Category: General Games

Critter Kitchen

In Critter Kitchen, you are a proud restaurant owner determined to set yourself apart during Restaurant Week at Bistro Bay! You’ll do this by completing various ingredient-related challenges over the course of the week and hopefully impressing the celebrity critics with a grand meal at the end of the week. However, you can’t be everywhere at once, meaning you’ll have to rely on your chefs to gather as many ingredients (and rumors!) as they can throughout Bistro Bay. Each round players will simultaneously and secretly decide where to send their workers, and deciding who goes where. Some chefs are fast but can only carry one item, whereas others are slower but can carry much more! Wow the critics and establish yourself as the best restauranter in this adorable game.

Game Mechanics:

  • Contracts
  • Programmed Movement
  • Variable Player Powers
  • Worker Placement

Game Specifications:

  • 1 – 5 Players
  • 60 Minutes
  • Difficulty Weight 2.51

Crafting the Cosmos

Welcome to Crafting the Cosmos, where you get to construct your very own universe! Each player’s turn is split into two phases: the Energy Phase and the Craft Phase, followed by a collective End Phase. During the Energy Phase, players will move their energy token around the board to gather resources, which they will then use in the Craft Phase to construct their own galaxy. You can create stars, nebulas, and even life to maximize your points and create the best universe!

Game Mechanics:

  • Contracts
  • Income
  • Movement Points
  • Tile Placement

Game Specifications:

  • 2 – 4 Players
  • 60 – 90 Minutes
  • Difficulty Weight 2.93

Conflict of Heroes: Guadalcanal – the Pacific 1942

Step back in history, in the midst of the Pacific Campaign during World War II over the battle for Guadalcanal! The incredibly important Japanese-controlled strategic island blocked off Allied supply lines from Australia, and it is imperative for both sides to not lose their foothold on the island. Recreate the 4-month struggle over air, land, and sea with gorgeous maps, amphibious landing craft, the USMC, Japanese Banzai Charges, night combat, and much more.

Game Mechanics:

  •  Action Points
  • Dice Rolling
  • Hexagon Grid
  • Modular Board

Game Specifications:

  • 2 – 4 Players
  • 60 Minutes
  • Difficulty Weight 3.06

Come Sail Away!

In Come Sail Away!you are in charge of facilitating the boarding process on your luxury liner. Ensure that your passengers are guided as smoothly and quickly as possible to their preferred cabins, and make sure you don’t run out of space! This game is simple to learn but has plenty of strategy that it’ll offer a new challenge every time you play!

Game Mechanics:

  •  Closed Drafting
  • Mancala
  • Modular Board

Game Specifications:

  • 1 – 4 Players
  • 25 Minutes
  • Difficulty Weight 2.11

Colonists, the

You and your opponents will take on the role of mayors of different villages forming in a newly established colony. The goal is to have the highest level of employment, and as mayor you’ll have to create jobs, educate your people, and strategically use your limited resources to expand your city and sow the seeds for greatness in the future.

Game Mechanics:

  •  Area Movement
  • Hand Management
  • Modular Board
  • Open Drafting
  • Solo/Solitaire
  • Tile Placement
  • Worker Placement

Game Specifications:

  • 1 – 4 Players
  • 30 – 360 Minutes
  • Difficulty Weight 4.06

Civolution

Board Game Overview

Civolution is a euro game where you will compete over 4 “eons” (rounds) to create the most successful civilization. Will you give them the power of the wheel? Or maybe you’ll focus on evolving wings for them? The possibilities are endless, as you’ll face new challenges, along with new ways to play your dice and cards, each time you play.

Game Mechanics:

  •  Area Movement
  • Dice Rolling
  • Modular Board
  • Open Drafting
  • Pattern Building
  • Tech Trees/Tracks

Game Specifications:

  • 1 – 4 Players
  • 90 – 180 Minutes
  • Difficulty Weight 4.22

Ancient Terrible Things: Reawakened 🟢

Ancient Terrible Things: Reawakened is a pulp-horror tabletop game for 1-4 players.
You play the role of an intrepid and foolish adventurer exploring a dark jungle river for Secrets.
Each turn you must travel to a Fateful Location and face an Ominous Encounter.
If you overcome the Encounter (using a combination of dice, tokens and cards) you gain Secrets.
The object of the game is to be the player with the most Secrets when the game ends at the Inexplicable Event.

