Tag: 2018

Futuropia

Reviews

Friedemann Friese wants us to build a utopia. Not the kind where we all have jet packs and go to the moon for brunch, but a more achievable kind. The kind of utopia where we all have enough food and energy and can spend our days doing things we enjoy, not at a job that is slowly but inevitably draining my will to live, where every hour makes me long for the sweet embrace of the grave, where the only way anything will ever change is for the worse… sorry, what was I talking about?
Oh yeah, Futuropia. Even that small kind of utopia doesn’t come for free, initially. Someone has to make it work first. Your mission, should you choose to accept it: build a condominium that produces its own food and energy and where all the work is done by robots.

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Cerebria: The Inside World

Reviews

Year2018PublisherMindclash GamesAuthorRichard Amann, Viktor Peter, István Pócsi, Frigyes Schöberl, Nick Shaw, Dávid TurcziPlayers1 – 4Age14 – 199Time60-120StrategyLuckInteractionComponents & DesignComplexityScoreInside every one of us, powerful forces are[…]

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Carpe Diem

Reviews

Year2018PublisheraleaAuthorStefan FeldPlayers2 – 4Age10 – 199Time45-75StrategyLuckInteractionComponents & DesignComplexityScoreCarpe Diem. The fish of the day, as they say in Latin. It’s an[…]

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Just One

Reviews

Year2018PublisherRepos ProductionAuthorLudovic Roudy, Bruno SautterPlayers3 – 7Age8 – 199Time20StrategyLuckInteractionComponents & DesignComplexityScoreIt’s often one little twist that makes the difference between yet another[…]

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Belratti

Reviews

I admit, there are wide ranges of modern art I don’t get. If you put a piece of butter in a corner you shouldn’t complain when the cleaners remove it. And if you want to pass a picture of a trumpet as a masterpiece, at least write Ceci n’est pas une trompette below it. I don’t want to belittle the choice of artwork in Belratti, but if your paintings are realistic depictions of everyday objects then you don’t get to complain about forgeries.

Art forgery is what Belratti by Michael Loth, winner of the Hippodice Game Contest, is about. The players in the cooperative party game are painters and curators. Curators ask for paintings to be made, the painters provide them. The famous forger Belratti smuggles his own works into the selection, and it’s on the curators to unmask his dastardly works.

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Tsukuyumi & After The Moonfall

Reviews

One amazing thing games let us do is explore worlds of imagination. Space ships traveling to distant stars are just as possible as dragons or old gods walking the Earth. I can’t think of any game that stretches the borders of imagination as far as Tsukuyumi.
On the surface, the world of Tsukuyumi used to be just like ours. Like Earth, that is. One difference, though – or at least I hope it’s a difference. Thousands of years ago, the white dragon god Tsukuyumi was trapped in the center of the moon by his brothers and sisters. There he lay, plotting, planning, until one day he broke free of his lunar prison by crashing into the Earth. The devastation was absolute. Continents shattered. Mountains crumbled. Oceans fell try. Animals, plants, and especially humanity paid a heavy toll. And amidst all this destruction Tsukuyumi and his army of Oni warriors stand to recapture what was once theirs.

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Architects of the West Kingdom

Reviews

After three games around the North Sea – Explorers, Raiders, and Shipwrights of the North Sea – designer Shem Phillips wanted a change of direction. Literally. So him and co-designer S J Macdonald went to the West Kingdom. The first game in this new trilogy is Architects of the West Kingdom, the sequel Paladins of the West Kingdom was just funded on Kickstarter, we don’t know the title of the third game yet.

The West Kingdom is the 9th century Carolingian Empire, and in the first game the players are architects – don’t act surprised now – construct landmarks and cathedrals for the king.

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Tokyo Highway

Reviews

You’ve probably seen photos of the crazy highways of Tokyo, with loops of the Shuto Expressway criss-crossing with on-ramps, off-ramps, sideways-ramps and itself in multiple levels. (Not going through any buildings, though. The Gate Tower Building is in Osaka.) The Expressway turned out that way, at least in parts, because of the 1964 Olympic Games. The first bit of Shuto Expressway was opened in 1962, and for the Olympic Games Tokyo wanted to present an efficient, modern transport system. Building this way was the cheap and quick way to have the Expressway connect much of the city.

It’s obvious that there’s a game hidden in that story. Many designers could have done it, had they thought of it. Resource management, worker placement, a tight time limit, contract cards to connect certain neighborhoods… . But many designers didn’t think of it. Naotaka Shimamoto and Yoshiaki Tomioka did, and they made a very different game called Tokyo Highway.

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Brass: Lancashire & Birmingham

Reviews

It is the eighteenth century and the skies darken over England. That’s not a metaphor for anything, nor is it talking about the typical English weather. The Industrial Revolution has begun and coal smoke blackens the air and lungs of England.

The original Brass turned ten years old last year, but the game by Martin Wallace still holds a proud overall rank 24 on BoardGameGeek at the time of writing. Not bad in a time where new games are so numerous that many won’t even be remembered ten years from now.

Two new editions by Roxley are a great opportunity for us to review this modern classic. Technically it’s Brass: Lancashire that is a new edition of the original Brass, Brass: Birmingham is more like a spin-off. However, the two games are so similar in rules and theme that we decided to put them in one review and highlight the differences.

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