Tag: Tile Placement

Games with Tile Placement mechanics require players to place tiles on a game board to create and modify the game’s environment.

Plague Inc.

Plague Inc.

Plague Inc.

Each player is a deadly disease and they must battle against each other to spread their plagues, develop new symptoms and ultimately wipe out humanity.

Starting with Patient Zero, you spread your infection across the world by placing tokens in cities – earning DNA points and preventing other players from becoming dominant. Players choose which countries are placed on the board but you must be both climate resistant and connected to a country before you can infect it. Eventually, as countries become fully infected – you try to kill them using the Death Dice.

Each player’s unique pathogen can be upgraded by evolving trait cards onto an evolution slide (with DNA points). At the start, your disease is weak and unspecialised, so you will need to add new symptoms to make it stronger. Choose carefully and plan ahead in order to react to the changing world and exploit opportunities created by other player’s actions.

A simple nosebleed could accelerate things early on, whilst diarrhea will help you thrive in hot countries. Sneezing can infect new continents by air but Total Organ Failure would allow you wipe out multiple countries each turn.

As countries start to fall, use powerful event cards to alter the balance of power. You might try to eradicate a dominant player by bombing their diseased cities, or hold the Olympics to cause huge numbers of infected people to travel to a healthy continent.

When the world collapses, who will be the ultimate plague?

Game Mechanics:

  • Area Control
  • Hand Management
  • Network Building
  • Take That
  • Tile Placement
  • Worker Placement

Game Specifications:

  • 1 – 4 Players
  • ~60 Minutes
  • Difficulty Weight 2.15

Picture Perfect

Picture Perfect

Picture Perfect

How do you take the perfect picture of a group of people if you only have one try? Each character has different wishes. Some want to be at the front of the picture; some want to stand next to another; and some really don’t want to be next to that one particular person by any means. Do your best to make everyone happy – even if you don’t actually know all the characters’ preferences…

In Picture Perfect, first released as Der Perfekte Moment, you need to arrange fourteen characters to take the perfect photograph. Each of them has three specific desires that you want to fulfill. Unfortunately, these desires are hidden in envelopes.

During the game, the players try to take a look inside these envelopes to figure out how to place the characters correctly. To do so, they trade their information with others — or maybe try to hide it…

Whoever earns the most points at the end of the game has fulfilled the most desires and becomes the master photographer.

Game Mechanics:

  • Auction/Bidding
  • Deduction
  • Memory
  • Negotiation
  • Puzzle
  • Tile Placement

Game Specifications:

  • 2 – 6 Players
  • 50 – 90 Minutes
  • Difficulty Weight 1.86

Paws and Padlocks

Paws and Padlocks

Paws and Padlocks

The evil Slime Queen has stashed her most valuable treasures within her fortress known as Slime Castle. This has attracted many adventurers from far and wide, including yourself, to try and nab her majesty’s treasures! Will you be quick enough to get your treasure and escape before everyone else, or will you be trapped inside Slime Castle forever?

Game Mechanics:

  • Area Movement
  • Dice Rolling
  • Push Your Luck
  • Tile Placement

Game Specifications:

  • 2 – 4 Players
  • 30 – 60 Minutes
  • Difficulty Weight 2.00

Papillon

Papillon

Papillon

A butterfly garden requires vision and a caring hand. Spring has arrived, and the world is in bloom. As your garden grows, caterpillars will congregate and morph into beautiful butterflies eager for nectar.

Papillon is a tile-drafting, tableau-building, and area majority game for 2-4 players. Over 8 rounds, you will bid for flower tiles to build your garden, attract butterflies to flowers with valuable nectar, and of course, every garden looks better with a gnome. Collect the most nectar at the end of the game and you’ll win!

Game Mechanics:

  • Abstract Strategy
  • Area Control
  • Auction/Bidding
  • Open Drafting
  • Tile Placement

Game Specifications:

  • 2 – 4 Players
  • 30 – 45 Minutes
  • Difficulty Weight 2.06

Paint the Roses

Paint the Roses

Paint the Roses

Paint the Roses is a 2-5 player cooperative logic deduction game that automatically adapts to your skill during play.

Set in the puzzling world of Alice in Wonderland, you and your friends are the newly appointed Royal Gardeners. You are working together to finish the palace grounds according to the whims of the Queen of Hearts. Use strategy, logic, and teamwork to finish the garden whilst staying one step ahead of the Queen, otherwise, the last thing you hear will be, “Off With Their Heads!”.

The Queen’s whims are shared via cards, secret instructions each player is given into how the garden should be arranged. Her whims are always changing, so as soon as you solve one, a new one is in your hand.

Every turn, together as a team you must guess at least one of these secret whim cards. You can’t say what your card shows, but by carefully placing a new shrub tile into the garden (taken from those available in the Greenhouse) you are able to reveal clues, tokens that will show any matches between the arrangement in the garden and the secret whims each player holds in their hands.

Although you can’t discuss your own secret whim card, you can openly discuss other players’. Share your theories at the table and then make a guess. Correctly guessing a whim will move you forward on the score track, but the Queen is always following, and her speed automatically adjusts based on your current score. Guess incorrectly and the Queen moves twice as fast, her axe ever closer to your neck.

