Category: Featured

Bunny Kingdom

Reviews

In the Year of our Hare 1492 Bunstoph Columbun, an acute listener even among bunnies, heard sounds of life from the other side of the Atbuntic Ocean. A New World thus discovered, the rush for colonizing it began. Up to four Rabbit Lords go to make this new world theirs in the name of the great Bunny King. The most successful of them will earn the coveted title of Big Ears plus all the golden carrots their ships can carry.

Bunny Kingdom is a card drafting and area control game by the illustrious Richard Garfield, inventor of such things as Magic: The Gathering and Robo Rally. This new game has a deceptively cute theme and design, but don’t let that fool you. The contest for the new world is fought with all the cunning a bunny can muster.

Read more

Luxor

Reviews

I thought I’d seen every possible way to use cards. Keep them in your hand. Put them on the table. Facing you. Facing everyone else at the table. Turning them every which way to change what they do. And then along comes Luxor, a Spiel des Jahres nominee by Rüdiger Dorn, with a way to use cards that is all new, and yet super simple.

There isn’t much of a story to Luxor. Each player controls a group of adventurers as they make their way through the legendary temple of Luxor to the pharaoh’s burial chamber. It’s not so much what you’re doing or why that makes Luxor interesting. It’s the how.

Read more

Die Quacksalber von Quedlinburg

Reviews

The Quedlinburg Quacks are not the east German town’s hockey team. Neither are the Quacks of Quedlinburg a family of celebrity ducks living in the area. I would love if they were, though. No, The Quacks of Quedlinburg (original title: Die Quacksalber von Quedlinburg, no official English title yet) is one of Wolfgang Warsch’s games on this year’s Spiel des Jahres shortlists. We already reviewed the others (Ganz Schön Clever and The Mind), so today we’ll talk about quacks and snake oil salesmen.

The players in Die Quacksalber von Quedlinburg are charlatans selling their potions and tinctures at the annual fair in Quedlinburg. At least, they will sell them if they manage to make them without blowing up their kettle. Spoiler: they won’t. Not reliably. The possibility of your kettle exploding is the fun. And the best part: when it does explode you have no one to blame but yourself.

Read more

The Mind

Reviews, Video Reviews

This is probably our shortest review ever. At least I can’t think of a game that would have an even shorter one. The Mind is one of Wolfgang Warsch’s games nominated in the Spiel des Jahres awards this year (the others being Die Quacksalber von Quedlinburg and Ganz Schön Clever, both nominated for Kennerspiel). I hope you’ll enjoy our very brief video review!

Read more

Kickstarter Preview: Evil Corp

Coming Soon

To many, they are our modern day legendary heroes: the founders, or maybe even serial founders, of giant Internet corporations. Multi-billionaires with power over and a vision for the future of mankind. But are they heroes? We only have their word that they aren’t evil. And even that not anymore after Google removed “Don’t be Evil” from their mission statement recently. For all we know they might as well be villains, ready to force their vision of the future on us whether we want it or not. Fortunately, their visions for the future are not all that compatible. Before anyone forces anything on us we’ll have to wait and see who will be the last man standing.

Read more

Ganz schön clever

Reviews

This year, the third seal of the apocalypse has been broken: A roll-and-write game is nominated for Kennerspiel des Jahres. Or was that the fourth seal? How did that happen? Has the world gone mad? Did the Yahtzee mafia threaten the jury? Take their children hostage?

It’s something much less sinister. I didn’t think it could happen, but Ganz schön clever might be a roll-and-write game that deserves to be on that list. There’s something about it that sets it apart from other games where you roll dice and write numbers on your score pad. In this game, the dice have different colors.

Read more

Flee

Reviews

As a reviewer, games where you discover new content and new rules while you play are frustrating. On the one hand, they are awful. How do you review a game with a Legacy or Fast Forward mechanism without giving away all the good bits? On the other hand, they are great, simply because discovering new things while you play works that fingerboard that is our brain’s reward mechanism so well. Or, in plain English, they’re one hell of a lot of fun. And we love to talk about fun games. So be warned, ahead you will find very mild spoilers for the first few rounds of Friedemann Friese’s Flee.

Read more