Author: OTSG Staff

Castle Combo

| OTSG Staff

Castle Combo is a tableau-building game that combines simplicity with deep, engaging gameplay, offering highly satisfying experiences.

Each player will spend coins to draft 9 cards from 2 open markets on the table (the lower and upper city), creating along the game a 3×3 square of people interacting with each other to trigger instant effects and end-of-game bonuses.

Each turn, you add a character to your tableau — a seemingly straightforward action that packs a punch regarding strategic decisions. You’ll need to carefully manage your Keys to influence the Messenger pawn at critical moments, as it controls which characters are available for recruitment from two different areas – peasants and nobles.

Balancing your Gold reserves is equally important, ensuring you can afford the characters that best suit your strategy throughout the game. Selecting the right characters is crucial to maximising their immediate effects and the points they will contribute at the game’s end. Finally, carefully arranging these characters on your 3×3 board is key to unlocking their full potential.

After everyone has played 9 turns (i.e., everyone has 9 characters in front of them), the player with the most points in their tableau wins the game.

Game Mechanics:

Game Specifications:

  • 2 – 5 Players
  • 10 – 25 Minutes
  • Difficulty Weight 1.73

Courtisans

| OTSG Staff

Tonight, the queen holds a banquet that everyone will attend. Will they leave a good impression? Backstabbing is fair game, and no trick is too dirty if it allows you to place your favorite families in the spotlight.

In Courtisans, you receive and play three cards on each of your turns. One is played at the Queen’s table to sway a family’s influence, whether in a positive or negative manner. The two other cards are played in your domain and in an opponent’s domain, and they can be worth positive or negative points, depending on their family’s status at the end of the game. Choose where best to place your three cards if you want to end up with the most points and win.

Game Mechanics:

Game Specifications:

  • 2 – 5 Players
  • 20 – 30 Minutes
  • Difficulty Weight 1.30

For All Mankind

| OTSG Staff

For All Mankind is a fast-paced game of strategic exploration, clever trades, and diplomatic shenanigans. Build your empire across the ever-changing solar system. (Careful, the planets move!) Gather, trade, and invest your resources — and do whatever it takes to stay ahead of the competition.

Expand: Grow your empire with colonies (more loot!), research (more power!), and espionage (more nukes!).

Scheme: All is fair in interplanetary domination, but you would never double-cross a friend…right?

Profit: Be the first to reach 10 points, and see your name etched in the stars forever!

Learn to play in about 15 minutes.
Finish a game in about 60 minutes.
The most fun you’ll ever have blowing up your friends in space, guaranteed!

Game Mechanics:

Game Specifications:

  • `1 – 4 Players
  • 60 – 90 Minutes
  • Difficulty Weight 2.00

Ancient: Knowledge

| OTSG Staff

Heirs to an exceptional knowledge that has survived the ages, it is now up to you to preserve the vestige of your civilization.

Ancient Knowledge is a strategic card game in which you erect monuments and build artefacts to pass on your knowledge. Time will make your constructions ephemeral,so make the right decision and combine the many cards at your disposal, because all knowledge is doomed to disappear…

It’s up to you to find the best synergy so that you can pass down knowledge before the decline of the emblematic monuments you have constructed, monuments we still find nowadays in the four corners of the globe. From Mexican pyramids to the Sphinx of Giza, passing through the famous cities of Tiwanaku and Babylon, only the cleverest builder will shine through the ages and seize victory. In this game, your only enemy is time.

Prove to your opponents that you are the worthy representative of your Legacy!
Will your monuments withstand the trial of time?

Game Mechanics:

Game Specifications:

  • 2 – 4 Players
  • ~75 Minutes
  • Difficulty Weight 2.72

Fortify

| OTSG Staff

It’s a hot summer and you see a new family just moved in across the street and you know what that means, boxes! You round up your friends and a giant bag of water balloons. You quickly split into teams, start stacking boxes, and fill your water balloons because everyone knows its time to Fortify!

Use the variety of boxes (Cards) to create a closed wall around your Base. The larger you make it the more friends can fit inside. The more friends you have the faster you can build or the more water balloons (Dice) you can toss at your opponent’s fort. Roll well and land your water balloons on boxes, rival friends, and ultimately their base to claim the day and the pride of the neighborhood!

Game Mechanics:

Game Specifications:

  • ~2 Players
  • 15 – 30 Minutes
  • Difficulty Weight 1.50

Formaggio

| OTSG Staff

You are an Italian cheesemaker in the early 20th century making, aging, and selling your artisanal cheeses. Become the most prestigious cheesemaker in all of Italy by running a highly successful creamery and crafting exceptional cheese. Formaggio is a standalone expansion for Fromage. With both games put together, you can combine any 4 board quadrants, and draft any combination of structure tiles for more variety and more paths to victory.

