
  Alternatively, the game has rules for getting qualifying times which involve each player doing a lap in the fewest number of moves and shortest time.

On to play
Formula D does not use a traditional turn order, instead a player's position on the track determines when they take their turn in the round. Whoever is in the lead goes first and becomes the active player, whoever is 2nd goes second and so on, until the last player has had their turn.
Then a new round begins and any changes in position will be carried over to the player turn order.
During a player's turn, they must perform the following.

• Start: This actually only occurs for each player's first action of the game and determines if they get a good start or not.
  The player rolls the black die, a bad start means they only move 1 space, a flying start means they move 4 spaces, in either instance they end their turn in 1st gear. If they got an average start, they move into 1st gear and roll the 1st gear die.
• Change gear: Other than the race start, at the beginning of every turn, the active player must decide whether to stay in the same gear or go up or down a gear. The gear they are in will determine which die they roll for movement.
  Change up: The active player may go up 1 gear.
  Change down: The active player may go down 1 gear, or possibly more.
  • Skipping gears: When going down gear, a player may choose to skip gears, i.e., go down more than one gear. E.g., skipping a gear allows a player to drop from 5th gear to 3rd by skipping 4th. A player may skip up to a maximum of 3 gears, allowing them to go from 6th to 2nd gear for example.
    However for each gear skipped a resource must be spent, they come from gearbox, brake and engine.
• Roll and move: Once the active player has settled on their gear, they must roll the pertinent die and move their car as many spaces as the die rolls according to the following rules:
  Full move: The active player must use all the movement for their car.
  Traffic: The active player's car cannot move through other cars' spaces, they must go around them instead.
  Arrows: If the active player's car moves on to a space with an arrow, they must follow the direction(s) of that arrow when moving on.
  Straights: If the active player is moving their car along a straight, they cannot zigzag to use up movement. Furthermore, they can only do 2 lane changes and cannot go back into a lane they were already in during the current turn. Essentially players should move their car along the shortest route possible.
  Having said that, players can change lanes to avoid other cars or hazards.
  ​Corners: When a car enters a corner, it must end or 'stop' a number of turns in that corner as determined by the corner's details. Thus, a 2-stop corner requires the player's car to end 2 turns in that corner.
  • Overshooting a corner: If a car is in a 1-stop corner (Or only has 1 stop left in a 2 or 3 stop corner.), then they can go through the corner's exit and overshoot the it to some degree.
    For each space a car overshoots the corner, they must spend 1 tyre WP. Additionally, brake WPs can be spent to lessen movement and thus move less spaces.
    If a car needs to make 2 or more stops in a corner and it overshoots, then it is eliminated from play.
• Additional rules: The description above covers the gist of the game but Formula D has numerous situational rules. Many of these are resolved by using the black 20-sided die.
  Contact: If a car ends its movement adjacent to one or more other cars, there is a chance they will make contact. This costs body WPs
  Overrevving: There's a chance that cars in 5th & 6th gears will lose a engine WP when any car in 5th or 6th gear gets a maximum result on their gear die.
  Debris: Certain events can leave debris on the track, if a car has to go over the debris, there's a chance they can loose a handling WP.
  Pits: In a race with more than 1 lap, there are rules to pitting, which allows a car to recover all their tyre WPs.
• Advanced rules: There are a number of optional advanced rules that can be applied to the game. Mostly these are to do with 3 lap races and running a championship.
  ​Custom cars: Instead of having WPs assigned to a car as per a player tile. With these rules, players can assign WPs to the resources as they see fit.
  Tyres: With these rules, just F1, players can choose different types of tyres, such as hard, soft and wets. They can each have an effect on a car's performance, they are also effected by weather.
  Weather: There are rules for different weather conditions such as dry and rainy or changeable weather. Different weather conditions will effect cars differently. Furthermore different types of tyres will behave differently in differing weather conditions.
  I think that's pretty much it for the F1 rules.

Endgame
The first car to cross the start/finish line after completing the prescribed number of laps, wins! Second across the line finishes 2nd and so on.

