Author: OTSG Staff

Horrified

| OTSG Staff

The stakes have been raised. Imagine living in a place so wretched that it’s not plagued by one, two, or even three monsters — but seven of the most horrifying fiends!

In this game, you’ll come face to face with them all as you work together to rid the town of the maniacal or misunderstood creatures…before it’s too late.

Horrified includes high-quality sculpted miniatures (Frankenstein, The Bride of Frankenstein, The Wolf Man, Dracula, The Mummy, The Invisible Man, Creature from the Black Lagoon). Its innovative, easy-to-learn, cooperative gameplay has players working together against the monsters with varying levels of difficulty. Just as each monster is unique, they require different strategies and tactics to be defeated.

Game Mechanics:

Game Specifications:

  • 1 – 5 Players
  • ~60 Minutes
  • Difficulty Weight 2.04

Honga

| OTSG Staff

Excitement in a prehistoric period! The saber-toothed tiger clan is looking for a new leader, but which one of you can best take care of the clan in Honga and prove to be the most worthy leader?

There are multiple ways to prove your worth: gather supplies, comb through the dark forest, pay homage to the old nature gods, attract mammoths, and successfully trade with other clans. But! No matter how busy you are with these tasks, you can never forget Honga! Whenever you ignore the local saber-toothed tiger, he will come and eat your food — and getting rid of him can turn out to be tough.

Honga is an action selection resource management game for 2-5 players, age 8+, set in the prehistoric period. Players take turns playing their action card to the central board, paying careful attention to where they place it, and how it’s rotated. The number of hands pointing to an action space determines how many times you may use that action. Gather resources and use them to complete trade agreements, lure mammoths to the tribe herd, and pay homage to the old nature gods. But! If you don’t make sure that at least one action point is allocated to Honga’s den, he’ll come steal food from you! Players must balance between keeping Honga at bay and using their limited action points effectively.

With multiple paths to victory, light player interaction, and a 45 minute play time, this game will have you coming back again and again to play with Honga, the local saber-tooth tiger that’s really just a big kitty at heart.

Game Mechanics:

Game Specifications:

  • 2 – 5 Players
  • ~45 Minutes
  • Difficulty Weight 1.89

Holotype: Mesozoic North America

| OTSG Staff

A fast-paced light-strategy worker placement board game about paleontology for 2-5 players.

Players use their Paleontologist, Grad Student and Field Assistant workers to gather fossils, do research and publish new Dinosaurs and Marine Reptiles as Holotypes. Personal and semi-collaborative Global Objectives feature modern paleontology concepts such as cladistics and taxonomy.

The player with the most Victory Points from publishing Holotypes, completing Personal Objectives and contributing to Global Objectives wins.

Game Mechanics:

Game Specifications:

  • 2 – 5 Players
  • 60 – 120 Minutes
  • Difficulty Weight 2.20

Helionox: Deluxe Edition

| OTSG Staff

Helionox is a movement based deck building board game where great leaders vie for control in a shattered solar system. One to four players can attempt mastery over competitive, cooperative, and solo modes. Designed to play fast with a quick setup and an imminent ending, Helionox has tension to spare from the first turn to the last.


The Deluxe Edition of Helionox brings together the original core set of Helionox: The Last Sunset and incorporates it with a brand new expansion called Mercury Protocol. The Kickstarter will offer a full sized box and game board along with the expansion and can be purchased via Kickstarter with or without the original core set.

Game Mechanics:

Game Specifications:

  • 1 – 4 Players
  • 30 – 90 Minutes
  • Difficulty Weight 2.59

Heat: Pedal to the Metal

| OTSG Staff

Based on simple and intuitive hand management, Heat: Pedal to the Metal puts players in the driver’s seat of intense car races, jockeying for position to cross the finish line first, while managing their car’s speed if they don’t want to overheat. Selecting the right upgrades for their car will help them hug the curves and keep their engine cool enough to maintain top speeds. Ultimately, their driving skills will be the key to victory!

Drivers can compete in a single race or use the “Championship System” to play a whole season in one game night, customizing their car before each race to claim the top spot of the podium. They have to be careful as the weather, road conditions, and events will change every race to spice up their championship. Players can also enjoy a solo mode with the Legends Module or add automated drivers as additional opponents in multiplayer games.

Game Mechanics

Game Specifications:

  • 1 – 6 Players
  • 30 – 60 Minutes
  • Difficulty Weight 2.16

The Haunted Mansion

| OTSG Staff
The Haunted Mansion

The Haunted Mansion

Disney’s beloved The Haunted Mansion comes to life — err, death — in this hauntingly fun family board game! Explore all the classic rooms of the ghost-infested manor, from the festivities-filled Ballroom to the Attic and out to the Graveyard and beyond in search of spirits. Beware, though, of the Hitchhiking Ghosts, who are notorious for “following you home” as that may spell your doom in the end!

Players gain points by socializing with ghosts around the Haunted Mansion. Players move around the mansion by rotating the Endless Hallway around Madame Leota’s Séance Room, collecting Ghost cards in front of them in sets, each of which are worth different point values. Players want to avoid Haunt cards, as the most “haunted” player will lose points. The player with the most points at the end wins.

Game Mechanics:

  • Action Points
  • Push Your Luck
  • Set Collection

Game Specifications:

  • 2 – 6 Players
  • ~30 Minutes
  • Difficulty Weight 1.83

Hadara

| OTSG Staff

Hadara carries you off into the world of cultures and countries of this earth. Over three epochs, you will experience the transformation of your new world from a small settlement to a high culture. You want to populate this world with people who come from different cultures and continents as well as different ages. To bring glory and honor to your world, you should choose the persons and accomplishments skillfully. But you should not ignore agriculture, culture, and military power, otherwise one of your competitors might get bigger and more successful than you. Who will succeed first in creating a new flourishing high culture?

