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• Hachette Boardgames had a relatively large booth in the exhibit hall, with this being its first appearance at GAMA Expo. Some of the Hachette brands have a long-established place on the U.S. market, such as Canadian publisher Scorpion Masqué, which was previously distributed by IELLO and which was acquired by Hachette in 2021.
In February 2022, Scorpion Masqué had announced the deduction game Turing Machine from Fabien Gridel and Yoann Levet, and I was able to play a couple of sample problems. The game rules will include a relatively small number of problems for players to solve, with thousands of other problems available online.
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I will paraphrase the rules while admitting that I only skimmed them because I was more interested in seeing how the system works than actually competing against others. To set up a problem, you lay out a specified number of situation cards (the exact name of which I do not recall) along with corresponding "verifier" cards; a verifier card consists of more than a hundred checks and crosses in a grid.
In a round, all players choose three numeral cards — with numerals ranging from 1-5 and with these cards being visible in a holder at the upper left of the image above — in order to create a three-digit number, say 451. Each of these numeral cards has many squarish holes on it, but when you overlay three numeral cards, only a single hole will remain. You then take the verifier card for the situation card you've chosen and place your number cards on it, thereby revealing a single check or cross. This result gives you some information about the three-digital code that is the solution to this particular problem.
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Let's look at the image above for a particular example. If I choose the situation card on the left — which reads "The verifier verifies the [yellow / middle] number compared to 4" — and place the cards for 451 on that verifier card, I will see either a check or a cross. If I see a check, then because my number has 5 in the middle, then I know that the middle numeral of the answer code is also a 5; if I see a cross, then I know that middle numeral is something else.
Similarly, if I place 451 on the verifier card for the situation card reading "The verifier verifies the number of 1s in the code", then a check tells me that the code has a single 1 in it and a cross tells me that the code has zero, two, or three 1s. In effect, the verifier "reads" your input and judges it, which gives you some information. In this case, a check would not tell me the location of the 1 within the code, so I would need information from the other verifiers to determine where that 1 is and what the other numerals are.
The challenge of the game is to make smart choices over which numbers to test with which verifiers and to use a good note-taking system in order to deduce the code first. The workings of the game might be hard to understand from a description, but once the materials are in hand, you should find it easier to grasp — although not necessarily easier to solve. We sort of played one game, then I just played the second problem on my own because I was fascinated by how the system works and how it hides information in plain sight. As a fan of deduction games, I'm looking forward to playing Turing Machine for real once it's available, with SPIEL '22 being the currently anticipated debut date.
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• Zero to 100 from Antonin Boccara is a team-based party trivia game that plays as follows:
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In Zero to 100, your challenge is not to be too far off target when answering trivia questions. Divide players into three teams and give each team six question cards at random. Each question has a numerical answer from 0 to 100 on its reverse side, but you can never look at the back of a question card until after you play it!
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For the first round, place the 50 number card in the center of play. Each team chooses a question card in front of them that they think will be as close to 50 as possible. Once each team has chosen, reveal the numbers on the back of the cards. Whichever team was farthest away from 50 draws a new question card from the deck — while the other teams discard their question cards — then the number on the back of the losing team's question card becomes the new target number for the next round. Each team has three power cards, and you can play a power card with your question card to raise or lower your number by 50; raise or lower it by 20; or allow you to discard an extra question card should your answer be within 5 of the target number.
The first team to have only question card in front of them wins! If multiple teams go down to one question card at the same time, they each must guess the answer on their own question card, and whichever team is closest wins.
Both Olé Guacamolé and Zero to 100 are due out in the U.S. in September 2022.For the first round, place the 50 number card in the center of play. Each team chooses a question card in front of them that they think will be as close to 50 as possible. Once each team has chosen, reveal the numbers on the back of the cards. Whichever team was farthest away from 50 draws a new question card from the deck — while the other teams discard their question cards — then the number on the back of the losing team's question card becomes the new target number for the next round. Each team has three power cards, and you can play a power card with your question card to raise or lower your number by 50; raise or lower it by 20; or allow you to discard an extra question card should your answer be within 5 of the target number.
