Hachette Games Top 5 Games.
There are so many great games published in France that for one reason or another, do not get picked up by UK distributors. One person spotted this obvious opportunity and started a business in the summer of 2021 to provide a UK forum for these wonderful games.
Since then, a flood of fantastic titles has hit the UK shelves. Games that were previously flourishing in mainland Europe but unavailable to British gamers. Flavien Loisier, the man behind the plan, has been busy hitting conventions, social media, and game events to spread the good word. But with games this good, this should be a walk in the park!
We have recently been enjoying several great Hachette games. Let’s take a look at five of our favourites. All offering a very interesting and sometimes unique experience.
WBG score: 8/10. 2-4 Players – Set collection/ Engine building / Race Space themed game. Plays 20-40 Minutes. Suitable for 8 plus.
Ganymede is a fantastic game. The art is striking and suits the space theme very well. But I think the main selling point for this title is the amount of game packed into such a short and light table experience. You will feel a significant amount of strategy and interesting decisions are needed to succeed within what is a quick and relatively light game.
In Ganymede, players are looking to recruit settlers to their intergalactic space corporation to help them travel first from the Earth to Mars, and then from Mars to Ganymede. You will need to use different shuttles for each part of the journey, in a game that challenges you to increase your efficiency of turn through building a quick and productive engine.
Each shuttle and settler piece has a symbol on it. When you take one that has a matching symbol to another that you already have, you can use the effect of the chosen piece again. As you move your settlers along from Earth to Mars and ultimately to Ganymede, you will also be trying to improve your company’s reputation and diversify the type of shuttle ships you use. At various stages on the reputation track, there are opportunities to take additional actions. And when you have one shuttle of each type, you can launch a settler ship to Ganymede immediately.
Considering the game ends when one player launches their fourth settler ship, this is a very powerful additional action to take. As the game is quick, and full of opportunities to increase your turns power, this game is all about trying to maximise these cascading options. Recruiting the right shuttle to move the right types of settlers seems to be all this game is asking you to do at the start of the game. But players will quickly realise this is about a longer-term plan.
Choosing a shuttle that moves a red and blue settler when you only have red ones available may seem inefficient. But if it gives you the symbol you want to enact a certain power more than once, or to get your final symbol to launch a settler ship, then the overall power of this turn will prove more significant.
Making these decisions in Ganymede is a highly satisfying and enjoyable experience. Essentially this is a race game. Trying to maximise your efficiencies to launch your fourth ship first, whilst ensuring you are not falling behind the other scoring opportunities in the game. I think it works best in a two. It can be frustrating for certain shuttle or settlers’ pieces to be taken by other players, which of course happens more in a higher player counts. Largely, there is not a huge amount of thinking required in this. Make a plan and execute it. In higher player counts, you can be sometimes left waiting for your go. But in a two, this has quickly become one of my go too games when I only have 30 minutes. But I want to feel like I have played something with some meat on the bones. Ganymede certainly delivers for that.
WBG score: 6.5/10. 1-4 Players – Dexterity story telling game. Plays 10-30 Minutes. Suitable for 6 plus.
Ghost Adventure plays like no other game I have seen or experienced before. Remember those spinning tops you had as a kid? You often get them in crackers? You know, they have a cone shaped bottom with a handle which you can spin them from? The idea being how long can you make them spin for. Well, in Ghost Adventure, they have somehow turned this into a game!
The idea is that you are moving through duel layered boards, moving your spinning top over certain images to collect or interact with them. This is a dexterity challenge, but in truth, more a test of your patience and subtle hand movements!
Ghost Adventure has three main game modes. Solo, Adventure or Quests. Each modes asks players to move the spinning top over certain images on the multiple game boards. The Adventure mode is the one with the most story, so I will focus on that here. In Ghost Adventure, you are playing the ghost of a mouse. The mouse is looking to help a group of animals on an island that has just had their sacred statues destroyed by the wolf-warriors of the north. Your job, using a delightfully illustrated comic book, is to travel through the eight different worlds, and visit different people, collect different items, and travel to different places to progress the story.
You do this by first spinning the top. There are two provided. One which you must engage in the usual way. A quick flick of the fingers. The other has a pull mechanism which starts the top itself. This is better with younger children who may not be able to initiate a good spin. It also starts the top spinning in a more controlled way. This is important, as you need to move the top through a series of grooves and channels on the duel layered boards to run over the certain target art required for that mission. Some of the boards have holes and fiendishly cut grooves to hinder your progress, and it will certainly take a few turns to master. But I found even my younger daughter who was six at the time of playing had a quick and impressive learning curve with the technique required.
As you progress through the comic book, you will be taught new rules and rewarded with new powers. Being able to jump up to other levels of the board, or teleport from one board to another certainly helps speed up your progress and increases the fun factor! The idea being that in a multiplayer game, each player is holding a different board, and when one player has collected all they need to from their board, they either teleport, or move to the exit, to then roll or jump to the next persons board. All of course, whilst the top is still spinning.
Players will be looking to get as far as they can across the multiple boards used in each mission before the top runs out of spin. You are able to restart the spin four times using the relaunch potions, so this won’t end your game. But it certainly becomes more of a challenge as the game goes on to reach the final part of each mission in time.
The Quest mode acts similarly, but without as much of a story. The solo mode has 15 simple missions for you to try on your own. Great practice for your next adventure!
I have thoroughly enjoyed my time with Ghost Adventure. I am unsure if it is a board game as such, but do the semantics really matter? I sat with my family for many hours over multiple days playing our way through the story and it delivered many laughs, cries, and screams. My family enjoyed the unique nature of this game and the story it told. The sense of satisfaction from completing a team task is very high too, and for this alone I think this game should come recommended by WBG. But fair warning, some players may find this frustrating at first, so go easy on the first few games!
WBG score: 6.5/10. 1-4 Players – Dexterity / Puzzle game. Plays 10-20 Minutes. Suitable for 6 plus.
Photoshoot is a game very much aimed at the modern generation of younger gamers! You play as a team of photographers looking to shoot a group of celebrities. You must organise them all into the right positions but remember to care for their every needs!