Category: New Games

Downtown Farmers Market

| OTSG Staff

Downtown Farmers Market takes you to your favorite time of the weekend, but today’s trip might require a little bit more thinking than usual. Your task: Line up eight challenge tiles to create two axes, then place an ingredient tile at the intersection of two challenge requirements each turn.

At the end of the game, check which rows and columns have the ingredients required to complete the corresponding challenges and earn points!

Game Mechanics:

Game Specifications:

  • 2 – 4 Players
  • ~20 Minutes
  • Difficulty Weight 1.42

GAP

| OTSG Staff

Game Mechanics:

Game Specifications:

  • 2 – 6 Players
  • ~10 Minutes
  • Difficulty Weight 1.20

Everything Ever

| OTSG Staff

You’ve prepared your whole life for this. Every movie you’ve seen, every show you’ve watched, every song you’ve listened to, every place you’ve visited, every book you’ve read, every kind of food you’ve eaten, and every person you’ve ever heard of makes you better at this game. It’s finally time to get credit for everything you already know!

In Everything Ever, you and your friends take turns listing things from categories like “Every Dinosaur Movie” or “Every Brand of Soap”. Two category cards are in play, and on your turn, you must say something that fits in one category and something that fits in the other, with both of those somethings not having been said previously. If you can’t think of something, you can play a category card from the three in your hand to cover the one you’re blanking on, then name something from that new category. If you can’t think of something for a category, you must take that pile as a penalty, then flip a new category from the deck.

If you say something that fits both categories at the same time, you can either discard one of your penalty cards or draw a new category card from the deck, then play a third category card to the table. (Once someone is penalized, drop back to two categories.)

Keep your friends’ iffy answers in check with judge cards, and win by collecting the fewest cards once the deck runs out.

Game Mechanics:

Game Specifications:

  • 2 – 10 Players
  • 20 – 60 Minutes
  • Difficulty Weight 1.00

GoodCritters

| OTSG Staff

It’s the most anticipated moment of any heist: time to split the loot. Of course, everybody trusts the boss to divide everything evenly, right? But will the boss be even-handed and make sure that every “made critter” gets a piece? Maybe the boss will pay off only some of them and keep the rest of it…

GoodCritters is a game for 4-8 criminal critters who are pulling off heists and fighting over the loot! Whoever is chosen as the boss can distribute the loot from the heist however they desire, but it’s the crew that has the final say. If the crew doesn’t like the split, they might just tell the boss to take a hike and put some other critter in charge! In the end, the critter that collects the most valuable stash of loot wins!

Game Mechanics:

Game Specifications:

  • 4 – 8 Players
  • 30 – 45 Minutes
  • Difficulty Weight 1.44

EGO

| OTSG Staff

We are not alone! It is the 23rd century, and proof of alien life has finally been discovered beyond our solar system. In fact, recent developments in technology have triggered a cascade of discoveries throughout the galaxy; intelligent life and advanced civilizations are now known across many planets, moons, and asteroids in the Milky Way. Now the race is on to establish interstellar relations with the aliens. The only chance we have of reaching alien life is by pooling our resources to build the required Super Ship. In an unprecedented, albeit uneasy, co-operation between the planetary governments, the peoples of our solar system have finally built the first of these Super Ships. Now, the coalition known as the Extraterrestrial Greeting Organization — EGO — is now ready to launch our first mission.

In EGO, players proceed through a sequence of major and minor events including auctions, drafts, risks, and more. Risks and egos are the lifeblood of this game as players will frequently find themselves in a game of chicken with their rival ambassadors as they try to impress various alien civilizations and earn political power. At the end of the game, players earn significant bonus points or suffer serious penalty points depending on how offensive the aliens find them to be. Ultimately, the ambassador with the most prestige and respect will earn a seat in the Galactic Senate and be crowned the winner of the game.

EGO is a drastic reimagining of the strategic, push-your-luck auction game, Beowulf: The Legend and introduces many innovations by:

  • Revamping the polarizing risk mechanism while preserving its excitement and drama
  • Increasing the set-up variety with a randomized sequence of interchangeable civilization boards
  • Streamlining the endgame push-your-luck token system in which players can score big or suffer immensely
  • Introducing exciting new features such as currency cards and transmission events
  • Balancing the bidding tie-breaker system with the simple solution of ranked cards
  • Speeding up the playtime with a condensed and focused sequence of events
  • Doubling the number of unique special cards that can be drafted as rewards
  • Spicing up the risk events with varying rewards and penalties
  • Sharpening the endgame hand management decisions with tempting rewards following a climactic final auction
  • Broadening the appeal of the theme and presentation with vivid galactic artwork by Marie Bergeron

Game Mechanics:

  • Auction / Bidding
  • Hand Management
  • Modular Board
  • Open Drafting
  • Push Your Luck
  • Variable Set-up

Game Specifications:

  • 2 – 5 Players
  • 40 – 80 Minutes
  • Difficulty Weight 2.40

Everdell: Silverfrost

| OTSG Staff

Silverfrost is the next standalone edge of the map series of Everdell. Beyond the snow-capped Spirecrest mountains to the south of Everdell Valley, lies the bold country of Silverfrost. It is your task to build and maintain a city in this challenging landscape. You must clear the piling snow, burn the fires to keep your citizens warm and prosperous, and complete important quests for the Ranger’s Guild.

