Table of contents for Issue 97 in Tabletop Gaming

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Designer: Kasper Lapp | Publisher: Ravensburger If you say a game contains memory as a key component, most people will about-face and become an Olympic sprinter. It’s as hated as roll & move when it comes to board gaming staples. That’s Not a Hat is a memory game. No, no, hold up. This one’s actually something special. The structure is simple. Everyone is dealt a faceup card showing a black and white drawing. It’s something simple, like a melon or a baseball. It’s probably not a hat, but it could be. Then a start player draws a new card off the deck and reveals it to everyone. After a moment, they turn this card facedown, and then pass it either left or right, depending on which way the arrow points…

Designer: Alexander Peshkov, Ekaterina Pluzhnikovan | Publisher: Alley Cat Games There’s nothing new about Escape Rooms any more. Nor about condensing the same puzzle solving and desire to escape into a tabletop format. So when Unfold appeared, I was admittedly sceptical – if it’s been done once, it’s been done a hundred times. But Unfold started to creep its hooks into me early by doing things a little bit differently. Instead of a box, or an envelope, it’s a self contained unfolding adventure. When pitching to friends to play it, I said it was an Escape Room meets a Pop Up Book, but Mazescape, for those familiar with it, is probably more accurate. Each puzzle solved sees you unfold the next bit of the compact and neatly folded contraption, to…

Designer: Whitney Loraine | Publisher: Skybound Tabletop There’s only one squirrel native to coastal areas of the Caribbean, and, disappointingly, they’re not oversized rodents with cheeks packed full of coconuts. However, as this tiny game from Skybound Tabletop suggests, they might be pirates. Baffling theme aside, Pirate Tails offers up to five players a compact set-collection experience in under fifteen minutes. As alluded to, players are piratical squirrels, collecting and burying a variety of nuts, as they try to amass the most valuable haul. With only three rounds in the game, players must be careful when deciding on the most lucrative hiding spot to loot, whilst being wary of snatching up too many candy cards. Each turn presents a choice of either three separate decisions or just one: If drawing…

Designer: Jason Mowery, Chase Williams | Publisher: The Op Games The Perfect Wave is a laid back game about catching waves, set in a sunset snapshot of the seventies. The first thing that will strike you is the game’s presentation. Designer Patrick Spaziante has clearly targeted a specific vibe here—and I’d say he’s absolutely achieved what he set out to do. It is faded glory throughout, with a real care and attention taken to period-appropriate typography, and the use of rough recycled paper with printed fold lines makes the rulebook seem like a discarded 70s surfing flyer. There’s even something about the matte card stock that adds to a Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas feel of sunglasses and sunshine. As you lay cards down, the progressively larger numbers are…

Designer: Ken Gruhl and Quentin Weir | Publisher: Gamewright It’s a situation plenty of us will have been in. You’re sitting in a restaurant with a spinning ‘lazy Susan’ in the middle. Everyone’s hungry. Fingers and chopsticks are poised to grab the tastiest treats. The food is delivered but DISASTER…the delicious-looking shrimp dumplings are on the other side of the table. You desperately try to spin the lazy Susan round to grab the dumplings but others are doing the same leaving you with the terrible turnip cake. The horror! This is the premise of the latest in the Sushi Go! series, where you’ve got to ‘spin to win’. You and up to five other players are collecting sets of food to score the most points. Some, like the chive dumpling,…

Designer: Brett J. Gilbert & Matthew Dunstan | Publisher: Pegasus Spiele Of all the nature themed games lining our shelves - and wishlists - in 2024, Prey Another Day is one of the most succinct. It takes the grizzly theme of the circle of life and makes it shine. It helps that the orange they’ve used in printing is relentlessly fluorescent. Small, and wasting no space or time, you could easily overlook or underestimate this fun-filled family card game. I thoroughly recommend you don’t. Each player has an identical hand of five animal cards. The cards are pleasingly oversized and entreatingly illustrated. Gameplay is in essence rock, paper, scissors, except the mouse doesn’t get to eat the bear. What the mouse does have is a higher point value if it…

Designer: Yohan Goh, Hope S. Hwang, Gary Kim | Publisher: Helvetiq Originally planned to be entitled Valhalla, Odin is a tiny, deceptively simple card game designed to be like sending your Viking warriors off into battle. Each numbered card has its own caricature of a Viking, standing tall in an outfit of that suit’s colour. They have a certain charm about them that welcomes you into the game, and makes you stick with it through the initial confusion I’ve seen from everyone I’ve tried to teach it to so far. Look out specifically for some of the fantastic fur boots and the Viking sneakily dressed as a tree. It starts out as a familiar concept to those who play card games. Take turns to lay cards, you must play a…

Designer: Florian Boué, Laurène Brosseau | Publisher: Aspic Games Ready to go to jail? Go directly to jail? Not like that other game, don’t worry! In Brigands, you can take on either the role of the Prince, hoarding wealth and sending your soldiers to police the city, or as a Brigand, a wily thief trying to get one over on the ruling class. Gameplay takes place over a handful rounds, each in two phases. Firstly, all players secretly choose which locations they will send their workers to, along with an action token if they want a bonus effect. After the location cards have been revealed and meeples have been placed, each space on the board is resolved in sequence either leading to the brigand players stealing some money, or the…

Designer: Scott Brady, Danielle Reynolds | Publisher: Wacky Wizard Games You’re handed a hastily hand-drawn sign warning you of a caution ahead. Staring back at you is a stony-faced winged creature wielding what could be a shovel, a saw, or maybe a giant spatula. Could you identify the hazard? Whether you and your friends are incredible illustrators or have dismal drawing skills, you’ll still find lots of hilarious fun in Caution Signs. Each round you are faced with peculiar hazards you’ll need to warn others about, and the only tools you possess to warn them are your questionable artistic abilities and a minimal window of time. Each round has one guesser and everyone else is a drawer, (the more players you have the better). Drawers select two secret cards, one…

Designer: Taiki Shinzawa | Publisher: Allplay I feel like there’s been an explosion of cute-animal trick-taking games in the last few years, 9 Lives is somehow the second cat-themed trick-taker in my collection (third if you count Nyet!). In this game, 3-4 players bid on the number of tricks they think they’re going to win and score points based on how close they were. So far, so standard, the two big twists on the format are the backs of the cards and what happens after you win a trick. The backs of each card match the colour of its suit, making it very clear how many of each everyone has in their hands, this includes the purple trump suit, so it’s always clear how strong everyone’s hand is. The other…

