Category: New Games

Druids of Edora, The

| OTSG Staff

The Druids of Edora is a game of strategic dice placement. Walk through ancient forests in the footsteps of fairy folk, past monolithic menhirs, and under strands of mistletoe. As druids you will place dice to take actions to gather provisions, gain knowledge, brew potions, and gain bonuses. Build stone structures, collect herbs, and leave your mark in the sacred wood.

Each turn is a few simple steps that with the right strategy will earn you prestige points and bring you closer to victory.

Dive into this fantastic new strategy game from the team behind The Castles of Burgundy.

Prove yourself worthy of the ancient ones and bring glory to your forest.

Game Mechanics:

Game Specifications:

  • 2 – 4 Players
  • 60 – 90 Minutes
  • Difficulty Weight 3.04

Borealis: Arctic Expeditions

| OTSG Staff

Become the leaders of scientific teams venturing into uncharted boreal territories to observe and photograph the Arctic’s most adorable inhabitants.

Play cards from your hand to one of 3 locations on your player board to snap a photo and send your scientists sliding to the left and to the right – but only if their colors match the ones printed on your card!

Line up vehicle symbols, race to claim objectives, and arrange animals in pre-determined end-game scoring patterns to earn the most points and gain everlasting fame at the Society for Polar Inquiry. Who knows? Maybe you’ll even get your own tiny snow-covered island named after you.

Game Mechanics:

Game Specifications:

  • 2 – 4 Players
  • ~45 Minutes
  • Difficulty Weight 2.00

Castle Combo

| OTSG Staff

Castle Combo is a tableau-building game that combines simplicity with deep, engaging gameplay, offering highly satisfying experiences.

Each player will spend coins to draft 9 cards from 2 open markets on the table (the lower and upper city), creating along the game a 3×3 square of people interacting with each other to trigger instant effects and end-of-game bonuses.

Each turn, you add a character to your tableau — a seemingly straightforward action that packs a punch regarding strategic decisions. You’ll need to carefully manage your Keys to influence the Messenger pawn at critical moments, as it controls which characters are available for recruitment from two different areas – peasants and nobles.

Balancing your Gold reserves is equally important, ensuring you can afford the characters that best suit your strategy throughout the game. Selecting the right characters is crucial to maximising their immediate effects and the points they will contribute at the game’s end. Finally, carefully arranging these characters on your 3×3 board is key to unlocking their full potential.

After everyone has played 9 turns (i.e., everyone has 9 characters in front of them), the player with the most points in their tableau wins the game.

Game Mechanics:

Game Specifications:

  • 2 – 5 Players
  • 10 – 25 Minutes
  • Difficulty Weight 1.73

Courtisans

| OTSG Staff

Tonight, the queen holds a banquet that everyone will attend. Will they leave a good impression? Backstabbing is fair game, and no trick is too dirty if it allows you to place your favorite families in the spotlight.

In Courtisans, you receive and play three cards on each of your turns. One is played at the Queen’s table to sway a family’s influence, whether in a positive or negative manner. The two other cards are played in your domain and in an opponent’s domain, and they can be worth positive or negative points, depending on their family’s status at the end of the game. Choose where best to place your three cards if you want to end up with the most points and win.

Game Mechanics:

Game Specifications:

  • 2 – 5 Players
  • 20 – 30 Minutes
  • Difficulty Weight 1.30

For All Mankind

| OTSG Staff

For All Mankind is a fast-paced game of strategic exploration, clever trades, and diplomatic shenanigans. Build your empire across the ever-changing solar system. (Careful, the planets move!) Gather, trade, and invest your resources — and do whatever it takes to stay ahead of the competition.

Expand: Grow your empire with colonies (more loot!), research (more power!), and espionage (more nukes!).

Scheme: All is fair in interplanetary domination, but you would never double-cross a friend…right?

Profit: Be the first to reach 10 points, and see your name etched in the stars forever!

Learn to play in about 15 minutes.
Finish a game in about 60 minutes.
The most fun you’ll ever have blowing up your friends in space, guaranteed!

Game Mechanics:

Game Specifications:

  • `1 – 4 Players
  • 60 – 90 Minutes
  • Difficulty Weight 2.00

Ancient: Knowledge

| OTSG Staff

Heirs to an exceptional knowledge that has survived the ages, it is now up to you to preserve the vestige of your civilization.

Ancient Knowledge is a strategic card game in which you erect monuments and build artefacts to pass on your knowledge. Time will make your constructions ephemeral,so make the right decision and combine the many cards at your disposal, because all knowledge is doomed to disappear…

It’s up to you to find the best synergy so that you can pass down knowledge before the decline of the emblematic monuments you have constructed, monuments we still find nowadays in the four corners of the globe. From Mexican pyramids to the Sphinx of Giza, passing through the famous cities of Tiwanaku and Babylon, only the cleverest builder will shine through the ages and seize victory. In this game, your only enemy is time.

Prove to your opponents that you are the worthy representative of your Legacy!
Will your monuments withstand the trial of time?

Game Mechanics:

Game Specifications:

  • 2 – 4 Players
  • ~75 Minutes
  • Difficulty Weight 2.72

Formaggio

| OTSG Staff

You are an Italian cheesemaker in the early 20th century making, aging, and selling your artisanal cheeses. Become the most prestigious cheesemaker in all of Italy by running a highly successful creamery and crafting exceptional cheese. Formaggio is a standalone expansion for Fromage. With both games put together, you can combine any 4 board quadrants, and draft any combination of structure tiles for more variety and more paths to victory.

