Game Design by Justin DeWitt. Published by Fireside Games.
Overall Grade: C
Genre: Cooperative, Tower Defense
Price: $
Players: 1-6, ages 10+
Time: 5 minutes setup + 60 minutes playtime
Summary: Work together to defend the castle from a monstrous onslaught. Strategize on the best way to deploy your troops, as goblins, trolls, and orcs advance towards you. Immerse yourself in a classic wargame with a fantasy twist, and, above all, don't let the castle fall!
Recommended for: Casual game nights, new players or those returning to the hobby, fans of Dynasty Warriors, and people who want to be a knight when they grow up.
Gameplay
Mechanics: Each turn consists of a player phase and a monster phase. To begin, the current player draws cards. These may be troops that can defend certain areas of the board, resources to rebuild broken structures, or abilities to slow the enemies' advancement. The game board is divided into colored sections and rings. Each card can provide a specified amount of damage (usually 1 hit) to one area of the board. Players can trade and play cards to defend against the enemies. Then, 2 more monster tokens are drawn and placed at random, and all existing monsters travel one ring closer to the castle. Occasionally, boss monsters or event tokens will be drawn for extra challenge. If all enemies are defeated, the players win. The player who killed the most monsters gets recognized for their heroic efforts. However, if all towers of the castle fall, the players have been defeated.
Teaching and Learning: Castle Panic has simple mechanics and a clear goal, making it easy to teach and learn.
Complexity: This game has low complexity, making it a great choice for beginners, younger players, or anyone who is looking for more playing and less thinking.
Replay Value: Drawing cards and tokens randomly adds some replay value to this experience. In addition, the rulebook includes several gameplay variations to change the game's difficulty or play competitively instead of the default cooperative game. However, the available monsters and resources remain the same each time, so playing multiple times in quick succession can become repetitive.
Single-player Mode: The game can be played with a single player, but there are no adjustments to the mechanics for this. Therefore, it is more difficult than when playing with others.
Specifications
Expansions: There are 3 expansions currently available.
Wizard's Tower - adds spell cards
Dark Titan - increases the game's difficulty
Engines of War - allows players to build siege engines
Durability: Average. Pieces are of good quality cardboard.
Table Space: Average. There is one medium-sized game board shared among players, with standees to represent the castle. A bag or cup for monster tokens must be provided, and decks for drawing or discard should be placed in an easily reached area. Each player requires space for their resource cards and tokens of the monsters they defeated.
Organization: The provided organization for Castle Panic could use some revision. There are cardboard inserts intended to keep pieces in place, but no bags are provided for tokens or standees, which can easily be spilled.
Game design by Matt Leocock. Published by Gamewrite.
Overall Grade: B-*
Genre: Cooperative Strategy
Price: $
Players: 2-4, ages 10+
Time: 5 minutes setup + 30 minutes playtime
Summary: Craving more adventure in your life? Consider scouring a sinking island to find ancient treasures before escaping with your life. Work with your friends to slow down the island's sinking, collect treasures, and meet up at the rendezvous point to take a helicopter flight to safety. But, work quickly - the waters will continue to rise!
Recommended for: Adventure seekers, strategy lovers, casual or hardcore game night, and Indiana Jones.
Gameplay
Mechanics: Players work together to find 4 hidden treasures by collecting sets of cards, then moving to a specified location. Once (if) all treasures are acquired, all players must meet on the Fool's Landing tile and use a Helicopter Lift card to escape the island. However, after each turn, random locations on the board will sink into the ocean. Players can use actions to save them, but only if they can be reached in time. Each character has a special ability to assist them in these goals. Forbidden Island is a cooperative game, so players can work together and trade cards for the good of the group.
Teaching and Learning: Forbidden Island is fairly easy to learn. The overall mechanics can be taught quickly, but this game benefits from hands-on learning.
Complexity: This game strikes a good balance of complexity that allows it to be enjoyed by both casual and experienced players. The goals are straightforward and the rules are simple, but the strategizing to reach those goals can become highly involved.
Replay Value: Most games of Forbidden Island are essentially the same. There are randomized characters with different abilities, and the location tiles are arranged differently each time. However, the gameplay itself does not change. I recommend taking breaks between games to avoid them becoming repetitive.
Single-player Mode: There is no single-player mode for this game.
Specifications
Expansions: There are no expansions for this game. However, there are spin-off games that feature similar gameplay, and similar vibes, with new mechanics and themes.
