New Game Round-up: Steal on a Double Mission, Serve at Café International & Set Up Fun at Alan's Adventureland

Double Mission: Beyond the Object is a light game with a heist movie theme, à la Ocean's Eleven. It is basically a competitive game, but with a dose of semi-cooperative element.

Each player personifies a "professional thief" who attempts to retrieve valuable objects (tokens) from various cities of the world. Each city has its own security level, which is represented by the number of dice a player has to roll. The special d6 die has one "fail" side and five "success" sides. For instance, if a player wants to penetrate a level 4 city, they roll four dice and all four dice must show "success" sides.

There is a unique semi-cooperative aspect here. If a player wants to penetrate a city, they can ask for other players to join the heist. If they do, each player rolls the dice, and the theft succeeds if any one of them rolls all "success". The main player takes the valuable object from the city while the collaborator receives points for compensation. If the heist doesn't succeed, the main player and the collaborator(s) receive investigation tokens (potential penalty points).

Players continue to gather valuable objects, which can be sold for immediate points or displayed to claim "fame titles". Whoever earns the most points wins the game and is declared the greatest thief of the world.

In Alan's Adventureland, players are a part of the design team for a new amusement park. There are four themed neighborhoods within the facility, and each player is responsible for constructing the attractions in one of those neighborhoods: Animal Kingdom, Tour America, Sky World, and Foreign Lands. Each turn represents the passage of one week.

During the game, players draw cards representing purchase orders (POs) for different types of attractions. These cards have two uses: first, as POs approved by the finance office to expedite construction of specific types of attractions each turn, and second, as the actual financing to construct the attraction represented on the card. At the end of each month, the review board meets, evaluates the progress of each neighborhood, and awards bonuses for meeting a set of predetermined preferences. These preferences relate to how attractions in a park are arranged. Points are awarded to the players who meet the review board's preferences.

At the end of the game, the owners of the facility come in and award points to the finished themed neighborhoods. These points are awarded based on four criteria:

1. Excitement Level — size of the rides
2. Parking Lot View — curb appeal to visitors upon arrival
3. Main Entrance View — attractiveness to patrons waiting in line for their tickets
4. Themed Attractions — number of matched types of attractions in a neighborhood

The player who earns the most points wins the design contract for the owners' next project.