Weird Things Happen in Greenville 1989, But Sunny Days Lie Ahead

Weird Things Happen in Greenville 1989, But Sunny Days Lie Ahead
Board Game: Greenville 1989
• Among what is surely a long list of games I missed seeing demoed at SPIEL '18 is Greenville 1989, a Florian Fay design due out in Q1 2019 from publisher Sorry We Are French, which remains the greatest publisher name ever placed on a box. Here's what little I know about the game right now:

Quote:
Greenville 1989 is a co-operative narrative game in which each player represents a character who has experienced or witnessed supernatural events. They must describe these events to their fellow players, who must then locate this character and save them. This lead role changes each round, giving everyone the chance to be lost or found — and you want to be found or else the group is pulled closer to the void engulfing the town that threatens to consume you all.
Board Game: Greenville 1989


Board Game: Ganymede
Board Game: Koryŏ
• In other news from SWAF, Hope S. Hwang's Ganymede — which debuted in mid-2018 in France — will be released in North America in Q1 2019 by Lucky Duck Games. I'm not sure whether LDG is distributing the existing edition of this tableau-building game or releasing a version of their own, but that's an issue for the BGG database later as either way the game will be available in a location where it currently is not.

I've yet to play, but at BGG.CON 2018 someone I trust described the game to me as "Splendor, but with more things you can actually do", so I borrowed a copy from the BGG Library to find out more for myself..

• Finally, SWAF is working on a new version of Gary Kim's majorities card game Koryŏ — dubbed "Koryŏ 2.0" for now — that will be set in its Immortal 8 universe and released at SPIEL '19.


From gallery of W Eric Martin
Prototype components


Board Game: Sunny Day
Ludicorn is a new French publisher staffed with people who are not new to the game industry: Cédric and Anne-Cécile Lefebvre from Ludonaute, K.J. Lee from Happy Baobab, and Hicham from Matagot. As Bruno Chevalier, business manager at Ludonaute and the final Ludicorn partner told me, they started seeing several kids games that they wanted to add to the Ludonaute portfolio, but since Ludonaute had never released children's games, creating a new brand for such titles on the French and North American markets seemed to be a better approach. Says Chevalier, "I am probably interested in kids games because I have two daughters, six and nine years old, with whom I would like to play interesting games, not only for them but for me, too. I'm fed up with poo games."

The first two titles from Ludicorn originated from Happy Baobab, and they'll reach the French and North American markets in January 2019. In Manu Palau's Sunny Day, players start with a 5x6 grid of tiles — each of which features four half-images along their edges — and a hand of two tiles. On a turn, a player places one of their tiles so that it creates a matching image with at least one tile in the grid. They remove all the matching tiles (leaving the tile they put down), then arrange these tiles to create a personal grid with matching images. When the tile supply runs out, players score one point per tile they've collected, one point per complete image in their personal grid, and some number of bonus points for completing images of the sun and ice cream.


Board Game: Sunny Day
Korean edition of Sunny Day


From gallery of Photodump
Board Game: Layers
Layers from Dave Choi and Yohan Goh debuted from Happy Baobab at SPIEL '18. In the game, each player has a set of five double-sided tiles, with each tile having cutouts and different graphics on the two faces.

At the start of a round, a target card is revealed that uses three, four or five tiles, and all players race to reproduce the image by stacking their tiles in the correct order and orientation. Players score points in the order they finish, and whoever has the most points at the end of six rounds wins.

Board Game Publisher: Ludicorn
• Chevalier shared info on two other titles coming from Ludicorn, with Gary Kim's Team Team being a game for, you guessed it, players pairing into teams. More on this Q1 2019 release:

Quote:
Each team consists of a speaker and a builder. The builder must place five tiles into a pattern known only by the speaker, with the pattern being the same for all teams. The only way for the speaker to communicate with their builder, however, is to shout that round's silly word once, twice, or thrice in a row, with the meaning of the word or phrase possibly being lost on that person given that all speakers are shouting at the same time. Can you find meaning in madness?
• The final title from Ludicorn for now is What's Missing?, a SPIEL '19 release from Florian Sirieix that possibly needs a demonstration video to really get what's going on. Ideally we can record something like this at FIJ, the game fair in Cannes in February 2019, but here's what I know for now:

Quote:
What's Missing? is a drawing game that contains 240 cards with line drawings, sorted by difficulty. In a round, each player takes a card, hides it behind a cardboard screen, and tries to draw another picture on transparent paper placed on top of that card, with the goal being that the drawer wants other players to guess what's on the card.

After finishing the drawing, the drawer shows only the transparent paper to others, and the other players have to guess what's missing on the transparent paper. The player who guesses correctly earns 1 point, with the drawer losing 1 point if no one guesses.

To win, being clever is more important than being a good artist. Young drawers can give other players a clue based on what kind of things are on the card.

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