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It is summertime and we are in the mood for some gaming. We like our publisher top fives here at Zatu and this month we are returning to a favourite. A publisher focused on creating games we can play with our children (if we have them) or with the hard-core gamers of our friend groups as we go into the longer nights and warmer days.
It’s nice to have a game where you can unplug from reality and set your phone aside to enjoy the time with your friends and family and Blue Orange certainly does that. We did a top five for Blue Orange back in February, but with summer here once again, we thought it would be nice to revisit this publisher and recommend to you some games to enjoy during the long months.
Photosynthesis: Under the Moonlight – Luke Pickles
The last time we did a Blue Orange top five, I talked to you about a game which helped bring me and my fiancée together – Photosynthesis. It’s a game we found wonderfully thematic, beautiful and a very interesting puzzle. So want to talk about it again means it must be something special and that has expanded the world of Photosynthesis – the Under the Moonlight expansion. The base game plays the same, but the expansion brings in some delightful new elements. Under the Moonlight brings three new gameplay modes: Moon and Animals; Great Elder Tree; and Moonstones, each adding new content that can be mixed and matched or played independently.
The animals have their own unique abilities which can be triggered by gathering moonlight. The Elder Tree acts as a blocker to the sun across the entire board and the Moonstones shine moonlight in all spaces surrounding them. The delightfully unique playstyle of Photosynthesis is retained, the planning ahead to ensure maximum efficiency. When is the best time to trigger my animal ability? When should I hatch a turtle? Can I get every last point out of the moon and sun in one turn? The answers to each of these questions are worth checking out. Aside from which – look at those adorable Animeeples.
Next Station London – Favouritefoe
Blue Orange Games are popping up in our collection more and more. And with great titles like Kingdomino (all of them and more on that later!), Planet, Photosynthesis and more, it’s hardly surprising. One I just can’t get off the table right now is the colourful, budget friendly Next Station London
In Next Station London, you’re in charge of redesigning a 4 line underground system. And having spent years commuting on the Tube, we networking obsessed gamers could definitely do better! You score points based on how many stations you connect into in your busiest zone, how many colour based interchanges you establish, how many districts you reach, and how many tourist sites you pass through. You also get points for crossing the Thames.
If you add in the two advanced variant expansions (Pencil Powers and Scoring Objectives), there are two extra goals to achieve per round as well as the opportunity to use colour based one-off bonus powers during the game!
The rules are very simple. Every round you have 1 colour pencil and you flip over cards from the mixed stack of station (pink) and street (blue) cards. You then connect your current coloured line to the symbol shown on each consecutive card. You can only connect to a new station from either end of your line using the prescribed paths, and lines of different colour cannot cross – they can share stations, but you must not get into a knot! If you can't access that symbol (or you don't want to), you pass until the next card is flipped. The current round ends when 5 pink station cards are revealed and you score that line before picking the next colour and starting over.
Next Station London is a lovely, quick, colourful, portable multiplayer solitaire game. It has a light crunch for when you need a hit but not a hard one! Having played at home and away, it’s quick to the table and packs away in its lovely magnetic catch box in seconds. In truth, with its bold simple styling, only 4 lines and just 12 cards, we thought it would be super easy.
But it has some fun thinkiness and I can’t help a quick solo session whenever I spy the box. Planning ahead to the next colour and potential line paths is definitely key. A great game to pack and play, and I can’t wait to try it solo!
Lost Seas – Tom Harrod
Lost Seas is a tile-placement game for 2-4 players, designed by Johan Benvenuto and Alexandre Droit. Here, the tiles you draft represent a series of nautical voyages that you’ll embark upon. You can think of them as slotting together to form cartography of oceans uncharted!
First, each player gets given four yellow Expedition Tiles. Each Expedition has a specific requirement on it, worth points. You place them in a horizontal row in front of you. (They’re doubled-sided, so you have eight options.) Then everyone gets dealt another four. This time you sit them in a vertical column, left of your horizontal row. (So you’ve created a right-angle.) They’re a border for a 4x4 grid of tiles you’re about to draft.
