Category: Game Reviews

I thought Observance was a cool game with easy-to understand mechanics. It actually heavily inspired me with my poaching game and gave me a good foundation to work with when I started writing up my rules.

Despite enjoying the game, there were a couple things that stood out as thing’s I didn’t like. I first of all wasn’t very impressed with the paper presentation of the game. I know that it probably exists somewhere in a finalized form and that it was free to print-at-home, but good quality materials makes games feel a bit more real. I also have never really been a fan of the battle-ship style announce and reply when it comes to trying to find where your opponent has things placed. I would have preferred a system that allowed me to see where the border patrol agents were, and subsequently would have allowed me to move around them. I suppose it makes sense that mexican migrants should be hidden to avoid detection, but it just pulled some of the immersion from my gameplay.

Things I liked:

I really enjoyed that the game wasn’t exactly balanced. It paints a picture for how difficult it actually is to cross the border from a migrant’s perspective. I wish for the sake of playability that I was able to have at least 1 or 2 more openings in the walls to increase my chances at winning, but that would take away from the story.

I liked the different search patterns, that the border patrol could do, it allowed me to stay in the game so long as Clay chose the wrong search pattern for where I was. I do wish I also knew where the green card was, if nothing else, because it would give me a slight advantage and a goal to work towards, instead of mindlessly throwing migrants at random spots and telling the border patrol where that person is.

Overall, I would def. play the game again and it did a good job at conveying a story of Mexican migrants essentially battling with the border patrol on the American-Mexican border.

Fluxx

The game is filled with elements of uncertainty each player needs to find them and switch the card path as needed to accomplish the mission; the game is about discovering each others’ advantages and taking over them to fulfill each other’s pursuits.

Bang

The game is about war and surviving with different partners and how partners can protect each other to prevent irrevocable damage that causes one of the partners severe gun injury or death.

Love Letter

The game is about each character’s strategies to transmit messages to the princess and plan strategically to deal with opponents.

Hanabi

The game is collaborative objects sequence game in which each player needs to see the upcoming cards to determine wether the current owned cards match the value of the card pile for successfully launching the firework.

Carcassonne

The game is a random puzzle piece that players will face to determine the dream place for each player. This is a structural game that one player who gets the most quality and lengths built objects — rivers, farms, and cities get further steps wins.

Dominion

The game is about a ruler who wants to occupy land without other occupants taking advantage of it; to successfully achieve the landowner position, he needs to collect more decks for getting enough price amounts to unlock the lands.

Splendor

The game is about purchasing treasures from gems that can develop final products.

Fluxx

I enjoyed playing Fluxx, but only after I started to learn how to play. I like the idea of matching cards and that it has an equal balance of random and strategy. I enjoyed having the new rule cards show up but it does make the game feel pretty cluttered when it really gets going; especially with 6 people playing. That feeling of clutter makes me want to play the game less/want the game to end as soon as possible so it can go back to normal. It did certainly provide me with a lot of inspiration for my game

Love Letter

I immediately enjoyed the storyline of Love Letter but I think the mechanics were a bit clunky for me to understand. It didn’t make a ton of sense to me that each player was a suitor, but had cards with different characters on them. It created a disconnect that was maybe only mostly apparent to me. However, once I learned how it worked, I did begin to enjoy playing. I’m just not sure it would be something I would come back to again.

Munchkin Gloom

This was the first of the games that I was not able to play due to 2 close exposures to covid, so from here on most of my thoughts will come from the perspective of game reviews I watched in place of playing the games.

I really like the transparent cards with the ability to place others on top of each other and the idea story-wise that happiness is bad and gloom is good. It also seems that a lot of the actions are very direct and player-focused. It also seems to poke fun at popular video games and Dungeons and Dragons. I love games that have player-to-player interactions that can cause fun conflict in the room, and Gloom Munchkin certainly does that. If I had the chance to play it I think I would enjoy it.

