Category: Competitive Games

Abomination: The Heir of Frankenstein 🟡

| OTSG Staff

It’s been twenty years since Victor Frankenstein died on a ship in the arctic, but his vengeful creature lives on, as does Robert Walton, the sea captain who vowed to kill the fiend before mercy stayed his hand. It’s now 1819, and a sinister darkness descends upon the city of Paris. A mysterious benefactor of gigantic stature has emerged in the scientific community, never showing his face, claiming to possess the late Frankenstein’s research. He sponsors a grand competition, offering an even grander prize: unlocking the mystery of mortality!

Renowned scientists from around the world come to take part: some drawn to solve this eternal riddle, others coerced against their will. But a certain captain comes as well, one deeply suspicious of the secretive patron, hoping to finally fulfill his vow.

Abomination: The Heir of Frankenstein is a competitive game of strategic monster building for 2-4 players, inspired by Mary Shelley’s classic novel of gothic horror. In the game, the creature demands your help to accomplish what his own creator would not: to bring to life an abomination like itself, a companion to end its miserable solitude. Through worker placement and careful management of decomposing resources, you’ll gather materials from the cemeteries and morgues around the city, conduct valuable research at the Academy of Science, hire less-than-reputable associates, and toil away in your lab — all in an effort to assemble a new form of life and infuse it with a “spark of being”. Do well, and the creature may reward you during one of its surprise visits; do poorly, and you may come to regret not putting forth more effort. Narrative elements come into play throughout the game, guided by your decisions, leading to potentially unsavory outcomes.

The game ends when you succeed in bringing your creation to life or when the Captain kills the creature, whichever happens first. Then the player with the most points fulfills Frankenstein’s dark legacy, becoming his heir, for good or ill…

Game Mechanics:

Game Specifications:

  • 2 – 4 Players
  • 90 – 180 Minutes
  • Difficulty Weight 3.25

Gods Love Dinosaurs REDO TAGS TO HERE

| OTSG Staff

How do you make an ecosystem flourish with just enough of every life form in the chain to supply you with dinosaurs to dominate the lands? Resources are scarce, animals can go extinct in an area, and everyone must eat to survive — so moves must be cunning. Life hangs in the balance…

In Gods Love Dinosaurs, a cheeky, wild, and timeless take on the scientific tale as old as life itself, you are a god who has been tasked with designing an ecosystem with a sustainable food chain of predator and prey animals. But you just love dinosaurs, so all you really want to do is to make as many of them as possible!

Each turn, you’ll add one tile to your ecosystem, which will add new animals and give them room to grow. Every so often, your dinosaurs will tromp around your ecosystem eating all the animals. The more they eat, the more eggs they lay — and the more points you score! Just be careful not to overeat, or there won’t be enough food to keep your dinosaurs alive the next time.

Game Mechanics:

Game Specifications:

  • 2 – 5 Players
  • 30 – 45 Minutes
  • Difficulty Weight 2.26

Glow

| OTSG Staff

In Glow, you are an adventurer who builds their company by recruiting a new traveling companion each turn, trying to combine their powers as best as possible. You’ll roll the dice to activate the advantages that your companions bring you…or their disadvantages. Gather many slivers of light to dispel the darkness, restore the colors, travel the land to reach landmarks, and (yes) score points.

In short, Glow is a card-drafting, dice-rolling, and combinations game. The box contains lots of colorful dice, two game boards for two different gaming experiences. You have also to count on luck sometimes, but be attentive to your card combinations, too.

Game Mechanics:

Game Specifications:

  • 2 – 4 Players
  • ~45 Minutes
  • Difficulty Weight 2.05

Gizmos

| OTSG Staff

The smartest minds of our generation are gathering together at the Great Science Fair. Everyone’s been working hard on their creations, but only one will be crowned champion. Contestants have to think on the fly to build their machines quickly and efficiently. Whose project will be the best?

In Gizmos, you win the game by gaining victory points from building engines. And engines help you get things done faster. Whoever builds the greatest machine and collects the most victory points wins!

At the beginning of the game, you have 4 actions:

  • File: Put a card in the public to your Archive, allow you to build it later.
  • Pick: Take one energy marble from the 3D marble dispenser to your storage.
  • Build: Build one machine and put it on action! You have to pay the marbles with colors corresponding to the card cost.
  • Research: Draw some cards, and you can then File or Build one of the drawn cards. The rest go to the bottom of their deck.

Machines give you victory points and allow you to do more actions when conditions are met. As you build, new attachments can trigger chain reactions, letting you do even more on your turn.

Game Mechanics:

Game Specifications:

  • 2 – 4 Players
  • 40 – 50 Minutes
  • Difficulty Weight 2.05

Gates of Delirium

| OTSG Staff

You have finally set out to find the truth. You’ve heard the rumors of ancient runes and the lost pages of a scattered tome that tell of ancient and evil monstrosities, calling for their return. You’ve heard tales of those who came before you in this search losing grip on their sanity as they grew nearer to the truth. As you press on, you can’t help but notice that you feel less attached to reality yourself. Some days you lose track of time and can’t account for hours of the day. The whispers of secret gates to another world are growing stronger, and while no one knows who is building them, you have a dreadful hunch…

Could you be the hidden architect of the Gates of Delirium?

