Freshly Added to BGG - September 5, 2023

whoI guess by now you got used to my usual complaint about too many games being added to the database. Well, for a change, the release flow has dried a little bit this week, and although I am nowhere close to a shortage, I welcome the respite!

Of course the biggest respite of all in these days of constant business - and by that I mean the state of being busy - was the mighty lockdown. Since the Covid days, we look at pandemics in a different way, and a theme like the one of Biohazard has become quite more impactful. As for the game itself, it's about managing resources to prevent the spread of a pathogen. Just like any good Euro though, it's all about serving the community better than the competition - and since this kind of semi-cooperation seems to play an important role in the mechanics, I would be surprised if the solo mode doesn't involve an AI, but then, I know nothing. The KS prelaunch page is already up.

Speaking of serious matters, did you know that Galileo Galilei was forced to study medicine by his father, so he couldn't become a priest as he wanted? Yet, bored as he was in the teaching class, he stopped attending his courses to learn mathematics and natural philosophy instead. This is not just some random trivia, but mostly a way to introduce Galileo Galilei, a game about ancient astronomers who craft their own telescopes and discover new stars and planets in the distant skies. All the while, the threat of the Inquisition is looming over your work and your discoveries. The game mechanics rely on deck-building and set collection. The designer and publisher of this card game are new to the board gaming scene, and I do not know how they plan to distribute their game.

As the curious existence of Galileo Galilei reminds us, life is often made of a succession of highly implausible occurrences. For instance, I would deem it quite incongruous to consider skateboarding over the subway rails appealing. All the more unlikely to decide to design an app about it. And even more far-fetched to adapt the said app to a board game. But what Subway Surfers: The Board Game teaches us is that, even when you very strongly don't believe it, everything can happen. Isn't life truly wonderful?

In the chapter on unexpected adaptations, Yellowstone is not yet another game about joyful hiking in natural parks to embellish your Instagram profile with lush pictures of woodlands before they all turn into fields of ashes, but the adaptation of a gritty TV series about cowboys living in a ranch named Yellowstone. So, no grizzly bears nor unexpected volcanic eruptions, but wits, luck, gunfights, and custom dice. Don't worry about the feasibility of the solo mode, the game has been designed as a fully cooperative one, so we are safe on that side. And if this doesn't sway you over, the wonderful Monopoly-inspired player pawns certainly will.

And yet, in the Far West, the true spirit of adventure has always lied within the most noble quest of it all: the harsh and heroic rush for the soothing brilliance of gold and the riches it promises! But in Dig' em All, the gold rush is happening over an asteroid in outer space where a ship has recently landed (well, "landed" in a rather irreversible way, if you see what I mean). And people are now sending drones and robots to do all the hard work for them. Where are the pikes, the sweat, the dirt, the comforting can of beans that provides warmth in the blizzard? I feel robbed of the very soul of it. Anyway. In that game, you will explore the board around the crash site and try to find as much gold and precious metals as you can. I don't know why a stranded patch of humanity would get consumed in a competition for gold, but I guess if you establish a small-scale society on a secluded asteroid lost in the immensity of space, you will still need to support your political authority over a competitive economy. The game shall launch on Kickstarter at some point and will be published by Zerofun Boardgames, who already fulfilled a few projects successfully.

Riches. Power. A Turczi-designed solo mode for Race of the Galaxy. There is so much we covet, so much we desire. This insatiable lust is at the core of Wish, where you play as a mighty djinn roaming the land, exploiting this very weakness of the human heart. But what do the djinn want, you ask? Oh, they have rather simple tastes. They only care about victory points. And to get some, they are willing to do pretty much everything: fulfilling the yearning of human hearts, building stuff (because it's a Euro board game, after all), and picking up shiny crystals. You may have recognized the artists; as for the designer, VantoN, I am afraid all the games he designed haven't been published yet. And the publisher is entering the scene with this title. To be Kickstarted at some point.

Djinn is the perfect opening I needed to introduce fantastical beings, the central thematic feature of Wondrous Creatures. The main selling point of this game is that it features more than a hundred unique cards with the titular wondrous creatures on them. Otherwise, the game involves worker placement and the ability to add powers on the different spots to make the worker placement more combo-ey. The creatures are collected and grant you abilities, building up your engine as the game goes by. They don't tell much about the overall objective, but I think the goal is to outperform your peers in ensuring these little creatures may lead in a beautiful natural reserve, or something like that. The designer is a new name, but the publisher, Bad Comet, has already fulfilled their fair share of KS projects.

I will conclude the overview with another game about wonders and adventures: Monstervania. But in all honesty, I shouldn't even write about it. We just know nothing regarding this game. The BGG description specifies a few thematic bits (random Fantasy rambling), and says that the game is inspired by action platformers (as the title would suggest), which tells us nothing about the actual mechanics, but, unfortunately, is enough to hook me. The game is also said to be a 1-2 players game and it will apparently rely on a game book (my best guess is that each page will be some platforming sequence to go through). I requested more information on the game forums a while ago, but silence prevailed ever since. At least the publisher, Zacatrus, is a rather established one in Spain. The Versions list specifies that, oddly enough, the game will be available in both Spanish and French, and everyone speaks at least one of these two languages, right?

My expansion choice this week goes to The Night Cage: Shrieking Hollow, mostly since it offers some quite creepy art, marvelously fitting its dark, horror theme. The premise of the Night Cage was about navigating an underground maze at the light of your candle, with shifting pathways that could reorganize as soon as they were back in the dark, and the looming threat of hostile, light-averse beings that waited for nothing but for you to stumble. The expansion adds the Pit, an even darker region where the Other awaits: once it's out, it will start to relentlessly attack you. But by facing it directly in the Pit, the most desperate of you may stand a better chance. Or they may not.

The PnP pick of the day, Azathoth, also fits the horror theme: inspired by a Cthulhian aesthetic, the goal is to build Old Ones with tiles, much in the style of the Castles of Caladale apparently. The game is entirely free from the BGG Files section.