Forbidden Desert
Forbidden Sky
Forbidden Jungle
Durability: Great! Tiles and cards are high quality. Each treasure is represented with a plastic figure. And, it comes in a fancy metal box.
Table Space: The game takes up a moderate amount of space. There are tiles making up the main board, 2 card decks + discard piles, and areas for each player to store their treasure and player cards.
Organization: The organization is functional but fairly basic. There is a fitted insert in the box with cutouts to store tiles and cards. The treasure figures have specially molded sections to keep them in place.
*My usual formula for calculating overall grade actually puts Forbidden Island at a C+. However, due to its significance in the gaming community as an innovative game that sparked a new type of gameplay, I gave it the extra 2 points that moved it up to a B-.
Game design by Daryl Andrews and Adrian Adamescu. Published by Floodgate Games.
Overall Grade: B
Genre: Dice drafting
Price: $$
Players: 1-4, ages 10+
Time: 5 minutes setup + 30 - 45 minutes playtime
Summary: Build something beautiful, and ruin your friends' plans, as you compete to create a stained-glass window out of colorful dice. Strategize to meet goals or prevent others from meeting theirs, adhere to design restrictions, and spend favors to access useful tools. The player who can earn the most victory points is the winner!
Recommended for: Casual game nights, artsy folks, and dragons that hoard dice.
Gameplay
Mechanics: Players take turns pulling delicious-looking gorgeous translucent dice from a bag to create the round's dice pool. Each player then gets two opportunities to choose a die from the pool and place it into their window. Adjacent dice cannot share a color or number, and window panels chosen at the start of the game provide additional placement restrictions. To assist with these restrictions, players can spend favor tokens to use tool cards. While designing their windows, players attempt to complete three shared goals, and one individual secret goal. After ten rounds, the game ends, and the windows are scored according to the goal cards.
Teaching and Learning: Sagrada is easy to teach and to learn, making it great for casual tabletop gamers, family game nights, and bringing to a friend's house. If you've played Sudoku, the rules are even more intuitive.
Complexity: While the game is rather simple on the surface, there is some strategy involved. Failing to plan ahead can cause you to block yourself out of part of your window. And, you can always sabotage your friends by taking the dice they need and making their favorite tools more expensive.
Replay value: There are several starting window panes, each with different requirements and difficulty levels. Combined with multiple options for shared and personal goals, Sagrada does have some replay value. However, the base gameplay remains the same every time, making it easy to burn out after playing several times in short succession.
Single-player mode: Sagrada does have a solo mode in which the player attempts to beat a target score. The difficulty can be adjusted by changing the number of available tool cards.
Specifications
Expansions:
Sagrada offers a set of three expansions known as "The Great Facades," which can be used alone or together to add additional mechanics to the game.
Passion - balances objectives and adds individual player powers
Life - adds additional abilities with apprentices, and rewards for managing tricky restrictions
Glory - introduces new types of objectives that cater to different play styles or reward the first player to reach them, as well as highly restricted Strife Dice
Another expansion is available to increase the number of players per game.
5 - 6 Player Expansion
Durability: The dice are well-made from plastic in a black fabric bag. Window boards are double-layered cardboard of high quality. Window pane cards are thin by necessity, but as durable as can be expected. Cards are of average quality.
Table Space: Small. Each player has a window board and favor tokens. six cards, the round / score tracker, and dice are shared.
Organization: The box has built-in indentions to keep the cards and boards from sliding around. There is a nice fabric dice bag, and a plastic zipper bag for favor tokens. However, there is no provided way to separate cards that can look quite similar at a glance.
Game design by Elizabeth Hargrave, Published by Stonemaier Games
Overall Grade: A
Genre: Engine builder
Price: $$
Players: 1 - 5 players, ages 10+
Time: 5 minute setup + 40 - 70 minutes playtime
Summary: Which of your friends is the best birdwatcher in the neighborhood? Find out as you compete to gather food, attract birds to your ecosystem, and excitedly wait for eggs. Plus, there's pretty art and fun facts!
Recommended for: backyard birders, fun fact enthusiasts, and people who want to try complex board games without being overwhelmed.
Gameplay
Mechanics: Players take one of four possible actions each turn: drawing bird cards, playing bird cards, gathering food, and laying eggs. Each bird card played contributes to victory points and makes resource gathering more efficient. Other actions can trigger birds' abilities, which add points or resources to a player's pool. There are four rounds, each with its own randomized goal and decreasing number of turns per player. Each player also has one or more secret end-game goal. Points from all sources are totaled to determine the winner.
