Author: T3d-1978

Dungeon Degenerates: Hand of Doom

Dungeon Degenerates: Hand of Doom takes place in the Dark Fantasy Realm of the decaying Eastern Provinces of the Würstreich. Players take escaped criminal adventurers on unsavory missions through four distinct regions, each with their own monsters & encounters. As the players explore the Würstreich, danger levels rise continuously across the map. Players must complete their mission before the Hand of Doom descends on the board, unleashing evil magic on the land.

Dungeon Degenerates is a co-op game where players can form parties or split up throughout the game at will; there is no obligation to stick together. Game play is 1-3 hours based on mission. Dungeon Degenerates has an epic RPG campaign feel in an open world sandbox board game, and you bring your experience & items from previous missions. There are multiple missions & objectives of varying difficulty with multiple ways to approach each mission.

Dungeon Degenerates is set in a cohesive & fixed world with multiple distinct regions which feature unique encounters & thematic monsters. Encounters allow multiple interaction choices; you do not have to fight everyone you see. Play features an open experience system allowing for character customization with new skills. You are always in danger – the town is not an artificial safe zone – combat is dangerous. There are various modes of travel – players cooperate to choose their route & pace, or split up & fend for themselves. Dungeon Degenerates features streamlined combat with tactical depth; each player rolls dice only once on their turn, using standard 6-sided dice only. There are over 100 monsters with unique abilities & artwork.

Game Mechanics:

  • Cooperative Game
  • Dice Rolling
  • Role Playing
  • Scenario / Mission / Campaign Game
  • Solo / Solitaire Game

Game Specifications:

  • 1 – 4 Players
  • 30 – 360 Minutes
  • Difficulty Weight 3.64

Dune: Imperium – Uprising

In Dune: Imperium Uprising, you want to continue to balance military might with political intrigue, wielding new tools in pursuit of victory. Spies will shore up your plans, vital contracts will expand your resources, or you can learn the ways of the Fremen and ride mighty sandworms into battle!

Dune: Imperium Uprising is a standalone spinoff to Dune: Imperium that expands on that game’s blend of deck-building and worker placement, while introducing a new six-player mode that pits two teams against one other in the biggest struggle yet.

The Dune: Imperium expansions Rise of Ix and Immortality work with Uprising, as do almost all of the cards from the base game, and elements of Uprising can be used with Dune: Imperium.

The choices are yours. The Imperium awaits!

Game Mechanics:

  • Automatic Resource Growth
  • Card Play Conflict
  • Resolution
  • Contracts
  • Deck, Bag, and Pool
  • Building
  • Delayed Purchase
  • Force Commitment
  • Increase Value of Unchosen Resources
  • Multi-Use Cards
  • Open Drafting
  • Solo / Solitaire Game
  • Team-Based Game
  • Turn Order: Progressive
  • Variable Player Powers
  • Worker Placement

Game Specifications:

  • 1 – 6 Players
  • 60 – 120 Minutes
  • Difficulty Weight 3.50

dude

dude is a game where you say “dude”. The word “dude” appears on each card in one of six different ways, with 12 dooode cards, 12 dewd cards, 12 dude. cards, 12 dude? cards, 12 tiny dude cards, and 12 tie-dyed dude cards.

The goal is to quickly find matches for as many of your cards as you can. To play, you say the word “dude” as you think it should be said, based on how it appears on your card. At the same time, listen to how the other players are saying the word “dude”. Trying to figure out whether you have the same card as another player is the essence of dude.

Game Mechanics:

  • Acting

Game Specifications:

  • 3 – 6 Players
  • 1 – 5 Minutes
  • Difficulty Weight 1.00

Drop It

Circles, triangles, squares and diamonds: Drop It is about letting go, with the pieces you drop landing somewhere in the vertical game board, ideally where they’ll score the most points, but the tiles bounce around and don’t always land where you expect them to!

In more detail, each turn the active player drops one of their pieces into the slot of the game board. The player scores points for the highest level that the piece touches and for any special locations that it touches, but if the piece touches anything of the same shape or color, then you score nothing! What’s more, certain pieces are forbidden at certain spots on the edge of the playing area.

The Drop It rulebook includes variant rules for simpler play or more variety from game to game.

Game Mechanics:

  • Dexterity

Game Specifications:

  • 2 – 4 Players
  • 30 Minutes
  • Difficulty Weight 1.09

Dragon Farkle

Gather your courage! The long-enjoyed peace of Yon has been disrupted by a ferocious and mean-spirited dragon — he’s terrorizing the locals and eating their livestock without their permission! Fortunately, a few wannabe heroes (that’s you!) have risen to the challenge of slaying the beast. Get yourself a brave companion, gather a powerful army, and enter the Dragon’s Keep for cheese and country in Dragon Farkle!