The first team to have only question card in front of them wins! If multiple teams go down to one question card at the same time, they each must guess the answer on their own question card, and whichever team is closest wins.
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• In the Palm of Your Hand from Timothée Decroix and La Boîte de Jeu has taken an even longer time to reach the U.S., arriving in May 2022 after first appearing in France in November 2020. In this Dixit-style game, one player uses physical objects like a string, a coin, or a plastic ring to "draw" an image on the palm of another player who has their eyes closed. Each other player in the game sees only this "drawing", and they place a card from their hand on top of the card that the artist is trying to represent. The person drawn upon then tries to identify the correct image among the fakes.
• Another Hachette acquisition was Gigamic in 2019, and the company expects to debut Jules Messaud's tile-laying game Akropolis at Origins Game Fair 2022 in June, with the game available at retail in July.
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• The Hachette team had received a mock-up copy of Northgard: Uncharted Lands from Adrian Dinu and Studio H only the day prior to GAMA Expo 2022, so I'll can only quote the description on the BGG game page to give info on this Gen Con 2022 release:
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Based on the universe of the Northgard video game, Northgard: Uncharted Lands is a game of conquest and exploration set in the age of vikings. Each player controls a Viking clan, looking to achieve victory by reaping glory in various ways or controlling the most prized territories of this new continent.
The game focus is on streamlined rules and mechanisms, allowing for a fast-paced and smooth rhythm of play. Each turn, players alternate their actions to adapt their strategies to their opponents' moves and the expansion of the board. Fame (i.e., points) can be earned by exploring, fighting, and controlling and developing territories. The various corresponding actions are played through the cards that the players have in hand. At the end of each turn, they have to choose a new card to improve their personal deck as their clans develop new tactics and technologies.
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The conquest of Northgard also requires clever management of resources to build new buildings, improve your warriors' effectiveness, better your hand of cards, and upgrade your clan's specificities. The winter phase makes this management more difficult as you have to feed your units to keep them healthy and happy.
The pace of the game is set by the players as the game ends after seven turns, but can also be cut short at any time if one of them is in control of three closed territories hosting certain types of buildings.
• Let's end where we began: party games from a Québec publisher. The Randolph Gaming Pub opened in 2012, but aside from being a place to play and eat, Randolph is also a game publisher, with the name being an homage to designer Alex Randolph. Québec has an intensely strong game-playing culture, and to some degree that culture has been cultivated by Randolph, both as a source of games and a place to play them.The game focus is on streamlined rules and mechanisms, allowing for a fast-paced and smooth rhythm of play. Each turn, players alternate their actions to adapt their strategies to their opponents' moves and the expansion of the board. Fame (i.e., points) can be earned by exploring, fighting, and controlling and developing territories. The various corresponding actions are played through the cards that the players have in hand. At the end of each turn, they have to choose a new card to improve their personal deck as their clans develop new tactics and technologies.
Playtest during FIJ 2020 (Image: Caroline Imbert)
The conquest of Northgard also requires clever management of resources to build new buildings, improve your warriors' effectiveness, better your hand of cards, and upgrade your clan's specificities. The winter phase makes this management more difficult as you have to feed your units to keep them healthy and happy.
The pace of the game is set by the players as the game ends after seven turns, but can also be cut short at any time if one of them is in control of three closed territories hosting certain types of buildings.
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One of Randolph's gaming lines debuted as "Links", then changed to "Linkto" in French and "Match Up!" in English. Games in this line are designed by Marie-Ève Lupien and Randolph co-founded Joël Gagnon, and they all work the same way:
You have fifty cards showing names and pictures from a specific category, which to date are animals, food, Earth, and travel. Lay these cards face up on the table.
Next, take the 49 clue cards and choose a level of difficulty from 1-5. Then individually or collectively players read the clue of the appropriate level on each card and decide which picture card to cover with that clue card. One picture card will remain uncovered, and to check whether you have done everything correctly, you compare a code on the back of this card with a code corresponding to the difficulty level. You will win or lose — there's no in between!
My understanding is that while two titles in the line — Match Up! Travel (seen above) and Match Up! Food — have been released in English, they have not previously been distributed in the U.S., something Hachette plans to change in 2022.
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