New Game Round-up: Cleopatra Returns, Torres Expands, and New Frontiers Come to Earth

Cleopatra and the Society of Architects is a fun and engaging family game that includes a three-dimensional palace that players compete to build. Players strive to become the wealthiest of Cleopatra's architects by constructing the most magnificent and valuable parts of her palace.

Players, however, will be tempted to trade in materials of dubious origins in order to build faster. While these corrupt practices might allow an architect to stay a step ahead of the rest, they come with a high price: the cursed corruption amulets honoring Sobek, the crocodile-god. When Cleopatra finally reaches her new palace at the end of the game, she punishes the most corrupted architects (i.e., the ones with the most amulets), depriving them of riches or giving them as a sacrifice to her crocodile! The wealthiest architect from among those still alive wins.

In addition to a new graphic design by Miguel Coimbra, this edition of the game incorporates these gameplay changes:

—The combinations of resource cards to discard in order to build pieces of the palace have been reworked.
—The player rewards for building the palace's pieces have been recalculated.
—The consequences of corruption have been reviewed.
—The Great Priest is no longer activated in the same way.
—The player count has changed from 3-5 to 2-4.
—There is a new specific system to manage the character cards, which are no longer part of the deck, and are instead handled separately.