Overall
I'll start by mentioning that while not part of the base game, there are 6 map packs for Formula D, each providing 2 additional tracks to the game. generally each pack features a street racing track as well as a real-world inspired circuit.
​It should also be noted that Formula D is almost identical to earlier iterations of the game, this means the game is fully compatible with all the racetracks from those previous games. This is fantastic, because if like me, you have a bunch of tracks from Formula Dé, it greatly increases the longevity of the game.
I'm sure it was deliberate on the part of the producers of Formula D and was a wise move.

I've seen Formula D criticised for being too luck based but without that element of luck, there's no risk and risk is at the heart of what makes Formula D so good.

You see, as a racing game, Formula D is not really a 'simulation', I mean how could it be? However, one thing it does emulate very well is the feel of having to 'push the envelope', how racers try to take it to the edge, how they take risks and how players in Formula D will also need to take risks, or more precisely, when to take risks
Unlike many games, playing too sensibly or prudently is a sure way to finish second in Formula D!

This all ties in with what Formula D is all about - which is managing corners, specifically the gear and consequently the speed of a car when it goes through corners.
This is not quite as simple as it sounds though: ​Ideally, players will want to be in as higher gear as possible for optimal movement at all times. However, players will need to be mindful of their resources, overshooting corners by too much or too often (Especially early in a race.) can have ramifications later. Sometimes overshooting will have an advantage, sometimes it won't it'll just be a waste of WPs.
This is all contextual of course, depending on a car's position relative to a corner, players will need to adapt their tactics to racing through that corner, even the position of opponent's cars can effect the players behind.
Players will also need to be wary of 2 or 3 stop corners and resist the temptation entering the corner in too higher a gear and too fast: In real racing, sometimes going into a corner slower means coming out faster, this can hold true in Formula D too.

Another time a player may take a big is when an opponent is ahead in a corner.
E.g., if that opponent ahead exits the corner in 3rd gear to avoid overshooting, the player behind may want to risk taking going up a gear and exiting in 4th. It's a real advantage to exit corners in a gear higher than your rivals. If you look at the distribution of numbers on the dice, the maximum speed on a gear die is generally the lowest speed on the next highest die.

In terms of negatives, player elimination is a thing here (I'm not a fan of player elimination.) and players can crash out and be sat twiddling their thumbs. Although this sort of thing generally only might occur when approaching the end of a race and back markers push hard to try and get on the podium.
Playing time can also potentially be an issue. Races can last 1-3 laps and you can expect a race to on average last 1 hour per lap. If you decide to play a full race, don't be surprised to lose an entire afternoon or morning to the race. Which is not necessarily a bad if that's what you want.
Also, with it's small components and 6 resources, Formula D can be a little fiddly.

Quibbles aside, Formula D is a fun, game and it's satisfying when you manage pull if risky manoeuvres and manage to fly from corner to corner. There's also a genuine, palpable surge of pleasure when you go into 6th gear, roll that 30-sided die and blasting down that straight.
Formula D is mid-weight game that fits it theme well and presents players with conundrum of when and how much risk to take. Who would have thought roll-and-move mechanics could be so well implemented.
Formula D is a game I have played a lot in its various iterations and I've always enjoyed it. If you want a racing game with a strong thread of push-you-luck running through it, then this is one to try. 

9th October 2022

Another Sunday and another gaming session on Board Game Arena.

Do the roll and bump and put the trick taking back.
Do the roll and bump and put the trick taking back.
When the dice are good, so are you.
Next time you roll, you know what to do.
Do the roll and bump and put the trick taking back.

OK, dodgy references to 80's adverts aside, Roll'n Bump blends trick taking, set collecting with a dash of push your luck into a interesting little dice game.

• ​Dice: Roll'n Bump uses normal six-sided dice.
  Player dice: There are 5 dice in each of the game's 5 player colours.
  ​Bonus die: There is only 1 white bonus die in the game. Depending on circumstances, players may get to roll it with their dice during their turn.

