New Game Round-up: Relive the Titanic Experience, A Second Awakening & New Frontiers for Aliens

The idea for Collapsible D: The Last Minutes of Titanic comes from the mind of the Italian author Gianluca Santopietro. In this game the players are on board the Titanic during the night of April 14, 1912, starting at 11:40 p.m. when the ship collides with an iceberg; each turn represents ten minutes in real time. Each player controls a passenger of each Class and a member of the Crew. Each character has a different starting point, an attempt to recreate the exact location where they were on the ship, thanks to historical research lead by the author in cooperation with history experts on the Titanic, such as Claudio Bossi. Thanks to an intuitive movement system, players will move their passengers through the ship, trying to reach the lifeboats on the dock.

Meanwhile, the water floods in quickly and the risk of drowning is very high. Each saved passenger grants victory points, and the player with the highest score wins.

Each player holds two animal cards stating the type and amount of terrain needed, five multi-terrain tiles, and wild cards. On a turn, she may lay up to three tiles, place one or both of her animals in free-form contiguous blocks of appropriate terrain, and use all or some of her wild cards. The starter tile has two blocks of each of the four terrain types: forest, grassland, desert and water. The number of blocks of terrain needed by an animal is equivalent to the number of points you can score by placing it. When the tile supply is exhausted, each player takes a final turn, then loses points for an unplaced animals still in hand. The player with the highest score wins.

Komodo can be played competitively in both basic or strategic mode. In the former, wild cards are obtained randomly; in the latter, players can choose their wild cards. Actions permitted by a wild card include: releasing animals to free up their terrain; bartering or stealing terrain tiles; remodeling tiles already placed; and forcing an exchange of animals.

In the cooperative version of Komodo, all 32 animals must be housed and each player must place at least one animal during her turn. The game is played open-handed, and the wild cards hinder the players.