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Divinus Board Game Review - Lucky Duck Games

Demigods eh? You think every thing is going well and life is nice and quiet, then all of a sudden you're reminded that you've actually got to go and prove yourself and show how powerful you are in order to ascend to some kind of Pantheon type thing. Well, in Divinus you need to. Now, I don't want you to cringe when I mention this game, but Divinus from Lucky Duck Games seems to have crawled from the same evolutionary pool as Charterstone. Now that might be enough to have some of you wince slightly but hang fire. I'm very aware that not everyone had the best time from that game and time has seen it as more an experiment in gameplay than a direction to forge ahead with. What if I said that Divinus also seems to have inherited its mother's love of Carcassonne. Does that make you feel any better? I hope so. I really do.  Divinus is another entry in the application based games that Lucky Duck Games are quietly and regularly producing from their studios. They seem to have

Heropath: Dragon Roar - Unique Board Games - Solo Mode Review

If you're a hero with a path, you can be pretty sure that a very large, angry dragon is waiting somewhere ahead, ready to turn your body to a blackened husk. Such is the life of a wannabe hero. Our hero (you) finds themselves in an unnamed land dominated by said dragon. Your job is to wander the land gaining arms, magic, abilities and various other items and boons that will hopefully make you strong enough to fight the dragon and ultimately slay it. The game allows you to choose from one of 4 familiar classes - Elf, Dwarf, Warrior or Sorcerer - and who you choose determines your stat line, and how much gold and food you start with. The stat line comprises the usual array of categories associated with a fantasy style game namely Experience, Vitality, Faith, Wisdom and Skill. Cards are then drawn from various decks and in the solo game you get to keep 6. These will comprise weapons, armour, abilities, magic etc that you may have at your disposal in the game. These items are also

Samurai Brothers Kickstarter Preview - Moon Rock Games

This is the pre-production version of Samurai Brothers, so the art, rules and mechanics may change over the next couple of months. Therefore please treat this as a first thoughts piece, based on version of the game that we were provided with. We have not been paid for the preview. We also do not provide a full play by play explanation of the game. So you want to be a Shogun do you? Well one doesn't simply walk into the kingdom, pick up a couple of heirlooms, use some ninjas and defeat the opposing Samurai. It takes a lot longer, and you'll have to pay your dues, and that will be in the form of hearts and steel, and the limbs and bodies of your ninjas and your enemies. If you get lucky, the temple guards might also fall to your might, and then you can claim the title and stand unopposed serving the empire. Samurai Brothers is a mixture of Tableau building and Take That, smart and fast and clever and trying to grab your attention from the plethora of other card carrying games out

Deep Sea Adventure - Oink Games - Review

Deep Sea Adventure 2-6 players Age 8+ Designed by Jun Sasaki and Goro Saski Published by Oink Games Deep Sea Adventure is a fantastically smart push your luck pocket game. Now, to begin with, I have a real bugbear with “pocket” games, because it’s all too often used to denote a game which is simply smaller than 30cm square. However Deep Sea Adventure is a pocket game, just so long as you have a decent sized pocket. It also has Oink games’ distinctive and slick graphics and design (you can normally spot an Oink game from fifty paces), along with their pared back components and efficient game mechanics.  Players take the part of a submariner on a treasure hunt. Setting up, there is a submarine board which marks the amount of shared oxygen and Ruin chips which are shuffled then placed in numerical level order, lowest to highest. On the reverse side of the Ruin chip is its treasure value, and its these that players are attempting to gain. Players take a submariner shaped meeple and begin i

Doughnut Dash - The Dark Imp - Board Game Review

It's like opening a box of doughnuts, but the doughnuts are in a cardboard box and there isn't one of those clear plastic windows that you can see inside. In this case you open the box and you think you've been faced with six boring old jam doughnuts, but then on lifting one of them up and taking a bite, you realise that you've opened the box upside down, because you've seen boxes like this before, and you've assumed that's how these things work. You have to admit to yourself that you got it wrong, but at least you've got a delicious doughnut, even if you have now got sprinkles and icing on your fingers plus a little bit of embarrassment.  I wasn't expecting what The Dark Imp were offering with Doughnut Dash. As a company who's main aim was to provide family board games to the masses, I was expecting something short and sweet and simple? The attraction to me was a chance to play something else with the family in these unusual times in lockdown. I

Of Knights and Ninjas Preview

Of Knights and Ninjas from Blue Fox Games is a streamlined simple card battle game based around the simple premise that you are defending your kingdom from the miscreants and fools that live in the kingdom over the other side of the table. Or potentially three other fools if you want a four player game. The idea is that you will use cards in you hand in order to either attack your opponents, or fortify your own kingdom or even break out some special cards in order steal jewels from the other teams.  The first to make it to ten will secure victory and be able to claim bragging rights until the next game takes places. The losers have to take a long swim in the moat and have a good think about what they've done, which considering the length of the game, shouldn't be much longer than about 30 to 45 minutes, so in fairness everyone should be happy. Of Knights and Ninjas is interesting that it manages to be extremely simple and yet relatively complicated all at once. It's like th

The Isle of Cats Board Game Review (Family Rules) - The City of Games

Finding a game that appeals to the whole family seems to be a never ending quest of mine. There have been some successes, including Kingdomino and Sagrada, but for the most part I usually give up and get another LCG expansion because finding that elusive game that will appeal to adults and kids (who rather inconveniently are different age groups and genders) is not always easy. When The Isle of Cats was announced as the next game from Frank West's The City of Games, I must admit I wasn't expecting this to be a contender for that hard-to-find game that appealed to my whole family. This was largely based on my experiences with The City of Kings, which is very much not that family game I sought. The theme did appeal though (we had 4 cats at one time, now we just have 1) and being a polyomino game it had potential but the icing on the cake were the family rules. As such, every observation is based on the family rules and not the solo or full game rules, so please bear that in

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