Designer: Dani Garcia | Publisher: Board & Dice In the mid-19th Century, Barcelona was the most densely-populated city in Europe. The average lifespan was shockingly low, as residents within its overcrowded walls fell prey to disease. After the old walls were torn down, pioneering urban designer Ildefons Cerdà proposed a new, open city layout, the Eixample, which became an influential demonstration of how to construct modern urban living spaces. In Barcelona, you are all working to create this new, more spacious, healthier Barcelona, by constructing streets, raising apartment blocks, connecting them with trams and even building fancy new projects in the ‘Modernisme’ style. You’re also introducing residents of three distinct classes to the area – Ildefons Cerdà was accused by some of pursuing a socialist agenda by deliberately mixing the…

Designer: Jean-Christophe Bouvier | Publisher: Holy Grail Games There are two things - in cardboard format - that I’m always a sucker for: driving games and fictional sports. Weirdly, I actually have a moderate disregard for both in real life. I enjoy running, maybe a little basketball, but I’ve no idea who won the Champions League last year, and I don’t care. Yet make up a nonsense sport, with a board and dice and ball throwing and fouls? Blood Bowl, Dreadball, Blitz Bowl… I’m always there. Driving is the same for me. Jumping in the car is a chore, and long drives are my nightmare fuel. But racing games? Whether it’s Car Wars, Gaslands or even the hand management cycling-supremacy of Flamme Rouge - I’m always up for the challenge.…

Designer: Karina Borysenko, Raphael Martines, Carleigh Magee | Publisher: One Up Parties and Games It was Miss Scarlett, in the boudoir, with a bottle of Eau de Parfum. No, I haven’t been finishing off a bottle of Christmas brandy, Castle Break really does give off Cluedo vibes. However, instead of solving a contrived murder mystery you are in a castle, taking part in a competition to free the dragon in the central tower. Quite why there’s a dragon in there and why it’s a good idea to let it out is anyone’s guess. So, to complete this noble, if foolhardy, aim you need to complete quests around the castle. These are rewarded with coins and when you have six they can be used to pay for three keys. You then…

Designer: Paul Denne | Publisher: Dire Wolf There is no board gaming theme that polyominoes cannot conquer. From the coziness of a warm quilt in Patchwork, to the elegantly stretched felines in the Isle of Cats, to drafting up maps in Cartographers to building the whole cities in My City, whichever way you use the polyomino pieces, you are bound to have a good time. So why not journey to the Wild West? In Wild Tiled West, players will be drafting polyomino tiles to build up their city to score victory points to win the game. They will also be wrangling cows, paying for things with whole gold nuggets and shooting bandits, as you would in the cartoonised Wild West. The number of victory points players earn depends on which…

Designer: Takeo Yamada | Publisher: Sylex Merchants in the Mediterranean during the Renaissance is the poster child for overdone themes. But publishers have shown that if you do it with swagger, you can still make it sing. Amalfi: Renaissance is the latest to prove there’s life in this old seadog yet. The original Amalfi had a small Japanese release in 2020. It was picked up by Sylex for a larger worldwide release, giving it time to make some rule and component upgrades, hence the slight title change. Amalfi: Renaissance is a beautiful thing. The cover art is gorgeous and everything fits nicely into the box without the need for a complex insert. The wooden ships and lighthouses have painted detail, all the boards are indented, and the art is lovely.…

Designer: Zack Mader, Jason Viddal | Publisher: Restoration Games The newest release in the Unmatched line is formidable. Focused on historical Japan, this set includes two warriors that are fierce and intriguing options. It functions as a fully standalone two-player head-to-head experience and contains the expected high quality established in this brand. Most significantly, Sun’s Origin highlights the possibility of future design methodology, and how we may anticipate the growth of this game. Both warriors here are interesting. Oda Nobunaga was the head of the Oda clan and a notable daimyo for unifying Japan in the 16th century. He overthrew the Ashikaga shogunate and ended a long period of feudal wars. In Unmatched, his leadership provides the basis for his innate ability of boosting cards played by allied fighters.…

Designer: Shem Phillips and S J Macdonald | Publisher: Garphill Games If playing this game has taught me one thing, it’s that translation is difficult, but it does pay well! In Scholars, 1-4 players will be gathering resources and journeying far and wide to employ the services of academics to translate ancient scrolls into Arabic, making them worth victory points. The core of this game is bag-building and resource management, primarily through rolling dice and playing cards to take actions on the central board. On a turn, a player will choose a handful of dice they have rolled and place them onto a card onto their personal player board, allowing them to take an action, the strength and value of that action is tied to the value and the colour…

Designer: Pim Thunborg | Publisher: Game Brewer I lived in Germany as a child, close to the Black Forest, and one of my core memories is coming home from kindergarten to find a troll doll placed on my bed. As cute as these shock-haired plastic figures were though, my more entrenched vision of the troll stems from the dark yet strangely welcoming art of John Bauer and the accompanying Scandinavian folklore. To my delight, it’s exactly this that Trolls and Princesses seems to aesthetically and thematically honour, and as a further thrill, it is us who play as the titular antagonists. Trolls and Princesses is a two to four player euro game which sees players controlling competing clans of trolls as they seize church bells, overrun human outposts, and, of…

Designer: Adam DeYoung | Publisher: Pandasaurus Games It’s the artwork that first draws you into this game. Just looking at the box it feels as though something great is about to happen as you approach the volcanic island. The calm of the earthy tones is given motion from the little spurts of lava in the distance. An excellent description of Emerge itself: mostly tranquil as an ocean, with little spurts of excitement. In Emerge, you are a researcher on a trip across the ocean where you compete with your fellow scientists to discover the biggest and best new islands, full of plant and animal life. Inside the box, the pastels of the island remain, complemented by the characterful animals, who each have a cheeky smile as if there’s something they…

