New Game Round-up: Cannes 2018 Edition — Defy Gravity, Collect Birds, Spot Spells, and Achieve Complicity

Day 1: It has been confirmed that what is now called "gravity stones" arose last night. Crystalline rock formations levitate in mid-air, resulting in a great decrease in the gravity around them.The potential benefits are enormous and the seven days we have to study them won't be wasted, be sure of it.

Gravity Stones is a development and optimization game with multiple choices in a brief playing time. The game plays over the course of seven rounds. Each round, a simultaneous first phase allows the players to play cards from their hand on the action side or on the resource side, also discarding one of them onto the central (company)

The second phase is individual, and starts with the first player, who uses their actions and resources (if needed) to establish a camp on the mountain, to study the stones, or to construct ZeroG tools from them. Once your actions are spent, you can either recover one of the cards left by the players or leave them; you will be punished or rewarded based on your choice.

With its intertwined actions and grant system, Gravity Stones allows you to augment your base actions with the stones you get back from the central board. The company that's hired you will also give you objectives to fulfill...or not.

Every day, dozens of birds have a stop on the fences of our countryside. When it is time to leave, all these birds mix together, unable to organize themselves into flocks to fly home. Help them find their way back to their nest.

Players begin each new round of CuBirds with eight bird cards in hand. Some birds also sit on four distinct fences on the table. On your turn, you lay a series of identical birds from your hand on one fence's extremity. These birds instantly gather with any identical bird already present on this fence, making all birds placed in-between them fly into your hand. With enough identical birds in your hand, you can perform a flock, allowing you to add some of these birds in your scoring area.

Your ultimate goal is to be the first player to gather in your scoring area either seven different species, or two species with at least three identical birds in each. Each bird comes with one small and one big flock scores, so you may want to wait to reach a big flock to add more birds at once to your scoring area. Beware, though, as the round ends as soon as a player empties their hand, forcing all players to discard their current hands and plans!

Everyone can understand emotions, but can you decipher each other's emotions? Is your group harmonious...or perhaps discordant? Find out in this game full of emotions...

In Complicity, all players get an emotion card, with one of the four "emotion spirits": Fun, Sad, Beautiful or Creepy. Each player also draws nine sentence cards: three starts, three middles, and three endings. With three cards, one of each type, they create a sentence trying to convey, as best they can, the emotion they received, then they give the sentence to the player on their left. The sentences are then read, and everyone other than the person who created each particular sentence can then discuss them, attempting to guess what the intended emotion was. If they guess the right emotion, move the complicity token forward; if not, move the Discord token forward. The game continues until complicity or discord reaches the end of the track.

Welcome, sorcerer apprentices! You are here for a lesson in spells. More precisely, it's the day of the exam, and you have to cast and recognize spells of all kinds: Leviosa, Torticolax, Petrificus... Who will be the best sorcerer apprentice? Take your magic wand and good luck to you because sometimes the spells will turn against you!

On your turn in Abra Kazam!, take the 24 cm. wooden magic wand, pick a card, then reproduce the gesture indicated on your card, trying to get others to guess your spell. The first player who finds the corresponding card on the table becomes the next sorcerer. Some spell gestures look quite similar, so it is not uncommon to be wrong in the rush! This new sorcerer has to act out the next spell challenge while following the command on the card just found, e.g., "Place the thumb of your hand holding the wand on your nose", or "Wedge your wand in the crook of the elbow", or "Your elbows must be glued to your body". The first player to collect five cards wins.