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psocopteraI usually forget to review games - failed to write about a whole batch back in August (Century: Golems, Santorini, something neat I don't remember the name of now, Sushi Go), or a couple more recently (Kingdom Builder, Trias), but here's a bunch from this weekend.
Wingspan - I loved this, a good balance of public goals and secret goals, and also you are building your engine by playing different birds and I really love birds. And there are cute little eggs.
Shadows in the Forest - Awesome concept (you play in a dark room, and one player is the seeker, moving a little lantern around the board, and the rest are hiders, 3D figures hiding behind stand-up trees, trying to stay out of the light) but I didn't think the game play was actually great; it was hard to even see what we were doing in the dark, and it didn't feel like there were a lot of options for the hiders. Q loved it, though - he was the seeker and found us pretty quickly, so, very successful as kid entertainment.
Decrypto - Sort of like Codenames, except instead of having to clue multiple words from one word, you have to clue four words repeatedly with different words that are different enough from turn to turn that the other team can't match up which new set of clues goes with which previous set. My team won and really should not have because everything we thought we knew was wrong, but we got lucky; meanwhile the other team was much more onto us but still lost, which didn't quite seem fair. But on the other hand, more of a time constraint than in Codenames to think of clues quickly, and a little less putting one person on the spot as the cluer (since you take turns coming up with the new sets of clues), which might be improvements over Codenames?
Letter Jam - Hanabi meets Scrabble. A cooperative game in which everyone has a letter they can't see; players take turns making words out of everyone else's letters, by indicating with number tokens which letters of the word they are, giving you information about what letters you might have, to make the word make sense. (Like if I knew I had the blank spot in "MIG_T", I could conclude it was an H.) I liked this a lot, although figuring out who was going to take the turn to clue involved a certain amount of asserting that our words were going to be useful that I found a little nervewracking (what if I was missing something and they weren't going to be that useful?). But it was neat; I like constrained-information games a lot. Also the number tokens were really satisfying objects with pretty pictures of fruit slices.
Spyfall - An improv game in which most of the players are assigned a particular location and one player, the spy, doesn't know what it is but is trying to figure it out without their ignorance being discovered, as everyone asks each other questions about the scenario. Seemed broken, as implemented - insufficient incentive for the players to give useful clues to the spy - but I kind of like the concept and have been trying to think of ways you could fix it. (My current idea: in addition to the spy, there is a beloved amnesiac, whose identity is known. The amnesiac gets to ask questions, but doesn't have to answer questions (because nobody wants to make them feel bad that they don't remember!) and is racing the spy to figure out the location. So the other players are trying to help the amnesiac without tipping off the spy. Maybe the amnesiac needs to have a slightly easier job than the spy - like they need to figure out something slightly less specific?)
Anyways I also got to terraform Mars, so, much gaming happiness.
Wingspan - I loved this, a good balance of public goals and secret goals, and also you are building your engine by playing different birds and I really love birds. And there are cute little eggs.
Shadows in the Forest - Awesome concept (you play in a dark room, and one player is the seeker, moving a little lantern around the board, and the rest are hiders, 3D figures hiding behind stand-up trees, trying to stay out of the light) but I didn't think the game play was actually great; it was hard to even see what we were doing in the dark, and it didn't feel like there were a lot of options for the hiders. Q loved it, though - he was the seeker and found us pretty quickly, so, very successful as kid entertainment.
Decrypto - Sort of like Codenames, except instead of having to clue multiple words from one word, you have to clue four words repeatedly with different words that are different enough from turn to turn that the other team can't match up which new set of clues goes with which previous set. My team won and really should not have because everything we thought we knew was wrong, but we got lucky; meanwhile the other team was much more onto us but still lost, which didn't quite seem fair. But on the other hand, more of a time constraint than in Codenames to think of clues quickly, and a little less putting one person on the spot as the cluer (since you take turns coming up with the new sets of clues), which might be improvements over Codenames?
Letter Jam - Hanabi meets Scrabble. A cooperative game in which everyone has a letter they can't see; players take turns making words out of everyone else's letters, by indicating with number tokens which letters of the word they are, giving you information about what letters you might have, to make the word make sense. (Like if I knew I had the blank spot in "MIG_T", I could conclude it was an H.) I liked this a lot, although figuring out who was going to take the turn to clue involved a certain amount of asserting that our words were going to be useful that I found a little nervewracking (what if I was missing something and they weren't going to be that useful?). But it was neat; I like constrained-information games a lot. Also the number tokens were really satisfying objects with pretty pictures of fruit slices.
Spyfall - An improv game in which most of the players are assigned a particular location and one player, the spy, doesn't know what it is but is trying to figure it out without their ignorance being discovered, as everyone asks each other questions about the scenario. Seemed broken, as implemented - insufficient incentive for the players to give useful clues to the spy - but I kind of like the concept and have been trying to think of ways you could fix it. (My current idea: in addition to the spy, there is a beloved amnesiac, whose identity is known. The amnesiac gets to ask questions, but doesn't have to answer questions (because nobody wants to make them feel bad that they don't remember!) and is racing the spy to figure out the location. So the other players are trying to help the amnesiac without tipping off the spy. Maybe the amnesiac needs to have a slightly easier job than the spy - like they need to figure out something slightly less specific?)
Anyways I also got to terraform Mars, so, much gaming happiness.
