Freshly added to BGG, November 23, 2021
For those who are unfamiliar with the Lounge, the "Fresh on BGG" posts are broad overviews of new solo games added to the Board Game Geek database. These can be mere notions of a game by a hopeful would-be publisher, the next big expansion of a major retail hit, a Print and Play, or a future Kickstarter campaign… Who knows - and in most cases, not us. The entries below are filtered for you from the influx of new database additions, to pique your interest, so you can look into them further at your leisure if you feel intrigued.
Let’s start with a very odd addition, RAIN , a solitaire game about helping the mind of a protagonist suffering from auditory hallucinations. The game comes on an A3 paper sheet, and you must provide the rest of the components. The picture that you see looks to be the main board. The game has an unlikely duration (63,072,000 minutes, or, in other terms, 43,800 days, hence 120 years); fortunately, and quoting the BGG description "rules include an exception for the game ending in case the remaining period of the game would exceed your expected lifetime."
Since we are in the "real time" category, I introduce to you: Retrogade, an invader-shooting roll-and-write inspired by classic arcade games, coming to Kickstarter shortly. Roll dice to shoot at evil Astrodroids, collect power-ups, and destroy bosses. Pew pew pew!
And since Earth never stops being the coveted prize of basically pretty much all intergalactic imperialists, you can defend it again in our PnP pick of the day, Invasion! This is hand-held game inspired by Palm Island, with cards you can rotate and flip. Different variants are available by focusing on different icons featured on these cards – as a downside, they look quite busy.
Fortunately, when no aliens come to mess with us, we still find ways not to get bored. And so we come up with massive armored divisions battles as in World of Tanks, the famous video game now turned tabletop in World of Tanks: Battlegrounds. In the solo mode you race against the game (that is, an AI, I guess) to conquer the most locations, like a pair of cats racing to pee near every tree to mark their territory. The only listed mechanism is "Memory", which left me wondering.
If you want to play "world domination" with a different setting and arsenal, Fantasy always offer its fair share of opportunities. In Eye of Zamrock: Invasion, you wage war to earn medals in order to best ensure the world’s prosperity. If you look at the BGG page, please avoid having a look at the resource tokens.
Now, war is not all there is in life, and you can compete for scientific prestige, as well. You may already have heard of the Newton game, well, it is now receiving a second edition, including all expansions released so far, even Stephen Hawking. It isn’t clear whether there is an change besides it being basically a 'big box'.
In the same vein, you can venture around the world to make discoveries in Encyclopedia. Funnily enough, this game immediately cried French! to me, from the characters of the box cover, to the insisting mention that you have been hired by Buffon, "predecessor of Darwin" – and indeed, French it is. Sorry guys, Buffon, also known to be a great admirer of beavers, will never get the same recognition as Darwin, and for all sorts of good reasons, so deal with it. Still, it’s another dice placement game, and the theme remains historically true (Buffon did send people around the world to investigate animal species for him to compile the 36 volumes of his Natural History).
I’ll end with two controversial additions, because BGG allows Escape Room games into its database (and believe me, they make up for a ton of the new additions). I’ll start with Mortum: Medieval Detective, an investigation game set in the Middle Ages, that will receive a stand-alone sequel, The Shelter. Since they don’t want to spoil any element of the plot, we are left with extremely vague descriptions such as "you will end up in a sinister place marked by mysterious events." Thanks, that helps a lot to picture what the game is about.
And a second Escape Room, this one because I know there is an overall interest for submarines out here: Danger in the Deep. The description says you’ll have to locate the enemy and save the world. I think with all the training we have in this matter as board gamers, the future of our planet is pretty safe and sound.
All images taken from the respective game's pages on BGG.