Category: Ω Board Games

Kingdomino Origins

| OTSG Staff
Kingdomino Origins

Kingdomino Origins

Go back in time to the prehistoric era of Kingdomino!

Kingdomino Origins plays similarly to the original game but introduces new components for additional actions and new ways to score points. Regions in your territory will earn you points if they contain fire. Fire is either part of your terrains or earned by adding dominoes with volcanoes. There are three game modes to play:

  • The first one introduces fire and volcanoes.
  • The second mode uses wooden resources.
  • And the third one features cavemen tokens.

You earn points by collecting resources, with additional points when you have the majority of a type of resources. These resources allow you to bring cavemen to your territory, and each type of caveman has its own way to give you points based on their position.

Game Mechanics:

  • City Building
  • Open Drafting
  • Tile Placement

Game Specifications:

  • 2 – 4 Players
  • 20 – 40 Minutes
  • Difficulty Weight 2.10

Kingdom Builder: Big Box

| OTSG Staff
Kingdom Builder: Big Box

Kingdom Builder: Big Box

In Kingdom Builder, the players create their own kingdoms by skillfully building their settlements, aiming to earn the most gold at the end of the game.

Nine different kinds of terrain are on the variable game board, including locations and castles. During his turn, a player plays his terrain card and builds three settlements on three hexes of this kind. If possible, a new settlement must be built next to one of that player’s existing settlements. When building next to a location, the player may seize an extra action tile that he may use from his next turn on. These extra actions allow extraordinary actions such as moving your settlements.

By building next to a castle, the player will earn gold at the end of the game, but the most gold will be earned by meeting the conditions of the three Kingdom Builder cards; these three cards (from a total of ten in the game) specify the conditions that must be met in order to earn the much-desired gold, such as earning gold for your settlements built next to water hexes or having the majority of settlements in a sector of the board.

Each game, players will use a random set of Kingdom Builder cards, special actions, and terrain sectors to build the map!

Game Mechanics:

  • Area Control
  • City Building
  • Grid Movement
  • Network Building

Game Specifications:

  • 2 – 5 Players
  • ~45 Minutes
  • Difficulty Weight 2.34

King of Monster Island

| OTSG Staff
King of Monster Island

King of Monster Island

A new King of Game rises: King of Monster Island

We have detected irregular movement on the Monster Island. The volcano is erupting like never before. Monsters from all around the world are gathering on the Island, what is happening? They don’t even fight each other anymore!
Because is a greater menace is lurking. Something big enough to threaten every monster and make them fight together against the same enemy…

Was this in the script? Wait… Is this a cooperative King of game?

In King of Monster Island, players will play as giant monsters who must work together to defeat a titan-like Boss before it finishes building an interdimensional portal. Each turn, players will roll dice to damage minions & boss, heal themselves, gain energy and buy cards, move around the island, activate human support, and increase fame. For the Boss’ actions, they are controlled entirely by the game itself. Using the results of the dice rolled into the volcano, the Boss will move, activate their minions, and attack nearby monsters.
Their goal: allow their minions to set up the pylons needed to construct the portal. To win, the players must defeat the Boss before they manage to activate the portal or defeat even a single Monster.

Otherwise Earth will be demolished!

Game Mechanics:

  • Cooperative
  • Dice Rolling
  • Open Drafting
  • Push Your Luck

Game Specifications:

  • 1 – 5 Players
  • 45 – 60 Minutes
  • Difficulty Weight 2.17

Kanagawa

| OTSG Staff
Kanagawa

Kanagawa

1840: In Kanagawa, the great bay of Tokyo, the Master Hokusai decided to open a painting school to share his art with his disciples. You are one of these disciples, and more than anything, you want to prove yourself worthy of the “crazy, old artist”. Follow his teachings to expand your studio and paint your preferred subjects (Trees, Animals, Characters, Buildings), all while paying attention to the changing of the seasons in order to make the most harmonious print… the one that will become the work of your lifetime!

Game Mechanics:

  • Hand Management
  • Open Drafting
  • Pattern Building
  • Push Your Luck
  • Set Collection
  • Worker Placement

Game Specifications:

  • 2 – 4 Players
  • ~45 Minutes
  • Difficulty Weight 2.02

Juicy Fruits

| OTSG Staff
Juicy Fruits

Juicy Fruits

Each player has their own small island paradise where they grow delicious fruit. To win, you must gain the most points by cleverly supplying ships and by adding the best businesses to your island.

Your turn in Juicy Fruits works like this: First, you slide one of your fruit collector tokens a number of unblocked spaces and collect that many fruits of the token’s type: banana, orange, lime, pomegranate, or mangosteen. Then you may either fulfill the order of a ship on your shores or claim a business from a shared display and place it onto your island (or do nothing). Clever planning and timing is vital because until you supply the ships on your shores, they block valuable island space which could be used to collect more fruit — but if you concentrate too much on the ships, the most promising businesses may get snatched by your opponents. Also, the sooner businesses are claimed, the quicker the game might end.

With each play, Juicy Fruits poses new puzzles of how to move your tokens efficiently and how to balance clearing your island with claiming businesses. The game also includes an additional “juice factory” mode and four modes of solo play.