Designer: Marco Canetta, Stefania Niccolini | Publisher: Sorry We Are French I have a theory that games on the heavier end of the spectrum rely on a kind of delayed-gratification approach to their themes. Unlike campaign games, or even light, whimsical euros, these are the games that, perhaps, fail to viscerally tell stories or recount events during play, instead laying down subtle threads of theme best pursued with our post-game brains. Conveniently - and without a hint of bias - Zhanguo: The First Empire (a seemingly dry simulation of Emperor Qin Shi Huangdi’s unification of China’s Warring States by way of hand management, area-control, and engine-building), demonstrated my theory perfectly: I had minimal knowledge of Chinese history, mostly just a sense of awe towards marvels like The Great Wall and…

Designer: Mike Gnade | Publisher: Rock Manor Games The title Maximum Apocalypse doesn’t lie. This card game drops players in pretty much any end of the world scenario one can think of. Want to see if you can survive a zombie plague? Or maybe a vicious mutant attack? Can you avoid being abducted by aliens? Or shot by robots? In this cooperative scenario-based game, players are trying to complete objectives by exploring a map composed of randomly dealt tiles, fighting monsters, looking for equipment and trying not to starve to death. At the beginning of each game, players will choose a character, each with their own unique deck of weapons and abilities. They will then pick a scenario – which will include their choice of the world-ending adversary – and…

Designer: David Thompson & Trevor Benjamin | Publisher: Osprey Games We’ve come a long way since Normandy. Undaunted 2200: Callisto is the most recent offering in Osprey’s revered Undaunted series, unlike the rest however, this one sees two players deckbuilding and skirmishing to resolve a resource conflict on 23rd-century Jupiter. The core of the rules will be familiar to fans of previous instalments, each player has a number of fighting squads in a combat scenario and a small deck representing your ability to command those units around the battlefield to achieve their objectives first. At the start of each round, players bid for initiative, spending a card in their hand to try to act first, before using the rest of their hand to take actions. These include moving units, capturing…

Another year down! And what a year it’s been. I can’t help but reminisce on how much the tabletop scene has grown over the years. When I first started gaming, I had to cross the county to get to a board game shop – now I’m spoilt for choice. Listing board gaming as a hobby wasn’t exactly unusual, but it normally meant someone thought you spent your evenings with Monopoly. In contrast, it’s not only normal, but almost common. Roleplaying games were associated with a moral panic, now they’re selling out huge tours – Dropout’s Dimension 20’s Time Quangle was a personal standout for me. I could easily go on, but you’ve probably seen the change for yourself. Isn’t it marvellous? Our industry is growing and changing, and 2024 has…

Designer: Rob Chew, Jon Kang, Gary Alaka | Publisher: Gap Closer Games I love Scrabble. It’s a great game. Unfortunately, no one will play it with me, particularly my other half. Common excuses include “it’s dull”, or “it’s dated”; both words (worth five and seven points respectively) which suit me perfectly. Consequently, I’m constantly seeking out word games that will entice players to the table. Mild successes so far have been Tim Fowers’ Paperback, along with the pocket-sized Ansagrams - a rucksack mainstay of mine. This latest contendant though, looks to be particularly promising. Illiterati describes itself as a cooperative survival word game. As a team, one to five players will be racing to assemble words to stave off the evil forces of the Illiterati; an organisation hellbent on ridding…

Designer: Saashi & Daryl Chow | Publisher: Saashi & Saashi I always feel I’m on safe ground when I open up a Saashi-designed game. It will have a nice everyday theme, charming artwork, and a clever take on some familiar mechanisms. I was a little nervous when I saw the size of the box Come Sail Away! comes in but I needn’t have worried. This is very much a Saashi & Saashi game, it just takes up a little more table space than they usually do. One area where their games vary is the amount of interaction they have. Most tend to be quite solitaire, relying on the fun of the puzzle to draw the player in, and so it is with Come Sail Away!. If you’re looking for lots…

Designer: Wolfgang Warsch | Publisher: Pegasus Spiele Have you ever stopped to think about the importance to humanity of a lawnmower? What about how it compares to its length. In The Same Game, these are exactly the challenges that you’ll be wrestling with. This is a colourful, cooperative party game in which 3-6 players each have to find items which are similar to one another, but in only one aspect. Each round, players are randomly assigned one of a range of categories such as “weight”, “volume” or “importance to humanity”, then given a card carrying the name of an everyday object. With these two things, players must find a second object which is most similar to theirs, but only in the given category. Once everyone has secretly written their answer…

Designer: Nicolas Poncin | Publisher: Blue Cocker Games It’s your first day at chivalry school but you’re not going to be learning all that rubbish stuff, like maths (yawn!), English (Shakespeare who?) or science (gimme a break!). No, at this school you’ll be jousting, heading out on quests, serving the king and… cooking? Still, it’s got to be better than double history, right? Before we get onto the nitty gritty of the review, you may be thinking the name Medieval Academy seems familiar - and you’d be right! This is a new edition of the 2014 version with a fresh art style and upgraded components. Of course, artwork is always a subjective topic but this version definitely appealed more to a younger audience, thanks to the cute cat illustrations and…

Designer: Josh Wood | Publisher: Alderac Entertainment Group Does the thought of planning the perfect holiday fill you with joy? Do you tremble with anticipation at the idea of scheduling day trips, selecting restaurants or taking a stroll around new locations? Perhaps you love booking train travel to get you from place to place and squeezing as much as possible into a week-long holiday. Well, this could be the game for you! In Let’s Go! To Japan (as the name might imply) you’re planning a dream trip to Tokyo and Kyoto. The problem is that you’ve only got six days to cram in a whole host of activities, like eating the best food, visiting shrines, experiencing the nature of Japan and, of course, buying a whole bunch of manga collectables…

Designer: David Cicurel | Publisher: Lucky Duck Kids I love a good walk in the forest. I find trees, and particularly the oak, to, at some subconscious level, act as a portal of sorts to our past, younger selves. Back then it was a fortress, a climbing frame, whilst now it evokes a different sort of awe: an awe towards its longevity, its role in folklore, the vast ecosystem of over 2,300 species nestled amongst its branches, and the ‘wood-wide-web’ writhing beneath. With Kids Chronicles: The Old Oak Prophecy, Lucky Duck Kids have used the venerable oak’s awe-inspiring reputation as a centrepoint for an arboreal adventure story - one aimed at children yet designed in a way so as not to alienate adults. The titular tree here is a slumbering,…

