Category: General Games

Destinies

Destinies is a competitive, story-driven, game of adventure and exploration, mixing an app and a board game.

The first in a series of games using a brand-new system called Destinies. This game is set in a dark medieval-fantasy universe.

The Destinies system offers a fully story-driven, app-supported, RPG-like board game experience, without the need for a game master. Each scenario depicts a part of a vivid world, full of dark stories, epic NPCs and mysteries to solve. Each player takes the role of a hero on a quest to fulfill their destiny. Each destiny is a final goal of the character and has at least two, completely different paths to victory, composed of branching series of quests. Players compete with each other to push the world towards their own destiny.

The game uses an app and the Scan&Play technology to offer players a unique story-driven experience full of dynamic events, epic adventures, and an ever-changing game world. Each turn players discover new parts of the world presented on tiles, explore them and pick one point of interest to visit. There they learn more about the story and make crucial choices of how they want to interact with people, creatures or situations faced there. The consequences of each choice are meaningful and often change the state of the world forever.

Game Mechanics:

  • Dice Rolling
  • Role Playing
  • Scenario / Mission / Campaign Game
  • Solo / Solitaire Game
  • Storytelling
  • Tile Placement

Game Specifications:

  • 1 – 3 Players
  • 90 – 150 Minutes
  • Difficulty Weight 1.93

Defcon

After two global conflicts, we have seen a long time of apparent peace. However, behind fragile stability, enormous strengths were moving. Big transnational factors, such as globalization, world population growth, a shortage of raw materials, and the formation of international actors, have weakened pluralism in favor of a growing polarization on the international stage. In today’s world, a few big regional powers compete for world domination.

In Defcon, internal frictions push decision-makers to look for international success to consolidate their power, even though it means conflict against international rivalries. In a climate of growing tension, megapowers begin an arms race to be prepared for a global scale conflict. Whoever controls the hegemonic megapower at the end of the fifth round wins, and to do this, that player must obtain the highest position on the consensus index, which is made up of two separate rankings: the reputation index and the military index. Those who will find the right balance between military strength and support from public opinion will win the game.

Game Mechanics:

  • Dice Rolling
  • Wargame

Game Specifications:

  • 2 – 4 Players
  • 60 – 90 Minutes
  • Difficulty Weight 2.00

Dead by Daylight: The Board Game

In Dead by Daylight: The Board Game, a team of four resourceful Survivors face off against a single supernatural Killer in a high-stakes game of cat-and-mouse.

As one of four Survivors, explore the trial grounds, discover props, and utilize your unique perks as you work to uncover and repair generators. Repair four generators and open the exit games to escape and win! As a Killer, hunt down the survivors, wound them, and place them on sacrificial hooks to summon a sinister force. With enough sacrifices, you are able to appease The Entity and win!

Each turn, players will plan their moves by secretly selecting paths on the board to move along. Each time a player moves, they will reveal new features of the board, called props, which they can interact with to further their objectives or to hinder their opponents.

Survivors are able to utilize many different props to aid in their survival and navigation of the trial. Killers can make use of fewer props—instead, they interact with the Survivors using their attack or their unique power. Each Killer has a different power that will completely change the way the game plays. Both Killers and Survivors have perks which grant them special abilities. Experienced players can customize their characters with various perk configurations, offering even more replayability.

The basic game comes with 7 Survivors, 6 Killers, and 2 maps. The Collector’s edition includes 17 Survivors, 16 Killers, 4 maps, and additional miniatures to create the ultimate Dead by Daylight experience.

Game Mechanics:

  • Dice Rolling
  • Simultaneous Action Selection
  • Team-Based Game
  • Variable Player Powers

Game Specifications:

  • 3 – 5 Players
  • 30 – 60 Minutes
  • Difficulty Weight 2.28

D6: Dungeons, Dudes, Dames, Danger, Dice and Dragons!

In D6, you’re playing the role of players playing a role-playing game. That boat you needed? It’s already in the harbor. That pit? It’s already been dug. Every adventure will be different, but your objectives will remain the same.

Collect the bounties. Kill the monsters. Gain the glory. The most glorious hero will prevail!

Game Mechanics:

  • Chit-Pull System
  • Contracts
  • Cooperative Game
  • Role Playing
  • Solo / Solitaire Game
  • Take That
  • Team-Based Game
  • Variable Player Powers

Game Specifications:

  • 1 – 4 Players
  • ~90 Minutes
  • Difficulty Weight 2.42

Cuzco

Cuzco is a new 2018 edition of Java from French publisher Super Meeple that moves the action to South America, which is in line with the other titles in the Mask Trilogy as well as the authors’ original plans for the design.