Munchkin

Munchkin seems to be a relatively simple game with dungeoning and treasure-gathering. The class and race system is really interesting too, being able to be any combination of class and race. In terms of the combat, It’s seems it’s similar to Dungeons and Dragons in the sense that when a monster appears, you fight it. Additionally, your combined levels must be the same or higher in order to fight/defeat the creatures, and it even incorporates bonus for different abilities. I really like that if you don’t meet the combined level of the monster that you can run away if you roll a 5-6, but if you land on anything other than 5-6, you have “bad stuff” happen to you. I wasn’t able to play this game this semester but I was able to play in 4D studio a couple of semesters ago and I enjoyed it!

Bang!

I think the character and role cards not being attached is a fun way of keeping the story of the game fresh as there are many different combinations and can change the storyline for players. It’s also cool that it’s a team-based game based around eliminating other players as opposed to points or score that determine who wins. I also always like games that are designed to start mini conflicts between the players. Bang does this by making it a mystery what team each player is on. I also think it’s really cool that you can get into duels with other players.

Pandemic

Pandemic is another one of the games that I wasn’t able to play but I did watch a few videos on. I think that a face value, the game can come off a tad overwhelming, at least for me as someone who isn’t incredibly well-versed or experienced with board games. It does seem to simplify itself just a bit more as the rules become more apparent. The role cards are also interesting, giving players an added ability each unique to themselves which provides players with a sense of purpose. I also like that the different regions on the map all foster the growth of different kinds of diseases specific to the region. It’s also cool that you can move around the map, essentially controlling the spread of disease through your presence there as a researcher/doctor or whatever. I also have to give an honorable mention to the infection rate mechanic, which allows players to choose the difficulty level of the game.

Tokaido

I wasn’t able to play Tokaido. but based on the reviews that I watched, I think the first mechanic that caught my interest was how the players move around the board. Players can move as far forward as they want and get ahead of the others, but they can only move forward once they are the farthest back in the group. I have to say though, I don’t think that I would really enjoy playing this game, despite the beautiful presentation, because of the currency system. I have never really enjoyed using currency to trade or purchase items in card games. I’m not sure if there is a reason behind it, but it just doesn’t always make a ton of sense to me if it’s not done in a specific way.

8 Minute Empire

I like the idea of the game being completed in 8 minutes. I find that when I am playing board games, it’s usually to quickly pass time when my friends and I are bored or waiting for something. 8 mins is the perfect amount of time for a fast game to to take place. It’s interesting that you basically start the game with everything you’ll ever need; i.e. 8 money, 3 cities, and a bunch of armies. It’s nice that once the money is spent, the money goes into the bank, which also means it doesn’t return back into the game. The territorial control of moving armies around an establishing cities almost as spawn points is also a cool mechanic. It seems like based on the videos that I have watched, there isn’t much player to player interaction which is kind of unfortunate so I would at least try to play this game if given the opportunity, but it may get boring for me after a while.

Hanabi

I really like the idea of Hanabi, trying to set off fireworks. The first thing that’s jarring is that you actually hold your cards backwards instead of directed towards yourself. So everyone can see your cards except for you. I have to say though, despite Hanabi being a seemingly simple and small game, I don’t really enjoy games with point values and a goal to reach a certain amount of points. I would prefer if players were trying to get a certain object or amount of objects, whatever it may be. Not too much to say about it.

Carcassonne

To start, I really like the idea of building the map together as a group, even though the goal is to take as much control of as much land as possible. I’m not a fan of the fact that they add up to points at the end, but that’s just the way it is. I think Carcassonne has a great of making players interact with one another by restricting the placement of certain players’ pieces on occupied sections of the board, but players can strategize to share sections of the board if placed correctly. I also like that the scoring is done through a different board and matches the theme of the main game “board.”

Dominion

I was able to play Dominion a few weeks ago. Unfortunately, we didn’t get to finish the game but we did eventually score it at the end and declared a winner. I personally don’t like deck builder games. They just don’t really keep my attention like a game with a nicely designed board/map, whatever it may be. This also ties into my small but general distaste for card games with currency. Being able to see where the money is going and it getting recycled kind of kills the magic for me. Overall, though, the game is well made and works with a small amount of players. However, if we didn’t have Ames there to help us get the hang of it, I’m not sure we would have been able to learn it very quickly.