Each of the 4 colours used on cards also have a unique pattern associated with them. This is a good accessibility feature. The joker card is of course the exception, having all 4 colours and all 4 pattern types on it.
Otherwise, the game has no artwork.

There's almost no iconography to the game either. There's only the 3 types of card to learn and that's trivially easy to learn.

How's it play?
Setup

• Cards: Take the joker card a place it in the middle of the central playing area. Then shuffle the remaining cards into a face-down deck.
  Deal the cards face-down into 6-12 stacks of 6-3 card each depending on player count. Arrange these stacks around the joker in the central playing area, then flip the top card on each stack face-up.
• Dice: Give each player the dice in their personal player colour.
  Bonus die: Put the white die adjacent to the cards in the central playing area.
• First player: Determine a starting player.

On to play
​Players roll dice to create tricks to place on cards and then claim those cards in which in turn scores them VPs.
​Depending on the available cards, there are 3 ways this can be done. Additionally, the active player has the possibility of 'bumping' other players' dice. I.e., the other player's dice are removed from the card and replacing by those of the active player!
Roll'n Bump uses the typical turn order of the active player taking their turn before play progresses to the player on their left.
On their turn, the active player takes the following actions.

• Claim card: Firstly, if the active player has dice on any cards in the central area at the start of their turn, they take those cards and their dice back.
  All cards taken should be sorted by colour and kept in the active player's personal area.
  When a card is claimed, the face-down card beneath is flipped face-up.
  Obviously a player can't claim cards on their first turn.
• Claim bonus die: How a bonus die can be claimed is explained below but regardless of this, if they can claim it, they do so now.
• Roll dice: The active player now rolls all of their dice and may choose to keep the result or reroll them up to twice as described below.
  Reroll: Once this is done, they may chose to set aside any number of dice - including 0 and reroll the remainder.
  2nd reroll: The active player may set aside more dice and/or take back dice they had previously set aside and roll the remainder again.
  Once the 2nd reroll is completed, there are no more rerolls
  Bonus die: The bonus die is used identically to a player's usual 5 dice, it can be rolled, set aside or rerolled as the player wishes.
  The bonus dice comes into it's own once the active player has finished rolling. The player can now change the side of any one of their normal dice to match the side shown on the bonus die. The bonus die itself is never placed on cards, players always have their 5 normal dice to place.
  
• Place dice: Now that active player has the result of their dice rolling, those dice may be placed on cards in the central playing area.
  • Singles: If a card is displaying a single number, the active player may place 1 or more dice with the matching number on to that card. E.g., if a card shows a '3', the active player may put a die showing a '3' on it.
    Bump: If a singles card already has another players die or dice on it, they can be 'bumped' off by putting more dice with the matching number on that card.
    E.g., if a card has a '4' on it, 2 4s will bump it off. Consequently, 2 4s can be bumped by 3 4s and so forth.
  • Straights: These cards display 3-5 overlapping blank boxes. This indicates the size of straight that must be placed on it to claim it. Thus 4 overlapping boxes means a straight of 4 dice must be placed on the card.
    A straight is considered a number of dice in numerical sequence without a break. 
    Bump: A straight can be bumped by another higher value straight. So a '2, 3, 4' can be bumped by a '3, 4, 5'.
    Note: If a straight ends in a '6', it cannot be bumped.
  • Sets: Blank squares are used to indicate sets cards and they come in 2, 3 or 4 spaces, except for the joker which has 5.
    These cards can be claimed with sets of any matching number. A set of 2 can be claimed with 2 5s, or a set of 3 can be claimed with a 3 1s.
    Bump: A set may be bumped by another set with a higher value. E.g., 3 1s can be bumped with 3 2s.
    Note: As with straights, high value sets cannot be bumped, i.e., any set that uses 6s cannot be bumped.
  • Unused dice: If the active player has dice that they cannot or choose not to place on cards, they can potentially be put aside next the bonus die to be claimed in the next turn.
    Bump: If another player has already placed dice adjacent to the bonus die, those dice can be bumped too! This can be done if a player has unused with a higher total value than dice already placed next to the bonus die.
    
