Category: Ω Board Games

Etherstone

Nobura is a forgotten planet shrouded in mystery. The story told that a cosmic being sacrificed its divine essence to breathe life into its desolate lands. Etherstones shaped the planet’s biomes and interconnected all living beings with nature. Yet, the lurking threat of the Vacuous, a parasitic force born from the depths of Nobura, poses a challenge to life on the surface, weaving a tale of divine sacrifice. Nobura has always been part of a paradoxical loop of life and death, where the forces of creation and destruction dance in an eternal cosmic struggle.

In Etherstone, players embody faction leaders uniting forces to avert the impending extinction, striving to gain the most victory points through various means, such as summoning cards, overcoming threats, and utilizing their abilities as effectively as possible.

The first stage of the game will be drafting your hand of 7 cards and your leader card. Alternatively, for the first few matches, players can take a pre-made hand of cards with the matching Leader. Leaders have a set number of life points, a strength value, and a persistent asymmetric ability.

During your turn, you can take only one action among the following: Dice Draft, Summon, Attack, Rest, Void Pact.

Players will win by gaining victory points while doing several different actions and the game will end if any of the end-game conditions are met:

  • The active player has no cards left in their hand.
  • There are no cards left in the Threat deck.
  • The victory point pool has no more tokens in it.

Game Specifications:

  • 2 -40 Players
  • 30 – 60 Minutes
  • Difficulty Weight 2.36

Downtown Farmers Market

Downtown Farmers Market takes you to your favorite time of the weekend, but today’s trip might require a little bit more thinking than usual. Your task: Line up eight challenge tiles to create two axes, then place an ingredient tile at the intersection of two challenge requirements each turn.

At the end of the game, check which rows and columns have the ingredients required to complete the corresponding challenges and earn points!

Game Specifications:

  • 2 – 4 Players
  • ~20 Minutes
  • Difficulty Weight 1.42

Deep Dreams

Little Bruno has gone to sleep and will travel during the night between dreams. Our mission as dream guardians is to keep him immersed in the most pleasant dreams and assure us that he wakes up as little as possible during the night.

The goal in Deep Dreams is to score points playing and connecting dream cards, that show the four colors of the dream. You will need to create the largest color groups connected to score victory points, while making sure Bruno doesn’t wake up by drawing a continuous path with the white lines and arrows through the cards. Some dream cards got powerful effects that will help players to get better combinations. And at the end, the longest path will have the greatest reward. Get ready to enter the world of dreams and ensure that Bruno has a quiet and peaceful night.

Game Mechanics:

Game Specifications:

  • 2 – 5 Players
  • 10 – 15 Minutes
  • Difficulty Weight 1.00

GAP

Game Mechanics:

Game Specifications:

  • 2 – 6 Players
  • ~10 Minutes
  • Difficulty Weight 1.20

Everything Ever

You’ve prepared your whole life for this. Every movie you’ve seen, every show you’ve watched, every song you’ve listened to, every place you’ve visited, every book you’ve read, every kind of food you’ve eaten, and every person you’ve ever heard of makes you better at this game. It’s finally time to get credit for everything you already know!

In Everything Ever, you and your friends take turns listing things from categories like “Every Dinosaur Movie” or “Every Brand of Soap”. Two category cards are in play, and on your turn, you must say something that fits in one category and something that fits in the other, with both of those somethings not having been said previously. If you can’t think of something, you can play a category card from the three in your hand to cover the one you’re blanking on, then name something from that new category. If you can’t think of something for a category, you must take that pile as a penalty, then flip a new category from the deck.

If you say something that fits both categories at the same time, you can either discard one of your penalty cards or draw a new category card from the deck, then play a third category card to the table. (Once someone is penalized, drop back to two categories.)

Keep your friends’ iffy answers in check with judge cards, and win by collecting the fewest cards once the deck runs out.

Game Mechanics:

Game Specifications:

  • 2 – 10 Players
  • 20 – 60 Minutes
  • Difficulty Weight 1.00

GoodCritters

It’s the most anticipated moment of any heist: time to split the loot. Of course, everybody trusts the boss to divide everything evenly, right? But will the boss be even-handed and make sure that every “made critter” gets a piece? Maybe the boss will pay off only some of them and keep the rest of it…

GoodCritters is a game for 4-8 criminal critters who are pulling off heists and fighting over the loot! Whoever is chosen as the boss can distribute the loot from the heist however they desire, but it’s the crew that has the final say. If the crew doesn’t like the split, they might just tell the boss to take a hike and put some other critter in charge! In the end, the critter that collects the most valuable stash of loot wins!