Photosynthesis

Visually, Photosynthesis is a striking game that I can imagine would pull players in and immerse them. However, I wasn’t able to play, so I’m only speculating. At first glance in the videos I have watched, it seems very complicated with tons of different chips, pieces, currency, etc. I think there is a lot to remember, such as point value, amount of spaces a shadow is cast, point trackers, light points, etc. While the game is visually one of the best I’ve seen, it’s more or less a no-go for me.

Takenoko

I enjoyed playing Takenoko, mostly because of the story line, but after opening the rules, it got complicated. Myself, Clay, and Max all did find ourselves getting the hang of the game, but were asking a lot of questions like can we take the bases of the bamboo shoots, does irrigation apply if not connected, etc. We also didn’t really use the player cards to track what was going on, which may have contributed to our general sense of confusion for a majority of the game. We did start implementing some strategy in the later game, but that was only after a pretty slow start at the beginning.

Settlers of Catan

I personally don’t enjoy resource management games. I’ve experienced some pretty intense games that use this as a main mechanic in their games like EU4, CK2, and other video games that take politics, war, resources, etc into account. Settlers of Catan is WAY simpler than those other games that I mentioned, but it generally has a similar feel and just isn’t really up my alley.

Splendor

This is going to sound incredibly redundant but because I don’t like games that involve buying and selling cards with currency, I have to say I’m glad I didn’t play Splendor. While I’ll admit it does have a cool premise, I just am not immediately interested in points and money for physical games. The game also has a lot to remember in terms of how many gems you can pick up and what controls that number, which can get confusing. I don’t like how everything changes based on player count, meaning that every time you play, unless your group is consistent, the rules are all different. This makes it difficult to learn.

Bohnanza

I really like Bonanza! I’ve been able to play it a couple times in both Game Design and in 4D studio. The game provides a lot of player-to-player interaction with trading being one of the most important things you can do. It adds strategy to a simple game with simple mechanics and is easily learned and taught. Also, the art is really nice to look at and is just overall a lot of fun to play. I also am pretty good at it so that adds to it a bit too.

After playing Pentagon, I really enjoyed it. As the box indicates, it is very quick to pick up and similar enough to tic tac toe which everyone has played. One connection that isn’t very similar that I would make is chess. Chess requires you to think multiple steps ahead of your opponent and challenges you to see every single possibility. This is something I found in Pentago. Being a very competitive person as well, I enjoyed the idea that it was me vs the other person, and that it is in a sense who is smarter or who is thinking further down the line in terms of moves.

I am definitely going to purchase this game and give it to my dad as a Christmas gift because he is the logical type that would obsess over a game like this with friends and family.

Flux (Zombie)

• I had previously played the base game of Flux last semester and I had enjoyed what I played. The idea that the rules continually shift as the game progresses interested me. This was my first time playing the Zombie version. One thing that I did not like was the pacing of the late game. Everyone took a long time to reacclimate to rule changes and to consider their options which made it boring to wait for your next turn. Our group made an adjustment for the subsequent playthrough that I deemed “Speed-Flux”. I started a 20 second timer on my phone and each player had exactly that long to complete their turn. This was especially frantic because sometimes you would draw a card that you were not familiar with that had a lot of text that you would need to read so this rule forced you to skim read in order to complete your turn. The chaos that this created was fun although I think a slightly longer timer would be good if it was being used in a more serious setting.

Love Letter

• This game was great! We got a grasp of the rules really quickly and were underway within a minute. On the first turn I had two of the highest ranked cards, meaning that I was forced to play one of them which is an automatic loss, however I was not perturbed by this because the length of the round is so quick. I particularly liked the strategy element of deductive reasoning trying to figure out what card your opponent(s) have.

Munchkin Gloom

• I have played the original Munchkin game in the past although it has been at least several years since then. This was my first time playing the “Gloom” variant. The most notable thing about this game is the quality of the cards. These things are awesome! The transparent plastic lines up when you stack the cards on top of each other to make adding up character stats very easy. In terms of gameplay, there was some confusion and frustration within my group regarding the objective. By the time we were underway, people seemed to be mostly over this game. I think this would have especially benefited from having one person in the group who has played before, and I would be open to trying to play again, although my group only had the one playthrough. 

