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• Let's start with a quick trip to Czech Games Edition, which had a massive space outside the main exhibit hall at Gen Con 2021 thanks to that publisher adding to its original floor plan the rooms that Rio Grande Games had abandoned.
I believe that CGE had set up at least one table for every title in its catalog, with full games of, say, Through the Ages, Alchemists, and Tzolk'in available for those who wanted to indulge themselves. The feeling in the room was far more relaxed than what was going on in the exhibit hall, even at its reduced size for 2021, with people playing for as long as they wanted. CGE wasn't trying to turn tables as quickly as possible to make sales of new releases — although sales were happening anyway, with Lost Ruins of Arnak seeming to be in every third bag I saw.
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The environment might have been too relaxed...
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Lost Ruins of Arnak: Expedition Leaders debuted at SPIEL '21, and it should have a U.S. retail release in December 2021. (At Gen Con 2021, the demo copy of Expedition Leaders was being changed constantly as development on the expansion was still taking place in the Czech Republic. CGE prints locally, so it could continue testing until shortly before SPIEL '21.)
CGE has already released one bonus item for Galaxy Trucker — the Rough Roads expansion that's available solely in digital form. Gullotti said that this method of release allows the company to give players small extras without having to manage production, shipping, and inventory.
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Giant-sized Galaxy Trucker at Gen Con 2021
Regarding its flagship title Codenames, Gullotti says that more than one million people per month play the game online at CGE's site (which has cards available in more than forty languages), and CGE is currently testing a Codenames app that would be playable on mobile devices, with players having various objectives that they could unlock.
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Carlo Bortolini's Riftforce had arrived in the Capstone warehouse the Tuesday prior to Gen Con 2021, so Candice and I got to play once for a taste of what it offers. Candice already wrote about the game from her POV here, but I'll give it a go as well.
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Candice contemplates her second play
Riftforce is a two-player dueling game in which you compete to score 12 points first, with points being scored when you eliminate an opposing card or control a field with no opposition during a reset action. On a turn, you can:
• Play up to three cards of the same guild or the same health (5/6/7).
• Discard a card to activate up to three cards of the matching guild or matching health.
• Refill your hand to seven cards and score a point for each uncontested field you control.
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In our game, my crystal goobers were worth 2 points instead of 1 when killed, but I managed to do massive amounts of damage with them before Candice could shatter my hopes for winning. I've since played Riftforce three more times, and I'm slowly starting to piece together how to draft guilds before the game begins in order to create competent combos as opposed to the nonbos I had initially. (In October 2021 Riftforce's originating publisher 1 More Time Games announced Riftforce: Beyond, which adds eight new guilds to the ten already available — which means I will never catch up with exploring all this game has to offer.)
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Only two points to go...
• At Gen Con 2021, publisher BoardGameTables.com won my No Prize for "best table signage" as each table was approachable on the perimeter of the booth space and featured overhead a compelling image, a short game description, and game details, not to mention being staffed by a demo person ready to roll as soon as you got there.
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At Gen Con 2021, owner Chad DeShon talked about the next couple of titles in its line-up, with those titles now being crowdfunded on Kickstarter through November 4, 2021. One of the games is Psychic Pizza Deliverers Go to the Ghost Town, a Hayato Kisaragi design that debuted from Japanese publisher One Draw in 2018. Here's an overview of gameplay:
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In Psychic Pizza Deliverers Go to the Ghost Town, players are divided into "Pizza Delivery Professionals" and a mayor (GM) who controls the ghosts and builds the town. The pizza delivery professionals have to find a pizza and deliver it to the right house in town, all while avoiding ghosts, barriers, and mystic teleportation runes. The first player to find and successfully deliver a pizza wins. Luckily for them, the pizza delivery professionals all possess mild psychic powers. They must use their abilities to sense and divine what's around them if they hope to deliver their pizzas.
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The main role of mayor is to moderate play and make the town. The mayor wins if no one is able to deliver their pizza. The game begins with the mayor building a unique town map that includes the starting location for each player, pizza, and house. On a player's turn, they may choose to move one space in any of the four cardinal directions, attack in any of the four cardinal directions in hope of banishing a ghost, or use a psychic power. The mayor then resolves the action, tells the player the location of any barriers adjacent to the player, and whether or not the player senses any ghosts/pizzas/houses in any of the eight spaces surrounding the player.
Attacking removes ghosts from the board and lets players draw one psychic card. Psychic cards allow players to make special movements on the board such as diagonal, hop step, or warp back to start.
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The players have only twenty turns to locate a pizza and deliver it to the matching house. The players have a gridded sheet of paper and a pencil to draw and record information about the town. The mayor has a special log sheet to track all the players moves and results.
The game also includes several variant tiles that can be added to the town to vary gameplay.
Japanese game maven James Nathan wrote about the game in detail in 2019 on Opinionated Gamers, and Nathan has been serving as a JP game scout for BoardGameTables.com, both for this title and for Dandelions, the other title being Kickstarted, with this being a new edition of Takashi Sakaue's dice game Birth that debuted in 2013 from Product Arts LLC.The main role of mayor is to moderate play and make the town. The mayor wins if no one is able to deliver their pizza. The game begins with the mayor building a unique town map that includes the starting location for each player, pizza, and house. On a player's turn, they may choose to move one space in any of the four cardinal directions, attack in any of the four cardinal directions in hope of banishing a ghost, or use a psychic power. The mayor then resolves the action, tells the player the location of any barriers adjacent to the player, and whether or not the player senses any ghosts/pizzas/houses in any of the eight spaces surrounding the player.
Attacking removes ghosts from the board and lets players draw one psychic card. Psychic cards allow players to make special movements on the board such as diagonal, hop step, or warp back to start.
A peek inside the mayor's hideout
The players have only twenty turns to locate a pizza and deliver it to the matching house. The players have a gridded sheet of paper and a pencil to draw and record information about the town. The mayor has a special log sheet to track all the players moves and results.
The game also includes several variant tiles that can be added to the town to vary gameplay.
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Transform into a dandelion, and float through clear blue skies on a pleasant breeze in this dice-rolling, area-majority game with a little direct-competition edge. Your quest is to find the best spots for your seeds to grow across a variety of vibrant, beautiful, and cozy gardens.
In Dandelions, players roll a group of dice, then choose one to move to a beautiful garden. Along the way, you can harness the power of the wind with three special actions — float, puff, and gust — to get the most points. The game ends after all the dice are used, and whoever receives the most victory points as combined from two different scoring methods wins.
DeShon says that he's already signing titles for 2023, with games typically falling into one of two box sizes and complexity levels. Nathan essentially has free reign to propose titles, suggest changes for the U.S. market, and help introduce others to these games that he loves so much. I, for one, greatly appreciate these efforts!
In Dandelions, players roll a group of dice, then choose one to move to a beautiful garden. Along the way, you can harness the power of the wind with three special actions — float, puff, and gust — to get the most points. The game ends after all the dice are used, and whoever receives the most victory points as combined from two different scoring methods wins.
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