Game Mechanics:

  • Cooperative
  • Deduction
  • Limited Communication
  • Pattern Recognition
  • Puzzle
  • Tile Placement

Game Specifications:

  • 2 – 5 Players
  • 50 – 70 Minutes
  • Difficulty Weight 2.48

Overboss

Overboss

Overboss

In Overboss, rival Boss Monsters emerge from their dungeons to conquer the Overworld. Each turn, players draft and place terrain tiles and monster tokens. Their goal: to craft the map with the greatest Power and become the ultimate Overboss!

Designed by Aaron Mesburne and Kevin Russ (Calico), this fast-paced game combines drafting, set collection, and puzzly tile laying. It’s set in the retro-inspired pixel art world of Brotherwise Games’ best-selling Boss Monster, but this is an entirely new experience.

Build your map by drafting Forests, Swamps, Caves, Camps, Graveyards, Dungeon Entrances and other landscapes. Each terrain type has a different point value, and some increase in Power as you acquire larger sets. Players must balance optimal placement, set values, and disrupt their opponents’ sets. You’ll also need to manage monsters, which award points when grouped together or placed on matching terrain.

The game includes everything needed for up to 5 players: over 120 terrain tiles, over 100 monster tokens, 5 double-sided player boards, a scorepad, and more.

Game Mechanics:

  • Abstract Strategy
  • Open Drafting
  • Pattern Building
  • Puzzle
  • Set Collection
  • Tile Placement

Game Specifications:

  • 1 – 5 Players
  • 20 – 30 Minutes
  • Difficulty Weight 2.03

Orichalcum

Orichalcum

Orichalcum

Orichalque is a tense and fast-pace strategy game – similar to a short 4X. Each player has their own Island board to explore and develop. On each turn, they choose a set of one Exploration tile and one Action : recruit hoplites, produce precious orichalcum (a legendary metal from Greek mythology), construct buildings granting powerful bonuses, or try to get rid of Monsters infesting your island (and preventing you to build new building).

To prevail, you will need to erect majestic temples, forge orichalcum tokens or win the favors of titans (by creating areas of their favorite landscapes. The first to get to 5 victory points while clearing their Island of all Monsters wins the game.

Game Mechanics:

  • Action Drafting
  • Dice Rolling
  • Racing
  • Tile Placement

Game Specifications:

  • 2 – 4 Players
  • 45 – 60 Minutes
  • Difficulty Weight 2.57

North Sea Saga: Explorers of the North Sea

North Sea Saga: Explorers of the North Sea

North Sea Saga: Explorers of the North Sea

Explorers of the North Sea is set in the latter years of the Viking Age. As ambitious sea captains, players seek out new lands to settle and control. They will need to transport their crew among the newly discovered islands to capture livestock, construct outposts and fulfill various other goals. So ready the longships, there are new horizons to explore!

Game Mechanics:

  • Action Points
  • Area Control
  • Grid Movement
  • Pick-Up and Deliver
  • Set Collection
  • Tile Placement

Game Specifications:

  • 1 – 4 Players
  • 45 – 60 Minutes
  • Difficulty Weight 2.13

The Night Cage

The Night Cage

The Night Cage

You awaken in the dark, your skin cold, your mind blank. You have nothing but your fear, a flickering candle, and a question: How long will your light last?

Trapped and crawling your way through a pitch-black labyrinth, equipped with nothing but dim candles, you must work together to explore the maze and escape. Unfortunately, your weak candlelight illuminates only your immediate surroundings. Worse still, horrifying Wax Eaters — monsters who despise the light — lurk in the suffocating darkness for their opportunity to strike.

The Night Cage is a fully co-operative, horror-themed tile-placement game that traps 1-5 lost souls within an unnatural labyrinth of eternal darkness. To win, players must each collect a key, find a gate, and escape as a group.

Escape won’t be easy as each player’s visibility is limited by the weak light of their candle. They illuminate only tiles directly connected to their own, and when players move, tiles that fall into darkness are removed from the game. Doubling back the way you came only opens new paths, the old ones being lost forever with critical keys and gates vanishing if your light move away from them…

Game Mechanics:

  • Cooperative
  • Grid Movement
  • Tile Placement

Game Specifications:

  • 1 – 5 Players
  • 45 – 60 Minutes
  • Difficulty Weight 2.05

New York Zoo

New York Zoo

New York Zoo

Puzzling and animal breeding: Designer Uwe Rosenberg is at his best! In New York Zoo, you are constructing an animal park. Build animal enclosures, introduce new animals and raise their offspring. The game play is straight forward as you have only two turn options: Puzzle a new enclosure tile into your zoo area or gain new animals to populate your animal encounters. But be sure to time your actions well since you want your zoo to participate in as many animal breedings as possible.

Game Mechanics:

  • Abstract Strategy
  • Grid Coverage
  • Puzzle
  • Racing
  • Rondel
  • Tile Placement

Game Specifications:

  • 1 – 5 Players
  • 30 – 60 Minutes
  • Difficulty Weight 1.99