  • Bonus die: If the active played used the bonus die on this action, once they've finished placing their dice, the bonus is returned to the side of the playing area.
• Next turn: Once the active player has finished their turn, play progresses to the player on their left.

Endgame
Play continues until one of the decks has been emptied (The joker does not count.), when this occurs, all players immediately claim cards they have dice on and the game goes to scoring.

Scoring
All cards score in 2 ways, firstly they score their base VPs but then they also score as sets as per their colours: The more cards in a colour set, the more bonus VPs it earns. The joker can be added to any single colour set as chosen by the owning player.

Points are tallied, highest score wins.

Overall
Roll'n Bump is such a pared down game focused on the core of its push-your-luck driven gameplay without almost no 'schticks' that it's hard to find much to write about!
It does exactly what it says on the tin.

It has fairly straightforward, light rules which can be picked up very quickly, especially since it utilises mechanics which will be familiar in some way or other to many people.
Creating straights or sets, rerolling dice twice, it's all common stuff. Roll'n Bump would make a good crossover game.

Decision making is also pretty straightforward. Players must recognise and decide when and how to push their luck.
Roll'n Bump provides a classic risk-and-reward conundrum; settle for a low-scoring card or risk reducing that score to 0 to potentially score a different, higher value card.
Despite the overall simplicity of Roll'n Bump, there is a innovative mechanic to be found in the game; the bonus die.
I like how it can give an edge to a player without giving them extra dice to place. Being able to bump other players' used dice from the bonus dice can provide players with meaningful decisions. There will be times when a player might not put a die on a card because it could be used to acquire the bonus die for their next turn.

If I had one criticism of Roll'n Bump and considering it's a push-your-luck game, it might be a facetious criticism, it's that there's a lot of luck to the game!
Taking some big risks to put some dice on a card only to have another player flippantly bump them with a single lucky roll can be pretty frustrating.
Sometimes, someone will win simply because they lucked into a very good roll but that's the nature of the beast and something anyone playing this type of game should come to expect.

Roll'n Bump is unremarkable and doesn't really stand out from the crowd however it manages to tick all the right boxes for a push-your-luck trick taking game and offers a solid, simple and fun game without any associated fiddliness.
It also has a fairly quick playtime and would serve as a good filler or finisher game which is why we actually play it on a fairly regular basis.

If you're on the look out for a push-your-luck, trick taking game, Roll'n Bump is worth considering.

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?

