Meople News: Language of the Mad

Hobby World

Deranged (Hobby World)

“Before you can win the game you have to kill another player character” is not usually something that sounds good to us. Player elimination is one of our least favorite things in a game. Nevertheless, hear me out about Deranged, because killing players is part of it, but player elimination isn’t. The players have to survive for three days and three nights in a city full of monsters. That’s bad enough, but it gets worse. At night, at least one of them turns into a monster, the Deranged. The only way for him to turn back is to kill another player. The victim isn’t eliminated, however. They return to life at the graveyard, minus their equipment, plus a curse. To get rid of the curse, again, someone else needs to die. On top of that, other bad things may happen to the group as a whole every time someone dies. They say that working together is a good way to escape. They don’t say how to do that when you have to kill each other to get out.

Fantasy Flight Games

The big promise of Outer Rim is to let you play as the scoundrels of the Star Wars universe. Now we see what we do in that role, and how we do it. The latest preview introduces the various decks of cards involved. Cargo both legal and illegal comes from one, bounties on famous characters from the movies from another. The most interesting is the job deck, where jobs are not the mowing-the-lawn kind and more rob-a-casino. High risk, high reward. Buying upgrades to make all those tasks easier is another option. And when your gear is good enough you can still buy luxury items that make you famous just for owning them. One downside to all this is that the cards you get are random, but that does fit with the theme. When you’re dealing with the underworld you’ll rarely get exactly what you wanted.

Quined Games

After three previews showing details of Quined Games’ Terramara there is one aspect of the game we haven’t seen yet: the items you can craft. Some are simply worth lots of victory points. Others have more interesting effects. See how many effects you guess from the card iconography without even knowing the game.

Bezier Games

There are two basic things everyone knows about werewolves. One, when it’s full moon they are bad for you. Two, silver is bad for them. Bezier Games will spin off a new series of games from their ever popular Werewolf series. In Silver each player is head of a small village with five inhabitants. Each of them has a value showing how many werewolves he or she will attract. Your goal is to have a smaller total than your neighbors. You get there using the other part of the villager cards, their special ability. They let you reveal hidden cards, exchange cards, draw more villager cards, or you can simply trade a new card for one of your current residents to bring down your village value. Any player who thinks they are better of than their opponents can call to end the round. However, if they are wrong they’ll be hit with even more penalty points. Silver will be released at GenCon, the first sequel Silver Bullet in Essen. Both are complete games, but you can mix them together for even more fun. You can expect more Silver games next year.

Plaid Hat Games

Super Punch Fighter, Plaid Hat’s card game adaptation of a classic, button-mashing beat ’em up game, is approaching, and in two preview posts we see the first four fighters. We have a corporate reptile, a brilliant (and insane) scientist, a security guard and a cheese loving mouse-girl. Those are just the first four. How are they going to top this craziness?

Giochix.it

As some of you might know, I have about half a degree in linguistics. I have a couple of half degrees, although I lack a complete one, but it’s the linguistics one that tells you why I’m excited about this bit of news. On Kickstarter by Giochix.it is a new deluxe version of a game about language: De Vulgari Eloquentia. In it you travel around Italy and collect data on the various dialects spoken there to forge the new common language, the Volgare. Interested in this new language are the cloth merchants who are in need of a common contract language that isn’t Latin. Your research is not just for leisure, it’s worth money. Although the game is about the common language, there are many other ways to score points, up to becoming pope. You have many different strategies to explore. And although the game mechanisms don’t have anything to do with language, De Vulgari Eloquentia‘s background is uniquely awesome.

This week’s featured photo was taken by Enrico Strocchi. It shows the Saint Sophia cathedral in Kiev, Ukraine. Beautiful, isn’t it? Thanks for sharing this beautiful photo, Enrico! (Saint Sophia’s Cathedral, Enrico Strocchi, CC-BY-SA)

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