Designer: Louis Arkada | Publisher: Arkada Studio The “oh my god, our ship is about to explode” genre is an old one. Games like Space Alert and Galaxy Trucker are still veritable classics, deserving every bit of recognition. Spark Riders 3000 seeks to modernise this concept. Instead of an old-school CD, it utilises a free application that runs the game, controlling enemy activations, feeding random events to the players, and containing the very structure of the branching narrative scenarios that are embarked upon each session. The app is a resounding success, and it’s the foundation upon which all of this game is built. This is really a cooperative adventure game. Space Alert is indeed the closest analogue, as you are constantly under assault and forced to defend your ship. Play…

Designer: Mike Callahan, Brigette Indelicato, Thomas Rochelle | Publisher: Bright Eye Games “I for Williams nodded hello to Bob the Bouncer as he walked through the door to the Jazz Club and into Back Room. He was surprised to find he didn’t need the Key as it was already open. Inside, he found The Inspector, sporting a grave face. Meanwhile…” Board Game Geek has The Plot Thickens down as an “uncharacterised” type of game. It’s sitting somewhere on the border between board game and RPG, on a distinctly separate fork from the social deduction games in the same area. It’s an almost entirely cooperative, verbal storytelling game. This version is Detective themed, there are also romance and sci-fi editions already released. With prompt cards like the Bouncer, the Key and…

Designer: Peggy Chassenet, Thomas Dupont | Publisher: Hachette Games Cartaventura is a series of narrative card games. Their unique selling point is that the cards, as they lay out choices and story, also build a map on the table. Cartaventura is available in many expressions—there is a Viking variant; Vinland; you can experience World War Two in D-Day, and in this version, Versailles, you play as a young Mademoiselle stuck in an arranged marriage to a French count in 1687. There’s no rulebook here, just some short written prompts that fill you in on your character and their situation in a few sentences. As further cards are revealed, some are laid down to create a map, whilst others reveal choices for you to make. You begin as Julie d’Aubigny, a…

Designer: Trevor Benjamin & David Thompson | Publisher: Osprey Games As you sit down at the table and survey your battle lines, the rulebook will tell you that you must knock out your opponent’s HQ. Simple. It’s only a few spaces behind the front line. A concentrated push at their weakest point and it will all be over by Christmas. You play out the first round and it’s going well, you’ve surged up the board, grabbing territory, secured supply lines and bagged a few bonus abilities to help the push. By the end of round 2, however, the confidence of an early victory is beginning to disappear. As the frontlines become entrenched, you realise just how hard it is to attack. It requires overwhelming numerical advantage and the attrition rate…

Designer: Eilif Svensson, Åsmund Svensson, and Geir André Wahlquist | Publisher: Chilifox Games Iunderstand that it’s hard to be original in today’s board game universe; whether theme or mechanisms, it’s becoming increasingly difficult to stand out. Many bigger manufacturers aren’t even trying anymore and why should they? With so many new people entering the hobby, and so many games facing a short print run before disappearing, there are plenty of old ideas to resurrect. Undeterred, I always look through new release lists for gems that break this trend. Prehistoric euro game Footprints jumped out of the Essen lists for this reason and I’m pleased to report it met my expectations. While it certainly doesn’t reinvent the wheel (insert caveman game joke here), it does plenty else to write home about.…

Designer: Ryan Laukat | Publisher: Red Raven Games The first thing you discover playing this is that the title is a lie. The gods are now AWAKE (I met four of them!) and interfering with human affairs as is their wont. It’s 1937, eight years after the events of Sleeping Gods, (which you don’t need to have played to enjoy this), pilot Claire Smith is flying her passengers to Honolulu when disaster strikes again. A tutorial comic portrays their abduction through a portal and subsequent brush with a pterodactyl (no, really). Landing in this strange world, they soon meet one of the gods who explains the need to find totems to escape the world. So much, so familiar, but this time around the totems will initially be dormant. We will…

Designer: Tobias Hall | Publisher: All or None Games While some aren’t keen on the phrase gateway game, I find it a useful tool in the reviewing kit. It describes games with more depth than a family game that are more universally appealing than some drier light euros. This is where Hidden Ark finds itself. It has eye-catching table appeal, from the gorgeous box to the lovely board and tiles. The environmental theme of saving fish from extinction is original and non-geeky enough to draw a more casual audience. So far, so gateway. Hidden Ark is a tableau-building pick-up-and-deliver game with a racing element. On your turn, you’ll gain a bonus token and then take one of four actions (if you didn’t take it on your previous turn). These are…

Designer: Bruno Faidutti and Serge Laget | Publisher: Grand Gamers Guild In The Artemis Odyssey, venture to undiscovered galaxies, inhabit mysterious faraway planets, form a high-yielding faction and reap their resources. The game is played over several rounds which are made up of two phases – the planning phase and the action phase. In the planning phase, players take turns to place action cards face-down onto the shared planning board in any order, then in the action phase, the cards are revealed from left to right and their effects are played out. Each player has their own deck of action cards with several variations on five main actions – produce resources from the bank (depending on which planets you currently inhabit), build an asset (a starship, colony, factory, or terraformer,…

Designer: Robert Pestrin | Publisher: Ares Life is pretty tough in northeastern Brazil – at least if you’re a cangaceiro, a gun-toting outlaw from the turn of the 20th Century. Gangs of bandits drawn from the country’s downtrodden and dirt-poor peasantry take up arms and set out to loot and plunder those with money to spare. Players must navigate the desert, avoiding or fighting the authorities, seeking wealth, notoriety and survival to a fulfilling retirement. Cangaceiros may be set in Brazil, but the vibe is pretty euroey. Each turn players pick three action cards from an initial deck of seven, then take it in turns to play those cards and take the associated actions one at a time. Cards are split, and can also be used for their upper attack…

