Tag: Push Your Luck

In games with a Push Your Luck mechanic, players must decide when to settle on existing resource gains for a turn, or risk those gains for further rewards.

Gardlings

| OTSG Staff

Cleverly build your garden. Harvest gems and enrich your seed bag with new, amazing creatures so your next garden can grow even more abundant. Combine the unique abilities of your creatures, and be the first to acquire the victory trophy.

Each round in Gardlings, all players simultaneously build their garden in front of themselves. You do this by drawing and placing tiles from your bag. You may stop drawing tiles at any time because if you draw too many gnomes, they will steal gems from you. At the end of the round, use any gems you matched in your garden to buy a new tile, then return all of your tiles to your bag to prepare for the next round. Each tile features potential ways to match gems, as well as a creature with a special ability. Your garden will grow larger and better each round, and the puzzle of placing tiles will become increasingly complex.

The goal of the game is to match enough gems to buy the victory tile.

Game Mechanics:

Game Specifications:

  • 1 – 4 Players
  • 20 – 45 Minutes
  • Difficulty Weight 1.47

Friday

| OTSG Staff

Friday, the second game in the Friedemann Friese Series: Freitag-Project (Friedemann Friese), is based on the story of Robinson Crusoe and his loyal partner Friday (Freitag). You play as Friday, and when Robinson Crusoe crashes his ship on your island, your peaceful times are disturbed. You must help Robinson to survive the island and prepare him to defeat the pirates that are coming for the island.

Friday is a solitaire deck-building game in which you optimize your deck of fight cards in order to defeat the hazards of the island. During a turn the player will attempt to defeat hazard cards by playing fight cards from their deck. If defeated, a hazard card will become a fight card and is added to the player’s deck. If failed, the player will lose life points but also get the opportunity to remove unwanted cards from their fight deck. In the end, the player will use their optimized fight deck to defeat the two pirate ships coming for the island, allowing Robinson Crusoe to escape the island and allowing you to finally have your peace back!

Game Mechanics:

Game Specifications:

  • 1 Players
  • ~25 Minutes
  • Difficulty Weight 2.15

Fortify

| OTSG Staff

It’s a hot summer and you see a new family just moved in across the street and you know what that means, boxes! You round up your friends and a giant bag of water balloons. You quickly split into teams, start stacking boxes, and fill your water balloons because everyone knows its time to Fortify!

Use the variety of boxes (Cards) to create a closed wall around your Base. The larger you make it the more friends can fit inside. The more friends you have the faster you can build or the more water balloons (Dice) you can toss at your opponent’s fort. Roll well and land your water balloons on boxes, rival friends, and ultimately their base to claim the day and the pride of the neighborhood!

Game Mechanics:

Game Specifications:

  • ~2 Players
  • 15 – 30 Minutes
  • Difficulty Weight 1.50

Flip 7

| OTSG Staff

Flip over cards one by one without flipping the same number twice.

Sound easy? Think again! This isn’t just any deck of cards… In Flip 7 there’s only one 1 card, two 2’s, three 3’s, etc plus a bunch of special cards that can score you extra points, give you a second chance, or freeze you or your opponents in your tracks.

Are you the type of player to play it safe and bank points before you bust, or are you going to risk it all and go for the bonus points by flipping over seven in a row? Press your luck meets strategy in this addictive card game that’s sure to be the greatest card game you’ve ever played!

Game Mechanics:

Game Specifications:

  • 3 – 18 Players
  • ~20 Minutes
  • Difficulty Weight 1.03

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

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

Family Plot

| OTSG Staff

In Family Plot, each player strives to build their perfect family while keeping other players by killing them off one by one.
Gameplay begins by a player laying out any “Family Members” in their hand that match their Family Tree. Afterwards a player can launch an assault using REAPERS and ACTION CARDS that could unleash anything from a Zombie Apocalypse to a Psycho Killer, sending their opponents family members to the graveyard! The chosen victim can block the attack on their “Family” by using ANGELS, WEAPONIZED FOOD, or even TEARS OF A UNICORN that they have in their hand. That way when it gets to your turn simply complete your unique Family Tree and YOU WIN!

Game Mechanics:

Game Specifications:

  • 2 – 6 Players
  • 20 – 30 Minutes
  • Difficulty Weight 1.13

Fairy

| OTSG Staff

Every round, reveal a new card. Simultaneously, all players choose a hand gesture to guess how the card relates to the previous one (☝️ for higher value, ? for lower value, ? for same suit, or ✊ to guess a fairy).

Guess the correct value relation and get two points. Guess same suit correctly and get four points. Call one of the three fairies in the deck? That’s seven points!

Any wrong guess loses you a point. First player to fifteen wins!

Game Mechanics:

Game Specifications:

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

Exploding Kittens

| OTSG Staff

Exploding Kittens is a kitty-powered version of Russian Roulette. Players take turns drawing cards until someone draws an exploding kitten and loses the game. The deck is made up of cards that let you avoid exploding by peeking at cards before you draw, forcing your opponent to draw multiple cards, or shuffling the deck.

The game gets more and more intense with each card you draw because fewer cards left in the deck means a greater chance of drawing the kitten and exploding in a fiery ball of feline hyperbole.

Game Mechanics:

Game Specifications:

  • 2 – 5 Players
  • ~15 Minutes
  • Difficulty Weight 1.08

Epic Monster Tea Party

| OTSG Staff

In this 2-4 player game, you are the monster, and you relax at the end of a busy day by grabbing heroes from the labyrinth to flavor your tea.

Players take turns blindly choosing a hero from the labyrinth bag. Heroes may be “squished” to use for their special ability and discarded, or they may be placed into the monster’s teacup to drink later for victory points. Once all of the heroes have been plucked from the labyrinth, each monster finishes drinking their tea, counts the victory points in their stomach, and the one with the highest score may belch and rejoice, for they are the winner!

This simple, family-friendly tabletop game can be played in under 20 minutes with 2-4 players. While adults may be playing for points, kids seem to have more fun squishing the heroes and using their abilities to spill, steal, or trade teacups with the other players.

Epic Monster Tea Party can be enjoyed by everyone, young and old! It’s simple to learn, quick to play, and the artwork will charm your socks off!

Game Mechanics:

  • Push Your Luck
  • Take That

Game Specifications:

  • 2 – 4 Players
  • 30 Minutes
  • Difficulty Weight 1.00