Category: Competitive Games

Atlantis Exodus

| OTSG Staff

The legendary Atlantis is shrouded in so many stories and myths, an island realm that was reputed to have completely drowned in only one night.

Atlantis Exodus presents the player kings with the challenge of rescuing as many citizens as possible before the impending downfall and, by doing so, saving the knowledge they have acquired for a different world and time.

Thanks to an innovative rotation mechanism, 1-4 kings have to face constantly changing conditions and keep adjusting their own strategy to the different action possibilities in order to ultimately become the savior of the achievements of their time.

Game Mechanics:

Game Specifications:

  • 1 – 4 Players
  • ~90 Minutes
  • Difficulty Weight 3.24

Bamboo

| OTSG Staff

For generations, harvesting bamboo has brought prosperity to your home. Work, perseverance, balance and prayer have made a small town flourish that has grown at the expense of the cane fields. Today, various clans live in harmony with nature.

In Bamboo, players take on the role of clans that grow bamboo and use the fruits of their labor to take care of their family and thus add happiness points. This is an action management and tile optimization game that is both accessible and deep. With a very careful setting, Bamboo is part of the Kemushi saga, to which Bitoku and Silk also belong.

Bamboo games are made up of 4 years or rounds, which in turn are divided into 4 phases or seasons. On their turns, players will burn incense in temples to seek favor from the spirits, and use bamboo shoots to perform actions such as seeking balance, cooking, home improvement, or managing finances.

Following the doctrines of the home balance discipline allows for better optimization of home tiles, making it a fundamental pillar for progressing through the game. To score balance tiles you must use the balance action and follow the pattern indicated on the tile, which always has something to do with the type of home tiles you get during the game. There are four classes of home tiles: decoration, garden, faith, or useful. Depending on how they place them on their board, players will earn happiness points.

In addition to managing the household, players will need to prepare for when tough times come. To get through the winter, it will be necessary to feed the family members with the tea, rice or ramen that has been prepared and stored in the previous season. And all this without forgetting to honor spirits and ancestors in the temples. The player who has made the largest offering of incense in each sacred space will receive the favor of one of the seven spirits of the forest, as a token of thanks. Spirit tiles, in addition to helping players throughout the game, offer bonus points in the final phase based on the number of different spirits in each player’s play area.

With accessible and easy-to-learn rules, Bamboo is a very versatile title that will fit into any shelves. However, behind its apparent simplicity lies great strategic depth, with plenty of options available to players. In addition, Bamboo has an advanced game mode on the back of the personal boards, which will give the games an extra level of demand. Harvest bamboo and find balance in your home to win the game. May the spirits be with you!

Game Specifications:

  • 2 – 4 Players
  • 90 – 110 Minutes
  • Difficulty Weight 2.89

Arcs

| OTSG Staff

Arcs is a sharp, tactical space opera game, for 2–4 players, set in a dark yet silly universe. Players represent officials from a distant, decaying and neglectful Empire who are now free to vie for dominance whether through battle, gathering scarce resources or diplomatic intrigue. Ready yourself for dramatic twists and turns as you launch into this galactic struggle.

A deck of cards in 4 suits with ranks from 1-7 (2-6 for less than 4 players) defines the action selection system. These cards are played in a trick-taking adjacent system to select actions, take the initiative and declare Ambitions. The 3 declared Ambitions are what will score in that deal. Timing is everything. Bad hands must be mitigated by careful card play and benefitting from other players’ card play.

Battles are resolved quickly with the attacker choosing their level of risk. The defenders must be prepared with adequate defensive ships and cards in their tableau.

Each game contains a hundred wooden ships and agents, 18 custom engraved dice, a beautiful six-panel board, and tons of cards with over 60 pieces of unique art. The base game may be played without the optional Leaders and Lore cards (for an easier teach) or with them for a richer, fuller and asymmetric game. It is also the core of the campaign game (requiring the Blighted Reach Expansion), which provides an epic, more thematic experience.

