Candice's Gen Con 2022 Round-Up/Discoveries: Part 2

• At Gen Con 2022, I was especially pumped to join Eric for a meeting with Czech Games Edition to hear more about Deal with the Devil, an intriguing, 4-player heavy eurogame with asymmetrical hidden roles from Alchemists designer Matúš Kotry. Deal with the Devil is due out at SPIEL '22, although the U.S. availability date is TBD.

In Deal with the Devil, which can only be played with exactly 4 players, one player plays as the Devil, one player plays as a cultist, and the other two players are humans. While the game is played the same by all players, each player has their own goals. Both human players start the game with three pieces of their souls, the cultist has two pieces, and the Devil has no souls. Throughout the game, the Devil is trying to gain pieces of the human and cultist players' souls, and the human players will be tempted to sell pieces of their soul in exchange for money and resources needed for their own motivations and goals.

A sneak peek of the Deal with the Devil prototype

Deal with the Devil has a slew of different things going on with a unique blend of gameplay elements and mechanisms, which makes me very curious to play it. You use an app to inform players of their roles, and facilitate trades and other activities in the game to keep everyone's roles secret, while maintaining a layer of deduction throughout the game. This is all blended with familiar eurogame elements, such as constructing and using buildings, producing and managing your resources and money, all while dealing with debt as best as you can, considering you can take loans out whenever you want.

Each player in Deal with the Devil also has an elaborate screen with a removable top, so you can play building cards secretly prior to revealing them publicly. These screens will appear slightly familiar if you've played Alchemists and they are essential to the gameplay in Deal with the Devil.

In Deal with the Devil, there are also witch trials, secret rituals, and inquisitors which players have to deal with to avoid penalties. Again, this game seems very unique. I have no idea if I'll love it or not, but I'm fascinated by this ambitious design from what I've heard and seen so far.

Behind the player screen (prototype)

• For something a little lighter on deck from CGE, we also checked out a prototype of Starship Captains, an action selection, engine-building game designed by Peter B. Hoffgaard, which is coming out at SPIEL '22. Starship Captains is a competitive game where 2-4 players are in command of their first starship and hungry to prove themselves in a galaxy full of space pirates, grumpy old androids, ancient artifacts, and interplanetary adventure.

Starship Captains main board (prototype)

Starship Captains features an innovative crew queue for action selection. There are different color upgradeable workers that allow you to take different actions. On the game board, there are different missions players can complete, and these missions refresh at different locations, so the game board evolves as the game plays out.

Crew queue & tech cards (prototype)

• Historical games are more rare at Gen Con, but I was on a mission to find a few new ones. This led me to stop at Hit 'Em With a Shoe's booth to check out The Red Burnoose: Algeria 1857, a co-operative wargame for 1-4 players with a fresh pro-feminism and anti-colonialism perspective on the Algerian War, from Creature Comforts designer Roberta Taylor and Matt Shoemaker.

In The Red Burnoose, players join Fadhma N'Soumer in her fight against the invading French armies in the Kabylie region of Algeria in 1857. With a mix of deck-building and area-control elements you and up to three other players work together to survive as the French advance on your villages.

The Red Burnoose: Algeria 1857

• For more from Roberta Taylor, Eric and I played a few rounds of Maple Valley at the Burnt Island Games and Kids Table BG (KTBG) booth. Maple Valley is a follow-up to Creature Comforts which is targeted to launch on Kickstarter for crowdfunding in Q4 2022.

Maple Valley is a worker movement game set in the delightful world of Creature Comforts, where 1-5 players take on the roles of young forest animals who must play cards to travel a variety of paths to explore Maple Valley and collect resources needed to craft favors that are needed to contribute to the Spring jamboree festivities. Along the way, you can also pick up new friends (action cards) and earn patches which grant you special powers. As festivities are filled with player cubes, players gain points for area majority, which is one of the main ways you gain points in Maple Valley. At the end of the game, the player with the most points wins, so there's plenty of competition from the different festivities. Between the number and variety of festivities and outposts included in the game, it seems like there's no shortage of replay value in Maple Valley.