Game Mechanics:

  • Area Majority / Influence
  • Auction / Bidding
  • Hand Management
  • Map Addition
  • Tile Placement
  • Zone of Control

Game Specifications:

  • 2 – 4 Players
  • ~90 Minutes
  • Difficulty Weight 2.64

Cryptid

You’ve studied the footage, connected the dots, and gathered what meager evidence you could. You’re close — soon the whole world will know the truth behind the Cryptid. A group of like-minded cryptozoologists have come together to finally uncover the elusive creature, but the glory of discovery is too rich to share. Without giving away some of what you know you will never succeed in locating the beast, but reveal too much and your name will be long forgotten!

Cryptid is a unique deduction game of honest misdirection in which players must try to uncover information about their opponents’ clues while throwing them off the scent of their own. Each player holds one piece of evidence to help them find the creature, and on their turn they can try to gain more information from their opponents. Be warned; give too much away and your opponents might beat you to the mysterious animal and claim the glory for themselves!

The game includes a modular board, five clue books, and a deck of set-up cards with hundreds of possible set-ups across two difficulty levels. It is also supported by an entirely optional digital companion, allowing for faster game set-up and a near-infinite range of puzzles.

Game Mechanics:

  • Deduction
  • Pattern Recognition

Game Specifications:

  • 3 – 5 Players
  • 30 – 50 Minutes
  • Difficulty Weight 2.26

Crusaders: Thy Will Be Done

Move your knights, erect buildings, and go crusading to spread the influence of your Order. When the Orders get too strong, King Philip will become nervous and disband all Templar orders, ending the game.

Crusaders: Thy Will Be Done uses a combination of rondel and mancala mechanisms. Each player has their own rondel, which they can upgrade over the course of the game, that controls their action choices during the game. Your faction gives you a special power to control your rondel, and the buildings you erect will help you form a strategy.

Game Mechanics:

  • Area Majority / Influence
  • Mancala
  • Rondel
  • Tech Trees / Tech Tracks
  • Variable Player Powers
  • Worker Placement

Game Specifications:

  • 2 – 4 Players
  • 40 – 60 Minutes
  • Difficulty Weight 2.48

Creature Comforts

Life in the forest is a lot of fun, at least while the sun is shining and the leaves are on the trees. Those days don’t last forever though, and long before the weather starts to change, the wise animals start to harvest for the long cold winter ahead. You will spend many months tucked into your burrow and you want to make it as cozy as possible. A nice bowl of soup, a comfortable rocking chair, and some toys and games will go a long way to make those dark winter days pass by quickly.

In Creature Comforts, you spend the Spring, Summer, and Fall gathering different goods from the forest and spending them to collect items that will make your home more inviting while the world outside is covered in a layer of snow. Each round you send family members out to various locations in an attempt to gain supplies. If they fall short of their goal, they’ll learn a lesson and be better prepared next time. The family that has created the most comfortable den wins the game.

Game Mechanics:

  • Contracts
  • Events
  • Hand Management
  • Open Drafting
  • Push Your Luck
  • Set Collection
  • Solo / Solitaire Game
  • Worker Placement

Game Specifications:

  • 1 – 5 Players
  • ~45 Minutes
  • Difficulty Weight 2.36

Cowboy Bebop: Space Serenade

Cowboy Bebop: Space Serenade is a competitive deck-building game with 2 to 4 players in which you play one of the four members of the famous Bebop crew.

Each player tries to prove that he is the best bounty hunter by getting the most reputation points at the end of the game. To do so, they will have to capture the criminals wanted by the ISSP, in a spirit of limited collaboration.

During the game, players will be able to buy cards that will allow them to improve their personal deck, in order to better manage the resources necessary for their victory. They will also be able to move from planet to planet with gas or use their special abilities and even those of other players if they have in the same place as them.

The game ends when the terrible Vicious is captured or has fled.

Game Mechanics:

  • Deck Building

Game Specifications:

  • 1 – 4 Players
  • 30 – 90 Minutes
  • Difficulty Weight 2.32

Cosmic Encounter

Build a galactic empire…

In the depths of space, the alien races of the Cosmos vie with each other for control of the universe. Alliances form and shift from moment to moment, while cataclysmic battles send starships screaming into the warp.

This classic game of alien politics returns from the warp once more!

In Cosmic Encounter, each player becomes the leader of one of dozens of alien races, each with its own unique power. On a player’s turn, he or she becomes the offense. The offense encounters another player on a planet by moving a group of his or her ships through the hyperspace gate to that planet. Both sides can invite allies and play cards to try and tip the encounter in their favor.

The object of the game is for players to establish colonies in other players’ planetary systems by landing their ships on the other players’ planets. The winner(s) are the first player(s) to have five colonies on planets outside his or her home system. The players must use force, cunning, and diplomacy to ensure their victory. And, because alliances are a key part of the game, multiple players can win together!

Game Mechanics:

  • Alliances
  • Hand Management
  • Interrupts
  • Negotiation
  • Race
  • Take That
  • Trading
  • Variable Player Powers

Game Specifications:

  • 3 – 5 Players
  • 60 – 120 Minutes
  • Difficulty Weight 2.58