Tag: Grid Movement

Grid Movement is a game mechanic where game pieces move on a predetermined grid in various patterns.

Istanbul

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Istanbul

Istanbul

There’s hustle and bustle at Istanbul’s grand bazaar as merchants and their assistants rush through the narrow alleys in their attempt to be more successful than their competitors. Everything must be well organized: wheelbarrows must be filled with goods at the warehouses, then swiftly transported by the assistants to various destinations. Your goal? Be the first merchant to collect a certain number of rubies.

In Istanbul, you lead a group of one merchant and four assistants through 16 locations in the bazaar. At each such location, you can carry out a specific action. The challenge, though, is that to take an action, you must move your merchant and an assistant there, then leave the assistant behind (to handle all the details while you focus on larger matters). If you want to use that assistant again later, your merchant must return to that location to pick him up. Thus, you must plan ahead carefully to avoid being left with no assistants and thus unable to do anything…

In more detail, on a turn you move your merchant and his retinue of assistants one or two steps through the bazaar, either leave an assistant at that location or collect an assistant left earlier, then perform the action. If you meet other merchants or certain individuals at the location, you might be able to take a small extra action. Possible actions include:

  • Paying to increase your wheelbarrow capacity, which starts the game with a capacity of only two for each good.
  • Filling your wheelbarrow with a specified good to its limit.
  • Acquiring a special ability, and the earlier you come, the easier they are to collect.
  • Buying rubies or trading goods for rubies.
  • Selling special combinations of goods to make the money you need to do everything else.

When a merchant has collected five rubies in his wheelbarrow, players complete that round, then the game ends. If this player is the only one who’s reached this goal, he wins immediately; otherwise ties are broken by money in hand.

Game Mechanics:

  • Dice Rolling
  • Economic
  • Grid Movement
  • Network Building
  • Pick-Up and Deliver
  • Racing
  • Worker Placement

Game Specifications:

  • 2 – 5 Players
  • 40 – 60 Minutes
  • Difficulty Weight 2.59

Inner Compass

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Inner Compass

Inner Compass

In Inner Compass, you play as one of four characters searching for meaning in their everyday lives. (Sound familiar?) Make the right life choices, experience the full spectrum of emotions, create meaningful memories, and — ultimately — find your own inner compass. The most enlightened player wins!

Inner Compass is a bold experiment in determining your personal inner compass. Will you focus on building up emotions to release them at certain times? Sometimes it can be healthy and productive, while at other times it can be destructive and inappropriate. As you move through the game, you’ll learn how to communicate your emotions constructively and earn points towards winning.

Game Mechanics:

  • Abstract Strategy
  • Grid Movement
  • Set Collection

Game Specifications:

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

Habitats

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Habitats

Habitats

In Habitats, each player builds a big wildlife park without cages or fences. The animals in your park need their natural habitats: grassland, bush, rocks or lakes. The zebra needs a big area of grass and some water adjacent, for example, while a bat needs rocks and bush and water, a hart needs bush and grass, and a crocodile needs mainly water. There is a snake, baboon, bee, elephant, otter, lizard, turtle, eagle, meerkat, scorpio, hog, catfish, rhino, etc., each with its own landscape requirements — 68 different animals in total.

Each player starts their individual park with an entrance tile, and they are each represented in the marketplace of animal tiles by a ceramic figure (or a wooden ranger meeple in some editions). On a turn, a player takes the tile to their left, right or front; moves their figure to the space just vacated; then draws a tile to place where their figure started the turn.

When adding an animal tile in your park, you add its main landscape — the base space for the animal — to your park, too. While placing this new animal, its own piece of landscape can help to fulfill the requirements of your other animals’ requirements, e.g., the water on a hippo tile fulfilling the adjacent otter’s need for water. Thus, fulfilling every animal’s desire for land becomes a more and more difficult task with each tile you add.

Aside from expanding your park with different landscape types, flora and animals, you can improve its profitability by building extra entrance roads, trek spots, and watchtowers.

Habitats lasts three seasons, with each season giving each player 6-9 new tiles for their parks. Whoever has best met the goal of the season receives bonus points, with a smaller number of points for second and third place. At the end of the game, each player scores for each tile in their park based on whether that tile’s requirements are satisfied. Whoever scores the most points wins!

Game Mechanics:

  • Grid Movement
  • Open Drafting
  • Pattern Building
  • Puzzle
  • Tile Placement

Game Specifications:

  • 2 – 5 Players
  • 30 – 50 Minutes
  • Difficulty Weight 2.25

Goryo

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Goryo

Goryo

Goryō is an asymmetrical game of investigation and deduction for two players, set in the mystical feudal Japan. One player will play the role of the Samurai guarding the Imperial Palace, charged with hunting down a dreadful spirit of vengeance, the Goryō, played by the other player.

The Goryō appears in the palace in the form of a cat, bound to a specific type of object. To get a revenge and win the game, the Goryō player must smash 5 objects in the palace’s rooms, without being defeated by the Samurai. To win, the Samurai must instead exorcise the spirit for good by finding out what type of object the Goryō is bound to, or by catching the spirit’s essence three times.

Each round, both players alternate in asymmetrical turns:
the Goryō plans the route to break a new object and mislead her opponent, placing movement cubes on a secret dry-erase board. Then the Samurai use their available actions to chase the Goryō along her path, moving the Samurai pawns on the map and using a special board to organize the catch.