• Player boards: These oblong boards are used by each player to track the game's 3 resources; Gold, Strength, Magic and also Victory Points (VPs.).
• Tokens:
  • Resource tokens: There are wooden tokens that match the shape and colour of each of the player board's 4 tracks and are used to track them on player boards.
    Card resource tokens: These cards tokens replicate the wooden resource tokens... only in cardboard.
  • Extensions: These card tokens are used to track resources which increase above 10.
• Dice: Valeria: Card kingdoms comes with 2 normal six-siders. These are plastic dice with indented numbers.
• Cards: Lots of cards and I do mean a lots that come in several different types.
  • Citizens: These cards represent the heroes that players will recruit to their cause and they share a number of features.
    These include knights, peasants, butchers and so on. Some of these folk don't seem much like the adventuring type but I guess it takes all sorts!
    Activation number: In the top left corner of each citizen card is its activation number. Activation numbers range from 1-8 or can be 9/10 or 11/12.
    There are 2 different citizen cards for each activation number which can be mixed and matched during setup.
    Role: Each citizen has 1 of 4 roles and this is shown in the top right corner. Types include Worker, Soldier, Shadow and Holy.
    ​Cost: On the left side, alongside the citizen's name is the cost in gold to recruit the citizen. Recruiting duplicate citizens usually gets more expensive.
    Abilities: Finally, along the bottom edge of the card are its 2 abilities. One of which is activated in the player's turn and the other which is activated in other players' turns.
    Typically, abilities include gaining some of the game's several resources or changing one resource into another.
  • Starter citizens: These are 3 starter cards which all player begin the game with, this includes 2 citizen cards and a Herald which gives players a consolation resource if they get nothing from activation. More on activation below.
  • Duke cards: Duke and duchess cards are all unique and provide provide players with asymmetrical scoring opportunities.
  • Monster cards: A fantasy adventure game without evil monster to battle wouldn't be very good and Valeria: card Kingdoms features some famous fantasy opponents. Each monster card shares several statistics.
    Location and type: In the top right corner of every monster card is its location, which can be mountains, swamp etc. There are 8 types of location.
    Type indicates how tough a monster is  and goes from minion to boss.
    Strength: To the left of the monster's name is listed it's strength. This how many of which resource(s) must be spend to vanquish it, this is usually just strength but may also include magic.
    Victory points: Top the right of the name it will list the monster's VP reward which will be earned at the game end for defeating it.
    Reward: Along the bottom of the card it will display the immediate reward a player earns for defeating that monster. Rewards can take a variety of forms.
  • Domain cards: As well as slaying monsters, a player's citizen's can also go out and build (Well purchase actually!) domains. All domain cards share certain information.
    Role requirements: Shown in the top right corner are the role requirements to acquire that domain card. E.g., a domain may require a worker and holy role citizen cards or 2 soldier role cards.
    Cost: To the left of the card's name is the cost in gold to purchase the domain card - provided the player also has citizen cards that match its requirements.
    Victory points: To the right of a domain's name is the VPs it earns at the game end.
    Reward: Listed along the bottom of the card is the reward it provides to the player that purchases it. This can be a one-off bonus or a ongoing benefit.
  • Exhaustion cards: These cards simple say exhaustion and are used to track when the game end may occur.

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

• Players: Give each player the following:
  Player board: Give each player a player board and the 4 resource tokens to go with it. Strength and VPs start at 0, Magic at 1 and Gold at 2
  Starter cards: Give each player their 3 starter cards.
  ​Duke cards: Shuffle the duke cards into a face-down deck and deal 2 face-down to each player. Then each player should select 1 to keep hidden and discard the other out of play.
• Central playing area: The monster, citizen and domain cards will be set out in 4 rows of 5 stacks per row as follows.
  Monster cards: Sort the monster cards by location and choose 5 locations. Take the cards for those 5 locations and create a row of 5 face-up stacks of monster cards. Each stack should also be sorted by monster type, with the weakest at the top and strongest at the bottom.
  Citizen cards: Decide which citizen cards will be used and sort them by activation number. There should be 10 stacks with 5 cards in each stack.
  Place them into 2 face-up rows of 5 stacks, with activation numbers 1-5 on the top row, while 6-8, 9/10 and 11/12 go on the second row.
  Domain cards: Shuffle the domain cards into a face-down deck. Deal 2 cards face-down into a row of 5 stacks, finally deal 1 domain card face-up on the top of each stack.
• Exhaustion cards: Take a number of exhaustion cards equal to twice the player count and put them in to the central playing area.
• First Player: Determine a starting player.

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.

• Dice roll phase: The active player rolls both dice. The result of this roll will determine which citizen cards will activate.
  Reading the dice: The dice are red 2 ways, individually and as a pair.
  E.g., rolling a 2 and 5 means that cards with activation numbers 2, 5 & 7 will activate.
  Rolling doubles like double 4 means that 8 activates and 4 activates twice.
• Activation phase: Players now resolve citizen cards with activation numbers that match the result the result of the dice roll.
  This means the active player resolves the left hand ability on all their activated cards.
  All other players resolve the right hand ability on all their activated cards.
  No activations: If none of a player's citizen cards activates, the Herald activates instead and this gives the unfortunate player 1 of the 3 resource of their choosing.
• Action phase: The active player must now perform 2 actions, this can be 2 different actions or the same action twice.
  Spending resources: 3 of the 4 available actions requires the active player to spend resources. In most cases, the magic resource can substitute for other resources provided at least 1 from the original resource is also spent.
  E.g., if a card costs 4 gold, the player must spend at least 1 gold but can substitute magic for any other part of the gold cost.
  The 4 actions are:
  • ​Gain resources: Each action spent allows the active player to gain 1 of the 3 resources.
  • Recruit citizen: The active player can recruit a citizen from the central area by playing their gold cost. This card is immediately placed into their tableau and will be ready to activate in the next roll.
  • Defeat monster: For an action, the active player may defeat the monster on top of any monster stack. They must spend the relevant strength and/or magic to do so. The player immediately gains the reward and the monster card is put into their victory stack.
    VPs from monster cards are not earned at this time.
    Additionally; as monsters are defeated, stronger and stronger monsters are revealed.
    
