![New Game Round-up: Bounce on a Trampoline, Answer Questions About Food, and Command the Gates of Mara](https://cf.geekdo-images.com/KpfiFX-GGtiecZ101HhI9Q__medium/img/TsjBY5iEldQiT9bsJ4YYY2KLulI=/fit-in/500x500/filters:no_upscale():strip_icc()/pic5186355.jpg)
• WizKids has announced an October 2020 release date for Gates of Mara from J.B. Howell, designer and co-designer respectively of the 2019 releases Reavers of Midgard and Flotilla. Gates of Mara is for 2-4 players with a playing time of 90-180 minutes and a US$70 MSRP. Here's an overview of the setting and gameplay:
Gates of Mara blends upgradeable worker placement with layered area-control mechanisms, all brought to life by the art of Nastya Lehn. You can lead reptilian dragonkin, the amphibious goblins, the insectoid antids, or the arboreal elves.
Strategically position your tribe members around the realms and gates. Enchant your tribe members to give them new abilities. Compete for short-term objectives, but keep your eyes on your influence. Only the player with the most influence can lay claim to the Gates of Mara!
Both games play as follows, with only the topics of the cards differing:
Together, players link all 49 clue cards to the 50 word cards. They then discover whether the remaining, unlinked word card is the key to their victory, validating its code with the answer card to know whether they've won the game!
Match Up! Food offers five levels of difficulty in the game as well as a competitive mode for those who want it.
• I'm not sure how I first became aware of Trampoline Park from Hassan Hekmat and Iranian publisher Soren Game Studio — a title that's held a tab open since January 2020 — but I would guess that I saw the cover image pass through GeekMod, and said, "Hmm, I should find out what else that company has done", and now it's late March. Hmm.
I see that Soren's 2018 release Color Match is also in the BGG database, but not Conqueror or Business Intelligence. (A note from the publisher to one of the BGG admins mentions that a second edition of Color Match will be released at SPIEL '20, which suggests optimism on the visa front since many Iranian publishers were denied entry to Germany ahead of SPIEL '19 — not to mention optimism on the medical front. Anyway...)
Here's a rough overview of the game, which the back cover helps to make clearer in both visuals and text:
After all players have had a turn, the referee token goes to the next jumping point in clockwise order, then the top playing tokens again go to the jumping points and players take their turns in order again. If a playing token remains at a jumping point, the new token is placed behind the previous one to create an entrance line.
As soon as a player manages to be on three tiles of the same colors or the same letter, they reveal their card and win. Since you don't know the other players' colors, you might do something which accidentally helps another player win, so bounce with care!