Freshly Added to BGG - December 1, 2022

After a pretty long hiatus, here I am, back with a satchel full of promises of future games that do their best to shine so you would be tempted to bring them into your own dragon's hoard!

I'll start with some Western setting, with a sparkle of tentacles. Welcome to Reckoning is a 'Weird West'-themed card-driven game of hand management, building on Poker combinations mechanics. I have no idea how it will play and how it will release, but since the previous game of the Wonderspell publisher went through a KS crowdfunding, chances are this one will appear there as well!

The next one is Satchel Quest, from Flatout Games (Calico, Cascadia, Fit to Print, etc.). This game is described as a rogue-like dungeon crawler, powered by little round tokens that you need to arrange successfully to make it alive out of your dive. Very little is known about it so far, but the vitamin colors, the promised abstracted mechanics, and the slight Bullet reminiscence, are sure spinning it all into an intriguing title.

And now some bit of unexpected news, Button Shy will produce their first 'Big Box' title, Zebra, a game of polyomino placement in which you draw colored patterns and draw them such they are not adjacent to polyominoes of the same color. Add to this a slight push of luck dimension, a few more decision points here and there, and you'll get a rough idea of the gameplay.

Not all my titles are really fresh, alas. Arborea is one I should have added a while ago, but, well, these colorful mid-heavy Euro games with magical nature spirits doing whatever stuff they can do to justify exchanging resources like crazy are so alike to each other that I felt I already presented it to you many times already. This one will be published by Alley Cat Games and should pop up on Kickstarter next January! We know very little about the design, except that it is "not at all like Bitoku".

I love sharp contrasts, so the next title is a pure Ameritrash with a horror theme: here comes Vostok, a game set in Antarctica. You'll play as a Russian expedition in charge of exploring "Lake Vostok", believed to host new species due to its unmatched oxygen levels. As you can guess, you will find what you came looking for... The game description is rather cryptic, so I'll copy paste it: 'Players must battle physically and meta physically. Vostok utilizes a "Learn While Play” Meta Physical combat system that injects each players soul into the game play.' Soul injection has been a proven game board mechanic in the past, so I guess you'll have fun struggling with the evil creepy octopus, if this sounds like your jam.

And here I have a genuinely innovative title with Once Upon a Line. This is a (bear with me) narrative-driven 'scratching off' game, in which you scratch little squares off a giant grid to reveal words that correspond to cards to be drawn in order to progress further into the narrative. You scratch squares according to polyomino patterns, but you must avoid traps hidden across the grid. The setting is a light and colorful post-apocalyptic world, seized over by giant insects. If you are still on board, it should get to KS rather soon.

It's been a while since we had any PnP, so here is Booma, a roll-and-write game set on a far-away planet plagued by the destructions caused by Booma, a giant extra-terrestrial snake. Erect electric fences, bomb the beast, create baits, while Booma will offspring clones and pursue its enterprise of devastation. The files are available in the WIP thread on BGG, so you can play right away!

Another freely available roll-and-write PnP (WIP thread here), A Simple Life seems obviously inspired by the hit PC game Stardew Valley, featuring farming, mine exploration, fishing, crafting of tools, achievements, and a bit of romance in the town square on your spare time. The game plays over 10 days, and each day you get a pool of five dice you can spend at the various locations to activate the corresponding actions.

Purim is a Bible-inspired game (more precisely based on the Book of Esther) in which you must save the exiled Jewish people of Ancient Persia from a murderous conspiracy woven against them. To do so, you must send messengers to the king and the queen while dodging the villainous Sons of Haman that want your end. Mechanically speaking, the game features Area movement and Area control, powered by Action cards of which I gave you a sample in the picture above. From the designer of Black Orchestra.

Now for the finale! Jump Drive is getting an expansion with Terminal Velocity, featuring an official solo mode, actually the one "fan-made" solo campaign that everyone has been using for two years! I personally find it neat that the publishers have recognized the value of this fan-made variant and decided to give the designer a well-deserved recognition. That's not all though, as the expansion also adds, quite obviously, a good wealth of new cards to vary your plays even more.