USD ($)
EUR (€)
One more week before Christmas and the year’s end! I know, right? How are we in the final weeks of 2024 already? If you’re like me, it feels like it’s been a bit of a whirlwind, and you’ve also tried to fit in as much board gaming as you can. I know, it’s not been easy with so much happening, but getting a game to the table is always worthwhile. The feel of the pieces, dealing out the cards and wondering who’s getting what, the beautiful artwork on the game boards… This is how we relax, this is how we soothe our minds and sharpen our intelligence. Oh yeah, us board gamers are proper smart and totally zen.
What I’m trying to say is, we deserve more games.
Here’s a few more that may or may not make their way to your shelves…
River Valley Glassworks
Animals. They’re great. They’re cute. We like to watch them being great and cute, foraging along the riverbank for berries, snuggling in their little hidey-holes with their tiny babies, and
What you didn’t realise, however, is those riverside animals are also entrepreneurs. Oh yeah, they’ve got savage business minds and they’re determined to turn a profit. Capitalism rules, comrades.
River Valley Glassworks from Allplay is a cozy drafting game for 1-5 players (yep, there's a solo mode) and takes around 20-30 minutes to play. You will become one of these animal pioneers, drafting glass from the market of river tiles. To do so, you have to play a piece from your inventory into the river. Each river tile can take only a specific shape, and you must play into a space adjacent to where you want to draft from. After you pick up your glass, the river shifts forward, revealing new pieces and new opportunities.
Store the glass you pick up strategically in your shop. Depending on how the glass pieces are placed, your score will change drastically. Fill in rows and columns to gain bonus points, but don't draft too many of one type to avoid negative points!
The bag full of pieces that represent the glass shapes are so cool, and I'm a big fan of the character designs. A brisk playtime and simple ruleset make this an ideal family game, and one I think you should check out right here.
Urbion: Second Edition
A few of you long-time readers have been round the block a couple of times by now – I know who you are, you’re the ones with the happy and fulfilled lives, board games are good for your health after all. The box art for Urbion will be instantly recognisable to you old hands as belonged to a specific gaming universe. In fact, the original version of this game appeared in 2012 and came with two expansions in the box. So what’s the news here? Brand new art from Elise Plessis – although still in keeping with the rest of the Oniverse - and a total of seven expansions to provide a whole heap of replay value.
Is there a story? Of course there is. For eons, Incubi (bad, negative dreams) and Sognae (happy, positive dreams) have dwelled in Equilibrion (which is the game's original title), opposed but complementary. As the king of this City, you must establish and maintain the delicate balance between those dreams: place them in the various districts, harness their power, and beware of the Chaos – fearsome entities that thrive on discord and hatred.
Urbion is a solo/coop card game: You must claim all the cards from the City deck before the Dream deck runs out! This is a game that's out to get you. Victory is achieved by balancing the twelve City cards. In order to prevail, you must play your Dream cards skillfully or discard them at the right moment to trigger helpful effects. And beware the penalties of the Chaos cards...
Reprints are an excellent means to get hold of great games that have been relegated to random eBay auctions, and are often the ultimate version of the game, so this is a real treat for newcomers and members of the fandom alike. This is where the game Urbion awaits.
Civolution
What’s that, you want something with a bit more meat on its bones? Something that reminds you of a golden age of PC gaming and a series of strategy games that would eat up your life the same way that I can devour cheese – endlessly, and with the purest of long-term joys? You know what, I might have the very game for you, madams and sirs.
Civolution from Pegasus Spiele is a medium heavy to heavy euro-style game that utilizes a dice selection mechanism to trigger actions on a tech tree-like structure. As you figure out how to best use your dice and put your unique cards into play, tons of strategies and paths to victory emerge, though each time you play, you will only explore a fraction of the possibilities that the game’s system and many cards provide.
I have to say that the publisher has put together a pretty great explanation of the game, so I’ll let them take it from here: Hello, student beings! The cosmic faculty of the Technical Academy of Creation is delighted to welcome you to your Civolution, the final exam in Civilization Design! For this occasion, we prepared a humanoid scenario on an isolated continent. Here, each of you holds the rank of a local deity which is closely linked to its very own civilization and must lead it to success over the other civilizations. Your developmental possibilities are endless and reach from cultural and technical progress to evolutional adaptations. For example, what would you consider more beneficial to your tribes: inventing the wheel or growing wings? Demonstrate your ability to operate your civilization console and show us how well you can adjust to changeable environmental conditions and mild creational chaos.
When the exam ceases after four eras, whoever managed to gather the most success points will not only pass the exam but will become a full member of the Technical Academy of Creation and garner the opportunity to be promoted to the next instance.
If your wallet hasn’t been battered to death by the festive season already, head on over here and grab a copy.
Toriki: The Castaway Island
And, as a famous comedy troupe once said, now for something completely different. I got something that’s easy on the piggy bank, easy to learn and teach, and will pull the younger members of the family in with the use of modern tech (they love a bit of tech, the young uns).
In Toriki: The Castaway Island from Lucky Duck Games, you and the fam are going to play as teenagers in the 19th century who are part of the very first scientific expedition on an
unexplored island, almost legendary: Toriki. (Discovery, exploration, sounds like the last game. Yeah, yeah, but the execution and accessibility are very different.)
