Meople News: The Glass Twisters’ Guild

Watchtower Games

Over the last weeks we’ve been talking a lot about Fallen, but if you missed it, here are the basics again: Fallen is a two-player dungeon crawler where one player is the Dungeon Lord and the other the invading Hero. Unusually for the genre, the game requires no game board but is played with cards only: Hero and Dungeon Lord have their ability cards and the game progresses along the Story cards with the hero deciding his course of action and the Dungeon Lord putting monsters in his way. Conflict is resolved by dice, but your special ability cards ensure that luck isn’t the only factor. Why do I tell you all that again? Because the Kickstarter project is now in progress.

Steam Park (Image by Cranio Creations)
Steam Park (Image by Cranio Creations)

Cranio Creations

Not really news, more of an assurance that it hasn’t become old yet: Steam Park, the steampunk theme park building game from the creators of Dungeon Fighter (Aureliano Buonfino, Lorenzo Silva, Lorenzo Tucci Sorrentino) with art from Marie Cardouat (Dixit) that was delayed last year is not dead and still very much work in progress. Maybe Essen this year? Here’s another photo showing the custom dice. I hope that last one is to start construction and not related to the picture on the right.

Ludically / Asmodee

All you Dungeon Twister fans can soon get your fix anywhere, at any time, without carrying more than a deck of cards around. Dungeon Twister: The Card Game gives that option to two players while keeping most everything about Dungeon Twister the same: with your team of characters and objects they carry, you descend into the dungeon that will twist and turn as you explore it.

Alderac

This September, when the stars will finally be right for Smash Up: The Obligatory Cthulhu Set, you’ll be able to release the Shoggoth on your victims the other players. Not only is he a beefy minion with his six strength, he also gives the other players the choice of losing a minion or going insane by drawing one of the new Madness cards. Death or insanity – don’t you love Lovecraft?

The Nightfall story goes on as the deck-building game about vampires and other things going bump in the night awaits another expansion. Eastern Skies, an expansion set in India will be released this September and contain new cards of all kinds and the mysterious, new Link mechanic that should speed up play. More details about that should be coming soon.

Minion Games

Minion Games is certainly not afraid to pick controversial themes for their games: in Manhattan Project you were placing workers to build the first nuclear bomb, and in the new Battle Merchants (Gil Hova) you’re going to try and maximize your profits as an arms dealer. Very realistically, even, selling to both sides of the conflict is explicitly encouraged. But that’s where realism ends, your customers are Elves, Dwarves, Orcs and Hobgoblins. The weapons you’re selling have to be crafted first, and upgrading your crafting to improve quality makes sure your weapons don’t break in battle – which would be bad for your bottom line. Here’s one of the merchant characters, no information yet if they will have special abilities or not.

Dice Hate Me Games

I love games. I love coffee. Making a game about coffee, that’s like inventing chocolate-flavoured crack. So you can imagine my reaction when I heard there would be a follow-up to Viva Java. Yeah, exactly: I made coffee. And then I kickstarted Viva Java: The Coffee Game: The Dice Game, also known as Viva Java Dice to its friends. The theme remains unchanged, it’s still about finding the perfect coffee blend. The way to do it is now to roll dice, nudge them a little with your Research Abilities, and create a new blend from the result. A fun and quick gaming experience, not too heavy in the aftertaste, lets call it a game ristretto game, maybe.

Rio Grande Games

Guilds is the next expansion for Donald X. Vaccarino’s Dominion, the eighth if anyone is counting, and possibly the last. But maybe not, only time will tell. The 13 new cards are all about guilds and craftsmen, of course, but some are also about money. For the first time ever, you’ll be able to save money in the shape of coin tokens and use it on a later turn. You’ll also be able pay more than the regular price for some cards and get something extra in return.

Atlas Games

Once upon a time there was a story-telling game where you have to spin a story from all the cards that you were dealt, leading to your ending card, in order to win the game. And the people were playing this game happily for a long time. But the people became restless and started complaining that they always saw the same cards. The people were growing bored. And so Atlas Games, who had created the game in the first place, took pity on the people and made many more cards for them to enjoy the game again. Atlas Games called those new cards Once Upon A Time: Seafaring Tales, and even before the new cards were printed, the people were allowed to see what they would be in the card list.

Feuerland Spiele

German boardgame magazine cliquenabend.de has answered one of the questions moving the gaming world with a video: how will Feuerland Spiele follow up on their immensely successful Terra Mystica? Since the video is in German, I’ll tell you the answer: with Uwe Rosenberg’s Glass Road, a game about the long tradition of glass production in Bavaria. The basic game mechanic to produce glass and bricks, build buildings to improve your production and cut down forests for firewood is action card selection, but there is a twist to that: each player has an identical set of 15 specialist cards, five of which they pick for their hand each round. When playing a card, you may always use one of its actions, but if no other player has the same card in his hand at the time, you also get the second action. Anticipating your opponents will be even more important than usual in this game, and it does look like Glass Road will be able to maintain the reputation that Terra Mystica built.

The featured photo of the Meteora monastery in Greece was taken by Flickr user alaskapine and shared with a CC-BY license. Thanks a lot!

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