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For my part, I was at Z-Man Games headquarters in Rigaud, Québec (at BGG's expense, mind you) to take part in a preview event that featured about a dozen titles being released over the next twelve months. I played several games and got descriptions of others, with Québec media, Facebook contest winners, and Z-Man demo crew and employees also being in attendance. Over the next few days, I'll post overviews of what I played and previewed. Ideally I can repeat this experience with other publishers and at other events in the months ahead. (Publishers, my email address is in the BGGN header in case you need to reach me.)
The Battle at Kemble's Cascade from designers Anders and Olle Tyrland recreates the feel of a 1980s scrolling arcade shoot-em-up, with players trying to avoid asteroids, take out alien spacecraft, and upgrade their equipment and weapons while making their way to the big boss at the end of the game. Oh, and while shooting at everyone else to keep them from scoring, open better avenues for you to explore, and to profit from their (temporary) demise. Here, Z-Man's Zev Shlasinger gives an overview of how to play:
I played the game once with five players, and graphic designer Philippe Guérin (in the red shirt below) noted that we were far nicer to each other than a previous group had been. For my part, I take a long time to process games with lots of moving parts, with upgrades and weapon add-ons, and with various details over how this moves, how that damages you, etc., so I was tucked up inside my own head just trying to figure out how to do anything. Killing others was far from my thoughts, although I did swing the guns sideways in the final rounds when I had little else to do and had not upgraded enough to do serious damage to the boss. Pew pew!
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Guérin tells artist Chris Quilliams that he's probably going to die — again
I also paid no notice to the four achievements available on the scoreboard display so that's another area in which I undoubtedly threw away points. Oh, and I neglected to work toward my mission, even though I could have easily achieved it if I had applied effort to the cause. So many things going on!
The card layout below gives you a look at the midgame, with four of us in the asteroid field at left and the gray ship skirting the edge of the playing area at right. Guérin noted that this card layout — five rows with space for four cards, with each card having two space sectors on it — was the basic one for five players. With fewer players, the rows would have only three cards, and players could choose to have more rows in play to have a better idea of what's coming. Not sure it would have helped me, but it's a nice thought...
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Non-final components
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