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.

Gods Love Dinosaurs

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

Galaxy Trucker

Galaxy Trucker

Galaxy Trucker

In a galaxy far, far away… they need sewer systems, too. Corporation Incorporated builds them. Everyone knows their drivers — the brave men and women who fear no danger and would, if the pay was good enough, even fly through Hell.

Now you can join them. You will gain access to prefabricated spaceship components cleverly made from sewer pipes. Can you build a space ship durable enough to weather storms of meteors? Armed enough to defend against pirates? Big enough to carry a large crew and valuable cargo? Fast enough to get there first?

Of course you can. Become a Galaxy Trucker. It’s loads of fun.

Galaxy Trucker is a tile laying game that plays out over two phases: building and flying. The goal is to have the most credits at the end of the game. You can earn credits by delivering goods, defeating pirates, building an efficient ship, and being the furthest along the track at the end of the flying phase.

Building happens in real time and has players build their personal space ships by grabbing tiles from the middle of the table before the timer runs out. Tiles start out facedown so they won’t know what they have until they take it, but they may choose to return it faceup if they don’t want it. They must place the tiles they keep in a legal manner in their space ship. Usually this just means lining up the connectors appropriately (single to single, double to double, universal to anything) but also includes proper positioning of guns and engines. Tiles represent a variety of things including guns, engines, storage containers, crew cabins, shields, and batteries. They may also peek at the cards they will encounter in phase 2, but they must sacrifice building time to do this. At any time players may call their ships finished and take an order marker from the center.

Once building is completed, and ships have been checked for errors, the flight begins. The flight cards are shuffled and player markers are placed on the flight board according to the order markers taken. Cards are revealed one at a time and players interact with them in order. They may include things such as pirates, abandoned vessels, disease outbreaks, meteor showers, worlds with goods to pick up, player-on-player combat zones, and other various things.

Most of the cards will cause players to move back on the flight track and they must decide if the delay is worth their efforts. When all the cards are encountered players sell any goods they have collected, collect their rewards for finishing in first, second, or third place or having the most intact ship, and then lose some credits for damaged components. Space can be a very dangerous place and it is not uncommon to see your ship break into smaller and smaller pieces or lose some very valuable cargo off the side. If your ship gets damaged too much you can get knocked out of the race, so be careful!

3 rounds of this are done, and in each round players get a bigger board to build a ship that can hold more components. After the 3rd round the player with the most credits wins!

Game Mechanics:

  • Dice Rolling
  • Team Based
  • Tile Placement

Game Specifications:

  • 2 – 4 Players
  • 20 – 30 Minutes
  • Difficulty Weight 2.38

Free Radicals

Free Radicals

Free Radicals

In Free Radicals, players take control of one of ten fully asymmetrical factions, each with its own path to earn resources, power, and the knowledge stored in the “Free Radicals”, which are giant mysterious objects that appeared around the world, causing a huge evolutionary leap in technology. You might play as the merchants, using action points to travel to different markets, and grow in influence and efficiency; the Couriers, using your drones to pick up and deliver valuable goods; the Entertainers, using card placement and abilities to maximize powerful abilities; or one of seven other entirely unique factions!

Players also interact through the main board, where they can visit each other’s buildings and try to unlock the technology in one of the free radicals. You can even help your opponents’ research in return for influence and other rewards!

Game Mechanics:

  • Action Points
  • Economic
  • Negotiation
  • Open Drafting
  • Pattern Building
  • Pick-Up and Deliver
  • Tile Placement
  • Worker Placement

Game Specifications:

  • 2 – 5 Players
  • 45 – 90 Minutes
  • Difficulty Weight 2.50

Fossilis

Fossilis

Fossilis

An incredible new dinosaur graveyard has been discovered, and if the early findings are any indication, it could be a treasure trove of fossils and bones like the world has never seen! In Fossilis, 2 to 5 players become paleontologists working the dig site with shovels, whisk brooms, and chisels looking for a find that could make their career.

Each round, players get two actions to dig at the site or make an extraction. As they remove the top layers of sand, clay, and stone, they’ll discover trace fossils, which can be exchanged for tools, the plaster necessary to extract bones, and discovery points. As they delve deeper, precious bones will be exposed. They can make a careful extraction if they have the right amount of plaster, but sometimes shifting the earth to cover up a find and slow down the competition is the right move. Bones on their own can be valuable, but museums are really interested in more complete specimens. Sets of bones can be exchanged for museum cards worth big points!

Fossilis features a unique 3D dig site board, with recessed pockets filled with dinosaur bones, and thick, chunky terrain tiles that cover the dig site. Players have to use strategy, timing, and a little bit of luck if they want to make the best discoveries, get their name in all the paleontology journals, and of course, win the game.

Game Mechanics:

  • Action Points
  • Grid Movement
  • Set Collection
  • Tile Placement

Game Specifications:

  • 2 – 5 Players
  • 45 – 60 Minutes
  • Difficulty Weight 2.19

Forgotten Depths

Forgotten Depths

Forgotten Depths

Forgotten Depths is a 1-3 player co-op dungeon adventure game that combines unique tile laying and hand management mechanics to deliver a substantial experience of exploration and combat.

The goal of the game is to get to the bottom of the dungeon and destroy the powerful entity that resides there. To make it, you’ll need to improve your heroes by finding items and buying new abilities with experience points you gain by exploring. Those experience points are in scarce supply and you’ll need to balance between saving them for abilities and spending them on the healing and keys you’ll also need.

