/pic2625718.png)
• Luca Bellini's Brick Party from Post Scriptum, which I wrote to myself about on July 28, turns out to have been a Spiel 2015 release and thankfully I caught it in time to add to the Spiel 2015 Preview.
Brick Party features LEGO-style bricks, and each round of the game you play with a partner, either giving or receiving instructions on how to build the item depicted on a card in hand with 5-8 bricks. The architect of each team chooses the level of difficulty for their associated builder, and every team must operate under a randomly drawn handicap, such as giving instructions only by using the words "yes" and "no", or having the builder hold the item card (and thereby having only one hand with which to build). Whoever has the most points after completing as many rounds as the number of players wins.
I tried Brick Party as a 4p game at Spiel 2015, and it worked fine, other than having the usual problem that occurs in a party game when the player with the most points in the final round is paired with someone else, which was me in this case. I can try to win, which will also give the leader more points, thus ensuring that I'll lose — or I can tank the round, thus ensuring that I'll lose. I'm not sure what the solution is for this design problem — and I still made an effort to win this demo game — but I'll just point it out for others bothered by such things.
/pic2605046.jpg)
• Saving Time is a cooperative time travel game due for release in 2016 from Richard Launius, Mark Zoghby and 8th Summit in which 1-6 players try to correct historical aberrations. Clearly they've succeeded or else we'd have ceased to exist. Therefore don't bother playing because you know that you're going to win!
• Villages of Valeria shares the setting of Isaias Vallejo's Valeria: Card Kingdoms, with co-designer Rick Holzgrafe and publisher Daily Magic Games coming in on this village-building game in which a player takes one of five actions on each turn, with all other players also taking this same action, but in a worse way (e.g., discarding two cards to get a resource instead of one).
/pic2530964.jpg)
• T. C. Petty, III and Dice Hate Me Games have the social strategy game Don't Get Eated on the docket for Q1 2016, with players being presented with a numerical challenge each round, e.g., play below a certain number, then simultaneously playing a number from their hand. All players who play the same number are on a team, and their played number is increased by the number of players on their team. Fail the challenge, and you're wounded; take enough wounds, and you get eated.
• Not so much a game as a teaser for a game that's still yet to be announced from IELLO, even though this teaser image — described as Paul Mafayon artwork "for Richard Garfield's next game with IELLO" — dates to April 2015. (I found out more about this game at Spiel 2015 and will post more later.)
/pic2432611.jpg)
/pic2695626.jpg)
/pic1068166.png)
/pic2623199.jpg)
