Category: Ω Board Games

Deep Regrets

| OTSG Staff

Deep Regrets is an unfortunate fishing game about pulling progressively more horrifying things out of the ocean. Decide what to eat, what to sell, what to mount, and how many regrets you’re willing to carry, as you push yourself too far and spiral towards a conclusion in this strategic horror fishing game.

You’ll roll bespoke tackle dice at the start of each turn to determine your strength for that round and then decide whether you’ll stay at sea or return to port to sell fish, buy provisions, and recharge your energy.

Survey the sizes of shadows on the backs of 9 different fish shoals at three depths, determining what you think you can afford to catch and if you want to risk it for a potentially better reward. Flip fish, spend dice, add them to your collection – but beware of reveal and catch abilities that can have various effects on the game! As your eyes spy more and more horrifying things, you’ll collect Regrets cards – which drive up your madness but also give you access to more dice and increase the value of weirder fish. It’s a risk/reward scenario as you balance your madness, knowing that at the end of the game the player with the highest value of Regrets will have to discard their most valuable mounted fish.

Manage you resources, make strategic decisions, leverage madness to your benefit and suppress your Regrets as you try to catch the most valuable haul of weirder and weirder fish in this weird week at sea.

SOLO MODE:
In the solo mode (which you can also co-op), you’ll act as an ichthyologist on a mission to catch and catalog every fish in the sea. Over a campaign of dozens of games, you’ll try to reel in every last fish and document their attributes on provided catalog sheet. At the end of each game, you’ll have to discard an equal value of fish to the regrets you’ve collected and may have to let some fish go to return to another day. At the end of the campaign, you’ll have a catalog of all fish names, depths, values and difficulties that can be used by players in the multiplayer game to help identify what they might fish up!

—description from the designer

Game Mechanics:

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

Game Specifications:

  • 1 – 5 Players
  • 30 – 150 Minutes
  • Difficulty Weight 2.35

Deep Dive

| OTSG Staff

Deep Dive is a press-your-luck set-collection game in which you use your waddle of penguins to dive deep into the ocean to amass the most bountiful collection of food!

Turns are simple: Flip over an ocean tile, and see what you reveal. You can take what you reveal in the shallows or dive deeper, hoping for a larger catch — but the deeper you go, the more plentiful the predators become. As you surface with food, you build sets of three colors. Target the colors you need to complete sets and score the maximum number of points.

When one of the depths of the ocean has been fully explored, the game ends and the penguin waddle with the best sets of food wins!

—description from publisher

Game Mechanics:

  • Memory
  • Push Your Luck
  • Set Collection

Game Specifications:

  • 1 – 6 Players
  • 15 – 20 Minutes
  • Difficulty Weight 1.13

Decrypto

| OTSG Staff

Players compete in two teams in Decrypto, with each trying to correctly interpret the coded messages presented to them by their teammates while cracking the codes they intercept from the opposing team.

Each team has their own screen, and in this screen they tuck four cards in pockets numbered 1-4, letting everyone on the same team see the words on these cards while hiding the words from the opposing team. In the first round, one team member from each team takes a code card that shows three of the digits 1-4 in some order, e.g., 4-2-1. They then give a coded message using synonyms of the code words so that their teammate can guess the sequence. If the teammates guess incorrectly, the team receives a black mark of failure.

Subsequent rounds have the same structure, except now the other team can attempt to guess your code. If they’re correct, they receive a white mark of success; if not, then the first team must guess the number correctly or take a black mark of failure. (Guessing correctly does nothing except avoid failure and give the opposing team information about what our hidden words might be.)

The rounds continue until a team collects either its second white mark (winning the game) or its second black mark (losing the game). Games typically last between 4-7 rounds. If neither team has won after eight rounds, then each team must attempt to guess the other team’s words; whichever team guesses more words correctly wins.

Game Mechanics:

  • Communication Limits
  • Paper and Pencil
  • Team-Based Game

Game Specifications:

  • 3 – 8 Players
  • 15 – 45 Minutes
  • Difficulty Weight 1.83

DC Forever

| OTSG Staff

In the deck-building game DC Forever, you pick two iconic characters pulled from the pages of DC Comics to form your own squad of heroes or rogues. These characters have unique powers that form the starting cards of your deck, along with basic resource cards.

During play, you recruit new characters to your team, each with unique decks and gameplay, and choose which of their cards to add to support your strategy as the game progresses. Heroes and rogues will clash at classic DC Comics locations from the shadowy alleyways of Gotham City to the subaquatic depths of Atlantis.

Rogues want to achieve their master plan by completing five schemes, but they’ll be equally happy to knock out all of the heroes since no one will remain to oppose them. For their part, the heroes want to either capture all of the rogues or place thirty citizens in sanctuary; you may not be able to stop the schemes, but if people are safe, then you’ll still call this a victory.

DC Forever features eighteen playable characters and hundreds of cards from which to choose during play.

Game Mechanics:

  • Deck Building
  • Variable Player Powers

Game Specifications:

  • 2 – 4 Players
  • ~30 Minutes
  • Difficulty Weight 3.20

DC Deck-Building Game: Justice League Dark

| OTSG Staff

ARE YOU READY TO GO DARK?
This entry in the DC Deck-Building Game series puts you in the supernatural shoes of the DC team that steps in when challenges arise that are too mystical for regular Super Heroes. Become a member of the Justice League Dark as you Seal the threats of magical Super-Villains and Transform your cards into more powerful forms!

Standalone game, but compatible with other games in DC Deck-Building Game series.

KEY FEATURES
Based on Justice League Dark comics, with original cover art by Ryan Benjamin
Play as Justice League Dark members like Wonder Woman, John Constantine, Zatanna, and Doctor Fate
Transform cards have the ability to change into other cards!
Seal your cards away to add to your score at the end of the game
New Weakness cards have a built-in way to get rid of them… if you are willing to pay the cost!

Game Mechanics:

  • Deck Building
  • Open Drafting

Game Specifications:

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

Cat Between Us

| OTSG Staff

Do you understand what the cat wants? Try to get as close to the cat as possible without passing it by.

Each round in Cat Between Us, you first draw a card from the deck, then place the cat token on the numbered space on the track matching the tiny number on the card. Shuffle the deck, then deal all players their current hand size.

Starting with the player who won the previous round, players take turns playing one card at a time under the six items laid out on the table until each item has two cards below it. The sum of these two cards is the value of this item. Each player sums the value of each item remaining in their hand to determine where they should place their token on the track. Whoever is closest to the cat without passing it has won the round; multiple winners are possible. (If all players have passed the cat, whoever passed it least wins.)

Winners move their personal token forward on their playing card, which indicates how many rounds they have won and how many cards they receive. Each time you win, you start the round with one more card in hand, making your next victory harder! Whoever first wins three rounds wins the game.

Game Mechanics:

  •  Hand Management

Game Specifications:

  • 2 – 6 Players
  • 15 – 40 Minutes
  • Difficulty Weight 1.67

Botanicus

| OTSG Staff

How about creating your own botanical garden? As an aristocrat in the late 19th century, you have bought land, hired a gardener and set out to find the best plants there are.

As you know, the visitors are very picky about the plants they want to see, so your job is not only to acquire the plants, but also to sort them according to the visitors’ preferences.

In Botanicus, you compete for the best action-spots in a unique selection mechanism, and then make the most of the options available to you. You have to collect new plants, take care of them, water them and keep an eye on the gardener. Last but not least, you have to collect some money along the way to pay for all this.
In the end, what counts is how many visitors you satisfy and how beautiful your garden is. Will you be able to outdo the gardens of your competitors?

Game Mechanics:

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

Game Specifications:

  • 2 – 4 Players
  • 45 – 60 Minutes
  • Difficulty Weight 2.40

Coffee Rush

| OTSG Staff

A cup of coffee sure is relaxing — for the customer. For the coffee shop, however, orders tend to pile up during peak hours, and it is no different today at Coffee Rush. Your goal: Complete customer orders to increase your ratings and be recognized as the best barista!

In more detail, each player moves on the ingredient board to collect the ingredients that they need to fulfill orders — and fulfilling orders boosts your rating. Orders that are not fulfilled in time become penalties, which subtract from your rating. If a player has fulfilled three orders, they may activate an upgrade that lets them acquire ingredients more easily.

The game ends once all order cards have run out or after a barista collects their fifth penalty card. The player with the highest rating wins!

Game Mechanics:

  • Contracts
  • Grid Movement

Game Specifications:

  • 2 – 4 Players
  • ~30 Minutes
  • Difficulty Weight 1.82

Darwin’s Journey

| OTSG Staff

When all you can identify in the horizon for many long days is the line that detaches the sea from the sky, the glimpse of a distant shore appearing before you will make you shiver at the understanding that the adventure is about to begin.

You find yourself astonished, landing on the shore that will be the origin of an extensive exploration through the Galapagos, a magic place of inconceivable beauty and endless biodiversity. There, you will gather repertoires and expand your knowledge of the natural sciences. Your eyes will learn how to detect the hidden species in the tropical forest, gazing at the countless colors and textures of nature. After inspiring hours spent studying and getting to enlightening conclusions, you will rest under a sparkling sky, admiring the stunning complexity of the animal realm.

Darwin’s Journey is a worker-placement Eurogame in which players recall Charles Darwin’s memories of his adventure through the Galapagos islands, which contributed to the development of his theory of evolution.

With the game’s innovative worker progression system, each worker will have to study the disciplines that are a prerequisite to perform several actions in the game, such as exploration, correspondence, gathering, and dispatch of repertoires found on the island to museums in order to contribute to the human knowledge of biology. The game lasts five rounds, and thanks to several short- and long-term objectives, every action you take will grant victory points in different ways.

Game Mechanics:

  • Contracts
  • Pick-up and Deliver
  • Set Collection
  • Solo / Solitaire Game
  • Variable Set-up
  • Worker Placement

Game Specifications:

  • 1 – 4 Players
  • 60 – 120 Minutes
  • Difficulty Weight 3.90

Danger the Game

| OTSG Staff

The World is a Dangerous Place!

Disappointed fathers, depressed giant squids, dynamite on train tracks, and so much more! It’s up to you to rescue those in need. Use your skills, tools, and imagination to devise foolproof plans and save the day!

The first victim is the person who lives the most dangerously. Each of the other players is called a rescuer. The victim draws and reveals a danger card containing the perilous situation they are caught in. The rescuers then place one skill card and one tool card from their hands which they will utilize to tell a story of how they will save the victim. While a Rescuerer presents their rescue story another can play a plot twist on their cards tripping them up and changing the story for more engaging play. the Victim awards the Danger card to the Rescuer with the best Rescue.

All cards are written for embellishment and lateral thinking. “Able to transform into a rock” well what kind of rock are you?!

Game Mechanics:

  • Card Game
  • Storytelling

Game Specifications:

  • 3 – 12 Players
  • ~30 Minutes
  • Difficulty Weight 1.20