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Often the answer is yes, I did see those games — but that doesn't mean that I learned everything about them at that time. Maybe they were in a display case, maybe no one was around to demo them, maybe the presenter at that earlier show focused on other games due to be released sooner. Whatever the case, NY Toy Fair frequently gives me a first chance to look at those twice-viewed games.
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In Nürnberg, the European branch of Blue Orange Games had showed us only four games out of twenty or so that it plans to release in 2020, so I still had lots to see, such as the 2-6 player card game Animix from Mathieu Bossu that I had seen in passing.
Animix is a tricky card-playing, stock-holding game along the lines of Arboretum and Hats. Each game, you use a number of animal types equal to one more than the number of players, and the game includes eight types, each with its own way to score.
Players start with some cards in hand with other cards being laid out in an array. On a turn, you either play a card from your hand face down in front of you or replace a card in the array with one from your hand, marking the newly placed card with a token (indicating that it can't be replaced on a future turn) and placing the removed card face up in front of you. After six turns, you reveal any face-down cards, then whoever has the most cards of a type (or is tied for the most) scores for that type. Elephants score for the longest connected horizontal line, while birds score for a connected diagonal line and wolves for cards on the border of the array, and lovebirds for being in pairs.
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You might hear about Piece of Pie from Trevor Benjamin and Brett J. Gilbert and think, "Wait? Don't we already have Piece o' Cake? How many dessert-drafting games can there be?" Answer: 25,000.
The basics of Piece of Pie are covered well on the back cover of the box. Lay out four pies with pieces placed at random in those pies. Reveal scoring cards that indicate how players score points in this game, with these directives supplementing what's always valuable: chocolate shavings, icing, and sets of decorative shortbread elements.
A central token has an arrow pointing at one slice in each pie. For each pie, this slice must be taken first, but once that slice has been taken, a player can take either slice that's adjacent to that space. When you take slices, each slice that you take after the first is placed adjacent to what you've already collected, so the players are effectively dissembling four pies to rebuild them on their own plates, after which they'll score points to see who's the best pie dissembler and re-assembler. Should you care to, I suppose you could then replay the game immediately with those completed pies, moving those slices around repeatedly like a character in a 1920s black-and-white cartoon — lots of frenetic motion that leaves you in the exact place where you started.
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We already recorded a video overview of Cupcake Academy, but here's a still image of the game being played. In short, in this co-operative game all players try to place their cupcake wrappers into the proper positions, but you can move a wrapper only onto a smaller wrapper a là Tower of Hanoi, with everyone having one central swapping space that they can use to swap pieces or use as a temporary holding area.
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Let's stick with dessert themes for a moment to check out The Great Cake Escape from Jay E. Treat, III and WizKids. In Nürnberg, Zev Shlasinger had a flyer about this game, but seeing the (non-final) cake assembled and on display makes the gameplay much easier to imagine. An overview:
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In The Great Cake Escape, players take turns pushing tools in between the layers of a three-layer, 3D cake, tools like shovels, chainsaws, and even dynamite! As you try to hide your pieces, you'll push your opponents pieces out — or at least make them visible enough to get caught by the guards. The more you hide, the higher you score!
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Last-Second Quest from Christian Giove was another title for which we had recorded an overview video, but here's a midgame shot that better demonstrates what you're doing in the game, specifically trying to prepare for a quest as quickly as possible by picking the right items and fitting them all into your pack.
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Super-Skill Pinball: 4-Cade is a pinball-themed, roll-and-write game for 1-4 players from Geoff Engelstein that's due out in Q3 2020. Here's a summary:
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Choose one of the four unique tables and matching backglass for scorekeeping, then roll a shared pair of dice and get the pinballs rolling! You'll select one of the two die results, then move your pinball to a bumper or spinner, or target one level below with a matching number. Once you reach the lowest level, pick which flipper's roll to use to send the ball right back to the top. Play well, and you'll unlock bonuses like multiball, score multipliers, and more to help you get the high score!
The 4-Cade comes with four different tables, each with its own unique art and challenges. In "Carniball", the intro table, you shoot ducks, pop balloons, and ring the bell in the test of strength! In "Cyberhack", steal data from an evil corporation and earn Hacks to help you when you activate the RUN mini-game. In "Dance Fever", return to the 1970s with lots of spinner action as you try to manage the main playfield and a mini-pin at the same time. In "Dragon Slayer", take on the role of a young wizard and defeat enemies for big bonuses; hit drop targets to level up, and learn new spells that let you manipulate the dice and trigger bonuses like multiball.
The 4-Cade comes with four different tables, each with its own unique art and challenges. In "Carniball", the intro table, you shoot ducks, pop balloons, and ring the bell in the test of strength! In "Cyberhack", steal data from an evil corporation and earn Hacks to help you when you activate the RUN mini-game. In "Dance Fever", return to the 1970s with lots of spinner action as you try to manage the main playfield and a mini-pin at the same time. In "Dragon Slayer", take on the role of a young wizard and defeat enemies for big bonuses; hit drop targets to level up, and learn new spells that let you manipulate the dice and trigger bonuses like multiball.
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Even more on display from WizKids, but with no components on display, so perhaps we'll talk about these at the GAMA Expo or Origins or...
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Fantastic Four: Cosmic Clash is an example of how WizKids is packaging new HeroClix titles, with the box containing a complete game playable on its own, while the figures can still be mixed with those from earlier releases to create teams for games of your own devising.
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Whenever I post something about new Dice Masters sets, a few people comment that they never see anyone playing the game, but WizKids continues to release new sets for the game system, so I think it's safe to assume that someone is playing it — likely thousands of someones who just happen to be among the billions of someones who we don't know.
This Phil Walker-Harding title caught my eye, and I was curious why I hadn't seen something about it in the press material available from WizKids. Turns out that Yummy World: Party at Picnic Palace had actually been released in 2017, so it was an even bigger miss by me than I had thought! The WizKids rep said that the game had been overlooked, so they had included it in their NY Toy Fair 2020 display to try to bring it to people's attention. Mission accomplished!
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