So, you're an expeditionary crew of super-bright kids, when... guess what? Your ship sinks in a fierce storm. Luckily you're within swimming distance from the Island - although I have to say that in real life I'd be stuffed, unless swimming distance is classed as ten feet from the shore. There begins your adventure. Will you be brave enough to live up to the challenges that await you?
The game is a cooperative family game of adventure, exploration and survival. The ultimate objective is to leave the island, but there are additional side quests that can be completed during your time on Toriki, and these are important for final scoring. The more missions completed, new species found and coins collected the better. Using Scan & Play technology to mix digital elements with a traditional board game (I'm telling you people, the future is already here), it offers an immersive, interactive experience enriched with beautifully illustrated components. Search the island for resources, craft new tools, discover species unknown to science and name them! Complete the Almanac by making discoveries, craft objects, find lost treasures, etc. But most of all, secure your survival and find a way to return home!
The game is played as a single continuous adventure that takes about 6–8 hours to complete, though you can pause and save it at any time. There's no dying here, and you're never forced to restart the game from the beginning, so there's no fear of some random event ruining all the fun. Bag a copy here and now.
Dabba Walla – Mumbai Food Express
I love the concept of this game so much that it’s gone straight into the top ten of my wishlist (oh, it’s an epic list, my friends, we’re talking dozens of juicy treats that are welcome in my house any time). If this theme hasn’t been tackled before, then the board gaming world has missed a trick.
Every morning in Mumbai, over five thousand workers dressed in white swarm out to deliver more than 200,000 "dabbas" (multistoried lunch boxes) to the offices of the Indian metropolis. These "Dabba Walla" - an iconic fixture in the cityscape since 1890 - are freshly prepared at home by families, then collected from their front doors by the Dabba Walla. Despite some travelling very far, they are delivered punctually via a network of intermediate stations with an amazing reliability of 99.999%! It’s basically Uber Eats way before either they or Deliveroo existed, and a hell of a lot more reliable.
The game – from Queen Games - consists of two phases. First up is the pick-up phase, in which players take turns moving your Dabba Walla through Mumbai to collect dabba cards. You'll be placing polyominos in your cart, stacking tiles higher and higher as the rounds progress. Dabbas come in four colours, and you must place them on flat surfaces, filling holes with empty dabbas if needed. Then comes the delivery phase: After everyone has placed fifteen tiles in their cart, it's time to deliver lunches! Pick up all the cards you played, then complete a number of delivery rounds equal to the highest level that someone has stacked their dabbas.
Get your deliveries fulfilled, and whoever has collected the most tips wins. The great news is that Dabba Walla also contains two expansion modules to provide additional ways to score or change the value of dabbas being delivered. Sounds great, yeah? Go get it today.
Townsfolk Tussle 2nd Edition
If you feel like we’ve said dabba enough times for one day (feel like I could squeeze in a few more, to be honest), then let’s move onto our final game of the day – and of this year! (I’m not crying, you are.) Let’s end on something a bit special/mental. We’re in the land of dreaming here, unless you’re the kind of dudette with 270 quid casually floating around. Now, the base game is available separately – and even then your eyes may water at the price – but when we dream, let’s make it big.
What we’ve got here from Panic Rolls Games, then, is a co-op boss battler reprint that got itself fully funded on Kickstarter and has now escaped into the world at large.
Ding Dong, the sheriff is dead, and a bunch of Ruffians have sniffed out a perfect chance to wreak havoc. It's up to you and your fellow townsfolk to bring them down, and you may just prove yourself worthy of becoming the new sheriff. Townsfolk Tussle is a co-op boss battler for 2-5 players. In each game, your goal is to take down four unique Ruffians, each one tougher than the last. You'll build up your townsfolk with gear, explore Eureka Springs, and devise winning strategies, so be ready to think on your feet.
What's extra in this new edition then? How about a couple of expansions to take your gameplay even further? In Foul Neighbors (American spellings here me dears), word of the sheriff's demise has finally reached our neighbouring towns, so you'll face brand new enemies alongside a couple new heroic townsfolk. Incoming are hungry cannibals (I always had my suspicions about the dicey types around mine), dodgy salesfolk, diseased doctors, and more. You're going to need new strategies to deal with them all. In the Odd Jobs expansion, you’ll be taking on new roles and working some odd jobs to help the Peddler restock her shop. With a new plethora of gear and roguelike elements, it's a new way to play.
The miniatures (some of them not so mini) look fantastic, and the art style and general design of this game gives a very unique feel, almost like a 1950s American comic you never got your hands on. If you fancy having a drool, head on over to this page.
That’s it for me, I’m going to bow out until 2025.
Most importantly, take time for games. This is not some castaway, careless comment. Get family/friends/partners to the table. Don’t worry about the game. If they want to play Monopoly but you don’t like it because you think it’s too simple, play it anyway, you’ll have a brilliant time. If you’re not keen on social games but its Christmas Day and the party is getting quiet, whip out Soundilicious anyway or even start up a round of silly old charades, the memories are waiting to be made. And Boxing Day, if you miraculously land yourself a spare hour, treat yourself to a solo game, eh? Consider it self-care. Horrified is always a win, especially if you somehow landed the Krampus expansion…
Just play, and get as many people involved, even if it means playing something you wouldn’t make first choice. We only get so much time, and I promise you that board games will help you make the most of it.
Merry Christmas, friends, and a Happy New Year!