Game Mechanics:

Game Specifications:

  • 2 – 4 Players
  • 60 – 120 Minutes
  • Difficulty Weight 3.40

Apiary 🟡

| OTSG Staff

In a far-distant future, humans no longer inhabit Earth. The cause of their disappearance (or perhaps their demise) is unknown, but their absence left a void ready to be filled by another sentient species.

Over the span of untold generations, one species of the humble honeybee evolved to fill that void. They grew in size and intelligence to become a highly advanced society. They call themselves Mellifera, and they have made substantial technological advances in addition to the technology they adapted from human ruins, up to and including space travel.

In Apiary, each player controls one of twenty unique factions. Your faction starts the game with a hive, a few resources, and worker bees. A worker-placement, hive-building challenge awaits you: explore planets, gather resources, develop technologies, and create carvings to demonstrate your faction’s strengths (measured in victory points) over one year’s Flow. However, the Dearth quickly approaches, and your workers can take only a few actions before they must hibernate! Can you thrive or merely survive?

Game Mechanics:

Game Specifications:

  • 1 – 5 Players
  • 60 – 90 Minutes
  • Difficulty Weight 2.97

Altiplano 🟡

| OTSG Staff

Altiplano is a bag-building game along the lines of Orléans, set in the South American highlands of the Andes (the “Altiplano”). The competition for limited resources is considerable, as it was in Orléans, but the greater focus in Altiplano is on building up your own production to be the best that it can be – or at least better than that of the other players!

The object of the game is for players to use their goods to produce more goods that will be worth points in the end. Each player starts with a unique role tile, giving them access to different goods and methods of production. Players have limited access to production at the start, but they can acquire additional production sites during the game that open up new options. The various types of goods — such as fish, alpaca, cacao, silver and corn — all have their own characteristics and places where they can be used. For example, silver can be sold for a high price at the market, fish can be exchanged for other goods at the harbor and alpaca can produce wool at the farm that can then be made into cloth.

Aside from building up an effective production, players must fulfill their orders at the right time, develop the road in good time and store their goods cleverly enough to fill their warehouses in the most valuable way. Often, a good warehouse keeper is more relevant in the end than the best producer.

Game Mechanics:

Game Specifications:

  • 2 – 5 Players
  • 60 – 120 Minutes
  • Difficulty Weight 3.29

Age of Innovation 🔴

| kithorning

Age of Innovation is a standalone game set in the world of Terra Mystica.

Twelve factions, each with unique characteristics, populate this world of varying terrains. Here you will compete to erect buildings and merge them into cities. Each game allows you to create new combinations of factions, homelands, and abilities so that each game isn’t the same as another.

You control one of these factions and will terraform the game map’s terrain into your homelands where you can erect your buildings. Proximity to other factions may limit your expansion, but it also gains you significant advantages in the game. This tension adds to the appeal of the Terra Mystica series.

Upgrade your buildings to gain valuable resources such as tools, scholars, money, and power. Build schools to advance in different sciences and collect books, which you can use to make innovations. Build your palace to gain a powerful new ability or build workshops, guilds, and universities to complete your culture.

Game Mechanics:

Game Specifications:

  • 1 – 4 Players
  • 40 -200 Minutes
  • Difficulty Weight 4.26

Earth

| OTSG Staff

Earth is a tableau builder with simple rules and countless strategic possibilities. With its encyclopedic nature and a near-infinite number of tableau combinations, every single game will allow you to discover new synergies and connections, just as our vast and fascinating world allows us to do!

It’s time to jump into these rich environments and create some amazing natural synergies that replicate and extrapolate on Earth’s amazing versatility and plethora of natural resources. Over thousands of years of evolution and adaptation the flora and fauna of this unique planet have grown and developed into amazing life forms, creating symbiotic ecosystems and habitats.