Designer: Adam Poots | Publisher: Kingdom Death Kingdom Death: Monster is the death-metal double album of board games. It’s dark, doomy and daringly over the top. You could probably mosh to it if you really tried. But this lavish boss-battler is also great fun – provided you have the patience for assembling dozens of often very tricky miniatures. And that you are open to grimdark vibes that make Warhammer feel like Mary Poppins. It has also just received a sequel of sorts in the form of the Gambler’s Chest expansion – which comes to retail (via the KDM website) several months after being made available to backers of a 2016 Kickstarter, which raised an eye-watering £9.5 million. Did I say expansion? Gambler’s Chest is more a second coming – a…

Designer: German P. Millan | Publisher: Devir Most people’s descent into the tabletop hobby started with something along the lines of “huh. I’ve not really played anything like that before.” Thankfully, within such a broad and creative industry, this is also an occasionally repeated feeling; one which Bamboo is likely to elicit for many who play it. Bamboo is a tile-laying, action-selection game for two to four players, occupying the same ludic-universe (ludiverse?) as Bitoku and Silk, and employing a novel approach to action selection - one that is difficult to compare to anything else. Through the growing and harvesting of bamboo, players must guide their families towards ‘balance’ in their home, whilst gaining favours from the spirits of the forest through offerings of incense. ‘Balance’ is attained through the…

Designer: Isra C, Shei S | Publisher: Devir Games Nine turns? What do you mean we only get nine turns? The White Castle is a big game in a modestly sized box. In The White Castle players take on the role of 18th century Japanese clan leaders, currying favour with the emperor and set your families up in positions of power within his court. The game plays out over nine turns, each turn players will select one die from either end of a three-dimensional bridge and place it on the board. Using dice to activate spaces, players take actions based on the colour used, while trying to make it more expensive for other players to take that same action. The central mechanic of the game is moving your worker meeples…

Designer: Matthew Dunstan, Jeffrey D. Allers | Publisher: Dranda Games Poker and the Old West, an iconic pairing. Throw in an excellent flip-and-write railway building game and you’ve got Pioneer Rails. Train-based roll-and-writes are nothing new, but this game adds the tense thrill of a hand of poker as a much-needed twist on the formula. In Pioneer Rails, 2-4 (usually) players are trying to lay the railway tracks that littered the old west. You’ll connect towns, deposit gold into banks and even help the ranchers out by making it hard for the cows to flee too far. Each turn the dealer reveals three cards from a deck of poker cards, four suits numbered 10 through Ace, and chooses one to keep for themselves. The other players can then pick from…

Designer: Klaus Teuber, Benjamin Teuber | Publisher: Catan Studios Catan: Starfarers Duel was the last game the legendary Klaus Teuber oversaw with his son, Benjamin Teuber, before his passing in 2023. Whilst not exactly a straight-up port of Klaus’ 2001 game Starship Catan, Catan: Starfarers Duel is, for the most part, the same game: players are intergalactic explorers, stranded in an unknown quadrant of space with critically damaged ships. To make it back home they must prove themselves worthy to the Galactic Counsel by establishing trade deals and colonies with the game’s four alien races. Essentially, much like Catan, this a race to claim ten victory points in a variety of ways. The first thing you might notice, though, is that this doesn’t look much like Catan. Each player…

Designer: Matt Gilbert | Publisher: Mantic Games Mantic Games did something very unique last year with Dungeon Saga Origins. They ran a successful crowdfunding campaign that they fulfilled within the same year. Those who dabble in Kickstarter will appreciate that this is as rare as glittery rainbow unicorn poop. Their range of games still give the impression of a series of passion products and the owner Ronnie Renton being very hands-on with their range. Much to their credit, their rulesets are some of the most easily accessible and solid out there on the market. Which takes us to Dungeon Saga Origins, which is their follow up to their own Dungeon Saga, an adventure game with quests and treasure and well sculpted miniatures. Dungeon Saga Origins aims to be the adventure…

Designer: Jeremy Geenen, Ethan Janssen, Matt Rayford | Publisher: Sophisticated Cerberus Games Hidden movement games do a wonderful job of conveying tension. Typically, one player secretly tracks their position on a separate map or pad of paper, while the rest of the group scours a board in search of the intruder. The Stifling Dark wields this format to craft a terrifying horror game where the hidden entity is a supernatural foe, intent on hunting down and eviscerating a group of investigators that have wandered into their domain. It’s full of atmosphere and utilises this style of game wonderfully. While the general story is that a group of investigators are searching for confirmation of the villain, the details are actually more varied. There are 14 different investigators, each with their own…

Designer: Dillon Morton | Publisher: Mirage Merchant So, you borrowed money from the Syndicate, did you? That was a silly idea - it’s loan repayment day tomorrow. You don’t want to miss a repayment now, do you? The Syndicate tend to remove limbs if people are late with the readies. So, how are you going to raise that much money in just twenty four hours? Time to head into Ghoulmorrah and bet your last coins on the pit fights, I reckon. Who knows - maybe you’ll be lucky. In Bloodsport Gambler, players begin with a small pile of coins and a large pile of due loan payments. They then set up three pairs of combatants, each with visible stats for Strength, Dexterity and Life. Players aren’t shown which weapon each…

Designer: Kamil ‘Sanex’ Cieśla, Robert Plesowicz, Łukasz Włodarczyk | Publisher: Awaken Realms Lite In Tamashii: Chronicle of Ascend players are transported into a postapocalyptic cyberpunk universe where an evil AI Ascend is trying to wipe out the humanity. Players take on the role of Tamashii, who are able to transport their minds into different bodies and attempt to stop the Ascend. To do this, they will complete a series of scenarios based around the tiled modular board, fighting and hacking their opponents, searching for clues and information. The main mechanism of the game is programming which takes place on the players’ individual gridded boards, called the launchers. Each round they will pull out a number of data tokens from their data bag and place them on the board. They will…

Designer: Iori Tsukinam | Publisher: Moaideas Game Design Joraku is a game of territory-holding, trick-taking and point-gathering set before Japan’s Edo era. Can you unite Japan or, at least, rule over all the other lords? To gain the all-important Reputation points, you must progressively seize areas of the board with your army of Samurai. Blending several common mechanics into one tight little game, Joraku is a unique and refreshing experience; quite unlike anything else I’ve ever played. The board is split into seven areas, beginning with Kyoto at 0, then moving up in number order. Play starts with each player getting assigned a number to place their “Daimyo” (a regional feudal warlord). This location is important, since the Daimyo counts as two pieces for the purposes of holding a…

