New Game Round-up: Connect Pipes to Deliver Curious Cargo, and Close Your Eyes for Ultimate Werewolf Extreme

• In 2019, U.S. publisher Capstone Games published Pipeline, a tile-laying game from Ryan Courtney about purchasing and selling refined oil.

In 2020, Capstone and Courtney have teamed up again for another buying-and-selling logistics game, but this time it's not exactly clear what's moving through your pipes. Here's an overview of Curious Cargo, a two-player-only game that Capstone plans to release in October 2020:

Quote:

I stumbled upon a midnight market. It wasn't selling flowers or farm goods. It was a more curious sort of cargo: energy capacitors, strange crystalline material, and something green and jiggly. Since then, I've been dragged into it, deep into the thick of it.

I paid a stranger more than I should have for manufacturing plans I hardly understood. Worse yet, they sold the same stuff to my best friend. Now, I have to get my supply lines up and running to prepare for shipping my cargo — and if my friend starts shipping some of this curious cargo, I'll have to intercept their trucks and corner the market that way.

By hook or by crook, I'm going to be the king of curious cargo...

Curious Cargo is a two-player game in which you go head-to-head against your opponent by building up the infrastructure of your facility, calling in trucks at the right moment, all while perfectly timing the shipping and receiving of cargo to score the most points. Connect an interweaving web of lines to your shipping and receiving spaces. Play with two-color conveyor tiles, or step it up for an advanced experience and play with all three colors. Ship your custom-shaped cargo tokens to your opponent to interfere with their logistics plans!

The puzzling nature of Ryan Courtney's Pipeline comes alive in Curious Cargo! With six unique player boards for each player and two game modes, a skillful challenge awaits even the sharpest competitor.

• U.S. publisher Bézier Games has announced a similar release to the one above in the sense that it reworks an earlier title from the company — well, several titles actually.

Ultimate Werewolf Extreme is the newest iteration of the Ultimate Werewolf family from Bézier and designer Ted Alspach, this being a reworking of 2014's Ultimate Werewolf, which was itself a reworking of 2010's Ultimate Werewolf: Compact Edition, which was compatible with 2008's Ultimate Werewolf: Ultimate Edition, which reimplemented 2007's Ultimate Werewolf: Whitebox Edition.

Ultimate Werewolf Extreme features the familiar villager vs. werewolf narrative, but with additional elements:

—A new role-balancing system based on information vs. the number of werewolves in any size game.
—Optional rules to increase difficulty, such as invisible Lycans, alternate nominees, celebrations after werewolf elimination that reduce village abilities, and elected judges that determine whether a nominated player is eliminated or not.
—Enough cards in the base game to play three simultaneous games of Ultimate Werewolf Extreme.
—More than a dozen brand new roles specifically designed for extreme play.
—Special tokens that provide new abilities, such as the Ivory Tower, charms, and sandwiches.
—An app that features both a deck configuration tool (to account for number of players, level of moderator difficulty, and more) and a game moderator assistant (to help the moderator with what needs to be done each evening and in which order).

Bézier notes that additional roles for this game will be available in Ultimate Werewolf Extreme Bonus Roles, with Ultimate Werewolf Extreme Pro containing additional rules and roles for very experienced players. Bézier plans to run a Kickstarter campaign for this new edition in August 2020, with a scheduled release date of June 2021.