I grew up in the Golden Age of arcade beat-em-ups. The likes of Street Fighter 2 consumed me and my spare change for years. For a long time, there was no way to get that same feeling at home, and the rip-off games that appeared didn’t really scratch that itch (we won’t talk about how much I spent on a Japanese import copy Street Fighter 2 SNES cartridge)
Achroma – the evolving card game in the style of a collectible card game. Beautiful artwork, and maybe more?
I’ve got a pet pug called Jeffrey. Actually, I’ve got one-and-a-half pugs, as I also have a half-pug called Peggy. Now, as squishy as a pug might be, there’s no way I’m getting Jeff in a mug.
On the surface, it’s easy to say Scout is a set collection game. The truth is that it’s more of a ‘carefully craft a set and then get rid of it’ game.
Flatout Games has built a good name for itself with its previous games, Calico and Cascadia. Verdant picks up the baton and keeps running, delivering another solid, clever game
The thrill of a re-purposed bread bin knocking seven bells out of a Tupperware box with a knife, is hard to beat. While Prometheus Game Labs’ Micro Bots: Duel might not be quite as violent on your table, it’s a cheaper and easier option for 1v1 robot carnage
The Shores of Tripoli is a two-player, event-driven wargame from Fort Circle Games. It’s set on the Barbary coast of North Africa at the turn of the 19th Century, and it’s great.
The Guild of Merchant Explorers doesn’t just look like a fancy version of Kingdom Builder, it actually plays like one too.
Shake That City is a tile-laying puzzle game with really light rules. The (very tenuous) theme has you choosing a series of tiles to make your own little city on your 5×5 grid boards. “But Adam, how am I – a lowly civil engineer – meant to choose which buildings and infrastructure go into my city?”. Don’t worry, friend, that’s where the cube shaker comes in.
Pearladora is a game set around a series of lagoons, and in these lagoons are piles of pearls, just waiting to be claimed. The inhabitants of the islands, dotted around the lagoons, want to be the best and to collect the most pearls.
