Author: Kai

Russian Railroads

Reviews

Russian Railroads is a European optimization game, subtype worker placement. Every game, you try to do better than the one before, optimize your strategy and score a bit higher. But it’s not a typical game of the genre. Where you often have a lack of options in other such games, only one or two routes to victory which you try to use as well as you can, Russian Railroads gives you many different, viable ways to score. Its many moving parts create a fascinating whole that will let you find new ways to a higher score for a long time.

Read more

Mai-Star

Reviews

Geisha are a fascinating and confusing part of Japanese culture. Women that you pay to be with for their conversational skills, or their talents in the arts, or even for their ability to play games. They are personal entertainers, but with a long history and, to us, strange customes.
Mai-Star, a game about geisha, will probably not do a thing to make you understand them better. But it will entertain you for half an hour, and then maybe for some more.

Read more

Rococo

Reviews

Games about making dresses are a tough sell. Between games about conquest, economic success and survival, tailoring just doesn’t compare. So to stand out, a game about making ballroom gowns needs to excel in other areas. Having well linked games mechanics and a new take on deck-building might do the trick for Rococo.

Read more

Istanbul

Reviews

The second nominee for this year’s Kennerspiel des Jahres, Istanbul makes you run around the bazaar district of the titular city in a desperate search for rubies. Why rubies, you ask? No idea, to be honest, but as the game progresses it turns into a frantic search for your lost assistants, anyway. Leaving your assitants behind to work, then gathering them up again and leaving them somewhere else, that’s the core of Istanbul.

Read more

Canterbury

Reviews

Games where you build cities are not exactly new. But they rarely go into the logistics of it, things like “before you build a theater there, shouldn’t you supply food and water”? Canterbury goes into that part of building cities, but it doesn’t need complicated rules for it. Just make sure you build things in order and make sure you get the majorities in supplying city districts, because that’s how you win.

Read more