  • Build domain: The active player may spend an action to build the top domain card on any stack provided they meet the role requirement and spend the relevant gold.
    The domain card is then placed into their tableau. If the domain provides an immediate benefit, then the player resolves that benefit now. Ongoing benefits will as determined by their description.
    Finally, a face-down domain card is flipped to replace the one just taken.
    As with monster cards, domain cards not earn their VP until the game.
• Empty stack: Any time that any of the 20 stacks in the central playing area becomes empty, an exhaustion card is put in the empty spot.
• Next player: Once the active player has taken their 2 actions, play progresses to the player on their left who begins their turn by rolling the dice.

Endgame
Play in Valeria: Card Kingdoms continues until any 1 of 3 game ending criteria is met, which are:

• All monster cards have been vanquished.
• All domain cards have been built.
• All allotted exhaustion cards have been placed into the central playing area.

Regardless of the method that triggers the endgame, play continues until the end of the round and all players have had equal turns.

A player can earn VPs from a variety of sources.

• VPs from the player's personal board.
• Total VPs from all monsters defeated by the player.
• Total VPs from all domains build by the player.
• VPs earned by meeting the scoring criteria on the player's Duke card.

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.

26th July 2022

It's Tuesday! That means it's time to meet up with the Woking Board Gaming Club at the The Sovereigns.

Time to steal the idol... and escape, Indiana Jones has nothing on this real-time, cooperative dice game, well at least until those crappy rolls inevitably turn up!

What's in a game?

• ​Tiles: The game comes with about 20 tiles, they depict various different kinds of underground sandstone chamber from a top down view. There are several different types of tile but all of them display a number of exits and also show icons of some sort.
  Main tiles: This includes the beginning tile and the escape tile, it also includes gem tiles, more on gem tiles later.
  The backs of each of these tiles feature 2 adventurer icons, also more on icons later.
  Gem depot: This is not a game tile per se and is used to store gems and track the amount which get used.
  Basic tiles: These are the most common type of tile; as well as a pair of icons they also feature an entrance (Stairs.) and exits. They are for the most part empty but some contain 'gem spaces'.
  The backs of these tiles also feature 2 adventurer icons
• Gems: Basic acrylic tokens in translucent green.
• Meeples: There are 5 of these suitably fedora-wearing meeples, one each in every player colour.
• Tokens: Circular card tokens, again in each player colour. These are used to quickly identify which meeple belongs to which player.
• Dice: Lots of dice! 25 to be exact and enough to give each player 5.
  These are not normal six-siders and all the numbers have been replaced with symbols which match the symbols found on tiles. The symbols are:
  Adventurer X2: A green man running away (Presumably from a giant boulder?) while carrying a whip!
  2 sides on each die has the adventurer icon.
  Key: A blue key icon.
  Torch: A red torch icon.
  Gold Mask: A grinning gold icon.
  Black Mask: A leering black mask, the black mask result on dice is bad news.
• Soundtrack: Yep! The game comes with a soundtrack, it serves as the game's countdown timers for the game's 3 rounds and it also plays atmospheric, moody ambient audio!

Escape: The Curse of the Temple has good quality components. The tiles all feel suitably thick and sturdy. The acrylic gem tokens are kind you see in a lot of games which use them to depict gems, they are a sparkly, pleasing shade of green though.
The bespoke dice and meeples are wooden which is always a nice touch.