In Silverfrost, you send critter workers to various Locations on the board, cards, or the mountain to gather resources and activate unique effects. You use these resources to play cards face up in front of you, forming your own city. Each turn, you take 1 of 3 possible actions — Place a worker, Play a card, or Prepare for the next season.

You may place 1 of your workers on any Basic Location, Red Destination card in your city or opponent’s cities, the Forge, the Hot Springs, or a mountaintop Beacon, so long as it is not blocked by Snow or another worker. You then claim the listed resources or perform the action. If there is Snow at the location, you must first spend a Fire resource to clear the snow pile. If you use your unique Ranger worker, you can visit an occupied location, or gain a Fire resource if visiting a location alone.

To play a card, you must pay the listed cost of resources. If it is a Critter, you may instead play it for free by using 1 of your 2 Chimneys, so long as you have the necessary Fire to light it. Cards may be played either from your hand, or from the area of face-up cards on the board known as the Valley. Nearly all of the cards in Silverfrost feature new and powerful abilities, offering a huge variety of strategic depth and combos to explore.

If all of your workers are deployed, you may prepare for the next season by bringing back all of your workers, gaining a new worker, and performing the action described for the following season, introducing new snowfall to the board and to your city, as well as other challenges. A player is finished when they have played through the last season (Spring) and cannot perform any more actions. After all players have finished, the player with the most points is the winner.

Game Mechanics:

Game Specifications:

  • 1 – 4 Players
  • 30 – 120 Minutes
  • Difficulty Weight 3.23

Dice Throne: Outcasts

| OTSG Staff

Dice Throne is a combat game, whether 1v1, 2v2, 3v3, 2v2v2, or free-for-all. Select from a variety of heroes that play and feel completely distinct from one another. Attack opponents and activate abilities by rolling your hero’s unique set of five dice. Accumulate combat points and spend them on cards that have a large range of effects, such as granting permanent hero upgrades, applying status effects, and manipulating dice directly whether yours, your teammate’s, or even your opponent’s.

Outcasts is the newest edition of the Dice Throne universe introducing 4 new heroes: Pale Lady, Headless Horseman, Raveness, Necromancer.

Game Mechanics:

  • Dice Rolling
  • Re-rolling and Locking
  • Take That
  • Variable Player Powers

Game Specifications:

  • 2 – 6 Players
  • 20 – 40 Minutes
  • Difficulty Weight 2.15

Cthulhu: Dark Providence

| OTSG Staff

Set in the Cthulhu: Death May Die world and inspired by the writings of H.P. Lovecraft, Dark Providence is a competitive game in which players take on secret roles of Investigators and Cultists from the most influential cities of the United States during the Great Depression.

While the Cultists explore the nation’s vulnerability seeking to remake it into a twisted version of itself by consorting with unspeakable beings from nightmarish dimensions, Investigators take the opposite side, standing against this dark providence.

Each player’s secret alignment determines how they’ll score points at the end of the game, however, this is not a cooperative game. During the game players use Influence cubes to bid for the right to claim Asset cards, take control of cities, and gather Mythos cards. Each new Asset card acquired improves the players’ deck and therefore the resources and actions they can perform during a turn.

Trying to keep their identity secret and avoid insanity, players perform a multitude of actions, swaying Hired Agents to their side of the battle, assassinating other players’ Agents, gathering additional help from Mythos cards, blocking other players from claiming cards, and sealing or protecting Gates, among others to gain Victory Points.

At the end, only the player with the most Victory Points of the dominant side of the battle will win the game!

Game Mechanics:

  • Area Majority / Influence
  • Secret Roles

Game Specifications:

  • 1 – 5 Players
  • 90 – 120 Minutes
  • Difficulty Weight 3.25

Duel for Cardia

| OTSG Staff

Cardia is a fast paced, strategic card game for two players: Choose your card wisely to win each encounter against your opponent.
In gratitude for her liberation, a mighty djinn created the wondrous city of Cardia. Legend has it that whoever wins over the four factions and gains their five powerful signet rings will rule the city. Your goal is set!

Players will each pilot one of two Decks, made up of the same cards for each, with values from 1-16 and with each card having unique abilities. Play your cards at the moment your opponent does not expect them and use their abilities wisely to outwit them!

Game Mechanics:

Game Specifications:

  • 2 Players
  • ~15 Minutes
  • Difficulty Weight 1.78

Armageddon

| OTSG Staff

In a post-apocalyptic world, players try to rebuild society. Using the debris, they build new towns for the remaining survivors to live in — but these friendly folks aren’t the only ones still out there. Marauders want to pillage your town and see it burn. Scavenge what you can and build new structures to help you defend against the marauder threat. While you can get more things done in town when you house more survivors there, they all have to have a space to sleep or they might turn against you and join the marauders.

Armageddon is a strategy game that offers many tactical choices and different strategies to claim victory.

Game Mechanics:

Game Specifications:

  • 3 – 4 Players
  • ~90 Minutes
  • Difficulty Weight 2.96