Game Mechanics:

Game Specifications:

  • 4 – 8 Players
  • 30 – 45 Minutes
  • Difficulty Weight 1.44

Fish & Katz

Welcome to the most famous fish market in the cat’s world, Tsukiji Market! You and your fellow kitten chefs are competing to get the freshest fish for your restaurant. The competition is so intense that you can’t get what you want without stretching your paws all the way to the most delicious fish at a lightning speed. So spot on the fish, raise your paws, and grab them for the win!

Fish & Katz, first released as Cat’s Tsukiji, is a speed game like no other because you will put on the cutest game component in the world — the cloth cat paws! You can choose the finger cloth of your favorite cat pattern, how cute is that! Each round, a number of fish cards will be displayed on the table. On the count of three, all players simultaneously point their “paws” at the fish card they want. If you are the sole player to point at a card, you get it for a set-collection scoring. However, if any other player(s) point at the same card as you do, none of you get the fish!

The first player to score 6 points wins!

Game Mechanics:

  • Race
  • Real-Time
  • Score-and-Reset Game
  • Set Collection

Game Specifications:

  • 2 – 6 Players
  • 20 – 30 Minutes
  • Difficulty Weight 1.00

First in Flight

First in Flight is a push-your-luck, deck-building game about the race to early flight. Players take on the roles of the Wright Brothers, Samuel Langley, and other flight pioneers, racing to build and pilot the “flyers” that preceded modern airplanes.

Each player’s flyer design is represented by a deck of cards that they can steadily improve and refine, and which may include unknown design flaws that threaten their success.

Flying is a blackjack-style challenge to test a design, break new records, and gain experience — hopefully without crashing. Then, players head back to the workshop to refine their flyers and improve their chances on future flights. There are dozens of available technologies, pilot skills, and friends in the field available for players to customize their own play style and strategy.

Game Mechanics:

  • Deck Building
  • Push Your Luck
  • Race
  • Rondel
  • Turn Order: Time Track
  • Variable Player Powers

Game Specifications:

  • 1 – 4 Players
  • 45 – 75 Minutes
  • Difficulty Weight 2.31

Fire In The Hole

Fire In The Hole is a multi-generational game with a comedy punch. Part carrrd game, part dexterity game, it’s simple enough to entertain the young landlubbers (7+), but has the strategic twists to trick even the saltiest of ol’ seadogs!

Players lay a card, roll dice to determine effects and fire yer cannonball! First to link 4 cannonballs in a row in the 3d ship is the WINNER!

Game Mechanics:

  • Dice Rolling
  • Events
  • Take That

Game Specifications:

  • 2 – 4 Players
  • 15 – 40 Minutes
  • Difficulty Weight 1.00

EGO

We are not alone! It is the 23rd century, and proof of alien life has finally been discovered beyond our solar system. In fact, recent developments in technology have triggered a cascade of discoveries throughout the galaxy; intelligent life and advanced civilizations are now known across many planets, moons, and asteroids in the Milky Way. Now the race is on to establish interstellar relations with the aliens. The only chance we have of reaching alien life is by pooling our resources to build the required Super Ship. In an unprecedented, albeit uneasy, co-operation between the planetary governments, the peoples of our solar system have finally built the first of these Super Ships. Now, the coalition known as the Extraterrestrial Greeting Organization — EGO — is now ready to launch our first mission.

In EGO, players proceed through a sequence of major and minor events including auctions, drafts, risks, and more. Risks and egos are the lifeblood of this game as players will frequently find themselves in a game of chicken with their rival ambassadors as they try to impress various alien civilizations and earn political power. At the end of the game, players earn significant bonus points or suffer serious penalty points depending on how offensive the aliens find them to be. Ultimately, the ambassador with the most prestige and respect will earn a seat in the Galactic Senate and be crowned the winner of the game.

EGO is a drastic reimagining of the strategic, push-your-luck auction game, Beowulf: The Legend and introduces many innovations by:

  • Revamping the polarizing risk mechanism while preserving its excitement and drama
  • Increasing the set-up variety with a randomized sequence of interchangeable civilization boards
  • Streamlining the endgame push-your-luck token system in which players can score big or suffer immensely
  • Introducing exciting new features such as currency cards and transmission events
  • Balancing the bidding tie-breaker system with the simple solution of ranked cards
  • Speeding up the playtime with a condensed and focused sequence of events
  • Doubling the number of unique special cards that can be drafted as rewards
  • Spicing up the risk events with varying rewards and penalties
  • Sharpening the endgame hand management decisions with tempting rewards following a climactic final auction
  • Broadening the appeal of the theme and presentation with vivid galactic artwork by Marie Bergeron

Game Mechanics:

  • Auction / Bidding
  • Hand Management
  • Modular Board
  • Open Drafting
  • Push Your Luck
  • Variable Set-up

Game Specifications:

  • 2 – 5 Players
  • 40 – 80 Minutes
  • Difficulty Weight 2.40