Tokaido

• This game was especially unique compared to what we have played this semester. Players progressed across the board and stopped wherever they chose in order to collect cards, money, and other such things. No one was exactly sure what the winning strategy would be for this so all players seemed to focus on different things. Although players are competing against each other, it usually didn’t seem to make sense to pursue the same objectives, like for example, the panels. If one player had already collected two out of four of the panels, other players were disincentivized from trying to collect them as well because only the first player to complete it would score the bonus. Perhaps a more obvious strategy would arise given the opportunity to play this game more than just the one time. Overall, in my opinion, it wasn’t very fun although the cool theme did make up for this slightly.

Dominion

• We played an abbreviated version of this game, having only cheap cards available to purchase and stopping before even reaching the endgame. From what I saw of this, I really liked the concept. The idea of making choices to build a deck from cards that are available to all of the players is very interesting. I also really like the progression of currency where later in the game, it becomes possible to get cards that are worth more. I especially like that you can replay this game with different cards available because this opens up so much in the way of replayability. 

Takenoko

• I am still not entirely sure that we played this correctly. The premise of this game is that players build out the board and grow bamboo that is later collected and used to score points. It was never clear what the dominant strategy was for this game. Points could also be scored based on score layout so depending on the state of the board, you could draw a card that immediately scores points. I would be interested to see this game played out multiple times to see what the average number of tiles that are played is. I couldn’t tell if our game would have been more fun if we spent more time placing tiles or less. Overall, this is another game with a fun theme that I am not totally sold on mechanically yet.

Bang

• This game combined a lot of elements from previous games that I had played including hidden roles, drawing cards and hand management, and special character abilities. I particularly enjoyed the theme of the country western art and having text written in the Italian language in addition to English. An enjoyable development that happened in our playthrough of the game was that players would attack each other for fun, even if they knew that their roles were working towards the same goal. Having people be “traitors” was honestly very on brand for the game theme and it made gameplay seem a little more intense because it was every person for themselves.

Splendor

• The premise of collecting gems and accumulating points with the cards in the middle is very simple but . I found this game interesting because every player has an equal opportunity (at least in the start of the game) to pick whatever they would like. As the game progressed, certain gems would get kind of gridlocked because two players were both trying to collect that color but neither had enough to score in order to return theirs to the circulation. Multiple people in the class have games that involve collecting resources and crafting so I highly recommend that others try this out to at least get a sense of it.

Bonanza – 8/10

Beans are funny. I have no clue why they didn’t call this one Beananza. Anyway. I think I would go on record as saying that I think games that take a while are fun, and Bonanza was no exception. The idea of assigning rarities to beans is funny, and most of the art was too. Good game. 

King of Tokyo – 6/10

I didn’t get to play much of this game, but I like fighting and I like winning – which I did.  I don’t really see a point for it, as if I wanted to fight monsters I’d just get action figures. And be ten.

Flux

This was the first time I got to play the original version of flux, and I enjoy the specialty versions a lot better. Flux is always a little slow to learn the first time you play, but pace increases as you play the game. Overall, I think Flux is too slow because of the reading and amount of rules you have to keep in mind. Strategizing can take time on your turn making game play slow. I do like the game as a whole. I think if I had a group of friends I consistently played that game with I’d grow to love it more. 7/10 would play again.

Love Letter

I absolutely loved this game. I loved how simple yet complex the game ended up being, and the idea that you quite possibly always had a chance to win even if you were behind. The pace of this game was fast and very easy to learn. I liked that it was easy to learn, but strategizing took time to perfect. 9/10 would play again.

Tokaido

This was by far my favorite in class game so far. I loved everything about this game, and I’m determined to buy it so I can vacation as every character it has. I loved the group interaction that this game triggered. I loved that it was more “friendly” competition rather than “cutthroat” competition. The pace was slower, but I felt as though that was intentional because the artwork is so beautiful so overall it didn’t bother me. Easy to learn despite the several pages of rules. The way the booklet was designed made every question I had while playing very easy to reference. 11/10 will purchase.

