Category: Ω Board Games

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

Fort

| OTSG Staff

Fort is a 2-4 player card game about building forts and following friends.

In Fort, you’re a kid! And like many kids, you want to grow your circle of friends, collect pizza and toys, and build the coolest fort.

By doing this cool stuff, you’ll score victory points, and at the end of the game, the player with the most victory points wins! Your cards not only let you take actions on your own turn, but also let you follow the other players’ actions on their turns. Will you devote yourself to your own posse, or copy what the other kids are doing?

But be careful as your carefully constructed deck might start losing cards if you don’t actually use them. After all, if you don’t play with your friends, why should they hang out with you anymore?

Game Mechanics:

Game Specifications:

  • 2 – 4 Players
  • 20 – 40 Minutes
  • Difficulty Weight 2.45

Forgotten Waters

| OTSG Staff

Forgotten Waters is a Crossroads Game set in a world of fantastical pirate adventure. In it, players take on the role of pirates sailing together on a ship, attempting to further their own personal stories as well as a common goal.

The world of Forgotten Waters is silly and magical, with stories designed to encourage players to explore and laugh in delight as they interact with the world around them. It’s a game in which every choice can leave a lasting impact on the story, and players will want turn over every rock just to see what they find.

Forgotten Waters features five scenarios and a massive location book that provides players with tons of choices wherever they go.

Game Mechanics:

Game Specifications:

  • 3 – 7 Players
  • 120 – 240 Minutes
  • Difficulty Weight 2.10

Forges of Ravenshire

| OTSG Staff

Grab a hammer and some steel, it’s time to forge! The Blacksmiths Guild of Ravenshire is in need of a new Forgemaster. You and your fellow smiths are competing to see who can make the most money and become the new Forgemaster.

Forges of Ravenshire is played over 4 seasons or rounds. Each season starts with the gathering phase where players will acquire contracts, recruit guild members, and gather resources. Players roll their dice workers and place one of them on an available location to gather resources. Then retrieve a different dice worker to gather even more resources. However, the various workers are from different guilds and when retrieved will activate the guilds you have invested in. All players will take turns placing one of their workers and retrieving another worker 3 times.

After the gathering phase is the production phase. Take those 3 dice workers you have taken and now place them on different areas of your forge to gather more resources, make charcoal or steel, and forge contracts to make money.

At the end of every season, check to see if any special titles have been earned. Titles bring prestige and hard-earned money.

Finally, roll your 3 dice workers again and prepare the county of Ravenshire for the next season.

Game Mechanics:

Game Specifications:

  • 1 – 4 Players
  • 50 – 100 Minutes
  • Difficulty Weight 2.87

Forest Shuffle

| OTSG Staff

In Forest Shuffle, players compete to gather the most valuable trees, then attract species to these trees, thus creating an ecologically balanced habitat for flora and fauna.

To start, each player has six cards in hand, with cards depicting either a particular type of tree or two forest dwellers (animal, plant, mushroom, etc.), with these latter cards being divided in half, whether vertically or horizontally, with one dweller in each card half.

On a turn, either draw two cards — whether face down from the deck or face up from the clearing — and add them to your hand, or play a card from your hand by paying the cost, then putting it into play.

During set-up, three winter cards were placed into the bottom third of the deck. When the third winter card is drawn, the game ends immediately, then players tally their points based on the trees and dwellers in their forest. Whoever scores the most points wins.

Forest Shuffle is the first in a line of Lookout games sporting the Lookout Greenline label, produced on FSC certified paper and avoiding plastic completely.

Game Mechanics:

Game Specifications:

  • 2 – 5 Players
  • 40 – 60 Minutes
  • Difficulty Weight 2.21

Forbidden Jungle

| OTSG Staff

In Forbidden Jungle, your team has crash-landed on a mysterious jungle planet, and you need to work together to survive. Search the ruins of an abandoned outpost for an elusive escape portal, all while fending off an ever-growing horde of venomous creatures and an escalating chain of collapsing locations. Shift tiles to power up the portal and live to see another day!

Game Mechanics:

Game Specifications:

  • 2 – 5 Players
  • 45 Minutes
  • Difficulty Weight 2.10

For the Queen

| OTSG Staff

The land you live in has been at war for as long as any of you have been alive.
The Queen has decided to undertake a long and perilous journey to broker an alliance with a distant power.
The Queen has chosen you, and only you, to be her retinue, and accompany her on this journey.
She chose you because she knows that you love her.

For the Queen is a card-based story-building game that you and up to five other players can begin playing in minutes. Choose your queen from among fourteen gorgeously varied illustrations—or start from scratch—and use the prompt cards to collaboratively tell a story of love, betrayal, doubt, and devotion.

Game Mechanics:

Game Specifications:

  • 2 – 6 Players
  • 30 – 120 Minutes
  • Difficulty Weight 1.08

For Sale

| OTSG Staff

For Sale is a quick, fun game nominally about buying and selling real estate. During the game’s two distinct phases, players first bid for several buildings then, after all buildings have been bought, sell the buildings for the greatest profit possible.

Rounding rule

The rounding rule preferred by the designer Stefan Dorra is that players get back half of their bid rounded DOWN (not UP), as confirmed in correspondence with him here and here. A history of how the rounding rule has changed in different editions is documented here.

Game Mechanics:

Game Specifications:

  • 3 – 6 Players
  • 30 Minutes
  • Difficulty Weight 1.25

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