In space, no-one can hear you scream. Luckily they can hear you shouting “Oh my god, I can’t believe you did that! You absolute nerf-herder!”, because you’ll be saying things like that quite often when you play Gravwell: 2nd Edition.
You’re sitting in a busy train station, wearing a pink carnation in your buttonhole, and reading a copy of The Times. A man in a fedora sits down on the bench behind you and says “The geese have flown south for the winter”. You reply with “Yes, but they’ll return in the spring”.
Complete challenges, earn points, laugh, and get to know your guests a bit better. Let me tell you, when you play Final Challenge, you’re going to know everyone around the room a lot better than when you started.
When I first saw the name ‘Subastral’, I immediately thought “Cool, definitely a space game”. I was wrong. Subastral in this context refers to exactly what it describes – below the stars. The focus is our own blue marble, our own speck of beauty on the canvas of cosmic insignificance: planet Earth.
Tiny Towns is a damning indictment on urban sprawl, overcrowding, and an ever-expanding society’s need for quick, affordable housing! Actually, it’s not. It’s a really cute abstract puzzle about space optimisation, forward planning, and the most adorable little wooden buildings.
They say good things come in small packages, and they don’t get much smaller than Zuuli, which is about the size of a pack of playing cards. Zuuli is a card game from Unfringed, where players are building and upgrading enclosures at their wildlife parks, while rescuing the animals who’ll live there
I really like Z-Ball. It quickly turned from a game I wanted to play a few times to give it a fair review, to a game my son and I take when we go somewhere, because we really enjoy playing it.
The premise of this abstract game is simple. You play the roles of deckchair attendants aboard the infamous ship, and your goal is to appease the First Class passengers who want prime deck space for their deckchairs.
Kombo Klash is a tile-laying, ‘match three’ game from Hub Games. Players battle by playing the cartoon animal tiles from their hands, using each creature’s special abilities, and trying to make adjacent groups of three or more of the same type to score points.
Big chunky pieces of wood and plastic clacking together, no complicated rules, and an innate human fascination with playing with things. Abstracts are great. Mandala Stones is the latest such game from Board&Dice, and it’s a beautiful boxful of pink, yellow, blue and purple discs.