Formaggio is a simultaneous worker-placement game where players place Workers to make cheese and gather resources from the quadrant of the board facing them. Once all players have placed their Workers, the board rotates, aging any cheese that was made, and presenting each player with a new quadrant to place Workers into. Score Prestige Points by selling cheese to the four locations, and by efficiently managing and upgrading your creamery.

Formaggio features 4 new board quadrants with all new puzzling mini-games:
• Pair your cheese with the wines at the Vigneto.
• Sell cheese to restaurants along the Venetian canals and attract customers.
• Distribute cheese across the Regioni of Italy.
• Deposit cheese in the Banca. (Yes, there is a real bank in Italy that accepts cheese as collateral for loans!)

Other new features:
• Platinum-tier cheeses.
• Reap various rewards in each of the Seasons.
• All new abilities on the Player Boards and Structure tiles.

Game Mechanics:

Game Specifications:

  • 1 – 4 Players
  • 30 – 45 Minutes
  • Difficulty Weight 2.53

Fort

| OTSG Staff

Fort is a 2-4 player card game about building forts and following friends.

In Fort, you’re a kid! And like many kids, you want to grow your circle of friends, collect pizza and toys, and build the coolest fort.

By doing this cool stuff, you’ll score victory points, and at the end of the game, the player with the most victory points wins! Your cards not only let you take actions on your own turn, but also let you follow the other players’ actions on their turns. Will you devote yourself to your own posse, or copy what the other kids are doing?

But be careful as your carefully constructed deck might start losing cards if you don’t actually use them. After all, if you don’t play with your friends, why should they hang out with you anymore?

Game Mechanics:

Game Specifications:

  • 2 – 4 Players
  • 20 – 40 Minutes
  • Difficulty Weight 2.45

Forgotten Waters

| OTSG Staff

Forgotten Waters is a Crossroads Game set in a world of fantastical pirate adventure. In it, players take on the role of pirates sailing together on a ship, attempting to further their own personal stories as well as a common goal.

The world of Forgotten Waters is silly and magical, with stories designed to encourage players to explore and laugh in delight as they interact with the world around them. It’s a game in which every choice can leave a lasting impact on the story, and players will want turn over every rock just to see what they find.

Forgotten Waters features five scenarios and a massive location book that provides players with tons of choices wherever they go.

Game Mechanics:

Game Specifications:

  • 3 – 7 Players
  • 120 – 240 Minutes
  • Difficulty Weight 2.10

Forges of Ravenshire

| OTSG Staff

Grab a hammer and some steel, it’s time to forge! The Blacksmiths Guild of Ravenshire is in need of a new Forgemaster. You and your fellow smiths are competing to see who can make the most money and become the new Forgemaster.

Forges of Ravenshire is played over 4 seasons or rounds. Each season starts with the gathering phase where players will acquire contracts, recruit guild members, and gather resources. Players roll their dice workers and place one of them on an available location to gather resources. Then retrieve a different dice worker to gather even more resources. However, the various workers are from different guilds and when retrieved will activate the guilds you have invested in. All players will take turns placing one of their workers and retrieving another worker 3 times.

After the gathering phase is the production phase. Take those 3 dice workers you have taken and now place them on different areas of your forge to gather more resources, make charcoal or steel, and forge contracts to make money.

At the end of every season, check to see if any special titles have been earned. Titles bring prestige and hard-earned money.

Finally, roll your 3 dice workers again and prepare the county of Ravenshire for the next season.

Game Mechanics:

Game Specifications:

  • 1 – 4 Players
  • 50 – 100 Minutes
  • Difficulty Weight 2.87

Forest Shuffle

| OTSG Staff

In Forest Shuffle, players compete to gather the most valuable trees, then attract species to these trees, thus creating an ecologically balanced habitat for flora and fauna.

To start, each player has six cards in hand, with cards depicting either a particular type of tree or two forest dwellers (animal, plant, mushroom, etc.), with these latter cards being divided in half, whether vertically or horizontally, with one dweller in each card half.

On a turn, either draw two cards — whether face down from the deck or face up from the clearing — and add them to your hand, or play a card from your hand by paying the cost, then putting it into play.

During set-up, three winter cards were placed into the bottom third of the deck. When the third winter card is drawn, the game ends immediately, then players tally their points based on the trees and dwellers in their forest. Whoever scores the most points wins.

Forest Shuffle is the first in a line of Lookout games sporting the Lookout Greenline label, produced on FSC certified paper and avoiding plastic completely.

Game Mechanics:

Game Specifications:

  • 2 – 5 Players
  • 40 – 60 Minutes
  • Difficulty Weight 2.21