Designer: Eric M. Lang, Calvin Wong Tze Loon | Publisher: Modiphius Entertainment Despite a massive crossover between the two mediums, bringing video games into the physical realm of board games historically has been a tricky endeavour. Players have learnt to approach such games with a dose of healthy scepticism; however, it is quite impossible not to get swept up in the hype when the words Mass Effect get mentioned. Created by a Canadian game studio, BioWare, Mass Effect is a trilogy of sci-fi roleplaying games, where players take on the role of Commander Shepard burdened with quite an impossible task: to save the galaxy. That means not just the Earth but the whole of the Milky Way inhabited by other space faring races, all with their own unique features, cultures…

Designer: Mirko Marchesi | Publisher: Gigamic If you went to UK Games Expo this year, you may have spotted Quoridor Pac-Man. It might have been the huge XL version that donned the tables that caught your attention, or the frankly fabulous Pac-Man suit that Hachette Board Games UK’s Flavien Loisier was wearing, but either way, it made a bit of a splash. The game offers the board of Quoridor as its foundation, letting you play a game of this with all the same pieces, but adds in gorgeous wooden versions of much loved Pac-Man, the ghosts, and the power pellets too. In reviewing the game, I want to raise that the foundation of it – Quoridor – is perfectly playable within it. Quoridor is a popular abstract strategy game that…

Designer: Richard Garfield, Michael Davis | Publisher: Renegade Games Do you like a board game where you can meticulously strategize your own game, claiming victory with finesse and grace? Well, that’s not this. Prepare yourself for absolute carnage. RoboRally is themed around a group of factory robots who, when the warehouse closes for the weekend, come to life and compete with one another in races across the factory floor. Each player controls a robot throughout the race, passing through all given checkpoints and beating their opponents to the final destination, wreaking all kinds of havoc along the way. Each turn has three phases, starting with the Upgrade Phase. Robots gain energy during the race which can be used as currency to install temporary or permanent upgrades from the upgrade deck.…

Designer: Karsten Harwig | Publisher: Repos Production Cards on the table (that I’ll later trade you for the perfect spot on the board), it’s been years since I played Chinatown. If you’re not familiar with it, it’s a somewhat cutthroat trading game, surprisingly easy to explain, fun to play, and promising a comfortable number of arguments around the table. Perfect for any gathering needing a healthy dose of family balancing, and if you’ve ever wondered which of your siblings is your favourite. So far, so irrelevant you’d think – except this brightly coloured, theme park themed Waterfall Park is a reimplementation of Chinatown. Now you’re wondering which you should play… Let’s approach Waterfall Park as a new game for now. Waterfall Park sees you trying to build the very best…

Designer: Andre Santos, Orlando Sa | Publisher: Arcane Wonders If the process of real-world city planning mirrored the ways in which games do so, I’d seriously consider a change of career. Could Suburbia’s hexes supplant stale greyscale urban design software? What about the polyominoes of My City or the colourful cubes of Tiny Towns? Why shouldn’t the cities of the future germinate from plans laid down in the form of custom acrylic tokens? And, if they can, will the designers of Neotopia be remunerated for their concept? Probably not. As pretty as Neotopia and its scores of circular, screen-printed acrylic tokens is, at the end of the game players are left with something more closely resembling the individual pixels seen when pressing your nose to the television than a functional…

Designer: Reiner Knizia | Publisher: Rebel Studio Roll out the universe on the table in front of you. Line up your eight intrepid cat astronauts. Things are about to get epic. It has a presence, this game. The cosmic mat is a feast for your eyes, full of colours and quirky cat references. Even the points tokens are delightfully designed fish, birds and balls of wool. Just like its feline inspiration, this game looks, feels and sounds irresistible. But just what does the universe have in store for our catstronauts? Players take turns commanding expeditions along the track from Earth to outer space. Your aim is to score the most points by visiting moons, planets and outer space. How far you get depends on the dice, but what you score…

Designer: Will Thompson | Publisher: Absurdist Productions In this entertaining family game, you play as skilled vets with a roar-some specialisation. You’ve answered the distress call, and your expertise is needed to take in and treat a field full of sick dinosaurs. You may be here to help, but these loveable giants are still a handful. Before letting them into your hospital, you’ll want to tranquilise them. Oh, and make sure they don’t wake up again before you’ve fully treated them. Nobody wants grumpy dinosaurs running round the corridors causing mayhem. Players take turns to roll their dice, admit Mesozsoic patients, and cure them by matching rolled dice to the symbols on the cards. One by one, you cure animals and add them to your stack of success stories. Be…

Designer: Emmanuel Gauvain | Publisher: Scorpion Masqué Picture the scene: two teams, each with a blindfolded driver are guided by a fully aware co-pilot. The racing all happens on a track with the pilot utilising a dry erase marker to trace the car’s route. The navigator grips the driver’s thumb, using it as a joystick to provide directional guidance. A player will know from that elevator pitch whether they want in or not, as the game is exactly what it sounds like. It’s a ridiculous experience. As a driver, you have someone yelling at you while yanking your thumb back and forth. You try to feel out the process as your other hand slowly–or perhaps furiously–traces a route along the track. It’s beguiling at times as it’s easy to run…

Designer: Daniel Greiner | Publisher: Ravensburger Board games love an eclectic theme. We’ve made trains fun. Birds fun. A pandemic fun (or it felt like it until we had to live through one). Now we’re having a crack at making fungi fun, though we’re one step ahead given it’s in the name. Mycelia, the deck-building family game therefore, is off to a winning start. The premise of the game is… well, it’s fine. Neither super cool nor bad. In theory, in Mycelia we’re bringing sacred dewdrops (tiny pretty counters) to the Shrine of Life (a funky construct in the centre of the table), in order to receive the forest goddess’ support (clear our board to win). We’re helped by forest dwellers (mushroom themed cards) that help us move and remove…