The game is played by alternating between two main activities, Exploring and Encountering. You’ll start by Exploring, creating the layout of the level as you play, and discovering Ecology Elements. You choose when and where to Encounter the Elements you discover, and you go back to Exploring after each Encounter.

Game Mechanics:

  • Cooperative
  • Hand Management
  • Tile Placement

Game Specifications:

  • 1 – 3 Players
  • 45 – 135 Minutes
  • Difficulty Weight 2.20

Ecos: First Continent

What if the formation of Earth had gone differently?

In Ecos: First Continent, players are forces of nature molding the planet, but with competing visions of its grandeur. You have the chance to create a part of the world, similar but different to the one we know. Which landscapes, habitats, and species thrive will be up to you.

Gameplay in Ecos is simultaneous. Each round, one player reveals element tokens from the element bag, giving all players the opportunity to complete a card from their tableau and shape the continent to their own purpose. Elements that cannot be used can be converted into energy cubes or additional cards in hand or they can be added to your tableau to give you greater options as the game evolves.

Mountain ranges, jungle, rivers, seas, islands and savanna, each with their own fauna, all lie within the scope of the players’ options.

Game Mechanics:

  • Bingo
  • Set Collection
  • Tile Placement

Game Specifications:

  • 2 – 6 Players
  • 45 – 75 Minutes
  • Difficulty Weight 2.60

Dinner in Paris

The restaurant industry in Paris is buzzing after the inauguration of a new pedestrian square in a very popular district for Parisians and tourists from all around the globe. It is a golden opportunity for you, restaurant owners, to open one of the addresses that will contribute to the culinary diversity and the reputation of the French capital. However, there isn’t space for everyone and your opponents could throw a wrench in your gears!

Game Mechanics:

  • Area Majority / Influence
  • Contracts
  • Hand Management
  • Income
  • Race
  • Set Collection
  • Tile Placement

Game Specifications:

  • 2 – 4 Players
  • 40 – 60 Minutes
  • Difficulty Weight 2.16

Destinies

Destinies is a competitive, story-driven, game of adventure and exploration, mixing an app and a board game.

The first in a series of games using a brand-new system called Destinies. This game is set in a dark medieval-fantasy universe.

The Destinies system offers a fully story-driven, app-supported, RPG-like board game experience, without the need for a game master. Each scenario depicts a part of a vivid world, full of dark stories, epic NPCs and mysteries to solve. Each player takes the role of a hero on a quest to fulfill their destiny. Each destiny is a final goal of the character and has at least two, completely different paths to victory, composed of branching series of quests. Players compete with each other to push the world towards their own destiny.

The game uses an app and the Scan&Play technology to offer players a unique story-driven experience full of dynamic events, epic adventures, and an ever-changing game world. Each turn players discover new parts of the world presented on tiles, explore them and pick one point of interest to visit. There they learn more about the story and make crucial choices of how they want to interact with people, creatures or situations faced there. The consequences of each choice are meaningful and often change the state of the world forever.

Game Mechanics:

  • Dice Rolling
  • Role Playing
  • Scenario / Mission / Campaign Game
  • Solo / Solitaire Game
  • Storytelling
  • Tile Placement

Game Specifications:

  • 1 – 3 Players
  • 90 – 150 Minutes
  • Difficulty Weight 1.93

Cuzco

Cuzco is a new 2018 edition of Java from French publisher Super Meeple that moves the action to South America, which is in line with the other titles in the Mask Trilogy as well as the authors’ original plans for the design.

Game Mechanics:

  • Area Majority / Influence
  • Auction / Bidding
  • Hand Management
  • Map Addition
  • Tile Placement
  • Zone of Control

Game Specifications:

  • 2 – 4 Players
  • ~90 Minutes
  • Difficulty Weight 2.64

Cleopatra

Designed by Bruno Cathala and Ludovic Maublanc, Cleopatra and the Society of Architects is a fun and engaging game that includes a three-dimensional palace that players compete to build. Players strive to become the wealthiest of Cleopatra’s architects by constructing the most magnificent and valuable parts of her palace.

Players, however, will be tempted to trade in materials of dubious origins in order to build faster. While these corrupt practices might allow an architect to stay a step ahead of the rest, they come with a high price: the cursed corruption amulets honoring Sobek, the crocodile-god. When Cleopatra finally reaches her new palace at the end of the game, she punishes the most corrupted architects (i.e., the ones with the most amulets), depriving them of riches or giving them as a sacrifice to her crocodile! The wealthiest architect from among those still alive wins.

This new edition of Cleopatra and the Society of Architects has a new graphic design by Miguel Coimbra, a free-standing 3D palace, and rulebook updated by the designers for simplicity and fluidity, which incorporates these gameplay changes:

  • The combinations of resource cards to discard in order to build pieces of the palace have been reworked.
  • The player rewards for building the palace’s pieces have been recalculated.
  • The consequences of corruption have been reviewed.
  • The Great Priest is no longer activated in the same way.
  • The player count has changed from 3-5 to 2-4.
  • There is a new specific system to manage the character cards, which are no longer part of the deck, and are instead handled separately.

Game Mechanics:

  • Auction/Bidding
  • City Building
  • Hand Management
  • Set Collection
  • Tile Placement

Game Specifications:

  • 3 – 4 Players
  • ~60 Minutes
  • Difficulty Weight 2.24