However exorcising a spirit isn’t a simple task at all…

Game Mechanics:

  • Deduction
  • Grid Movement
  • Programmed Movement

Game Specifications:

  • 2 Players
  • 20 – 30 Minutes
  • Difficulty Weight 2.11

Gods Love Dinosaurs

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Gods Love Dinosaurs

Gods Love Dinosaurs

How do you make an ecosystem flourish with just enough of every life form in the chain to supply you with dinosaurs to dominate the lands? Resources are scarce, animals can go extinct in an area, and everyone must eat to survive — so moves must be cunning. Life hangs in the balance…

In Gods Love Dinosaurs, a cheeky, wild, and timeless take on the scientific tale as old as life itself, you are a god who has been tasked with designing an ecosystem with a sustainable food chain of predator and prey animals. But you just love dinosaurs, so all you really want to do is to make as many of them as possible!

Each turn, you’ll add one tile to your ecosystem, which will add new animals and give them room to grow. Every so often, your dinosaurs will tromp around your ecosystem eating all the animals. The more they eat, the more eggs they lay — and the more points you score! Just be careful not to overeat, or there won’t be enough food to keep your dinosaurs alive the next time.

Game Mechanics:

  • Abstract Strategy
  • Grid Movement
  • Open Drafting
  • Tile Placement

Game Specifications:

  • 2 – 5 Players
  • 30 – 45 Minutes
  • Difficulty Weight 2.38

Arcadia Quest

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In Arcadia Quest, players lead guilds of intrepid heroes on an epic campaign to dethrone the vampire lord and reclaim the mighty Arcadia for their own. But only one guild may lead in the end, so players must battle against each other as well as against the monstrous occupying forces.

Arcadia Quest is a campaign-based game for 2 to 4 players, where each player controls a guild of three unique heroes, facing off against the other players and the various monsters controlled by the game. Players need to accomplish a series of quests in order to win each scenario and choose where to go next in the campaign.

Players are able to choose the path their campaign takes, navigating through six out of eleven available scenarios, so each time the campaign is played it can have a different configuration of scenarios. As the campaign progresses, the heroes are able to acquire new weapons, equipment and abilities that give them powerful options to tackle the obstacles ahead. Furthermore, by fulfilling specific quests in a scenario, players unlock exclusive features in subsequent scenarios.

Game Mechanics:

Game Specifications:

  • 2 – 4 Players
  • ~60 Minutes
  • Difficulty Weight 2.53

Adventure Land 🟢

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In Adventure Land, King Agamis rules from his castle. Rich cities, vast forests and rugged mountain ranges dominate the country. The large river is known to be lined with gold and the forests filled with medicinal herbs, but dangers lurk beneath the fog! Only the bravest adventurers dare to face the challenges. When you move your adventurer tactically and bravely fight the fog creatures, you’ll win the favor of the king. Illustrated by Franz Vohwinkel and designed by acclaimed duo Wolfgang Kramer and Michael Kiesling who between them have won the highly coveted Spiel des Jahres award 5 times.

Game Mechanics:

Game Specifications:

  • 2 – 4 Players
  • ~45 Minutes
  • Difficulty Weight 1.84

Thrive

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Thrive

Thrive

Thrive is a two-player abstract strategy game with incredibly simple rules that grows in complexity as you play.

You play as one of two lotus flowers, competing to control the pond. Be the first to capture all but one of your opponent’s seed pods and win this game of tactical decision making!

Each turn you move a piece, then add two additional pegs to any of your pieces, giving them more possibilities for movement on future turns.

Game Mechanics:

  • Abstract Strategy
  • Grid Movement

Game Specifications:

  • 2 Players
  • 20 – 30 Minutes
  • Difficulty Weight 1.56

Survive: Escape from Atlantis!

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Survive: Escape from Atlantis!

Survive: Escape from Atlantis!

Survive is a cutthroat game where players seek to evacuate their pieces from an island that is breaking up, while remembering where their highest-valued pieces are located to maximize their score.

An island made up of 40 hex-tiles is slowly sinking into the ocean (as the tiles are removed from the board). Each player controls ten people (valued from 1 to 6) that they try and move towards the safety of the surrounding islands before the main island finally blows up. Players can either swim or use boats to travel but must avoid sea serpents, whales and sharks on their way to safety.

Game Mechanics:

  • Action Points
  • Bluffing
  • Dice Rolling
  • Grid Movement
  • Memory
  • Take That

Game Specifications:

  • 2 – 4 Players
  • 45 – 60 Minutes
  • Difficulty Weight 1.70

Scooby Doo! Betrayal at Mystery Mansion

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Scooby Doo! Betrayal at Mystery Mansion

Scooby Doo! Betrayal at Mystery Mansion

Based on the award-winning Betrayal at House on the Hill board game, Betrayal at Mystery Mansion is the mash-up fans have been clamoring for!

Play as Scooby-Doo, Shaggy, Velma, Daphne, or Fred as you explore the mansion and its grounds, finding clues, encountering strange occurrences, and maybe even catching sight of a monster! When you find enough clues to learn what’s really going on, that’s when the haunt starts, and one player will switch sides to play the role of the monster! Will you be able to stop them before they carry out their sinister plan?

Betrayal at Mystery Mansion contains 25 new haunts based on popular episodes and movies from the Scooby-Doo oeuvre, with different monsters, items, events, and locations each time you play.

Game Mechanics:

  • Dice Rolling
  • Grid Movement
  • Role Playing
  • Storytelling
  • Team Based
  • Tile Placement

Game Specifications:

  • 3 – 5 Players
  • 25 – 50 Minutes
  • Difficulty Weight 1.80