It might seem odd to bring all of these older titles back to print, but I have no idea what the Korean game market is like and which titles have been released there previously. I wish that I could know everything about games everywhere, but without readily available cloning technology, that's not going to happen.
• One of the titles coming back to print has a name that describes how you might think about the availability of these games on the market: Easy Come, Easy Go, this being a dice game for 2-4 players from Reiner Knizia that first appeared in 2004 from Out of the Box Publishing. Here's how to play:
The four dice show numbers 0-5, and on a turn you roll all four dice, freeze one or more of the dice, roll all unfrozen dice, freeze one or more dice, etc. until either all four dice are frozen or you have achieved a combination and can claim the tile showing this combination, whether from the center of the table or from another player.
If you claim a third combination tile, then the next two players (or the same player twice in a two-player game) each have one chance to steal one of your combinations. If they fail to do so, you win! If they do steal one, then perhaps they now have three tiles and have a shot at winning themselves!
• Knizia's Circus Flohcati was one of OPEN'N PLAY's first releases in 2016, and the game now has a new look to accompany its company's re-branding as Playte.
Like Easy Come, Easy Go and, well, most Knizia designs, Circus Flohcati has simple, intuitive rules that allow players to express themselves through their manner of play:
On a turn, you can choose one of the face-up cards on the table and add that to your hand or flip the top card from the deck and add it to the cards on display. If you flip an action card, you must take that action — often stealing a card from an opponent — then your turn ends. If you flip a card of the same color as any face-up card, then you instead discard the newly revealed card and your turn ends with you getting nothing. Otherwise, you again face the same options: Collect a face-up card or reveal a new card.
If on your turn you have three cards of the same value in hand, you can play this trio on the table for a guaranteed 10 points. The game ends either when someone reveals that they have all ten acts in hand or when the deck has been exhausted. You score only for the highest-valued act of each color, so either avoid taking duplicate colors or ditch them in trios. If you have all ten acts in hand, score a 10-point "gala show" bonus. Whoever has the highest score wins.
On your turn, you lay a tile from your hand, draw a replacement from the draw pool, then replenish the draw pool. The game continues until all the tiles are laid, though you can stop laying tiles if you want (to "protect" some of your own colors on show), but once you've stopped, that's it, and other players can still lay theirs. At the end, you score for any face-up tile of your color, with bonuses for getting tiles adjacent.
The game's first appearance was actually in Sackson's 1981 book Card Games Around the World under the baldly efficient name "Card Stock Market", but I suppose German publisher Salagames thought it would be ideal to capitalize on the financial disaster brought about by Black Monday so that folks could find joy in the misery of others.
Anyway, here's an overview of how to play:
On a turn, you can deal in shares (both buying and selling) and change the value of stocks, but you must do all of your dealing either prior to or subsequent to changing stock values. When you deal, you can sell any number of shares you own, earning money from the bank equal to the number of shares sold by the current value of those shares; when you buy, you can lay down at most two cards from your hand, paying money to the bank equal to the number of shares bought by the current value of those shares.
When you change value, you take one or two cards from your hand and cover a corporation's current value with this new value; corporations have different limits on how much they can be raised or lowered per card play, with some being more stable than others. If you play the highest-valued cards, you can either pump up the value tremendously — or tank the stock, bringing its value to $0, with all players discarding all shares they own of this stock. (A player can jumpstart the value of this company by playing a new stock value on it, even with the second card played on the same turn.)
Alternatively, you can skip the dealing and changing actions to discard 1-4 cards from hand. In either case, to end your turn, replenish your hand to eight cards.
When the deck is exhausted, take all of the discards and all of the stock value cards other than the top one of each corporation and shuffle them together with a "Market Closed" card to form a new deck. Continue play until the "Market Closed" card is drawn, at which point the game ends immediately, and all shares held by players are cashed out at the current stock value. Whoever has the most money wins.