In Gates of Delirium, players have a hand of split action cards: one side sane, and the other insane. Every round, one player decides whether the round is sane or insane, and all players must play that side of their cards. During sane rounds, players search for maps and lost pages to a secret tome, while assigning investigators to help them in their cause. During insane rounds, players collect ancient runes and work to build gates to release the monstrosities that their sane selves have been trying so hard to understand and prevent. Earn the most victory points by the time the last monstrosity is released to win Gates of Delirium.

Game Mechanics:

Game Specifications:

  • 2 – 4 Players
  • 30 – 45 Minutes
  • Difficulty Weight 1.88

Ganymede

| OTSG Staff

Ganymede is a development and tableau-building game in which players are corporations specialized in sending settlers to colonize the universe. To do so, you will recruit settlers on Earth, use shuttles to transport them to Mars, then to Ganymede where the settlers’ ships launch base is located.

The game ends when a player has launched four settlers’ ships into space. Players score VP from their launched ships and from their reputation track.

Game Mechanics:

Game Specifications:

  • 2 – 4 Players
  • 20 – 40 Minutes
  • Difficulty Weight 2.25

Galaxy Trucker

| OTSG Staff

In a galaxy far, far away… they need sewer systems, too. Corporation Incorporated builds them. Everyone knows their drivers — the brave men and women who fear no danger and would, if the pay was good enough, even fly through Hell.

Now you can join them. You will gain access to prefabricated spaceship components cleverly made from sewer pipes. Can you build a space ship durable enough to weather storms of meteors? Armed enough to defend against pirates? Big enough to carry a large crew and valuable cargo? Fast enough to get there first?

Of course you can. Become a Galaxy Trucker. It’s loads of fun.

Galaxy Trucker is a tile laying game that plays out over two phases: building and flying. The goal is to have the most credits at the end of the game. You can earn credits by delivering goods, defeating pirates, building an efficient ship, and being the furthest along the track at the end of the flying phase.

Building happens in real time and has players build their personal space ships by grabbing tiles from the middle of the table before the timer runs out. Tiles start out facedown so they won’t know what they have until they take it, but they may choose to return it faceup if they don’t want it. They must place the tiles they keep in a legal manner in their space ship. Usually this just means lining up the connectors appropriately (single to single, double to double, universal to anything) but also includes proper positioning of guns and engines. Tiles represent a variety of things including guns, engines, storage containers, crew cabins, shields, and batteries. They may also peek at the cards they will encounter in phase 2, but they must sacrifice building time to do this. At any time players may call their ships finished and take an order marker from the center.

Once building is completed, and ships have been checked for errors, the flight begins. The flight cards are shuffled and player markers are placed on the flight board according to the order markers taken. Cards are revealed one at a time and players interact with them in order. They may include things such as pirates, abandoned vessels, disease outbreaks, meteor showers, worlds with goods to pick up, player-on-player combat zones, and other various things.

Most of the cards will cause players to move back on the flight track and they must decide if the delay is worth their efforts. When all the cards are encountered players sell any goods they have collected, collect their rewards for finishing in first, second, or third place or having the most intact ship, and then lose some credits for damaged components. Space can be a very dangerous place and it is not uncommon to see your ship break into smaller and smaller pieces or lose some very valuable cargo off the side. If your ship gets damaged too much you can get knocked out of the race, so be careful!

3 rounds of this are done, and in each round players get a bigger board to build a ship that can hold more components. After the 3rd round the player with the most credits wins!

Game Mechanics:

Game Specifications:

  • 2 – 4 Players
  • ~60 Minutes
  • Difficulty Weight 2.33

Furnace

| OTSG Staff

Furnace is an engine-building Eurogame in which players take on the roles of 19th-century capitalists building their industrial corporations and aspiring to make as much money as they can by purchasing companies, extracting resources, and processing them in the best combinations possible.

Each player starts the game with a random start-up card, the resources depicted at the top of that card, and four colored discs valued 1-4.

The game is played over four rounds, and each round consists of two phases: Auction and Production. During the auction, 6-8 company cards are laid out with their basic sides face up. Players take turns placing one of their discs on one of these cards, but you cannot place a disc on a card if a disc of the same value or color is already present. Thus, you’ll place discs on four cards.

Once all the discs are placed, the cards are resolved from left to right. Whoever placed the highest-valued disc will claim this card, but first anyone with a lower-valued disc on this card will gain compensation, either the resources depicted multiplied by the value of their disc or a processing ability (exchange X for Y) up to as many times as the value of their disc.

Once all the cards have been claimed or discarded, players enter the production phase, using their cards in the order of their choice. Each company card has one action — either production or processing — on its basic side and two actions on its upgraded side. During the production phase, you can use each of your cards once to gain resources, process those resources into other resources or money, and upgrade your cards.

At the end of four rounds, whoever has the most money wins.