Teaching & Learning: Wingspan is fairly simple to explain and understand. The foundational mechanics of gathering resources, playing cards, and working towards goals is familiar enough that newcomers to strategic board games can join in quickly with minimal time spent on explanations and clarifications.
Complexity: Wingspan's complexity can vary, depending on the play style of a particular group. Beginners or families may focus on the simpler aspects, such as playing high-value cards and working towards goals. However, more experienced players can use birds' abilities and synergies to create powerful combos.
Replay value: This game has a fairly high replay value. The 170 bird cards, 26 individual goals, and 8 round goals make it unlikely to get the exact same combination repeatedly. But, birds' abilities are not unique. Multiple birds may have the same ability, allowing the same combos and strategies to be repeated despite playing different cards.
Single-player mode: There is a dedicated single-player mode for Wingspan. It involves competing against an artificial opponent, "Automa." The main game rules remain unchanged for the player, but there are additional guidelines on how to play Automa. The solo mode can be adjusted to three difficulty levels.
Specifications
Expansions:
The base game only includes birds from the Americas. Expansions are available to add species from other continents:
European Expansion
Oceania Expansion
Asia Expansion
There are also two standalone spin-off games from the same developer, with similar gameplay:
Finspan - an aquatic adventure to observe oceanic fish
Wyrmspan - create sanctuaries for local dragons
Durability: Most game pieces are made of high-quality cardboard, including the delightful "birdfeeder" dice tower. The dice and action markers are polished wood. All cards are high quality and slightly textured to avoid the tall deck sliding off your table.
Table space: Medium. Each player has a personal board representing their ecosystem. There is a small shared board for round goals, a card display, draw & discard piles, and the dice tower. Resources (food tokens and eggs) take up the remaining space.
Organization: The game comes with a plastic case that functions both as card storage and the card display during the game. Resealable bags are provided to store resources. However, there is no provided storage for the goal cards, and the dice tower does not fit in the box well when it is assembled.
Game design by Mathias Wigge, Published by Feverland and Capstone Games
Overall Grade: B
Genre: City builder, with engine building & worker placement aspects
Price: $$$
Players: 1 - 4 players, ages 14+
Time: 10 minute setup + 1.5 - 2.5 hours playtime
Summary: Build & manage your perfect zoo in this highly realistic competitive game! Compete to balance public appeal & conservation efforts, while improving your reputation in the scientific community.
Recommended for: biologists, strategists, and people who grew up obsessed with Zoo Tycoon.
Gameplay
Mechanics: Players take one of five possible actions each turn: Building enclosures, playing animal cards, gaining sponsors, forming associations, and drawing more cards. Play continues in this way until the "break" tracker is complete, after which resources refresh before continuing. The game ends when one player's markers on the "Conservation" and "Appeal" trackers meet. The winner is determined based on those trackers as well as victory points from secret goals unique to each player.
Teaching & Learning: Ark Nova takes significant time to learn, due to its multiple interacting systems. Similarly, it can be difficult to teach and overwhelming for players new to tabletop games.
Complexity: This is a highly complex game that lends itself to long-term strategic thinking. Each game includes multiple boards, each with its own related mechanics, and three separate points trackers. The box contains a rulebook, a symbols guide, and a glossary to ensure all necessary information can be found (relatively) quickly.
Replay value: You can play this game over and over again with a different experience each time! There are multiple designs for the zoo maps, each with their own advantages and challenges. The deck of animals and sponsors contains well over 100 cards, ensuring new combinations every time you play. The rulebook even includes ideas for how to adjust the rules to increase the difficulty level!
Single-player mode: There is a dedicated single-player mode for Ark Nova. In it, the player must attempt to reach a target score within a limited number of turns. This mode has a separate game board.
Specifications
Expansions:
Marine Worlds - an aquatic themed expansion that adds new animal cards, enclosure types, and action cards.
Durability: All game pieces are made of high-quality cardboard. If, like me, your favorite part of setting up a new game is punching out tokens, you will have a very satisfying time.
Table space: Large! The main board is fairly long, and the additional associations board, individual player mats, card decks, and tokens cause this game to require a lot of space.
Organization: The game comes with 2 segmented plastic organizers with covers, which hold the tokens well. It also provides several plastic storage bags, although they are too small to hold the zoo deck.
