New Game Round-up: Wallace's Hobbit Game Revealed, The Temple of Chac Revisited & Cities of Horror, of Rebuilding and of Political Machinations

The city of Karez was once the crowned jewel in the vast kingdom of King Tyrial, but as he lost grasp on his kingdom, the city fell to ruins at the hands of the dark forces surrounding it. Now the king has died, and his heir, King Tyrial II, has decided to dispatch his finest lords to raise the fallen city and stand ground against all its enemies, within and outside the city walls.

In Fallen City of Karez, each player will take the role of a lord of one of the guilds who seek to tighten their grasp on the rising city. The players will strive to maintain a balance between keeping the city safe for its citizens by sending exploration parties to defeat any threats, and at the same time attracting to the emerging city new adventurers wishing to fill their pockets with fortunes and their names with glory.

In the action phase at the start of each of the eight turns, players can assign two citizens or one adventurer to act on their behalf in the various buildings of Karez, send an exploration party to remove any threats that lurk near Karez, or buy new equipment to reinforce their parties of heroes. Some guild houses may choose to erect their own private Dungeons (!) in an attempt to inflict havoc and dismay on the other houses. After everyone performs their actions, the players must check how these actions affected migration to Karez; the results of this phase will reflect on the growth of Karez towards a city state, which is the common aspiration of all players.

Players start with different initial possessions and owned buildings. In addition to the common goal of raising the city, each house also has some unique goals (ambitions), which will eventually determine the sole winner. That said, the game is semi-cooperative in that while each guild has its own ambitions, all players must succeed in raising the city by the end of the game or else everyone loses.

In Der Hobbit: Das Kartenspiel, two teams play against each other: good versus bad. The basic game mechanism is trick-taking, but whoever wins the trick can distribute the cards amongst all the players, depending on his character's ability. Some cards hurt, some heal – and only one team can win the game.

City Hall sees players competing to become Mayor of New York City. They do this by attempting to be the most successful at both bringing people into the city as well as campaigning for the citizens' approval. Whoever best balances these two goals will win the election.

There are seven offices within City Hall. These offices deal with a different aspect of building the city or campaigning, such as the Tax Assessor, Surveyor, or Zoning Board. In a round, each player will get to activate one of these offices. However, just because you activate an office doesn't mean you will get to use it. The other players will have an opportunity to use their influence to steal control of the office away from you. Keeping it will require countering with your own influence. However, you can instead let another player control that office this round and add their influence to your own, giving you a leg up on controlling things later on.

In using these offices, players will buy land and build properties to create attractive neighborhoods which will bring the most people into the city – or they might place a factory next to an opponent's housing complex to drive people out. They will also tax their constituents to raise funds (with the option of sacrificing popularity to tax at higher rates), buy and sell influence to the Lobbyist, and campaign to increase their approval level.

At the end of the game, the citizens of the city will vote based on which player brought them in and that player's approval level. Special interest groups will also collect votes for players based on certain goals, such as Wall Street backing the player with the most money. Whichever player has the most votes on election day will become Mayor of New York and appoint his or her opponents to the Sanitation Department.