Players create a self-supporting engine of growth, expansion and supply where even your unused plants become compost for future growth. They use their cards to choose actions (which affect all players) and gain resources. The first player to complete their Tableau triggers the end of the game. The player with the most points wins.

Game Mechanics:

Game Specifications:

  • 1 – 5 Players
  • 45 – 90 Minutes
  • Difficulty Weight 2.91

Gaia Project

| OTSG Staff

Gaia Project is a new game in the line of Terra Mystica. As in the original Terra Mystica, fourteen different factions live on seven different kinds of planets, and each faction is bound to their own home planets, so to develop and grow, they must terraform neighboring planets into their home environments in competition with the other groups. In addition, Gaia planets can be used by all factions for colonization, and Transdimensional planets can be changed into Gaia planets.

All factions can improve their skills in six different areas of development — Terraforming, Navigation, Artificial Intelligence, Gaiaforming, Economy, Research — leading to advanced technology and special bonuses. To do all of that, each group has special skills and abilities.

The playing area is made of ten sectors, allowing a variable set-up and thus an even bigger replay value than its predecessor Terra Mystica. A two-player game is hosted on seven sectors.

Game Mechanics:

Game Specifications:

  • 1 – 4 Players
  • 60 – 150 Minutes
  • Difficulty Weight 4.40

Coffee Traders

| OTSG Staff

Thousands of coffee farmers all over the world support their families by using small stretches of hillside land for their coffee plantations. Farmers work day in and day out for very little, but the future of coffee farming is bright. Fair Trade organizations strive to improve living conditions for these farmers by helping them set up cooperatives. This enables them to establish better pricing agreements and take out loans for new plantations, all to help provide education and improve the quality of their lives, families, societies, and environment.

In Coffee Traders, set in 1970s Central and South America, Africa, and Asia, the delicious Arabica coffee beans farmers harvest are sold in Antwerp — and all over the world — to coffee roasters large and small. Work with your competitors to develop the regions you see fit for the best coffee beans while keeping a watchful eye on the market. Construct buildings to help your Fair Trade coffee plantations thrive while enhancing your network for trading coffee. Will your plantations fall to ruin, or will you rise to the top and become the world’s greatest coffee trader?

Game Mechanics:

  • Action Points
  • Area Majority / Influence
  • Contracts

Game Specifications:

  • 2 – 5 Players
  • 120 – 150 Minutes
  • Difficulty Weight 4.26

In Too Deep

| OTSG Staff

In Too Deep is a unique, narrative that thrusts you into the future in a tense, strategic board game for 1-5 players. Draft characters and spend actions to complete objectives and collect sets. What side of the law will you end up on?

In the year 2087, central governments have fallen. What remains are fragmented citystates like New Dawn City, struggling to keep chaos at bay. The sinister Syndicate targets these weakened cities for domination by usurping, organizing, and enhancing the existing criminal elements. In the world of In Too Deep, you are part of a secret agency dedicated to stopping the Syndicate at all costs.

Cybernetic implants give Syndicate operatives a technological advantage, but you have found a way to exploit that power. By infiltrating their cerebral upgrades, you can gain control of these criminals. Going deep undercover into the minds of your targets, you’ll coordinate crimes of escalating seriousness to get your hands on the critical evidence needed to foil the Syndicate’s looming plot.

Each turn, you can hook into a new criminal and manipulate their activities throughout the city, accessing powerful skills and increased stamina as you grow familiar with their minds. Your physical body is in a secret lab far from the actual action, but you are by no means safe. Entering the mind of criminals takes its toll on your morality.

Orchestrate crimes, strive to put the information you gather to the best use, wrestle with dangerously corrupting dilemmas, and try to hold yourself together. It will take everything you’ve got to avoid going In Too Deep.

Game Mechanics

Game Specifications:

  • 1 – 5 Players
  • 60 – 90 Minutes
  • Difficulty Weight 3.43