Freshly Added to BGG - June 2, 2023
Once again, I have raided the BGG database and here comes the loot!
Well, the first title is... Not that much of a surprise. Actually, Cyberion has lurked in the shadows of the BGG database for months, but only recently has it shown its copper-like, voracious face. Evil Cogs have sabotaged the factory of the Oniverse, and it is up to you and your robot squad to repair the damage before everything collapses. The chief mechanic is hand management, as you send your robots to perform repairs or trigger "powerful effects" (whatever that means). In any case, this new title brings us one step closer to the already teased Ultimion that will bring the Oniverse series to its conclusion.
In Solitaire Times we like dealing with the curios of human culture, and forgotten myths definitely belong to this category. This is why I am most pleased to present you a game about ancient Georgian mythology, The Legend of Kartlos, that offers you to play as a primeval god, set to conquer the mythical kingdom of ancient Georgia. The three listed mechanics (Area Control, Hidden Victory Points, and Role Playing) do not seem much compatible with solo play, but with so little being revealed, it would be premature to form a firm opinion. Anyway, despite being distributed by a Tbilisi-based publisher, it will likely reach an audience beyond the Georgian borders thanks to the upcoming Gamefound campaign to finance it!
I hear some people telling me Colchian gods might be a tad too obscure. Well, what can I do, what do you want then? Something more familiar? You mean really really familiar, like dragons? Okay then, here you go. Keep enjoying your comfort zone. Flame & Fang is all about them: in a Fantasy world, dragons were thought to be extinct, but as always, life finds a way, and four eggs escaped this terrible fate. It's up to you to care for these little scaly munchkins and to teach them to feed, to fight, and to fly. The game is played through a series of adventures across which your youngster dragons will grow, mature, and face increasingly threatening perils. Mechanically, it relies on deck crafting and hand management. The game is scheduled for a Kickstarter launch at some time.
But if you want something reaaaaaally familiar, I have even better: Fighting Fantasy Adventures, the CYOA books of your forever gone youth, are being adapted in the card game format by master designer Martin Wallace, in the form of a card-driven escape game that unfolds across five adventures, with your characters leveling up in between. And, be at ease: even though it's a card game, you do have lots of dice rolls. According to the sales pitch person, "this isn't designed with a load of replayability in mind", but "it's also going to be priced accordingly". Anyway, we'll find out more when it launches on Kickstarter, next July!
The Fantasy trip goes on with Djinn, where you play as a warden of the Source of All Magic; after centuries of peaceful meddling with mystical powers, the Source has been located by a bunch of ill-intentioned djinns, and your job is to deal with this impeding threat by entrapping them into magical bottles closed with magical corks (of course in the city of magic even the most mundane items are somehow magical). To do so, you will move around a board made of 13 locations in which you can collect resources to make the precious bottles, or capture the roaming djinn. The game is distributed by Pegasus Spiele (so expect a wide retail release) and designed by Benjamin Schwer (Crown of Emara, New Eden), with a solo mode by Ralph Bruhn.
And now, politics! Gritty, ruthless, Far West-inspired politics, with cute anthropomorphic electors and murderous badgers in the woods to lobby for your favorite candidate. In Springsign, you will play as a variety of characters to develop your little settlement while ensuring that voters eventually elect the mayor who will best lead the city into a brighter future - which means you, and if they don't believe that, you may already fire your propagandist. Reading the description, it feels that the game is brimming with diplomatic moves and knifes in the back, so I am not sure it will play well solo. In any case, you will get the opportunity to back the game on Kickstarter for a $35 pledge, although I do not know when at the moment.
Well, enough with the real-world issues, and let's have some literal escapism with Rats of Wistar, designed by Simone Luciani and Danilo Sabia. Contrarily to what the title and the box art may have led you thinking, you play as mice, recently escaped from the Wistar institute (a real-life biomedical research facility in Philadelphia). Years of experiment has granted you extraordinary cognitive skills and megalomaniac delusions, which is the best combo to imprint your dominion upon the free mice in the neighborhood. Under your rule, they will get organized within a newly founded society of mice, with an array of workers at your service to gather food, exapt human artifacts to the needs of your wonderful authoritarian rodent utopia, build beds to make your subjects feel special and better than their fellow mice out there, and claim achievements as you set made-up goals to keep justifying your iron grip on the colony.
Oh, sorry. You did not want more politics. Hmm. Business then! The second single best way to enjoy the real world after following the passionate struggles for power over our peers! In Bansan, named after the famous wet market of Penang (one of the thirteen states of Malaysia), where bored lobsters in their crowded tanks eye the piles of colorful pitayas with envy and despair, you will play as a savvy vendor, surfing the waves of the local food stock market to catch the winds of profit and fortune. Despite being focus on negotiation, the game does feature a special solo mode, the Sendiri mode. And if you wonder, Sendiri is not a fancy culinary term to say half-baked, it's simply the Malay translation for Solo.
Free PnP of the day! All this human agitation had to start at some point, and you may retrace the origins of it in Stone Age Survival, where six six-sided dice decide your fate as you hunt and scavenge across the harsh environment of the Paleolithic. All required files may be found in the corresponding section of the BGG page.
Oh, no, wait! It's not over yet! I forgot to feature a game illustrated by Andrew Bosley this week! This post feels incomplete! So, here is TRAILBLAZER: The Arizona Trail. The goal of the game is to travel the Arizona Trail, plundering natural resources along your way to bring back home as fond souvenirs of the spectacular landscapes you encountered. As you can see, I am not sure I have understood the theme well, nor the mechanics, that rely on polyominoes and pattern building. If you have backed the previous Trailblazer game (The John Muir Trail), maybe you will have a clearer idea of what this game about. I only see a bunch of wooden cylinders over way too many tracks for me not to get lost in the wilds.