Maple Valley Prototype

While I didn't get a chance to demo it, Fall of the Mountain King from designer Adam E. Daulton is another upcoming release from Burnt Island Games which made an appearance at Gen Con 2022. Fall of the Mountain King is a standalone prequel to Jay Cormier and Graeme Jahns' 2019 release In the Hall of The Mountain King, which was successfully funded on Kickstarter in June 2021 (KS link) and will be available in September 2022. In Fall of the Mountain King, 1-5 players are clans of trolls striving to best defend against an onslaught of gnomes.

Fall of the Mountain King

At the Burnt Island Games booth, we also got to briefly check out the prototype for Endeavor: Deep Sea, an exciting reimplementation of Endeavor: Age of Sail from designers Carl de Visser and Jarratt Gray. Similar to Endeavor: Age of Sail, Endeavor: Deep Sea is being co-published by Grand Gamers Guild, and it is targeted to launch on Gamefound for crowdfunding in Q1 2023.

In Endeavor: Deep Sea, 1–5 players compete as independent research institutes with the goal of developing sustainable projects and preserving the fragile balance of marine life. While most of the gameplay will be familiar if you've played Endeavor: Age of Sail, there are some modifications and improvements aside from the new theme -- the biggest one being the modular map in Endeavor: Deep Sea. With a modular map, players can get a feeling of exploring the deep sea, plus building the game board differently each time you play will give each game a unique feel.

Unfortunately, we weren't allowed to take any photos of the prototype (aside from the box cover), but I'm definitely looking forward to playing Endeavor: Deep Sea when it is available.

Prototype box

• I stopped for a quick chat with Omari Akil and team at the Colorway Game Labs booth (formerly Board Game Brothas) and took a peek at Critical Care: The Game and Hoop Godz which are both due out in Q4 2022.

Omari & Team lookin' fly in their scrubs...

In Omari Akil and Lakshman Swamy's Critical Care: The Game, 1-4 players work together as a team of intensive care unit (ICU) doctors trying to save their patients while dealing with a variety of crises and managing different specialists in a busy Emergency room setting. Swamy is an ICU doctor, so Critical Care is filled with realistic scenarios and challenges ICU doctors face on a day-to-day basis, not to mention a diverse set of patients, which is super cool.

Critical Care: The Game

For another unique theme, Hoop Godz is a 2-player, head-to-head street basketball game designed by Omari Akil and Hamu Dennis. In Hoop Godz, players draft three basketball players as their team for the game, then spend "juice" to move, pass, and play action cards. The first player to score 7 points wins.

Hoop Godz

• On Friday evening of Gen Con, brothers Drew and Cole Wehrle of Wehrlegig Games held a low-key (high-excitement) event at the Omni Severin Hotel to show off their latest release John Company: Second Edition, which was hot off the press. Fans gathered in an intimate room to gaze at the beautiful, high-quality production along with the gorgeous Pax Pamir: Second Edition which was displayed on another table in the room. Drew and Cole were excited and proud, and were happy to answer any questions and/or simply chat with us. The vibes were good, and it felt like we were experiencing an exclusive Wehrlegig museum exhibit. I've been looking forward to playing the finished version of John Company: Second Edition since I posted about it in March 2021, and now I'm even more stoked.

John Company: Second Edition

• Lennon and Chip Cole's Cryptid Cafe was available at Gen Con from 25th Century Games after a successfully funded on Kickstarter in February 2021 (KS link) by Squatchy Games. In Cryptid Cafe, 1–5 players compete as lead servers at a Sasquatch-owned restaurant gathering food, filling orders, and trying to satisfy customers to earn the most tips. Chip Cole's playful, nostalgic artwork grabbed my attention and was very fitting with Cryptid Cafe's unique restaurant theme.

Cryptid Cafe