Portal Publishing
You probably noticed in the review that we really liked Robinson Crusoe: Adventure on the Cursed Island, but that it’s easy to get rules details wrong or miss some rules when playing. To fix that, there’s a player aid for download that not only summarizes how things happen in which order but also shows the distribution of dice symbols and beast strength for better risk assessment. And when you’re on the game’s website already, there’s also a blank scenario sheet for you to come up with your own ways to suffer a horrible deathplay.
Indie Boards & Cards
Another expansion for another great coop game is incoming through Kickstarter : Flash Point: Fire Rescue – Extreme Danger. In this expansion, you’ll be fighting fire in dangerous places, namely a mechanic’s garage and a two-floor laboratory. Think of all the flammable substances! To have even more danger, there will be a second game board to add a basement or an attic to the location, complete with new rules for damaged floors. I can see dramatic scenes with oil barrels exploding and floors collapsing just as you run the family cat through the door and win the game.
Asmodee
Expansion number four for Formula D brings two new tracks for the racing game, just like you’re used to from Formula D expansions. Both Baltimore and Buddh look like the kind of track that I will not finish in one piece – those long straights to shift up all the way, ending in a tight turn? No chance for me. Boom.
Alderac Entertainment
Hisashi Hayashi’s Trains is one of the 2012 games we completely missed out on – that fair really needs to be longer. Fortunately, AEG is creating an English edition of the Japanese game with its odd mix of mechanics – a deck-building train game. Sounds weird, but it’s an interesting crossover. You build your deck with railroad hardware that you use to build tracks and stations on the game board, scoring points for stations at the end. But building actions have a tendency to give you Waste cards which serve no purpose other than clogging your deck, slowing down your progress.
And while that is an unusual mix of mechanics, another new project goes for “utterly weird mechanics” at full speed: at the heart of Maximum Throwdown (Jason Tagmire) is tossing cards. Taking turns, all players toss cards in a shared playing area, trying to cover the icons on other players’ cards while also trying to leave theirs uncovered, because visible icons give you special actions on your next turn. Sounds hilariously chaotic.
IO Worlds
Do you know those people that tell you they are not interested in a game for its components? Well, guess what? They’re wrong! The components are exactly what got me interested in Teramyyd: Earthsphere. I mean, wow, just go to the Kickstarter page and look at those airship minis! But components are not all there is to a game, obviously, there is setting, there is gameplay. While the gameplay video is still missing – I’ll try to keep you posted on this – the setting manages to push all my buttons hard: it’s a steampunk setting with dragons and magic where you adventure as the captain of one of the aforementioned airships who could be, for example, an anthropomorphic fox, if the card illustrations are to be believed. Come on guys, did someone go around thinking “how do we make a game that Kai of Meople’s Magazine cannot possibly ignore”? I didn’t know we were that important.
This week’s featured photo (CC-BY-SA) by Roger Wollstadt shows St. Maria Cathedral in the Hanseatic city of Visby in Gotland, Sweden. Thanks for sharing, Roger!