On Top of the World
Snowcrest (1-4 players) is the new game by Philip duBarry (Black Orchestra), set in a fictional version of the snowy mountains of Tibet.
In it, you manage a village, adding buildings (farms, forges and altars) and villagers (from your hand or from a market). On your turn you’ll either add cards by paying their cost, activate cards for their actions – or rest to gain resources and refresh your used cards. All the while working towards enlightenment by obtain scrolls, or like we euro people like to say, by gathering victory points to win. The game ends when all of those scrolls have been taken.
Your actions may have consequences on an omen track and can result in negative points at the end of the game. On the other hand some of the buildings might give you bonus points.
When playing solo there are a few very small changes to set up and rules and you can choose several difficulty levels, but you basically play the same game as multiplayer. To win, you must earn all the scroll tokens before your fourth rest action, and have at least 10 points after end game scoring (though you’ll need twice as much for the high score, “Inner Peace”).
The designer diary is a fun read if you are curious to see how a cross-over between Hearthstone and Agricola turned into a very advanced version of Tic-Tac-Toe.
Personal opinion: I am not a fan of anthropomorphic animals, but it looks like this game could be played solo in half an hour or so and bring some lightweight fun. So, I’m curious for a solo playthrough video.
Snowcrest will launch on Gamefound on 16 April.