Three Titles on a New Playte: Dragon Stripes, Ada's Library, and Mino Dice

At SPIEL '21, Korean publisher OPEN'N PLAY announced that it had re-branded itself as Playte, and the company is running its first Kickstarter campaign through Nov. 12, 2021 to fuel awareness of the first three Playte titles — as well as a game accessory that is a combination dice tray/dice tower/set of card racks — and deliver them to players outside of Korea and those who travel to Essen, Germany.

If you want to dive into these titles without knowing anything else about them, you can check out my unboxing video:

Okay, my thumbnail image does spoil the contents of this reveal, but I'll live with that choice.

In any case, here's a rundown of the three games, starting with Dragon Stripes, an Alex Randolph design that debuted in 1989 as Drago Rosso from Editrice Giochi, then appeared in 1993 from Schmidt Spiele as Die Augen der Kali. OPEN'N PLAY has re-released a number of titles from Alex Randolph — Big Shot, Chess Race, Venice Connection, Buffalo Chess, and more — and it typically uses a sparse 1960s-ish approach to art and graphic design that mirrors the minimalist feel of a Randolph design.

Here's an overview of this 2-6 player, press-your-luck design:

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In Dragon Stripes, players test their luck as a knight approaching a dragon, with the knight trying to pick up as many gems as possible along the way. Each player starts the game with 40 gems. Shuffle the deck of 51 cards: 38 footprint cards, 10 stop cards, and 3 danger cards.

On a turn, the active player places the knight before the first stripe on the dragon's tail, then reveals the top card of the deck. If they reveal a footprint card, they advance the knight this many stripes toward the dragon's head, then place gems next to the knight equal to the number on the current stripe (which range from 1 to 17). The player then decides to either reveal another card or hold. In the latter situation, other players can offer to take over the current player's turn by paying them a bounty based on the number of gems currently next to the knight. If someone takes over the turn, they must reveal at least one card as the new active player; if no one does, the current active player collects all of the gems, then the next player takes their turn.

If the active player reveals a stop card, they lose 1/4 of their gems (rounding down), then the knight retreats to the dragon's tail and the next player takes their turn.

The first time the active player reveals a danger card, this is treated as a stop. The second danger card is also treated as a stop, but the penalty for being stopped now (and by future stop cards) is 1/2 of your gems. The reward, however, is that each time the knight moves forward, the number of gems placed next to it doubles.

Dragon Stripes ends one of two ways: Either a player reveals the third danger card, which causes them to lose all of their gems, or a player moves the knight past the 17th stripe to the dragon's head, at which point they claim all gems that remain in the dragon's hoard. Either way, whoever has the most gems at this point wins.

• Ada's Library is a new version of Phoenix, a 2003 title from Amanda and Zach Greenvoss that I played a bunch in 2004 when I was first diving into modern games outside of Magic: The Gathering.

Phoenix is a delightfully simple two-player game, and Playte has streamlined the design a bit further:

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Your goal in Ada's Library is to arrange all of the books in your personal display in an order that matches the books in the "master display".

The game includes larger "master" book cards in a six colors, as well as smaller books in these six colors. To set up, each player draws ten books from the bag, then places them in a row in front of themselves in the order drawn. Shuffle the six master cards, then lay them out in a row, e.g., red, light blue, gray, brown, yellow, dark blue. Shuffle the deck of action cards, with each player getting a hand of five cards.

On a turn, either discard a card from your hand (ignoring its effect) or play a card from your hand. Cards will:

—Swap the position of two books in your display, with the number of spaces between these books being specified.
—Move a book in your display a specified number of spaces either left or right, but never past the end of your display.
—Move a book to either end of your display.
—Swap the books on the ends of your display.
—Swap a book of your choice with the book in the opponent's display directly opposite.
—Move a book in the master display 1 or 2 spaces to the left or right.

Draw a replacement card to end your turn. As soon as the ten books in your display match the order of the books in the master display — regardless of whether all the colors are present — you win.

Ada's Library differs from Phoenix in two ways. First, in Phoenix, a complete game lasts three rounds, and players score points at the end of each round based on whether they go out, have a pawn of each color, and have 3-5 pawns of a color in a row on their display. Whoever has the most points after three rounds wins. In Ada's Library, if you line things up, boom, you win and that's that.

I can appreciate this change as sometimes in Phoenix, you'd randomly draw 4-5 pawns of a single color, and by doing so you were already on a good path to (1) score bonus points and (2) go out since it's somewhat easier to arrange things in color order when you have a huge block of one color. Additionally, you then super-hated the "swap with an opponent" card since it mussed with your bonus points without regard for whether you were close to ending the round or not.

The second change in Ada's Library ties into the first as this game includes only four books of each color whereas Phoenix had five pawns of each color. This change should lessen the chances of you ending up with a lot of one color.

• The final game in the line-up is of more recent vintage, with Mino Dice being a new version of Manfred Reindl's Skull King: Das Würfelspiel from 2016.

This design is a trick-taking game played with dice in which you bid on how many tricks you'll collect in each hand played. In detail:

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Mino Dice includes seven types of dice: minotaurs, griffins, mermaids, and four types of number dice. The game lasts 6-8 hands depending on the number of players, and in each round each player draws a number of dice from the bag equal to the current hand, e.g., five dice for the fifth hand, then places them behind their screen, keeping these dice a secret from all. After getting their dice, each player simultaneously bids the number of tricks they think they'll claim during the round by putting out fingers on their hand. Record these bids on the scoresheet.

The first player in a hand chooses a die from behind their screen, then rolls it in public. If they roll a number die, each other player must roll a number die of this color, if possible; otherwise they roll a die of their choice. Alternatively, a player can always roll a minotaur, griffin, or mermaid die. After each player has rolled, see who has the highest die and claims this trick. A rolled flag is a 0 and cannot win the trick. The minotaur beats the griffin, which beats the mermaid, which beats the minotaur — and all of these special characters beat numbers. If no one rolls a special character, the highest number rolled wins the trick, with a tie being broken in favor of whoever rolled later. The player who wins the trick collects the dice in front of their screen, then chooses a die from their collection to start the next trick.

After all the tricks have been claimed, players score points. If you made your bid exactly, score 20 points per trick bid; if you missed your bid, lose 10 points for each trick your bid was off, whether higher or lower. If you bid zero tricks and make it, score 10 points for each trick in the hand; if you miss a 0 bid, lose 10 points for each trick in the hand regardless of how many tricks you made. If you made your bid and captured a minotaur with a mermaid without also capturing a flag, score 50 bonus points; similarly, if you capture a griffin with a minotaur without capturing a flag, score 30 bonus points.

Whoever has the highest total score after the last hand is complete wins.