Boardgame talk for Meeple & People
I’ve been talking about this game every time we mentioned word games recently. It’s about time I told you more about it. I’m talking about Decrypto, a word game by Thomas Dagenais-Lespérance. It sounds like a regular word game like many others at first. One player gives hints about words, other players on his team try to guess the words. We’ve seen it before. So what makes Decrypto stand out? Allow me to introduce it!
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Werewords is a new game from the ever popular Werewolf franchise. Unsurprisingly, it is a hidden identity game. Equally unsurprisingly, given the name, it’s a word game. And if you think those things don’t mix, like I did, think again.
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Year2018PublisherRepos ProductionAuthorLudovic Roudy, Bruno SautterPlayers3 – 7Age8 – 199Time20StrategyLuckInteractionComponents & DesignComplexityScoreIt’s often one little twist that makes the difference between yet another[…]
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I admit, there are wide ranges of modern art I don’t get. If you put a piece of butter in a corner you shouldn’t complain when the cleaners remove it. And if you want to pass a picture of a trumpet as a masterpiece, at least write Ceci n’est pas une trompette below it. I don’t want to belittle the choice of artwork in Belratti, but if your paintings are realistic depictions of everyday objects then you don’t get to complain about forgeries.
Art forgery is what Belratti by Michael Loth, winner of the Hippodice Game Contest, is about. The players in the cooperative party game are painters and curators. Curators ask for paintings to be made, the painters provide them. The famous forger Belratti smuggles his own works into the selection, and it’s on the curators to unmask his dastardly works.
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Do you remember Euphoria, the worker placement game about the absolutely happiest city of the future? We all knew things there were to good to be true and something would go horribly wrong sooner or later. Well, something has gone horribly wrong. The brain implants that guaranteed everyone’s continued happiness have failed. The city is in uproar. And behind the scenes people are scheming to take advantage of the situation and take control of the city. People like you.
Leaders of Euphoria: Choose a Better Oppressor is set in the same city as Jamey Stegmaier and Alan Stone’s Euphoria: Build a Better Dystopia, but it was created by a different designer team. Clayton Skancke and Brian Henk of Overworld Games liked the Euphoria setting so much they created a new edition of their own game Good Cop Bad Cop in it.
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Some might find a game where one player is literally Hitler offensive. I’m not one of them, and I’m glad, because that would keep me from a great hidden identity game that has tiny bit more structure than other games in that genre. At least for me it makes a huge difference.
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I still think Vlaada Chvátil has this little check list on his desk where he goes “Oh, here’s a genre I didn’t make a game in yet” and then just sets out to design a game for that genre. And whatever genre he picks, he’s good at it. The latest example of that is Codenames, a word association game. And if you think that word games are boring, like I did, then maybe Vlaada can change your mind.
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Games let you play different roles and do things that you wouldn’t do in real life. At least I assume most people playing necromancers in a fantasy RPG, for instance, don’t mess around with the dead in real life. I’ll also assume that most people playing Christope Boelinger’s Illegal don’t really deal with drugs or weapons. That’s the role you take in this adults only party game: that of a distasteful criminal trading his illegal goods for other goods.
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Do word guessing games all feel the same to you? I can promise you, this one won’t. You’ll still be guessing words, it wouldn’t be a word guessing game otheriwse. But how those words are explained for you to guess is new and, actually, pretty awesome.
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Goblins no have bombs. That no good. Goblins need bombs. You Goblins will see bombs, will look at bombs, will learn bombs? Why? Because Big Boss Necromancer Goblin say, that why. Go learn bomb, not worry if bomb explode, Big Boss bring you back, no problem.
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