Photosynthesis

Photosynthesis was an interesting game. I never really decided whether or not I liked it, I think I would need to play it again. I’m leaning towards not liking it I think because of the little player to player interaction. I very much was only worried about myself and my own trees and trying to get light points. I felt at points I wasn’t even playing against the other players I was just trying to get light points to do more actions. The pace was a bit slow, but picked up once we got a hang of the game. 5/10 not a lot of interest in playing again.

Bonanza

Another class favorite of mine. The player interaction was some of the most fun I’ve had playing and the mechanics of the game were so unique and inspiring. I wish there were other tokens to use as money, but I assume that removing some beans from gameplay is the point by having the cards double like that. Also, it was fun to beat Max at a game. 11/10 will purchase.

Rule Set 2

The challenging part of the game: Trying to figure out how this game work due to the complex values that could mean so much for players in terms of the winning process and distance

The Surprising Moment of the gameplay: The value each player draw could be everything out of their control; the most unexpected outcome is I accidentally won by just picking out the ace card (only if I get a value of 50). This game also has the function of switching turns and picking out a queen/king.

Rule Modifications for the game (recommendations for switching, adding, and/or removing): Maybe start with three cards so that players feel more challenged.

Impression of the Game: It is a magical play about the exchange of values

Replaying Willingnesses (Enjoyments of the Game): I enjoy despite the complex formats of the rulesets since I learned a little bit about the game’s objective: how each card’s values could enable one to go against others.

Disasters

The challenging part of the game: I cannot own items as full as I wish since I need to discard items once I draw a card that could exceed my current item cards.

The Surprising Moment of the gameplay: The adventurous gameplay involves the action of interacting with the next player to complete the goals, therefore each card is detectable to all players. In other words, this game is about getting things from the next players to create satisfying goals for each other — how greedy are our pursuits for possessions?

Rule Modifications for the game (recommendations for switching, adding, and/or removing): Creating more variety of disasters to elevate more obstacles for players to get through the path to their destination.

Impression of the Game: Will players have the right tools to deal with unexpected hazards?

Replaying Willingnesses (Enjoyments of the Game): The genre of this game is filled with narrative elements including items collections and unexpected harmful circumstances which encourage narrators like me to puzzle the sequences of the plot — it is definitively exciting for an adventurous personality like me.

There will be a file attached here as soon as I can get it to upload to my Google drive…….

https://drive.google.com/file/d/1Cqn06gLa3M5ABrJXq3nrojqCdoNInyAm/view?usp=sharing (I realized the video was 2GB)

The following is the script that I wrote for this presentation. I hit most if not all of the points when filming the video, but in the event that a more in depth look at my thought process is desired, it is pasted below.

Escape From Tarkov, often abbreviated EFT for the purposes of simplicity, is a tactical First Person Shooter set in the fictional sealed off Russian city of Tarkov. It was created around 2014, though open alpha access was not available until 2016, by Nikita Buyanov and has seen semi consistent updates since. In the story, Tarkov was cut off from the rest of the world and largely left to fall into chaos after an event known as the Contract Wars. 

The Contract Wars can be blamed on a conglomeration of different companies called Terragroup that had its base in Tarkov. Terragroup was conducting illegal scientific experimentation and had largely mobilized its own military to enforce their will in the region. 

You Play as a member of one of the two private military factions who fought in the Contract Wars, trapped within the city after the United Nations set up a perimeter. These factions are:

USEC- United Security, is a private military company formed from the merger of two others and used as a corporate military force by Terragroup. 

USECs were deployed to protect sensitive information regarding Terragroup’s illegal operations in the region, as well as establish Terragroup as the De Facto ruling faction of the city, all without raising the alarm. 

BEAR- Battle Encounter Assault Regiment, is a private military company established in secrecy by the Russian government to find evidence of Terragroup’s illegal activity. 

BEARs were deployed directly into Tarkov and the surrounding region to assault Terragroup’s USEC forces and retrieve any and all digital, physical, or other forms of data pertaining to their activities. Unfortunately, the assault was not as successful as hoped, and the two factions began effectively a state-corporate war in the Tarkov region. 