Game play involves rolling dice to achieve combinations: runs, pairs, three or more of a kind, and single die showing a particular number or higher. Dice combinations are spent to overcome Encounters and to acquire the four resources used in the game: Focus, Mystery, Treasure and Feat tokens.

  • Focus tokens are used to activate Swag cards to better manipulate dice results.
  • Mystery tokens are spent to overcome any Encounter when visiting the Yawning Chasm.
  • Treasure tokens are spent to purchase useful Swag cards from the Trading Post which give you a permanent game effect.
  • Feat tokens are spent to play one-shot Feat cards from your hand.

Ancient Terrible Things: Reawakened is the third implementation of the Dicequest game system as previously used in Ancient Terrible Things (1st/2nd Edition) and Konja.
The third edition incorporates edited and revised content from all previous iterations and expansions of the game, renovated art and language-independent graphic design into a new and definitive edition of ATT.

Game Mechanics:

  • Push Your Luck
  • Re-rolling and Locking
  • Set Collection
  • Solo / Solitaire Play

Game Specifications:

  • 1 – 4 Players
  • 40 – 120 Minutes
  • Difficulty Weight 2.17

Big Boss

Big Boss is a game of founding companies, expanding existing companies, taking over smaller companies and share buying. The game is explicitly based on the Sid Sackson classic Acquire and shares many similarities to that game though mergers are not as prevalent or crucial in Big Boss. The main differences between the two games include the three dimensional aspect of Big Boss, and the existence of a strong monetary incentive to expand companies that you do not control.

Game Mechanics:

  • Hand Management
  • Market
  • Stock Holding
  • Tile Placement

Game Specifications:

  • 2 – 6 Players
  • ~90 Minutes
  • Difficulty Weight 2.36

Castles of Tuscany, The

The beautiful Tuscany region, in the 15th century, is the home of the Italian Renaissance. As influential princes, the players make creative decisions to build their region into a flourishing domain.

By supporting towns, villages, and monasteries, or by extracting marble and delivering goods, players see their lands grow, earning them victory points. Each round, players use cards to place useful tiles to expand their regions and gain new opportunities.

The winner is the person who has the most victory points after three rounds of play.

Game Mechanics:

  • Modular Board
  • Set Collection
  • Tile Placement
  • Variable Set-up

Game Specifications:

  • 2 – 4 Players
  • 45 – 60 Minutes
  • Difficulty Weight 2.23

Cascadero

The kingdom is shattered, its towns are divided, and its people are distrusting. The newly crowned ruler, El Cascadero, seeks to reunite the land, but he can’t do it alone. Thus, he appoints four ministers to visit the people and restore civil harmony. While the ministers are obligated to bring prosperity to the entire land, each of them also has one dedicated responsibility: Farming, Crafting, Mining, and Markets. El Cascadero also records in his book the successes of his ministers…

Cascadero is the next epic tile placement strategy game from acclaimed designer Reiner Knizia. Ministers visit towns by placing their envoys adjacent to them; but towns are distrusting of single envoys, so newly placed envoys will only trigger town scoring when they are part of an established group or carry an official seal from El Cascadero himself. Towns with Royal Messengers at them or a history of envoy visits are even more valuable, as they willingly collaborate for even greater successes.

Players must decide between two competing strategies: build long chains of their envoys to achieve synergies and objectives, or establish smaller, separate groups of envoys to trigger timely town scoring. Both will award victory points, yet your victory points will mean nothing if you don’t also reach the end of your appointed success column.

By triggering town scoring, you’ll advance along that town’s matching success column, gaining bonuses as you pass over them. Bonuses include earning victory points, advancing further on any success column, claiming an official seal, repositioning an envoy, or even acquiring an additional turn. Through careful timing and clever plans, players can trigger a cascading combo of exciting bonuses that swing momentum in their favor.

Cascadero provides a wealth of replayability through emergent player interaction, variable board and tile setups, and an advanced player mode featuring traveling heralds. Yet the game will always end in one of two ways: when one player reaches fifty victory points or must place a tile but has no tiles left. The players who reached the end of their appointed success column qualify for victory, and whoever among them has the most victory points wins.

Game Mechanics:

  • Chaining
  • Connections
  • Network and Route Building
  • Tile Placement
  • Track Movement

Game Specifications:

  • 2 – 4 Players
  • 45 – 60 Minutes
  • Difficulty Weight 2.58