To play, you gather an army of loyal soldiers or steal them from your opponents, hire suspicious-looking companions and gain allegedly useful items (most of which aren’t even cursed), then fight that dragon you’ve heard so much about — or don’t, if you hate winning…

Game Mechanics:

  • Mechanisms
  • Dice Rolling
  • Hand Management
  • Open Drafting
  • Push Your Luck
  • Re-rolling and Locking
  • Take That
  • Variable Player Powers

Game Specifications:

  • 2 – 5 Players
  • 30 Minutes
  • Difficulty Weight 1.50

Draftosaurus

Your goal in Draftosaurus is to have the dino park most likely to attract visitors. To do so, you have to draft dino meeples and place them in pens that have some placement restrictions. Each turn, one of the players roll a die and this adds a constraint to which pens any other player can add their dinosaur.

Draftosaurus is a quick and light drafting game in which you don’t have a hand of cards that you pass around (after selecting one), but a bunch of dino meeples in the palm of your hand.

Game Mechanics:

  • Closed Drafting
  • Dice Rolling
  • Die Icon Resolution
  • Set Collection
  • Simultaneous Action Selection

Game Specifications:

  • 2 – 5 Players
  • 15 Minutes
  • Difficulty Weight 1.25

Doomlings

Somewhere on a doomed and distant planet, life has emerged, competing for supremacy until the world’s inevitable destruction. The object of the game is to score the most points by the time the world ends. Score points by playing Traits for your Doomlings’ species, making them more adaptable, resilient, and mischievous. As your Doomlings assert their dominance, Catastrophes will befall the planet, causing setbacks for each competing species. When the third Catastrophe inevitably strikes, the world ends, and the Doomlings with the strongest set of traits gets to look the Apocalypse in the eye and declare…“I scored the most points!”

Throughout the game, players draw Trait cards from a community pile, and then play them for points. Traits can also have special abilities and bonuses, allowing players to build a wide range of winning combinations. The game is played in rounds, using Age cards, which have different rules that players must follow. But be warned, hidden in the Ages are Catastrophes: special rounds with adverse effects that force players to adapt their strategy.

Doomlings adds a fun twist to hand management, by introducing the “Gene Pool” mechanic. Your Gene Pool is your hand size: it is unique to you, and it can increase or decrease through special Traits, or even Catastrophes. Doomlings includes 6 colorful Gene Pool counter cards, elegantly tracking how many cards you should hold at the end of your turn. There are opportunities to increase your Gene Pool (hand size), which can give your species a leg up by providing a larger pool of Traits to select from each turn.

A lightweight card game for 2-6 players, Doomlings can be played casually amongst friends, or competitively by the gaming enthusiast family. Because there are no duplicate cards, and Age cards are chosen randomly, no two games are ever the same. While the game itself can be learned in 5 minutes or less, don’t be fooled: with 100+ unique Traits—in Red, Blue, Green, Purple and Colorless—and rare, powerful Dominant Traits, there are countless combinations of play to be discovered.

A typical game takes between 20-45 minutes, depending on the number of players and sequence of events. Advanced-play expansion packs are also available, including a Hidden Objective expansion for a fun twist to the game. Doomlings requires no dice or additional pieces, just a jolly embrace of the inevitable end of the world!

—description from the designer

Game Mechanics:

  • End Game Bonuses
  • Events
  • Finale Ending
  • Hand Management
  • Move Through Deck
  • Set Collection
  • Take That

Game Specifications:

  • 2 – 6 Players
  • 20 – 45 Minutes
  • Difficulty Weight 1.67

Don’t Talk to Strangers

School’s out but otherworldly STRANGERS are here! Mom & Dad haven’t caught on yet so you’re on your own, kiddo. Play your cards as efficiently as you can, helping to navigate your Kids one at a time from SCHOOL to a SCORING space–in order to score as many points as you can before the neighborhood is completely overrun with STRANGERS!

  1. At the start of the game, each player will draw a hand of 3 cards and place one of their kids in the SCHOOL space. Your goal is to get that kid into a valuable scoring space, at which point you’ll place a new kid in the SCHOOL space and repeat the process. Some spaces are worth more points at the end of the game, and some confer a unique bonus (for example, your hand size increases by 1 for each Kid you have in the Library).
  2. Remember, you want to score a good space, but you’ll have to Walk, Run, Skateboard, School Bus, and even City Bus to get there! Each turn you’ll play one card and draw a new card to replace it!
  3. But watch out! When any player draws a STRANGER card, they can abduct any kid on a “STRANGER SPACE!” Furthermore, now that a STRANGER is lurking in that space, it is impassable for all future movement…so you may just have to re-route your plans on the fly! SAUCER cards can abduct *any* kid–even one that has already scored–but your opponent will have to get lucky when they flip the SAUCER COIN or you’ll escape abduction!

—description from the publisher

Game Mechanics:

  • Take That

Game Specifications:

  • 1 – 4 Players
  • 15 – 20 Minutes
  • Difficulty Weight 2.00