Designer: Travis Hancock | Publisher: Façade Games The year is 1947, the cold war is hotting up, and we’re in Hollywood, baby! It’s the latest volume in Facade’s quirky “Dark Cities” series. Each game pairs a city with a year to set up a riotous social deduction and light strategy game. The boxes look like beautiful old books, making them probably the most recognisable series in modern board gaming. Hollywood 1947 sees a group of filmmakers in post-war trying to make sure no communist messages are snuck into their latest blockbusters. Of course, there are communists amongst you with their own message to spread and a rising star switching sides depending on where the wind is blowing - frankly, my dears, they don’t give a damn about politics. Patriots and…

Designer: Steve Howe | Publisher: Big Potato Games Big Potato Games are practically the specialists in creating and/or publishing quick to learn, fun to play games for nongamers and gamers alike. Cards Vs Gravity is absolutely no exception. An absolutely perfect game to keep in your pocket and draw out at a social gathering (the pub especially), I expected to find it having little longevity, but pleasingly, I was wrong. To play, you’re just balancing cards. That’s it. Well, that’s not entirely it. Inside the box you get a bottle stopper (a rubber wotsit that fits into a bottle top, squishing to fit most of them) that means you can play impulsively while out having a drink, a flat disc to place on top of it with holes in,…

Designer: Matt Leacock, Matteo Menapace | Publisher: CMYK Why do you play board games? To escape, or to engage? Most of us would answer the former, and there’s absolutely nothing wrong with that. Board games have value precisely because they transport us away from the daily grind and the stresses that come with it. But since their earliest days, many board games have also encouraged us to engage with ideas and relevant themes, by exploring or at least considering pertinent concepts or issues through play. The danger with this kind of game, however, is that its preachiness – or teachiness – can drench the fun. A first look at Daybreak might set some escapists’ alarm bells warning. After all, it fundamentally and directly concerns one of the greatest causes of…

Designer: Helge Ostertag | Publisher: Feuerland Spiele Time works funny in tabletop land. Terra Mystica is only twelve years old, which in boardgame years is about fifty. The game has the status of a grand old classic – ‘oh yes, I have fond memories of this’ – and has already budded off into several expansions, rethemes and remakes, including Gaia Project and the relatively recent Terra Nova. I get why publishers want to iterate on old successes – it’s a tough old business, costs have skyrocketed and brand recognition is pretty low outside a small, enfranchised base of enthusiasts. But you’ll forgive me for wondering, as I popped the punchboards on this new title, if we really need yet another slightly-rejiggered version of a game that already exists and is…

Designer: Mathias Wigge | Publisher: Feuerland Spiele There was marginal ‘will they, won’t they?’ about whether Feuerland would release an expansion for Ark Nova, their wildly popular venture about creating a conservation zoo. It was more a matter of when it would hit the shelves. Now here it is. First impressions are Marine Worlds is in a slimmer box than perhaps expected. That’s actually quite considerate, considering the hippo-sized proportions of the original. However, another first impression creates concern. There’s a lot of chat early on in the rulebook about replacement cards and components. Will this be an attempt to complicate or rewrite a perfectly solid game? Reassuringly, no. The replacements are mainly there to accommodate the new icons introduced through the marine creatures, or, in the case of action…

Designer: Ondřej Bystroň, Petr Čáslava, Pavel Jarosch | Publisher: Czech Games Edition The premise of Kutná Hora might not strike you as particularly innovative or dazzling. It’s the 14th Century, you’re mining silver and developing a town in a Czech valley, and you’re trying to score the most points while you do it. So far, so by-the-books Euro game. This game spices things up a little with some pretty neat things. Firstly there’s a surprising amount of indirect interaction between players, but the thing which really sets it apart from its peers, is the dynamic economy used in the game. Each player has an identical deck of six cards, and each card has an action at either end. During each round, you’ll play two cards on your first turn, two…

Designer: Min & Elwen | Publisher: Czech Games Edition When Lost Ruins of Arnak landed a couple of years ago it grabbed our attention, not only because of its novel mix of deck-building and worker-placement, but also because it’s a ton of fun. Getting it added to play online on Board Game Arena was a master stroke, but it also highlighted the curse of making a popular game. People are fickle and get bored easily. CGE kept things fresh with the Expedition Leaders expansion, and once again are treating us like dignitaries at a Ferrero Rocher tasting party with a campaign expansion for the base game. As far as campaign games go, it’s a pretty light touch. There are six chapters to work through by yourself or with a…

Designer: Wolfgang Kramer, Richard Ulrich, Jens Christopher Ulrich | Publisher: WizKids What do you get if you put a botanist, two jesters, and a builder in some lovely parklands? Probably a winning score in this classic tile-laying auction game. Playing as a member of the Italian nobility, your goal is to hire the best creative minds of the era and set them to work earning you more prestige than your opponents. The game plays out over seven rounds, each containing an auction phase and an action phase. In the auction phase, players try their luck at outfoxing their opponents, inducing them to bid high while trying to buy the perfect upgrade for their own palazzi at the best price. Once that’s done, players spend their turn setting up their board…

Designer: Florian Sirieix, Benoit Turpin | Publisher: Lumberjacks Studio I remember being sceptical my first time playing Pandemic. Cooperation? Winning as a group in a tabletop game? I’d played RPGs but this was altogether different. The world had gone mad. But an hour later, as the world lay in tatters, we were all hooked. We, together, were going to beat this thing! The cooperative game is now firmly established in the tabletop hobby, with designs exploring everything from quick trick-takers to epic legacy experiences. The first thing that caught my eye about The A.R.T. Project (as well as the excellent Vincent Dutrait artwork) was it looked like a throwback to simpler times. So, would that prove to be a good thing or a bad one? In a nutshell, players play…

Designer: Morten Monrad Pedersen | Publisher: inPatience If you go down to the woods today, you might just find yourself fighting alongside a very special badger. Skoventyr is a short cooperative card game in which players must save Vogter, the soul of the forest from Gamle Erik, the Adversary, and his minions, ideally without burning it to the ground first. In Skoventyr, players must race to defeat all six minions of Gamle Erik before he reaches Vogter who is hiding in the forest. This is done using a deck containing Vogter’s allies such as the Trold, the Formskifter and the Ellefolk, in order to draw those cards from the trade row however, you must incur some form of penalty, damaging the forest or allowing Gamle Erik to take another step…

