Tag: Puzzle

Games with Puzzle mechanics often require players to solve a specific puzzle or riddle to earn various resources and 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

AQUA: Biodiversity in the Ocean

| OTSG Staff

In AQUA, your starting point is a hot spot that gradually becomes surrounded by expanding coral formations. These corals serve as habitats for small marine animals. By fostering biodiverse habitats, you can then create ideal conditions for attracting the largest marine animals.

AQUA plays over 17 rounds. On your turn, you must take a new coral tile from the market and add it to your reef, then you may also attract animals to your ecosystem if you create the correct patterns of coral.

At the end of the game, the player who grew the best coral formations and attracted the most large and small sea animals will score the most points and win.

AQUA invites you to dive into the beauty and wonder of the ocean, delivering an incredible variety of gameplay experiences for the whole family.

Game Mechanics:

Game Specifications:

  • 1 – 4 Players
  • 30 – 45 Minutes
  • Difficulty Weight 2.08

Azul Duel

| OTSG Staff

Decorate the magnificent ceilings of the palace. Will the vaults look more beautiful by day or by night? Azul Duel invites you to play with light and pit opposites against each other.

This competitive strategic game for two players retains the purity and elegance of the original Azul while adding an extra tactical dimension in which you determine the pattern in which tiles will be placed, in addition to drafting tiles to complete that pattern.

Game Specifications:

  • 2 Players
  • 30 – 45 Minutes
  • Difficulty Weight 2.42

Praga Caput Regni

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Praga Caput Regni

Praga Caput Regni

Charles IV has been crowned King of Bohemia and ruler of the Holy Roman Empire. From his castle in Prague, he oversees construction of new fortifications: a bridge across the Vltava River, a university, and a cathedral rising within the walls of the castle itself. Prague is already among the largest cities in Europe. King Charles will make it the capital of an empire!

In Praga Caput Regni, players take the role of wealthy citizens who are organizing various building projects in medieval Prague. By expanding their wealth and joining in the construction, they gain favor with the king. Players choose from six actions on the game board — the “action crane” — that are always available, but which are weighted with a constantly shifting array of costs and benefits. By using these actions, you can increase your resources, improve the strength of your chosen actions, and build “New Prague City”, the Charles Bridge, or city walls. You can possibly gain additional actions or even participate in the construction of St. Vitus Cathedral.

Clever players will discover synergies between carefully timed actions and the rewards from constructing civic projects as all of the mechanisms mesh together. At the end of the game, the player who most impressed King Charles wins.

Game Mechanics:

  • Area Control
  • City Building
  • Puzzle
  • Tile Placement

Game Specifications:

  • 1 – 4 Players
  • 45 – 150 Minutes
  • Difficulty Weight 3.74

Feast for Odin, A

| OTSG Staff

A Feast for Odin is a saga in the form of a board game. You are reliving the cultural achievements, mercantile expeditions, and pillages of those tribes we know as Viking today — a term that was used quite differently towards the end of the first millennium.

When the northerners went out for a raid, they used to say they headed out for a viking. Their Scandinavian ancestors, however, were much more than just pirates. They were explorers and founders of states. Leif Eriksson is said to be the first European in America, long before Columbus.
In what is known today as Normandy, the intruders were not called Vikings but Normans. One of them is the famous William the Conqueror who invaded England in 1066. He managed to do what the king of Norway failed to do only a few years prior: conquer the Throne of England. The reason why the people of these times became such strong seafarers is due to their unfortunate agricultural situation. Crop shortfalls caused great distress.

In this game, you will raid and explore new territories. You will also experience their day-to-day activities: collecting goods to achieve a financially secure position in society. In the end, the player whose possessions bear the greatest value will be declared the winner.

Game Mechanics:

Game Specifications:

  • 1 – 4 Players
  • 30 – 120 Minutes
  • Difficulty Weight 3.85

Public Market

| OTSG Staff
Public Market

Public Market

Head out to sea and fish to fulfill contracts in order to gain points and emerge as the winner in this tile-laying, engine-building game.

In Public Market players bid on and draft tiles to play into an ice chest. Once the ice chest is full, players can go to the market to sell their latest catch based on the current market values and to complete contract goals. They then get a new ice chest and go back out on the open water to fulfill new contracts. Play continues until the ocean bag is empty.

Game Mechanics:

  • Auction/Bidding
  • Open Drafting
  • Puzzle

Game Specifications:

  • 2 – 4 Players
  • 45 – 90 Minutes
  • Difficulty Weight 2.91

Mansions of Madness

| OTSG Staff
Mansions of Madness

Mansions of Madness

In the skies above the Atlantic, a dirigible’s peaceful journey is interrupted by a bloody act of revenge and an oncoming storm. On the sea far below, a treacherous saboteur plants the explosives that will sink a ship. In the New England countryside, a train billows black smoke, desperately fleeing an unimaginable threat.

