Watch your Back: Week April 23 to 29
It's a quiet week ahead with just a couple (or three?) releases, let's check them out.
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Ascendancy is a 1-4 player 4X game in which heroes of royal descent compete against their rivals for the throne.
According to the game description, it incorporates worker placement, engine building, push-your-luck, and some narrative. Characters are asymmetric and can be upgraded. The game can be played solo, co-op or competitively, and as a campaign or single scenarios. It is launching on Kickstarter on April 25.
Personal opinion: I'm not sure if this is actually launching, I checked their website and didn't see a launch date announcement so I'm only relying on what I saw on BGG. Given that the information is sparse, I can't really have an opinion. I saw some Midjourney-created artwork and was bummed a bit, but I get that it's a solution when money is tight.
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Endeavor: Deep Sea is a 1-4 player economic game in which you are the head of a marine research institute studying the oceanic environment. It can be played solo, cooperatively or competitively, and comes with different scenarios.
Over the course of the game, you will move your submarine into new locations to interact with them, dive in to do research, publish journals, and upgrade your team members. It is launching on Gamefound on April 25.
Personal opinion: I suspect I may enjoy this. The theme and solo-friendliness are tempting me, so I'll take a look when it goes live.
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If Zerbique is correct, the 1-3 player dungeon crawler Forgotten Depths is going to be reprinted and expanded. I couldn't find any information at all, however, so we'll see on April 25.
I'll back Forgotten Depths, new stuff, unless the shipping fees exceed $30 or something. I have been holding off the game so far because of the ugly rulebook but I love the aesthetics and the expansion seems to add a Skeksis-inspired new level and campfire dialogues between the protagonists to flesh them out, and I am enthusiastic about both of these things.
Thank you Athena for another great post about what's coming, they're greatly appreciated.
I might look into Endeavor: Deep Sea, similar to Athena, the theme appeals to me. And it does look pretty. Also from the pictures I don't expect it to be a big game, though they listed as TTR-sized on bgg. However I'm a bit iffy on games that claim to do it all (the "trifecta" - comp, coop, solo), so I'll be looking at the rulebook, which is the main mode (though I expect comp was the primary mode). It's not that all games that have the trifecta are bad at coop/solo (which are the only modes I care about), but they're still a bit rare. Mostly…