Because of the rapidly increasing level of violence and the steadily increasing geographical scope of the conflict, the United Nations deployed a peacekeeping force to Evacuate the city of civilians and seal it off from the remainder of the world. During this operation, UN peacekeeping forces assisted by the Russian Federation Govt. quickly swept the city and managed to create an impenetrable blockade around it, all while also eliminating a large part of the remaining warring factions and evacuating a large number of civilians. 

This is where you enter the story. Whichever faction you chose, you are one of the lucky ones, or so they tell you, who didn’t fall when the UN had their way with the streets. You have your issued gear, and have established a small hideaway on the outskirts of town after being separated from your friends. 

Your goal is now simply to escape the city of Tarkov, but it is a hostile place, and you are not the only one lurking between empty rusting cars. Scavengers, or Scavs, largely comprised of the homeless population, those who stayed to defend their homes, criminals, or those who simply wanted to watch chaos unfold, wander the streets. They are often drunk and are incredibly violent, having picked up scavenged weapons from the casualties left by the Contract Wars. 

Other PMCs remain alive as well, and these characters are the most dangerous of all, as they are also players that could have any motivation you could dream of to leave you alone or take what they think they deserve. To overcome these odds, you will have to work with what remains of civilization within the walls of Tarkov, and venture into the dark truths about Terragroup’s research. 

Gameplay:

There is one main facet of gameplay. A Raid. 

A raid is a time limited open world environment set somewhere in Tarkov. You succeed by passing successfully from the insertion point to the extraction point and doing whatever it is you wish to do along the way. If you run the clock down, Russian Regulars storm the map to quell th fighting, and your character goes missing in action. If you die in a raid, you are sent back to the main menu. The penalty for both of these outcomes is the loss of all the gear on your character’s person. Potentially Permanently, but we’ll get to that. Raid goals can vary depending on player level, faction, and location. A common goal may be to kill 4 Scavs or find three screwdrivers, which leads to one of the core tenets of EFT that makes it such a compelling game compared to many others out there. 

The mantra of EFT’s development has always been, “As realistic as playable.” Equipment has weight, your character has weight. You need to bring ammo. You need to bring food. You need medicine. Do you know where you are? Is your gun brand new or do you need to worry about a jam? What’s around that corner? WHO is around that corner? 

Each map in Tarkov is designed to instill these kinds of anxieties and practices into the players organically, as they learn over time, whether through success or failure, that there are certain things they need to do before they ever enter the Factory or the Woods maps. Inventory management is manual. You need to restock your ammo and fix your equipment between raids. Your character can get hurt, and if you don’t heal a broken leg, it’s liable to make you an easy target for a scav looking for a quick buck. Even so, if you don’t know your own way around, it may not matter if you aren’t hurt. 

This realism carries over to combat, to a large degree. Characters can lean, jump, sprint vary their stance height or crouch altogether, prone out, vary walking speed to sneak, and even blindly fire over cover and corners. The guns are all 3d quixel megascans of real firearms, and as a result can be modified piece by piece. Wearing a heavy plate vest may stop a round, but it will slow your character down depending on the weight. Bullets are bullets, not a hitscan check. The game actually fires a bullet from the barrel of the weapons with each click of the mouse, and trajectory as well as drop is calculated in real time not only based on distance but also weather conditions and wind of the current environment. On top of this, they have a set mass and ability to penetrate certain types of cover. Wooden doors and drywall are not a great bullet stop, as it turns out. This creates an incredibly dynamic and rich system of combat where no two encounters are ever the same. This is only compounded when it is additionally considered that Nikita and the other developers for EFT design goals and missions on each map, as well as the flow of the very map itself, to drive players into each other. 

Why fight? Remember how if you die, you get booted back to the menu? That gear remains in the live raid, on your character’s body. It can be taken from your corpse by any other player that happens to stumble upon it. Certain local gang leaders and traders offer insurance on your gear, but that only gets it back to you after a hefty wait and only if nobody took it. While in a raid, you can loot items in the environment as well, and these are often needed to help you to progress. With this, we have the stakes, and the driving force behind EFT. 

You can even play as a scav and show up to an in progress raid if you run out of gear in your hideout. Scavs spawn with a random loadout.