Furnace also includes capitalist cards that contain unique effects, and if you want, you can choose to deal one out to each player at the start of the game. For an additional challenge, you can require players to create a “production chain”, with each newly acquired company card being placed somewhere in that chain and locked in position for the remainder of the game.

Game Mechanics:

Game Specifications:

  • 2 – 4 Players
  • 30 – 60 Minutes
  • Difficulty Weight 2.32

Formula D

| OTSG Staff

Formula D is a high stakes Formula One type racing game where the players race simulated cars with the hope of crossing the finish line first. This is a re-release of Formula Dé with several changes from the original format. Whilst old tracks can be used with the updated Formula D rules, the new game features boards that have an F1 track and a Street Track on the other side. These street tracks each have a novel inclusion or two to add greater theme –

The game mechanisms are a simple race, get to the finish line first! However, players have to use a significant amount of planning, and rely on quite a bit of luck. Each player manages when to shift gears, with each gear providing a different speed. (For example, 4th gear is a die that rolls random numbers from 7 to 12 for spaces moved.) Each turn, players may move up one gear, stay in that gear, or move down gears. This forces players to match possible rolls with the optimum distance for that turn, and hopefully plan ahead. However, speed is not the only issue! Corners have a “stop” rule that requires players to stop once, twice, or three times on that corner in consecutive turns or face a penalty. This creates an effective speed limit to the corners.

Of course, things do not always go as planned! Players take penalties if they miss their roll, bump into another car, are blocked by other cars, have to brake heavily, or have to downshift several gears. These are taken off of a car’s attributes (Tire health, Brake wear, Transmission Gears, Body, engine, and Suspension). Losing the maximum in any of these categories will result in elimination, or a severe setback for that car. This requires that players manage their car’s health, plan for their best path, and have good luck on their rolls. This high amount of luck gives the game its family appeal, and lets weaker players have a chance at winning once in a while.

However, the fun does not end with a single race! The rules include the ability to customize your cars, use a pre-generated character, add Slipstreaming (Drafting) rules and road debris, and change tire types to modify your distance rolls. There are also variations for a single lap race, or multiple laps with pit stops to repair some of your damage points. In addition, numerous expansion tracks can be purchased to vary the demands on each driver and car. Each track may also have weather effects (rain) that change car handling and die rolls due to skidding on wet track. This opens up the game for rally rules giving championship points over a number of races.

Formula D adds a few items that are not in the original Formula De: There is the added excitement of illegal racing in the streets of big cities – anything goes! This adds custom cars, nitro acceleration, drifting in the curves, dirty tricks, gun battles, and trash on the road to add more variation. A basic change is the use of a “Dashboard” with movable pegs to manage your car’s attributes instead of the paper forms from Formula De. There are also two sets of pre-painted cars; a Formula 1 set and the Street Race set of stock cars. The street cars come with “Character” profiles to give a bit of role-playing to the game. Finally, the old category of “Fuel” for the car has been renamed Transmission Wear to give a better thematic fit to the effect of multiple downshifting.

Game Mechanics:

Game Specifications:

  • 2 – 10 Players
  • ~60 Minutes
  • Difficulty Weight 1.97

First Rat

| OTSG Staff

For generations, the rats in the old junkyard have been telling each other the great legend about a moon made out of cheese and they want nothing more than to reach this inexhaustible treasure. One day, the little rat children discovered a comic in the junkyard that described the first landing on the moon, and thus the plan was born: Build a rocket and take over the cheese moon!

Fortunately, the junkyard has everything the rats need to build their rocket, and the other animals are willing to support this daring venture — at least if they’re well paid. Of course, all the rats work together to achieve this mighty goal. However, each rat family competes to build the most rocket parts and to train the most rattronauts so they can feast on as much of the lunar cheese as possible.

In First Rat, each player starts with two rats and may raise two more. On your turn, you either move one of your rats 1-5 spaces on the path or move 2-4 of your rats 1-3 spaces each as long as they end up on spaces of the same color. Your rats can never share the same space, and if you land in a space with another player’s rat, you must pay them one cheese, borrowing cheese from the back as needed. After movement, you collect resources (cheese, tin cans, apple cores, baking soda, etc.) matching the color of the space you occupy or move your lightbulb along the light string, which will boost your income in future turns. (More lights in the junkyard makes it easier for you to find things!)

If you end movement near a store, you can spend resources to buy a backpack or bottle top — or you can steal an item instead, with the rat then returning to the start of the movement track. You can also spend resources to build rocket sections (and score points) or spend cheese in bulk as a donation (and score points).

When you pick up apple cores, you move around the rat burrow to pick up comics or stored food or raise one of your rats from the nursery. Alternatively, you automatically get a new rat when one of your rats reaches the launch pad and boards the spaceship. When a player places their fourth rat on the spaceship — or places their eighth scoring marker on the board — the game ends, and the player with the most points wins. In the event of a tie, the tied player with the most rattronauts in the rocket wins.

First Rat includes a solo mode as well as variable game set-ups described in the rulebook.

Game Mechanics:

Game Specifications:

  • 1 – 5 Players
  • 30 – 75 Minutes
  • Difficulty Weight 2.29