New Game Round-up: A Quartet from KOSMOS — Paths of Fire, Customers with Hunger, Clay with Kneads & Raccoons of Adventure

Whether as a team game for four players or a duel for two, players in Lumis: Der Pfad des Feuers must create a path of glowing fire stones that connect to their tower blocks on the game board.

Lumis is an abstract connection game in the tradition of classics like Hex and Twixt with each player (or team) trying to create a path from one side of the game board to its opposite side, but with the opposition working at cross purposes. To start the game, each side places tower blocks on the game board, then tries to build connections between these tower blocks using cards that match the colored spaces on the board. Once you have connected to a tower block, it's yours, but until you do so, the opponent can steal it from you.

The first player or team to make a complete connection wins!

Buying ingredients, greeting guests, serving tables — running a restaurant can be hectic, and in the end only the one who is "Da Luigi" can keep an overview of everything and earn a star for the restaurant. If only you didn't have to deal with the other players who always act as unwelcome guests...

Your goal in Da Luigi is to get as many guests as possible, although only satisfied customers will always be good customers. Variety in the gameplay comes from the 90 individual guest cards, with you always wanting to find a free table for wealthy guests with plenty of time while pushing off grumpy customers in a hurry to your opponents.

Players buy ingredients for their meals from the market and pay for them in time — and time is always against you because if you don't serve a guest his desired food quickly, say, by the end of the game, you'll lose points in the end.

Deep in the jungle lies the unexplored temple of the Mayan god Tschakka Lakka. Exploring together with Raccoon Jones, the players will try to uncover the precious treasures of the temple — but the loot comes closer only when you roll the matching temple symbols on the dice.

Will you be able to salvage the treasures in Tschakka Lakka: Die rasante Würfeljagd nach dem Tempelschatz? Will you be a lucky explorer and make it out in time with the temple's precious relics?

In the game players use clay to create objects — a mountain, an animal, a famous ruin — then they take turns asking one another questions about these objects or asking for a letter in the name of this object. Everyone hears these requests, though, so your efforts might lead opponents to the correct answer, too, and since anyone can throw their solution stones into the answer funnel at any time, you'll need to think fast.

If you give the correct answer for a puzzle, both the creator and guesser score points — but if everyone guesses the answer, or conversely no one does, then the creator scores nothing. Who will find the ideal mix?