Category: Ω Board Games

Deep Dreams

| OTSG Staff

Little Bruno has gone to sleep and will travel during the night between dreams. Our mission as dream guardians is to keep him immersed in the most pleasant dreams and assure us that he wakes up as little as possible during the night.

The goal in Deep Dreams is to score points playing and connecting dream cards, that show the four colors of the dream. You will need to create the largest color groups connected to score victory points, while making sure Bruno doesn’t wake up by drawing a continuous path with the white lines and arrows through the cards. Some dream cards got powerful effects that will help players to get better combinations. And at the end, the longest path will have the greatest reward. Get ready to enter the world of dreams and ensure that Bruno has a quiet and peaceful night.

Game Mechanics:

Game Specifications:

  • 2 – 5 Players
  • 10 – 15 Minutes
  • Difficulty Weight 1.00

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

Fish & Katz

| OTSG Staff

Welcome to the most famous fish market in the cat’s world, Tsukiji Market! You and your fellow kitten chefs are competing to get the freshest fish for your restaurant. The competition is so intense that you can’t get what you want without stretching your paws all the way to the most delicious fish at a lightning speed. So spot on the fish, raise your paws, and grab them for the win!

Fish & Katz, first released as Cat’s Tsukiji, is a speed game like no other because you will put on the cutest game component in the world — the cloth cat paws! You can choose the finger cloth of your favorite cat pattern, how cute is that! Each round, a number of fish cards will be displayed on the table. On the count of three, all players simultaneously point their “paws” at the fish card they want. If you are the sole player to point at a card, you get it for a set-collection scoring. However, if any other player(s) point at the same card as you do, none of you get the fish!

The first player to score 6 points wins!

Game Mechanics:

Game Specifications:

  • 2 – 6 Players
  • 20 – 30 Minutes
  • Difficulty Weight 1.00

First in Flight

| OTSG Staff

First in Flight is a push-your-luck, deck-building game about the race to early flight. Players take on the roles of the Wright Brothers, Samuel Langley, and other flight pioneers, racing to build and pilot the “flyers” that preceded modern airplanes.

Each player’s flyer design is represented by a deck of cards that they can steadily improve and refine, and which may include unknown design flaws that threaten their success.

Flying is a blackjack-style challenge to test a design, break new records, and gain experience — hopefully without crashing. Then, players head back to the workshop to refine their flyers and improve their chances on future flights. There are dozens of available technologies, pilot skills, and friends in the field available for players to customize their own play style and strategy.

Game Mechanics:

Game Specifications:

  • 1 – 4 Players
  • 45 – 75 Minutes
  • Difficulty Weight 2.31

Fire In The Hole

| OTSG Staff

Fire In The Hole is a multi-generational game with a comedy punch. Part carrrd game, part dexterity game, it’s simple enough to entertain the young landlubbers (7+), but has the strategic twists to trick even the saltiest of ol’ seadogs!

Players lay a card, roll dice to determine effects and fire yer cannonball! First to link 4 cannonballs in a row in the 3d ship is the WINNER!

Game Mechanics:

Game Specifications:

  • 2 – 4 Players
  • 15 – 40 Minutes
  • Difficulty Weight 1.00

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

Finspan

| OTSG Staff

You are a marine researcher seeking to find and observe an array of aquatic life in the colorful Sunlight Zone, ghostly Twilight Zone, and pitch-black Midnight Zone of the world’s seas and oceans. In Finspan, the fish you discover over four weeks will generate a series of benefits as you dive deeper into the ocean.

Each dive site specializes in a key aspect of expanding your research:

  • Grow your collection of fish.
  • Discover freshly laid eggs.
  • Hatch eggs into young and consolidate young to form schools.

The winner is the player with the most points gained from fish, eggs, young, schools, and achievements.

Game Mechanics:

Game Specifications:

  • 1 – 5 Players
  • 45 – 60 Minutes
  • Difficulty Weight 2.33