There's not much art to speak of, the tiles show flagstones and that's about it. It's clear artwork that does not get in the way.

About half a dozen icons are used throughout the game, luckily they most relate to the dice and there's never a need to refer to the rules - which is a good thing since this is a real time game with a countdown.

How's it play?
Setup

• Tiles: Put aside the Start and Exit tiles, then shuffle all the remaining tiles into a face-down stack. Finally shuffle the Exit tile into the bottom 4 tiles in the stack.
• Start tile: Put the Start tile into the central playing area, since it has two doorways, reveal and place 2 tiles from the stack and place them adjacent to the starting tile with the stairs connected to the exit from the start tile.
• Gem depot: Depending on player count, place 7-16 gems on the gem depot tile. 
  Also place 2 gems adjacent to the gem depot tile, these 2 gems can be very important later on.
• Players: Give each player the token and meeples in their colour, then give each player 5 dice for their personal use.
  ​Each player should then place their meeple on to the starting tile.
• Soundtrack: Prepare the soundtrack.

On to play
In Escape: The Curse of the Temple players are collectively attempting to explore a lost temple to find the exit and escape before becoming trapped.
It's not so simple though; not only must they find the exit, they'll also need to activate the gem tiles and spaces to make their escape possible.
The game is played over 3 rounds and does not use a typical turn structure. Instead, turns are actually synchronous, in other words, players perform all their actions at the same time and in real time!
This involves all players rolling their dice and resolving their actions simultaneously. How is this all done? Read on.

• Soundtrack: Begin the soundtrack, the clock is now ticking.
• Roll the dice: When a player wants to undertake an action it is resolved by rolling dice, getting a required result will then complete that action. This usually means get at least 2 specific symbols on the dice.
  Rerolls: Players are free to reroll their dice as much as possible (And will have to do so nearly all the time!) to resolve an action. However, that brings me to...
  Black masks: Any time a die gets a black mask result, it becomes locked. A locked die cannot be rerolled or used for anything. When this happens (And it will happen.) the affected player should leave the die showing the black mask. Luckily, we come to gold masks...
  Gold mask: When a die comes up with the gold mask result, the player can use it to unlock up to 2 black mask locked dice. Very useful!
  Set aside: After making a roll, the player may set aside a dice on any face for later use. A player may also change their mind and reroll dice set aside in a later roll.
  A good example of setting aside would keeping a gold mask result in anticipation of getting a black mask later.
  Aid: If 2 or more meeples are on the same tile, they may help each other by contributing die results to the other player's action.
  A player can even use a gold mask of their own to unlock another player's locked dice.
• Actions: There are several actions each player can perform, which they can do in any order as required.
  Move: The player may attempt to move their meeple into an adjacent tile. The tile they are moving on to will show 2 icons that will need to be rolled. Typically this involves a green adventurer and 1 other icon - sometimes another green adventurer.
  After matching the icons, the player can move their meeple into the relevant tile.
  Explore: If the player wants to move their meeple through a doorway that does not yet have a tile, they must get a result with 2 green adventurers on their dice.
  Once this is completed, they flip a tile from the stack and place it adjacent to the doorway they want to go through.
  When adding new tiles to the playing area, the doorway with the stairs is always used to make the connection.
  ​Gems: Some of the basic tiles have space for a gem and number of the main tiles will have 3 gem spaces (For 1, 2 or 3 gems.).
  What's important about gems? Well, they need to be removed from the gem depot tile and put on the gems spaces on the tiles in order to allow the players to escape.
  How is this done? next to a single gem space will be a torch symbol and a 4. As an action, if a player gets 4 torches on the dice, they can move a gem from the depot tile to the space on their current tile.
  For the tiles with 3 gem spaces, 1, 2 or 3 gems can be shifted, however, only 1 of those spaces can be used on a tile. Furthermore, it gets harder to achieve  to move more gems. E.g., it takes 10 torch symbols to shift 3 gems, which is impossible for a single player and requires a group effort - probably with 3 players!
• Turn of fate: This action does not require rolling dice, it does however, require unanimous agreement from all players.
  When this action is triggered, it allows all players to reroll all locked dice. It's a powerful move that can free up a lot of dice but it comes at a cost. One of the 2 gems that were put adjacent to the gem depot tile must be added to the tile, thus making escape harder.
  Since 2 gems were put to the side, this can be done twice in a game.
• End of round: When a gong plays on the sound track, it marks the beginning of the end of the 1st round. All players must return to the starting tile before countdown expires and a door shutting sound plays.
  If a player gets back in time, nothing bad happens.
  If a player fails to get back in time, then they permanently lose 1 die for the rest of the game!
  2nd round: The second round now begins and is basically a repeat of the 1st round, players must again move, explore and shift gems until this time 2 gongs play and must return to the starting tile or suffer the same penalty.
  Even if the exit tile is discovered in the first 2 rounds, at no point can the players use it to escape in those rounds. Which brings me to the 3rd round and the endgame.

