Category: Beginner Games

Harmonies

| OTSG Staff

In Harmonies, build landscapes by placing colored tokens and create habitats for your animals. To earn the most points and win the game, incorporate the habitats in your landscapes wisely and have as many animals as you can settle there.

Starting with the first player and proceeding clockwise, each player will choose a set of 3 terrain tokens from the central area to place on their personal board. They may optionally choose an Animal card from the 5 displayed and/or place an Animal cube from their Animal card(s) on any completed patterns on their board that match their personal Animal cards. There is a 4-card limit per player. After their turn, refill with a new set of 3 tokens and a new Animal card if needed.

Placement of the terrain tokens will depend on the personal Animal card goals, and scoring rules for the various terrain types (mountain, field, forest, etc). For example, mountain tiles score based on how high they are (1 tile scores 1, while 3 tiles stacked score 7), but the mountain scores zero if it is not adjacent to at least one other mountain. If all the cubes on a given Animal card have been placed, the card is set aside and a new card can be drawn. The cards are scored at game end based on the highest number that isn’t covered by a cube.

The games ends when there are no tokens left in the bag to refill the central area, or at least one players has 2 or fewer empty spaces on their player board. Play continues until all players have had an equal turn that round. The player with the highest points is the winner.

Optionally, you can use Nature’s Spirit cards for richer gameplay. During setup, each player chooses 1 of 2 spirit cards and places a Spirit cube on the card. They follow the same placement rules as Animal cards, but tend to have an ongoing effect once completed. The spirit card does count towards the 4-card hand limit.

—description from the publisher

Game Mechanics:

Game Specifications:

  • 1 – 4 Players
  • 30 – 45 Minutes
  • Difficulty Weight 2.01

Hamster Roll

| OTSG Staff

Imagine a hamster’s exercise wheel made out of wood that’s divided into numerous segments, with these segments being separated by low fences. That’s the playing surface for Hamster Roll, a dexterity game in which players compete to play all of their pieces first.

Everyone starts with seven wooden pieces. On a turn, place one of your pieces somewhere within the wheel, which might move and rotate as a result! If any pieces fall out of the wheel, you must add them to your supply, so try to keep the rolling of that hamster wheel to a minimum…

 

Game Mechanics:

Game Specifications:

  • 2 – 4 Players
  • 30 – 40 Minutes
  • Difficulty Weight 1.07

Great Split, the

| OTSG Staff

In The Great Split, you draft cards to collect riches such as gems, gold, artwork, and tomes, adding them to your collection to make it the most prestigious of all!

You start each round by splitting your cards into two groups, then you pass your wallet to the player on your left — but only one group of cards will be given back to you. You split, they choose! Don’t despair, though, because while your opponent is looking at your split, you also receive a similar offer from the player on your right, so choose wisely. When your hand is complete, play your cards to add all those riches to your collection.

Each type of riches awards you prestige points in different ways, so maintain a balanced collection of gems, keep an eye on the value of the art market as it evolves, and pile up priceless tomes. Depending on how each player builds their collection, different riches will take on a different value for each of them. Show off your best haggling skills in crafting your split, and create the perfect offer to push your opponent to take what you want them to take…leaving you with the tastiest loot!

Be prepared for when the mid-game scorings are triggered. Manage your gold reserves sensibly to get additional riches, and make your collection just right!

—description from publisher

Game Mechanics:

Game Specifications:

  • 2 – 7 Players
  • 45 Minutes
  • Difficulty Weight 2.06

Gardlings

| OTSG Staff

Cleverly build your garden. Harvest gems and enrich your seed bag with new, amazing creatures so your next garden can grow even more abundant. Combine the unique abilities of your creatures, and be the first to acquire the victory trophy.

Each round in Gardlings, all players simultaneously build their garden in front of themselves. You do this by drawing and placing tiles from your bag. You may stop drawing tiles at any time because if you draw too many gnomes, they will steal gems from you. At the end of the round, use any gems you matched in your garden to buy a new tile, then return all of your tiles to your bag to prepare for the next round. Each tile features potential ways to match gems, as well as a creature with a special ability. Your garden will grow larger and better each round, and the puzzle of placing tiles will become increasingly complex.

The goal of the game is to match enough gems to buy the victory tile.

Game Mechanics:

Game Specifications:

  • 1 – 4 Players
  • 20 – 45 Minutes
  • Difficulty Weight 1.47

Fountains

| OTSG Staff

Welcome to the elegant city of Florimelle, where a grand beautification effort has begun. In Fountains, you’ll become a master Fountaineer tasked with transforming Florimelle’s gardens and plazas by creating the most magnificent Fountain the world has ever seen!

Fountains is a take-and-make game in which each player starts with a round fountain that features a spout and room for four features.