Formaggio is a simultaneous worker-placement game where players place Workers to make cheese and gather resources from the quadrant of the board facing them. Once all players have placed their Workers, the board rotates, aging any cheese that was made, and presenting each player with a new quadrant to place Workers into. Score Prestige Points by selling cheese to the four locations, and by efficiently managing and upgrading your creamery.

Formaggio features 4 new board quadrants with all new puzzling mini-games:
• Pair your cheese with the wines at the Vigneto.
• Sell cheese to restaurants along the Venetian canals and attract customers.
• Distribute cheese across the Regioni of Italy.
• Deposit cheese in the Banca. (Yes, there is a real bank in Italy that accepts cheese as collateral for loans!)

Other new features:
• Platinum-tier cheeses.
• Reap various rewards in each of the Seasons.
• All new abilities on the Player Boards and Structure tiles.

Game Mechanics:

Game Specifications:

  • 1 – 4 Players
  • 30 – 45 Minutes
  • Difficulty Weight 2.53

Forestry

| OTSG Staff

In Forestry, players take on the role of forest stewards dedicated to sustainable forest management. The game challenges players to balance the demands of harvesting resources and fulfilling contracts with the need for environmental conservation. Every action taken has a lasting impact on the forest’s health, and players are encouraged to make responsible choices, from planting new trees to adjusting water streams for optimal moisture retention. Drawing from the expertise of real-life foresters, Forestry provides a realistic and educational glimpse into the work of forestry, making it as engaging as it is enlightening.

As a Eurogame focused on strategic action management, Forestry relies on a dual-worker system in which players control a harvester and a manager, each with distinct responsibilities. The harvester moves through the forest, felling trees to meet contract demands, replanting saplings, constructing infrastructure, and adjusting water retention to promote a healthy ecosystem. Meanwhile, the manager oversees resource collection, utilizes sawmill buildings, fulfills contracts, and optimizes wood processing. Players must carefully allocate action points between these workers to make sustainable choices, enhance infrastructure, and ensure the forest thrives while meeting demand.

Game Mechanics:

Game Specifications:

  • 1 – 4 Players
  • 70 – 120 Minutes
  • Difficulty Weight 3.36

Feed the Kraken

| OTSG Staff

Feed the Kraken is a hidden role deduction game, with three asymmetric factions. All players may be sitting in the same boat, but they want to navigate in different directions! The loyal sailors must bring the ship safely to mainland, whereas the pirates crave to secretly maneuver the ship into the Bermuda Triangle. Meanwhile a crazy cultist is busy convincing parts of the crew to help him summon their dark lord —the Kraken— from the depth of the sea to save them all.

The goal of the game is to navigate the ship towards your final destination, which would be easy if only players weren’t divided into three different factions. Each secret faction wants to reach a different area of the board. Every turn the ship will sail in one of the three possible directions —but which one will it be? The current captain and their chosen lieutenant will study ancient sea maps and pass their often conflicting orders onto the chosen navigator, who has to make the final decision. Meanwhile the rest of the crew is busy drinking rum, gambling and telling each other tales of ancient sea monsters.

After each navigation, the lieutenant and navigator go off duty, and the captain has to find somebody sober enough to take their spot instead. Everyone can discuss, how well that last navigation went, who is to blame for the current course, and who should be in charge in the future instead. Convince your enemies that it is in their best interest to make you the next lieutenant, or navigator! You can even draw your guns and become the new captain in open mutiny! But for how long will you be able to keep the trust of your crew? The next mutiny might already be waiting for you if your decisions don’t please your fellow sailors.

Game Mechanics:

Game Specifications:

  • 5 – 11 Players
  • 45 – 90 Minutes
  • Difficulty Weight 2.17

Etherstone

| OTSG Staff

Nobura is a forgotten planet shrouded in mystery. The story told that a cosmic being sacrificed its divine essence to breathe life into its desolate lands. Etherstones shaped the planet’s biomes and interconnected all living beings with nature. Yet, the lurking threat of the Vacuous, a parasitic force born from the depths of Nobura, poses a challenge to life on the surface, weaving a tale of divine sacrifice. Nobura has always been part of a paradoxical loop of life and death, where the forces of creation and destruction dance in an eternal cosmic struggle.

In Etherstone, players embody faction leaders uniting forces to avert the impending extinction, striving to gain the most victory points through various means, such as summoning cards, overcoming threats, and utilizing their abilities as effectively as possible.

The first stage of the game will be drafting your hand of 7 cards and your leader card. Alternatively, for the first few matches, players can take a pre-made hand of cards with the matching Leader. Leaders have a set number of life points, a strength value, and a persistent asymmetric ability.

During your turn, you can take only one action among the following: Dice Draft, Summon, Attack, Rest, Void Pact.

Players will win by gaining victory points while doing several different actions and the game will end if any of the end-game conditions are met:

  • The active player has no cards left in their hand.
  • There are no cards left in the Threat deck.
  • The victory point pool has no more tokens in it.

Game Mechanics:

Game Specifications:

  • 2 -40 Players
  • 30 – 60 Minutes
  • Difficulty Weight 2.37