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Videos from Spiel 2014 II: RoboRama, Typo 2D, Versailles, Praetor & Progress: Evolution of Technology

Videos from Spiel 2014 II: RoboRama, Typo 2D, Versailles, Praetor & Progress: Evolution of Technology
Board Game: Progress: Evolution of Technology
• Certain types of games pop up each year at Spiel, one of those types being the civilization game, with people wondering what's new in the genre this time, what's different about this civilization-building game that we haven't seen in others. For Spiel 2014, one of those new civ titles was Progress: Evolution of Technology from designers Agnieszka Kopera and Andrei Novac and publisher NSKN Games. I haven't played the game, so I can't give you the Reader's Digest version of what's new here; instead you'll have to watch NSKN's Blazej Kubacki or turn your eyes elsewhere.





Board Game: Praetor
• NSKN Games had three titles at Spiel 2014, two of them being new for the show and the third — Novac's Praetor — having debuted in mid-2014. Does that even count as a Spiel release these days? Things come and go so quickly these days that you sometimes lose perspective and forget that five months is not much of a window in a game's life. Sure, for some five months = time to be pushing up the daisies, but for most people five months is the equivalent of today, of now. Heck, I still see people at game conventions who are learning of Ticket to Ride for the first time, so it's good to keep that perspective in mind.





Board Game: Versailles
• NSKN Games' third title at Spiel 2014 was Versailles from Andrei Novac, and I have nothing to add about this title. I think I saw Andrei in passing in Essen, waved at him, and that was that. You think you're going to go back and check out a title so that you have at least some passing familiarity with it, but no, time eats your lunch and you go home hungry.





Board Game: Typo 2D
• Titles come and titles go and sometimes titles come once again, as is the case with Corné van Moorsel's Typo 2D, a new version of his Cwali release Typo from 2004, which I picked up that year in my first trip to Spiel because (1) the gameplay looked interesting and (2) the box was super-tiny so I was able to find a spot for it in my already overloaded luggage. It's amazing how we all make purchasing decisions based on random things like that. I'd like to think that I'm somewhat less random these days, but I suppose that my randomness has merely shifted down different avenues of thought...





Board Game: RoboRama
• With so many games being released on the market, it's easy to find yourself making instantaneous judgments about one or another (or dozens) because you just don't have time to contemplate everything in detail, much less play them firsthand and come to reasoned decisions (as much as one can come to reasoned decisions based on a single playing, but that's perhaps a topic for another time). Thus, you see shorthand dismissals like "Looks like RoboRally" of a new release like RoboRama from designers Kirps, Pierson and Zuidhof and publisher PLAYthisONE. Yes, the games both have robot figures that players move, but aside from that, the two don't have much in common.

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