Belratti

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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Pandemic Legacy Season 2

The big question after Pandemic Legacy Season 1 was: How will Season 2 start? Will it assume that we saved the world? That we didn’t? How do you start a second season when everyone’s first season had a different ending?

Well, you’ll have to click to find out. I’m not putting spoilers in the teaser text.

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Mansion of Madness

There are many, many games set in H.P. Lovecraft’s Mythos universe, and they trend to be on the large side. Travel around the city, or even the world to stop the Great Old Ones from awakening. The scale makes sense when you consider that Cthulhu was put back to sleep by ramming him with a ship the last time he woke up. And he’s supposed to be small compared to some of the others.

What those games often forget is Lovecraft’s stories are not primarily the giant monster kind of horror. Much of Lovecraft’s writing is more intimate than that. It’s the horror of insanity that you may find, for instance, in the New England countryside. Or in a luxurious mansion anywhere in the world.

Fantasy Flight Games have in their catalog the biggest names of the former kind of game: Arkham Horror and Eldritch Horror. But they also have the other side of Lovecraftian horror with Mansions of Madness.

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The Mind

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!

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Flee

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.

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Professor Evil and the Citadel of Time

Usually it’s safe to assume that the people entering somebody else’s house through the window are the bad guys. Usually. And it’s not an excuse that the dwellings owner is called Professor Evil, either! What was he supposed to do, not pursue an academic career because of his last name? There is, however, the little detail that Professor Evil has been using his time machine to steal priceless artifacts right out of history. The Mona Lisa is small fry in a collection that contains Excalibur and the Ark of the Covenant.

If some heroic individuals were to enter such an individual’s citadel to return those stolen items to their rightful place in the timeline they would most definitely be the good guys. But their mission won’t be easy. A man called Professor Evil, why, his security systems are bound to be more interesting than a blinking red light on the wall. Those heroic individuals would need some outside guidance as they make their way through the Professor’s home. Someone telling them were to go, what to do. Someone like… you. Welcome to Professor Evil and the Citadel of Time.

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Rob ‘n Run

Rob ‘n Run might easily mislead you when you first look at it. Between the cartoonish cover art and the paper built escape vehicle on the table you could be forgiven for mistaking it for a kids’ game. You’d still be mistaken. Although Rob ‘n Run is suitable for kids – the crimes you commit are non-violent safecracks, and the rules are straightforward enough – adult gamers will have more fun. You have to take great care how you communicate, what conclusions other players will likely draw from revealing certain information in the situation you find yourself in. Kids below the recommended age of ten will struggle with that. We are enjoying the hell out of it.

The first published design by Michael Luu is a cooperative game with restricted communication. The players are a gang of safecrackers doing a few more jobs on their way to the airport. For every robbery one of them is the boss. The boss knows the tools needed for this job. Instead of just telling the rest of the gang, however, he can only give cryptic clues. The rules say he does this so the police cannot figure out where they are from what he says on the radio. I think it’s more likely that he read to many Batman comics and The Riddler is his idol.

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Exit vs. Unlock – A Competitive Review

An Escape Room is a fun way to spend an evening where you and a couple of friends are locked in a room. Wait, it sounds weird when I say it like that. The point is to escape from that room, usually in an hour or less, by discovering useful items and solving puzzles, both leading to more items and more puzzles, until you finally unlock the Exit and escape. (Unlock the Exit. See what I did there?) Anyway, it’s a great way to spend an evening with friends, and you do it indoors without getting too sweaty.

Doing things indoor and without getting sweaty brings us to the next step in Escape Room evolution: Why would you even leave your living room? You could have a box full of puzzles to solve at home and avoid all that messy outside business. And that’s were Escape Rooms Inna Box come in, a new kind of cooperative game that lets you have the excitement of an Escape Room around your living room table. You could argue if they are boardgames or not, but we’re not going to nitpick that point right now: They’re produced by the same publishers, made by the same designers and enjoyed by many of the same people as more traditional boardgames. People like us, so we’ll review them when we feel like it.

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Mysterium

Many years ago, in Warwick Manor, there occurred a murder most foul. The crime had been carefully planned and so well executed that the police have ruled it an accident. But ever since Warwick Manor has not been the same. Haunted, they say. And in that haunting the new owner of Warwick Manor sees a chance to have the murder solved still, and the ghost thus laid to rest. He has invited the most famous psychics in the world to contact the ghost and discover what happened. A great plan in theory, if only the ghost wasn’t too traumatized by his death to clearly remember what happened, and if he hadn’t been a member of the Dixit fan club in life.

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