Horrific Journeys is a deluxe expansion for Mansions of Madness which unlocks three thrilling scenarios that take four new investigators far from Arkham, solving mysteries aboard a bustling transatlantic airship, a luxury ocean liner, and a scenic countryside train. With new map tiles, puzzles, monsters, and mythos events, these brave men and women must contend with hideous amphibian monstrocities and interdimensional creatures tearing holes in the fabric of reality all with the knowledge that one wrong move can destroy the very vessels they are trying to protect! In order to arrive at their destinations, the investigator of Arkham must first survive their journey!

Game Mechanics:

  • Area Movement
  • Cooperative
  • Dice Rolling
  • Hand Management
  • Puzzle
  • Role Playing
  • Team Based

Game Specifications:

  • 1 – 5 Players
  • 120 – 180 Minutes
  • Difficulty Weight 2.66

Village Attacks

| OTSG Staff
Village Attacks

Village Attacks

Village Attacks is a co-operative castle defense game in which players take on the roles of the most infamous creatures of folklore and legend from around the world! Deep in a remote part of the world, you and your monstrous associates have taken up residence in an immense castle. But the local village has had enough of the evil that lies at its door and has decided to lay siege to the castle in an effort to exorcise your wicked taint from the world.

The villagers may be weak, but they are not alone! News of your malevolent presence has spread far and wide; hunters and heroes have come from all corners of the globe to vanquish you! Some have come for fame, others for the glory, and some even for the reward. But they share a single goal; your doom!

Game Mechanics:

  • Area Movement
  • Cooperative
  • Dice Rolling
  • Puzzle

Game Specifications:

  • 1 – 5 Players
  • 30 – 180 Minutes
  • Difficulty Weight 2.60

Tiny Towns

| OTSG Staff
Tiny Towns

Tiny Towns

You are the mayor of a tiny town in the forest in which the smaller creatures of the woods have created a civilization hidden away from predators. This new land is small and the resources are scarce, so you take what you can get and never say no to building materials. Cleverly plan and construct a thriving town, and don’t let it fill up with wasted resources! Whoever builds the most prosperous tiny town wins!

In Tiny Towns, your town is represented by a 4×4 grid on which you will place resource cubes in specific layouts to construct buildings. Each building scores victory points (VPs) in a unique way. When no player can place any more resources or construct any buildings, the game ends, and any squares without a building are worth -1 VP. The player with the most VP wins!

Game Mechanics:

  • Abstract Strategy
  • City Building
  • Grid Coverage
  • Pattern Building
  • Player Elimination
  • Puzzle

Game Specifications:

  • 1 – 6 Players
  • 45 – 60 Minutes
  • Difficulty Weight 2.06

TIME Stories

| OTSG Staff
TIME Stories

TIME Stories

The T.I.M.E Agency protects humanity by preventing temporal faults and paradoxes from threatening the fabric of our universe. As temporal agents, you and your team will be sent into the bodies of beings from different worlds or realities to successfully complete the missions given to you. Failure is impossible, as you will be able to go back in time as many times as required.

T.I.M.E Stories is a narrative game, a game of “decksploration”. Each player is free to give their character as deep a “role” as they want, in order to live through a story, as much in the game as around the table. But it’s also a board game with rules which allow for reflection and optimization.

At the beginning of the game, the players are at their home base and receive their mission briefing. The object is then to complete it in as few attempts as possible. The actions and movements of the players will use Temporal Units (TU), the quantity of which depend on the scenario and the number of players. Each attempt is called a “run”; one run equals the use of all of the Temporal Units at the players’ disposal. When the TU reach zero, the agents are recalled to the agency, and restart the scenario from the beginning, armed with their experience. The object of the game is to make the perfect run, while solving all of the puzzles and overcoming all of a scenario’s obstacles.

You usually take possession of local hosts to navigate in a given environment, but who knows what you’ll have to do to succeed? Roam a med-fan city, looking for the dungeon where the Syaan king is hiding? Survive in the Antarctic while enormous creatures lurk beneath the surface of the ice? Solve a puzzle in an early 20th century asylum? That is all possible, and you might even have to jump from one host to another, or play against your fellow agents from time to time.

The base box contains the entirety of the T.I.M.E Stories system and allows players to play all of the scenarios, the first of which — Asylum — is included. During a scenario, which consists of a deck of 120+ cards, each player explores cards, presented most often in the form of a panorama. Access to some cards require the possession of the proper item or items, while others present surprises, enemies, riddles, clues, and other dangers. An insert allows players to “save” the game at any point, to play over multiple sessions, just like in a video game. This way, it’s possible to pause your ongoing game by preserving the state of the receptacles, the remaining TU, the discovered clues, etc.

Game Mechanics:

  • Cooperative
  • Dice Rolling
  • Move Through Deck
  • Narrative Choice
  • Puzzle
  • Storytelling

Game Specifications:

  • 2 – 4 Players
  • ~90 Minutes
  • Difficulty Weight 2.60