On a turn, move one of the tokens 1-3 spaces clockwise around the central board, skipping occupied spaces, to land on an empty space. You then take the top tile next to this token and add it to your board. You can expand out or up or both, but you want to ensure that you have a spout at your highest level and water flowing through all of your lower levels or else you’ll have dead zones that won’t score. If you stop next to the tiny oval features instead of a tile stack, choose one of these features and add it to an empty space in your fountain.

When someone lands on the green, blue, or white space with the matching colored token, everyone scores for the linked item: lilypads, separate pools linked by constant water flow, and fish. (Fish come in three types, and the player who scores fish chooses which color scores.) For each item, you score 1, 2, 3, etc. points if the item is on the first, second, third, etc. level.

When a player hits a point threshold, players then score for all three colors once again, as well as endgame bonuses such as 2 points per coin icon and 4 points for a set of fish in the three colors.

Game Mechanics:

Game Specifications:

  • 1 – 5 Players
  • 30 – 45 Minutes
  • Difficulty Weight 2.18

Forbidden Jungle

| OTSG Staff

In Forbidden Jungle, your team has crash-landed on a mysterious jungle planet, and you need to work together to survive. Search the ruins of an abandoned outpost for an elusive escape portal, all while fending off an ever-growing horde of venomous creatures and an escalating chain of collapsing locations. Shift tiles to power up the portal and live to see another day!

Game Mechanics:

Game Specifications:

  • 2 – 5 Players
  • 45 Minutes
  • Difficulty Weight 2.10

For a Crown

| OTSG Staff

Coming from noble families, you are ready to do anything to accede to the throne…except that the competition between the pretenders is fierce!

For a Crown is a single-deck, deck-building game. Players recruit new characters, such as mercenaries, then place these cards within a sleeve of their own color. All cards — individual player cards and common event cards — are shuffled into a single deck, which is then drawn card by card, with the relevant player resolving the effect of their card when it’s revealed.

After four rounds, the player with the most rubies wins.

Game Mechanics:

Game Specifications:

  • 3 – 5 Players
  • 30 – 40 Minutes
  • Difficulty Weight 1.40

Fit to Print

| OTSG Staff

Fit to Print is a puzzly tile-laying game about breaking news, designed by Peter McPherson and set in a charming woodland world created by Ian O’Toole!

Thistleville is the world’s most bustling little town — it’s a challenge to keep up with everything going on, from who took home first prize for their baked goods at the community fair to who has been digging in Mrs. Brambleberry’s carrot patch.

As an editor at one of the local newspapers, your job is to tell their stories!

The front page is due in just a few hours and you have no time for perfection. Grab the big stories before the other papers get a chance, and make sure you get the right photos too. A newspaper is a business, so the money has to come from somewhere — don’t forget the ads! After you’ve picked out a combination of stories, photos, and ads, it’s time to lay out the front page. Did you take enough tiles to fill the paper, but not so many that things have to be cut? Over the course of three hectic days, your skills will be tested as you compete to be the most newsworthy editor!

Fit To Print is a tile-laying game for the whole family. Players simultaneously collect newspaper tiles, stacking them on their desks until they think they have what they need to make the perfect front page. Then, they will yell “Layout!” and begin to lay out the page by carefully considering the placement of centerpieces, articles, photographs, and advertisements. When everything is just right, they yell “Print” to be the first off the press and gain their choice of centerpiece for the next round! This hectic spatial puzzle features over 100 unique newspaper tiles, 6 characters with their own special abilities, as well as 3 decks of Breaking News cards — so that each and every time you play you will be solving a new puzzle!

If real-time games aren’t your style, Fit to Print has a number of alternative modes to satisfy every type of puzzle gamer. In Slo-Mode players take turns drafting tiles from a shared market and arranging them on their front pages. In Puzzle Mode, take a specific set of tiles and piece together the highest-scoring arrangements. Whether you enjoy relaxing solo puzzles on your own, or frenetic action for up to 6 players, you will have a blast helping the critters of Thistleville tell their stories!

Game Mechanics:

Game Specifications:

  • 1 – 6 Players
  • 15 – 30 Minutes
  • Difficulty Weight 2.12

EGO

| OTSG Staff

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

Finspan

| OTSG Staff

You are a marine researcher seeking to find and observe an array of aquatic life in the colorful Sunlight Zone, ghostly Twilight Zone, and pitch-black Midnight Zone of the world’s seas and oceans. In Finspan, the fish you discover over four weeks will generate a series of benefits as you dive deeper into the ocean.

Each dive site specializes in a key aspect of expanding your research:

  • Grow your collection of fish.
  • Discover freshly laid eggs.
  • Hatch eggs into young and consolidate young to form schools.

The winner is the player with the most points gained from fish, eggs, young, schools, and achievements.

Game Mechanics:

Game Specifications:

  • 1 – 5 Players
  • 45 – 60 Minutes
  • Difficulty Weight 2.33