Game Mechanics:

  • Area Movement
  • Economic
  • Grid Movement
  • Tile Placement

Game Specifications:

  • 1 – 4 Players
  • 20 – 50 Minutes
  • Difficulty Weight 2.00

Jaws

| OTSG Staff
Jaws

Jaws

In JAWS, one player takes on the role of the killer shark off Amity Island, while the other 1-3 players take on the roles of Brody, Hooper and Quint to hunt the shark. Character and event cards define player abilities and create game actions for humans and the shark. Gameplay is divided into two acts — Amity Island and The Orca — played on a double-sided board to replicate the film’s story:

  • In the Amity Island phase, the shark menaces swimmers and avoids capture. Other players attempt to pinpoint the shark’s location and save swimmers from shark attacks.
  • In the Orca phase, played on the reverse side of the game board, Brody, Hooper and Quint are aboard the sinking ship engaging in a climactic battle against the shark, while using additional action and strategy cards to defend the Orca from targeted shark attacks.

If humans kill the shark, they win; if the shark attack on the Orca succeeds, the great white shark wins.

Game Mechanics:

  • Action Points
  • Area Movement
  • Hidden Movement
  • Player Elimination
  • Team Based

Game Specifications:

  • 2 – 4 Players
  • ~60 Minutes
  • Difficulty Weight 2.20

Jamaica: The Crew

| OTSG Staff
Jamaica The Crew

Jamaica The Crew

Jamaica: The Crew is a set of twenty characters, each with a special power, that add flavor to the game without any big changes in the rules. The characters may be hired when you’re able to pay for the fee of a harbor, and they are “loaded” like any other resource, following the same rules.

You might find it enticing to add several characters to your boat — especially since most of them earn you additional gold at the end of the game — but with fewer holds dedicated to the regular resources, navigation becomes more dicey. All in all, more challenge, more silly fun, more Jamaica.

Game Mechanics:

  • Dice Rolling
  • Hand Management
  • Racing

Game Specifications:

  • 2 – 6 Players
  • 30 – 75 Minutes
  • Difficulty Weight 1.89

Iwari

| OTSG Staff
Iwari

Iwari

Evermore have they walked the world of Iwari. Evermore have they embodied its spirit and shaped its lands. They are stewards of the earth. Five Titans that make the cosmos breath. On Iwari, there are no teeming masses, no continent-wide civilizations. Humanity is in its infancy, living in scattered tribes in forest, tundra, and desert.

Now we have left our ancestral homelands to explore the vast uncharted regions, encountering other fellow tribes and exchanging knowledge, culture and wisdom. In our journey, we all live in harmony with the Titans, and though distant to us, they decide our fate. And yet only we don’t know if they created us, or we created them.

Iwari is an abstract-like Eurogame in which players represent different tribes looking for their identity by traveling around far lands and expanding their settlements into five different regions on the board. In the game, players use cards for two different actions:

1) Place tents and expand their settlements into five different regions on the board in a majority game that scores on each territory.
2) Construct nature totems to bond with the Titans by placing them on regions and score points based on the totem majorities in adjacent territories.

During the game, players can complete missions that grant small perks and score points by having the majority of tents in each territory after the end of the first card cycle. At game end, the majority of tents will be scored again, along with the majorities of nature totems in two adjacent regions and settlements that players have created (i.e., four or more tents in an uninterrupted sequence along one of the roads on the board).

Iwari reimagines the award-winning game Web of Power by Michael Schacht by adding new layers of strategy, tribe player boards, different maps with their own set of rules, modules that can be added to the game, and unique co-operative and solo modes.

Game Mechanics:

  • Abstract Strategy
  • Area Control
  • Cooperative
  • Hand Management
  • Network Building
  • Open Drafting

Game Specifications:

  • 2 – 5 Players
  • ~45 Minutes
  • Difficulty Weight 2.15

It’s a Wonderful World

| OTSG Staff
It's a Wonderful World

It's a Wonderful World

In It’s a Wonderful World, you are an expanding Empire and must choose your path to your future. You must develop faster and better than your competitors. You’ll carefully plan your expansion to develop your production power and rule over this new world.

It’s a Wonderful World is a cards drafting and engine building game from 1 to 5 players. Each round, players will draft 7 cards and then choose which ones will be recycled to immediately acquire Resources, and which ones will be kept for construction to produce Resources each round and/or gain victory points.

When a card is fully built, it’s added to the player’s Empire to increase the player’s production capacity for each round. The mechanical twist being that the production phase works in a specific order. You’ll have to plan your constructions carefully!

Game Mechanics:

  • Civilization
  • Closed Drafting
  • Economic
  • Hand Management
  • Set Collection

Game Specifications:

  • 1 – 5 Players
  • 30 – 60 Minutes
  • Difficulty Weight 2.30

It’s a Wonderful Kingdom

| OTSG Staff
It's a Wonderful Kingdom

It's a Wonderful Kingdom

It’s a Wonderful Kingdom is a standalone solo or 2-player game in a Low-Fantasy universe. Inspired by the core mechanics of its predecessor “It’s a Wonderful World”, this new game offers more interaction, a bluff mechanism and new challenges.

The game is played using modules, each different and offering mechanical twists. Each game, players will choose one of the different modules to compete against each other. The game is divided into 4 rounds. Each round having 3 phases.

Split & Trap
Players take turns offering their cards to one another in two areas in the center of the table.

One player picks 2 cards from their hand and either places them in the same area or splits them between the two areas. The other player chooses an area and claims the card(s) in it. The players take turns repeating this step until both players have offered all of their cards. Each player has 2 Trap tokens which can be used to place cards face down, otherwise all cards are played face up.

Planification
Each player chooses which of the cards they have collected to build and which ones to recycle for immediate resources.

Sequential Production
Each player produces their Kingdom’s resources sequentially. Since resources are produced in a specific order, it is important to plan ahead to optimize your production and development.

At the end of the fourth round, the player with the most victory points wins the game.

Game Mechanics:

  • Bluffing
  • Open Drafting

Game Specifications:

  • 1 – 2 Players
  • 45 – 60 Minutes
  • Difficulty Weight 2.57