Designer: Jason Hager, Darren Reckner | Publisher: Restoration Games That’s right—it’s another box with “Unmatched” written on it! You’re missing out if you’ve not played this gem of a series by Restoration Games yet, but surely even die-hard Unmatched-ers have had enough by now? The important difference is that Unmatched: Tales to Amaze is the first cooperative and solo friendly release in the series. Instead of a Super Smash Bros style battle royale, players must now work together against the game. Players choose characters to play as—with four new heroes included in the box—including Nikola Tesla, Annie Christmas, The Golden Bat and Dr. Jill Trent, Science Sleuth. Together, they must defeat one of two villains; Moth Man or the Martian Invader, alongside an array of potential minions. Gameplay is initially…

Designer: Zé Mendes | Publisher: Arcane Wonders A polyomino (think Tetris shapes) is a fantastic game component. One shape carries within itself so many gameplay decisions. Is this the right shape? Will it fit? Will it make future shape placement more complicated? Can I place given the rules of the game? How can it help me win? If you succeed in these decisions, you walk away having built a both visually pleasing and brain stimulating landscape of tiles. Even if you had compromised in some areas - maybe none of the available shapes were quite right - you can clearly see areas for improvement, which encourages repeat plays. This geometric puzzle makes polyomino a perfect component for city-building games. You can easily apply theme, rules and restrictions but still retain…

Designer: Euijin Han | Publisher: Korea Boardgames Ever dreamt of becoming the best barista in town? No? You soon will after playing Coffee Rush. Although it will take a bit of training not to suck at its blend of movement planning and contract fulfilment. The premise places players behind the counter of a hip café, the sort of establishment that, according to Korea Boardgames, “trends on social media”. Attentions are divided between meeples who move around the ingredients board (very reminiscent of Splendor Duel), picking up food to complete drink order cards that are drawn into the serving area. Each player starts with basic movement rules for how meeples are permitted to navigate: up, down, left, right, and only one ingredient collected per space. Yet after completing three orders, players…

Designer: Max Wikström | Publisher: Lautapelit Agemonia is a planet with two moons populated by a variety of exotic species. A world of squelchy fungi and sharp bladethorn underfoot but also of ancient technology, strange devices and many many rune stones. Despite adopting an overall dark versus light trope, this is not a superficial or banal fantasy adventure. But first things first. It’s a very large box, and will take a few hours to sort out, but is well organised and explained, making set up and tear down reasonably fast. Table space is medium. You are guided through three tutorial scenarios which do a fine job of gradually introducing gameplay elements. Everybody chooses one of the 7 pre-defined characters with their individual backstories and motivations. There are no guidelines for…

Designer: Kevin McPartland & Jerry Shiles | Publisher: GMT Games The ‘Dark Ages’ are framed for most of us as much of Europe’s slip from enlightened Roman rule into the mud of local mismanagement. There’s plenty of disagreement around using the term itself, in part because the lights weren’t going out everywhere. While the rest of the British Isles were turning pagan (according to a track in this game at least) Ireland was becoming Christian at the hands of St. Patrick. With that Christianity came the scribes whose records make up a great deal of our modern understanding of the period. Banish The Snakes is a Euro-ish game from GMT that sees players wandering about the countryside debating with pagan druids, converting the people and convincing the leaders of a…

Designer: Gustaf Sundström | Publisher: Artipia Games Ceres is a dwarf planet somewhere between Mars and Jupiter, but Ceres by Artipia Games is a large box somewhere on my shelf of good eurogames. In Ceres, each player takes the role of a faction commander, trying to send out mining probes from the planet’s surface into the nearby asteroid belt to farm the asteroids of their valuable resources and victory points. There are a lot of overlapping systems in Ceres but the fundamentals are pretty straightforward for a worker placement game. On your turn, choose whether you want to place one of your command tokens onto the board to activate a location’s power or take one of the primary-coloured worker meeples from the shared supply to place onto your own player…

Designer: Robin David | Publisher: Games 4 Gamers & dlp games “Trepanation?” my mum says, as I get the box out at the family dining table, “didn’t they try to do that to Chekov?” I had been concerned that the theme would be off putting, but in the end, I set it up as Mum and Dad tried to remember the Star Trek storyline and everyone was immediately on board. My experience aside, as themes go, this one is a little out there. Trepanation invites you to play as fraudulent physicians, putting on shows to be the most renowned quack in town. Think Dr House meets Derren Brown. You get a player board, five meeples in your colour, and a random couple of starting resource tokens. Playing order is decided…

Designer: Grégory Grard, Matthieu Verdier | Publisher: Sorry We Are French The work of Charles Darwin is undoubtedly some of the most important scientific literature of all time, and the game In the Footsteps of Darwin asks the question “could you have done it better?”. Navigate the Beagle around the world and create a scrapbook of colourful creatures, scoring points for sets, groups and families that you acquire. In this simple game, players take turns grabbing an animal tile from the board, adding it onto their own personal “research journals” and then moving the Beagle marker around to allow the next player to do the same. Animals are scored based on completing rows of specimens on your player board, or for collecting many from the same region. Some actions will…

Designer: Grégory Grard, Mathieu Roussel | Publisher: Catch Up Games I can’t stop playing this game. I’ll put it down for just long enough to tell you about it, but then I’m getting right back to it. Delightfully, it has appeared on Board Game Arena and started floating around in the BGG hotness list too. It’s frequently hard to put your finger on what makes a game special, but usually, you can feel the X-factor. Castle Combo feels like it has an X-factor. Let me introduce you to the colourful world of Castle Combo, where you’re not going to want to leave. It’s a big game in a small box. There’s a whole medieval town of characters split into two main types: the village and the castle. The village is…

Designer: Paul Scott & Gary Scott | Publisher: Midlam Miniatures Dungeon diving is a familiar genre, and you generally need a good selling point to stand out from the crowd. Stalagbite! does this by casting an anthropomorphic lifeforce onto stalagmites—those pointy outgrowths you find in limestone caves. They also have a few gameplay innovations that give this fun little game extra reason for your attention. First things first; this is a game of dwarves heading into caves, hunting for gold and glory by hacking their way through crowds of nasty creatures. The aim is to hopefully escape before a crowd of hunting goblins arrive to take care of you. Much like cave-crawler-in-space Level 7: Escape, the game is semi  cooperative, with the players working to clear the cave together, but…