Then, you draw five blue Exploration Tiles into a public display. These have a combination of Marine Elements on them. (A blend of jutting rocks, maelstroms, squids, ships, islands, or sea serpents.) Players take turns drafting one of these tiles, placing it into a vacant space within their 4x4 grid. Player count-dependent, players remove a second tile from this flop (for scaling purposes).
Over the course of 16 rounds, you’ll aim to complete this grid. The goal is to place tiles in such a way that you complete the requirements of all eight of your Expedition Tiles. Some Expeditions might state that this row/column needs to have a specific number of certain Marine Elements within it (no more, no less). Others might want, say, exactly seven of the same Element in that row. Some might want at least all six Marine Elements in that row/column. Others might state that there must be no, say, squids in this row/column.
Like Azul or Sagrada, the first half of Lost Seas feels relaxed. You can place tiles in your grid, anywhere. But in the later stages, if you’re too blasé with your earlier drafting, you’re left crossing your fingers and toes. Will it be possible to complete those Expeditions with the tiles remaining? Lost Seas is an addictive experience due to its simple-yet-clever rules, and charming artwork, perfect for a summer afternoon.
Kingdomino Origins - Favouritefoe
The Kingdomino series deserves its name – it is a veritable legend of gaming greatness. If you haven’t played any of them, they are clever tile laying, territory building games with elegant domino-style components and a crunchy variable turn order mechanic. The base has spawned many variants (including a 2 player roll and write, Kingdomino Duel) and the latest one is truly excellent!
In Kingdomino Origins, Bruno Cathala is transporting players back to the stone age where fire is king! Teaming up with artist Cyril Bouquet again, players compete to control territories furnished with flames escaping from erupting volcanoes. You still have to place tiles so that at least one end of the domino matches the terrain type of an adjacent tile. And the order in which you pick your next tiles depends on the tiles you chose on your previous turn. But unlike the original Kingdomino, Origins offers three game variants of increasing difficulty.
Module 1 (“Discovery”) uses fire and volcanoes. Here, you are trying to win points by having as many campfires in your territory as possible. And that is because (just like crowns in the original), your end point total is based on multiplying territory type by the number of fires within it. And if you pick and place a tile with a volcano on it, you can then add a fire to another tile located up to a specified number of spaces away.
Module 2 (“Totem”) introduces resource collection as an added point scoring device. Whenever you choose a tile with a symbol on it, you place a wooden token on it. Any time a player has the majority of a resource on their territory during the game, they get to hold the relevant bonus point totem. Whoever is holding it at the end, adds the extra points to their total!
Module 3 (“Tribe”) is the most complex of the three and involves spending collected resources to recruit cavemen to empty tile squares. Cavemen score extra points for your end game total based on their type and what is around them.
We are really enjoying the added variety that Kingdomino Origins brings to the basic Kingdomino game play. It still feels true to its origins, but the added increasing crunchiness is guaranteed to keep this flame of a game burning bright in our collection!
Block Ness – Luke Pickles
Summer is a great time to explore new experiences and even better for new games. Sometimes you just need something bright and cheerful to play to round off an evening of gaming or just a small game that doesn’t require too much deep thinking at the end of a hot day but has hidden depths to it. My pick for something new to try falls into both categories.
Block Ness is a light-weight strategy game where players are placing different segments of Nessie (and her three cousins) into a loch to try and bamboozle each other by building the biggest monster they can. Each monster comes with a head and a tailpiece which players can remove and attach to their newly played section, building over their opponents in an attempt to escape the confines of the board.
While the look of the game may suggest it is aimed more for the younger members of your family, there is a surprising amount of depth to the puzzle. For starters, each player has slightly different monster pieces, and the play area changes size depending on player count. Block Ness plays fast too, so you can get a few rapid abstract games to warm yourself up or cool yourself down after a long summer day. Everything feels intuitive – place a piece next to the end of one of your existing pieces and make sure it goes over an opponent if it crosses one of theirs, never under. Block Ness was new to me this summer and it’s something that I won’t be forgetting about in a hurry!