Game Mechanics:

Game Specifications:

  • 2 – 5 Players
  • 45 – 60 Minutes
  • Difficulty Weight 2.20

Habitats

| OTSG Staff

In Habitats, each player builds a big wildlife park without cages or fences. The animals in your park need their natural habitats: grassland, bush, rocks or lakes. The zebra needs a big area of grass and some water adjacent, for example, while a bat needs rocks and bush and water, a hart needs bush and grass, and a crocodile needs mainly water. There is a snake, baboon, bee, elephant, otter, lizard, turtle, eagle, meerkat, scorpio, hog, catfish, rhino, etc., each with its own landscape requirements — 68 different animals in total.

Each player starts their individual park with an entrance tile, and they are each represented in the marketplace of animal tiles by a ceramic figure (or a wooden ranger meeple in some editions). On a turn, a player takes the tile to their left, right or front; moves their figure to the space just vacated; then draws a tile to place where their figure started the turn.

When adding an animal tile in your park, you add its main landscape — the base space for the animal — to your park, too. While placing this new animal, its own piece of landscape can help to fulfill the requirements of your other animals’ requirements, e.g., the water on a hippo tile fulfilling the adjacent otter’s need for water. Thus, fulfilling every animal’s desire for land becomes a more and more difficult task with each tile you add.

Aside from expanding your park with different landscape types, flora and animals, you can improve its profitability by building extra entrance roads, trek spots, and watchtowers.

Habitats lasts three seasons, with each season giving each player 6-9 new tiles for their parks. Whoever has best met the goal of the season receives bonus points, with a smaller number of points for second and third place. At the end of the game, each player scores for each tile in their park based on whether that tile’s requirements are satisfied. Whoever scores the most points wins!

Game Mechanics:

Game Specifications:

  • 2 – 5 Players
  • 30 – 50 Minutes
  • Difficulty Weight 2.25

The Guild of Merchants Explorers

| OTSG Staff
The Guild of Merchants Explorers

The Guild of Merchants Explorers

In The Guild of Merchant Explorers, each player starts with one city on their personal map board.

Shuffle the deck of terrain cards, then reveal most of these cards one by one. Based on the terrain revealed, each player places on their board cubes that are connected to their starting city or other cubes. You want to complete areas on your board, cross the seas to new land, and establish new cities on the board. You can explore capsized ships for treasure — which gives you special placement capabilities — and create linked connections between locations to score bonus points. Common objectives can be completed by all players, with those who complete it first scoring more points.

At the end of a round, all cubes are removed from each board, leaving only the cities behind, so if you don’t establish new cities, you’ll be stuck in the same places.

The Guild of Merchant Explorers contains multiple copies of four different maps, and the game is designed so that you can play remotely with one or more copies.

Game Mechanics:

  • Bingo
  • Line Drawing
  • Network Building
  • Pattern Movement

Game Specifications:

  • 1 – 4 Players
  • ~45 Minutes
  • Difficulty Weight 2.00

The Grimm Forest

| OTSG Staff
The Grimm Forest

The Grimm Forest

Welcome to The Grimm Forest, where family members of the legendary Three Little Pigs are having an epic house building competition. But this is no ordinary competition as all the most famous Fairy Tale characters will be looking on and occasionally lending a hand.

Who will benefit most from the cunning of Robin Hood, the beauty of Snow White, the bountiful gifts of the Golden Goose or the dark witchcraft of the Evil Queen?

Using only their wits, a handful of sharp steel tools, and a few stacks of resources gathered at great risk from fields, brickyards, and even the dark and deadly Grimm Forest itself, each player must compete to be the first to build 3 Houses and gain the title of Royal Builder.

Players are encouraged to use any of the devious tricks they have read about in the many books of Fables found throughout the land. Some will have their plans wrecked by that villain of old, the Big Bad Wolf, while others will gain bricks, straw, and wood by the cart load.

Who will brave the dangers, avoid foul monsters, and bring home the victory? There is only one way to find out… get ready to venture into …The Grimm Forest!

Grimm Forest is a 2-4 player strategic game of Hidden Movement, Resource Gathering, and House Building. It is a medium weight game that plays in approximately 45-60 minutes.

During the game, players will play cards secretly to move to various Location boards where they attempt to gather resources. Using their deduction skills and a hand full of Fable cards, players attempt to guess each other’s plans and make the most of their actions while disrupting the other player’s plans.

After resources are collected during the Gather Phase, players will enter a Building Phase where they can use those resources to build Wood, Straw, or Brick Houses. Whenever a player builds a Wall Section on one of their houses, a helpful Friend from the nearby forest comes to lend a hand. Players may choose to accept the help of that Friend, but occasionally it makes more sense to send that Friend to a different player, sometimes discarding their current Friend in the process.

With 16 unique Fable cards and 12 powerful Friend cards, gathering resources in the Grimm Forest can be a difficult and challenging endeavor.

Work hard, deduce correctly, avoid the treachery of the other builders and the sharp teeth of the lurking monsters, and you just might have a chance!

Game Mechanics:

  • Set Collection
  • Take That

Game Specifications:

  • 2 – 4 Players
  • 45 – 60 Minutes
  • Difficulty Weight 1.92