![Game Previews: Tokyo Game Market • Nov 2015 — Balloon Challenge, TimeBomb II, Nine Tiles, and Violinista!](https://cf.geekdo-images.com/dZBA4j3f2f65YEu7T5N7Gg__thumb/img/gsJWOteOsq9UQjYwjGTIUwrevV4=/fit-in/200x150/filters:strip_icc()/pic2786194.jpg)
Japanese game publisher Oink Games had a new title for TGM, one not from director/main designer Jun Sasaki but rather from Jean-Claude Pellin. Here's an overview of Nine Tiles:
Each round, one of the thirty goal cards is revealed, then players race to rearrange their tiles — flipping one tile at a time, or swapping two tiles — in order to make their nine tiles match the image shown on the card. Whenever a player thinks they've done this, they slap the card. If they're correct, they keep the card; if they're wrong, they still keep the card, but flipped face-down. If a player collect two face-down cards, they're out of the game.
The first play to collect four (face-up) cards wins!
By combining two sets of Nine Tiles, up to eight players can compete at once. When more than four people are in a game, reveal two of the thirty cards each round. Each player can claim at most one card in a round.
In case you want to see Nine Tiles in action, check out the video below. I've since played twice on a purchased copy — well, two copies as we played with six people — and I crushed all comers. As with other pure speed games, if you're 10% faster than others in Nine Tiles, you're likely to win 90% of the time as there's nothing other than speed to determine who wins and who loses. Still, I'm ready to face other challengers should they want to throw down the tiled gauntlet...
Speaking of Oink Games, the publisher's Deep Sea Adventure won the first Game Market Award, with the other four nominees for this debut prize being Minerva, Princess Escort, Hitohira, and Stone Garden. Here's a pic of Sasaki accepting the award during TGM:
![External image](https://scontent-atl3-1.xx.fbcdn.net/hphotos-xfl1/v/t1.0-9/12247059_1257185320973864_6995537573637869836_n.jpg?oh=35b9272e274b8bd582ca1aed1236b679&oe=56E43B39)
• Designer/publisher Kenichi Tanabe has been releasing games since 2007, and for the Nov. 2015 TGM he released two titles through his COLON ARC brand: Lisboa and Balloon Challenge. I didn't record an overview of the former, alas, but we're getting a few copies of Lisboa as well as Balloon Challenge for the Geek Store, so perhaps I'll get a chance to do so later. For now, though, here's an overview of the card game Balloon Challenge:
• I bought TimeBomb from New Board Game Party on the recommendation of a trusted source and highly enjoyed this secret-role game, despite me not normally taking to such things. (Here's my overview of the game from May 2015.)
Thus, when I discovered that NBGP would release TimeBomb II at Game Market in November 2015, I made a note to pick it up, in addition to recording an overview video for the game. That said, I still need to get a translation of the rulebook since my overview gets me only 85% of the way through the complete rules.
• We'll close with バイオリニスタ! — Violinista! — a convention-only cooperative game from Bouken Adventure Planning Service that to this untrained ear comes across as four people playing violins somewhat at random, but my ineptness at Japanese limited me from finding out about the game in detail. In any case, I wanted to share this unusual experience: