So I've been a bit cooler on buying more Kickstarters recently (I've still got lots on the way) and have instead been looking out for bargains, small and old out of print games that I want to have a go at.....
First up is an old Victory Point Games "Pizza Box" offering Frontier Stations from 2015. Supposedly this is just a 3-6 player game, but comes highly recommended for solo play so I'm going to give it a go........
So I really liked this and as before here's my reasoning.....
Frontier Stations – 3.38/5
Speed / Ease Of Set Up & Tear Down? – 4/5
Not much to it so very easy – 5 mins
Game Time? – 3/5
It’s claimed to be a 60/90 minute game on the box – not a chance! 2hrs minimum. Whilst it’s a bit too long it would be easy to shorten it (by manipulating the threats) so scored ok!
There are 20 early and 20 late threats, they act as the game timer, this is how many I had left to go through when I was brutalised by the game!!!!
Rule Book? – 3/5
Clear and concise, does the job. The game has a simple structure so not much more is needed!
Component Quality? – 3/5
Old wooden style VPG tokens that are very small. Cards are thick with not exciting but serviceable graphics and not forgetting the “Pizza Box”
Theme? – 3/5
The Space theme is there and works well.
Gameplay? – 4/5
A simple, puzzle game very well executed. Fans of dice manipulation and worker placement games will find a lot to like here! Officially a 3-6 player co-op game, the solo game is played exactly the same way controlling 3 players and works really well.
Replayability? – 4/5
Despite the simple premise this in fact a tough puzzle game and requires some thought and some luck to get a win. There are lots of ways to vary the difficulty just by manipulating what’s here and making custom set ups as well.
Value For Money? – 3/5
Because this is out of print, this is difficult to assess. I got mine relatively cheaply, some OOP VPG games go for a small fortune!
Keeper ????
100%, a great thinky puzzle game!
5 = Out of this world, could not be better!
4 = Great !!!
3 = Average (Where any game should be)
2 = Really needs some work to come up to standard!!
1 = Disastrous
0 = Oh! The Horror!!!!!!!