Endgame
When the 3rd and final round begins, all players must get to the exit tile and successfully perform the escape action.

• Escape: Obviously this action can only occur in the 3rd round and when the player is on the exit tile. They must then roll their dice to escape.
  The player must get a number of key results equal to the remaining number of gems on the gem depot tile, plus one! I.e., if the gem tile is empty, they still need at least 1 key. If there were 3 gems on the tile, they would need 4 keys.
  What makes this worse is that players cannot help each other in the final escape. Players can only use their own dice, which is why losing dice in the first 2 round can be really bad as can having too many gems remaining on the depot tile.
• Boon: When a player escapes they may give exactly 1 of their dice permanently to another player as assistance.

The soundtrack has a total countdown across all 3 rounds of 10 minutes.

If one or more players are still in the temple when the countdown has finished, then they collectively lose the game.
If all the players have escaped before the time runs out, then the players collectively win!

Overall
I'm going to start by saying that I'm a bit ambivalent towards real time games.
I've played some good ones and can see how they have their place in gaming but for me but broadly speaking, it's not why I like and play board games. I like to think out my decisions and choices at least a little bit.
Add to the mix a push-your-luck dice mechanic and you've a game of a lot of quick frantic rolling. You really don't want to roll those dice off the table!

Having said all of this, I think Escape: The Curse of the Temple is a solid game and there's a lot to like about it.

Firstly, rules and theme mesh together well. Chucking dice as quickly as you can to escape feels good.

The synchronous dice rolling is a clever little system.
Generally real time games are always trying to impress upon players that they're up against the clock, this can be a little jarring in a game where players are having to wait for another player's time to run our and get their turn. By having synchronous actions, it heightens the sense of urgency as everyone is in it together.

Being able to provide assistance another player on the same tile is equally clever. It's an elegant mechanic that also feels organic and makes sense.

This means it would seem like a good idea to have players explore the temple as a group, it would make shifting gems and unlocking dice easier...
But there's a couple of rules that throws a spanner into that strategy.

Firstly; exploring as group can slow down that exploration. Players can't escape if they don't shift enough gems or find draw exit tunnel from the stack.
Secondly; players will want to avoid creating single long corridors, they will need to return to the starting tile twice and the further away they are from it, the further it is to get back.

This will force players to split up or go in pairs or stick close by if they have the option, at least for the first 2 rounds.
This can change contextually when certain tile are revealed or have to be put in play in a certain way or a player get too many locked dice and so on.
Players will have to think quickly and decisively as well as adapt to emergent events.

Escape: The Curse of the Temple obviously has a quick playtime - 10 minutes! That feels a little strange because the setup and explanation time almost feels longer than a single game.
It's reasonably easy to learn, I can't imagine novice gamers struggling to learn the concepts here.
It also not a game to be taken too seriously and leans heavily on luck which is not unusual for cooperative games. Although, even accepting this, a bad run of rolls can sour the experience.
​But treat Escape: The Curse of the Temple as a cooperative, silly, fun, filler of a game and it will be a enjoyable time. So long as your luck is better than mine... much better!