New Game Round-up: Building Malta, Searching for Treasure, and Scooping Out the Goods

New Game Round-up: Building Malta, Searching for Treasure, and Scooping Out the Goods
From gallery of Photodump
• Posts in this space were few last week as I've been chugging along in the background adding titles to the BGG database and keeping our early 2017 convention preview as up to date as possible.

One item newly added on that list which might be of more general interest than others is the next title coming from Hans im Glück, the 2-4 player game Valletta from Stefan Dorra, for which I have only the sketchiest of descriptions:

Quote:
In 1566, Jean Parisot de Valette, 49th Grand Master of the Order of Malta, laid the foundation for Valletta, the future capital of Malta.

In Valletta, players take inspiration from Jean Parisot de Valette in order to procure raw materials and build their own version of the magnificent capital, with its mighty bastions, baroque buildings, and a right-angled street network. They are supervised in their work by de Valette, who patrols his streets as a building inspector. When he reaches the end of his patrol, the game ends and a winner is determined.
Board Game: Tara Wolf in Valley of the Kings
• It's interesting/depressing to see how certain icons of pop culture appear again and again, as with the 2016 release of La Vallée des Rois by P. O. Barome, Pascal Bernard, and The Red Joker,, which will be released by the German branch of Asmodee in 2017 as Tara Wolf. A brief overview of this two-player design:

Quote:
A magical medallion from the last Egyptian excavation has attracted the attention of two famous adventurers — Tara Wolf and Montana Smith — who then decide to explore the Valley of the Kings in search of hidden treasures.

While playing La Vallée des Rois, they will be surrounded by good companions who might help them avoid deadly traps and withstand the wrath of the gods of Egypt, but in this quest, only one adventurer can reap fame and wealth...
• In September 2015, I noted that James Ernest was working on a new edition of Button Men that would "come with a deck of 35+ new characters, all the dice you need for those characters, and an extended rules and strategy guide". That title didn't go to Kickstarter in mid-2016, which was mentioned as a possibility, but instead Ernest kept working on the design and this new edition now contains roughly fifty character cards and thirty dice, with the mod-themed action taking place in 1950s Fight City and a crowdfunding campaign now scheduled to launch in April 2017.


Board Game: Dr. Beaker
Board Game: Dr. Microbe
Board Game: Go Go Gelato!


• Following the success of Roberto Fraga's Dr. Eureka, Blue Orange Games is adding more titles to the line in 2017 with Dr. Beaker in which you must quickly rearrange "molecules" in the compartments of a plastic beaker using only your swizzle stick of science, Dr. Microbe in which you must quickly fill your petri dish with the right assortment of microbes and superbug using only tweezers, and Go Go Gelato! in which you must place the proper gelato scoops in the proper cones without touching the scoops by hand.

I'm sad not to see a game titled Dr. Gelato, but I suppose BOG thought no one would find that believable — or they just didn't want to pay royalties to this fine establishment in Turkey.


From gallery of W Eric Martin


Or this equally fine establishment in Hungary:


From gallery of W Eric Martin


No, seriously, look at this waffle:


External image

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