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UKGE 2022 just came and went and it was epic. As the UK's largest board game convention, it was great to see UKGE back to its full scale best after the lock down pause and small scale 2021 show. There were over 20,000 unique attendees with close to 40,000 visits to the three halls and Hilton hotel over the weekend. Pretty impressive considering the way the world is right now. As I said in my show article "Are we still geeks" we are rolling with the mainstream now! 100,000 go to Comic Con in the UK each year, Crufts gets 160,000, and 50,000 go to the British Motor show each year. We are getting there! Article from UKGE show guide. The show was a huge success from what I could see. But it doesn't go unnoticed to me that not everyone had a great time. Some games looking for kickstarter support at the show have cancelled and some attendees looking for other gamers to play with have commented on how hard it was to find people. Nothing in life is ever perfect for everyone, but speaking from my own experience, I had an absolute blast and found it to be incredibly well run. But I hope all the below games find huge success soon, they deserve it. And I hope my tips below may help you if you plan to go in the future. So, without further ado, here are my top 5 independent published games on UKGE 22 and my suggestions for future visits on how to make the most of your time at a busy convention. Top 5 Independent Games at UKGE 2022. Amulet of Thrayax - Trolls n Rerolls - Sadly they just cancelled their kickstarter but I am sure it will be back better and stronger soon. More info here. I love this game, and Tom, the man behind the Amulet, is an absolute gentleman. I saw this game last ear at UKGE and at Airecon this year but didn't have the chance to play it. I met Tom this Thursday at the press event and was blown away by his passion, enthusiasm, and dedication to this game. He was packing up at 10pm Thursday night as I was sitting down to play games so he could drive back from Birmingham to London to then drive back with his volunteer crew ready to set up for the show the next day. I saw Tom on Friday for a demo and the guy was running on fumes after 20 minutes sleep. But this is the reality for an independently run and funded game. A lot of blood, sweat and tears. But thankfully, after my demo of Amulet of Thrayax, a great game too. I instantly backed it. But it has sadly had to cancel due to a lack of momentum, but will be back soon. I would heartily recommend it. Amulet of Thrayax a mix of take-that, area control, very clever card play, and smart timing. The amulet moves around the circular board made up of six districts, affecting all tokens it shines down upon. Playing as one of six eccentric cults, you need to work your way around the board collecting points from harvesting the souls of nobles and peasants in the dystopian city of Bleakpire. Peasants are worth one point each, but are also used for movement each round, and a bidding mechanic for being first player between rounds. The Nobles are worth ten points, but are a lot harder to acquire. On your turn, you can move and must play or burn one Murder card and one Counter card. Moving costs one Peasant for one space, two for two, three for three etc. You can play the cards at any point or burn to play one of you inconvenience tokens. Inconvenience tokens activate at the end of your turn and are another other way to harvest peasants but they wont necessarily all go to you. It depends what players are in the area that the inconvenience token has been placed. Each card has various stages on it, with even more higher powered options if the Amulet is facing your way when you play it. Each district is divided into a protected and unprotected side. Peasant's and Nobel's can move from either side, or be moved into neighbouring distracts. It's a clever, ever changing board, that looks gorgeous, but every part does something functional. It is very easy to learn this game thanks to the layout and thought behind the art. I am gutted this cancelled, and cannot wait for it to launch again. I loved everything about this game. The art, the gameplay, rules, mechanics, and team behind it. 2. ISLA - Ocean City Games - Check out there upcoming kickstarter here. ISLA (pronounced Iz-Lar before we start at Jurassic Park style argument) is from Ocean City Games, the team behind 2020 hit Salvage Hidden Treasures. They are also working on Towers of Ra which looks fun, but next up it's Isla, an explorative roll-and-write using polyhedral dice. Each turn, players roll five dice, and chose to either move to explore the Island, rest to recover their lowest die, or research to select a card showing either the flora or fauna in the island, or maybe even a fossil they discovered. These get you points. The further you travel into the island, the trickier things get. It looks gorgeous, and plays very smoothly. I cannot wait for this kickstarter to launch. 3. Go Ahead Punk - Next Dimension Games - Coming to kickstarter soon. Find out more here. I love hidden movement games and I love the theming of a 1970s American cop film. Add the two together with some really clever mechanics, and I am sold. Similar to other hidden movement games, there are plenty of ways to move around the city. In this game using the freeway, trolley bus, or famous San Francisco Cable Car systems. But, unlike other hidden movement games, this isn't just about finding the other player. One player plays as the assassin and needs to take out three victims. The other player, playing as the cop needs to track the assassin down, and stop any more killings. But each time you find the assassin, they wont just come quietly, they will fight back! The game looks stunning and has some very smooth and slick rules. I am very keen to get this one soon! 4. Psychobabble - Cheatwell Games - More info here. This game draw me in with the gorgeous art, but the simple rule twist made me stay! This is a social deduction game set in the Arkham Asylum where it seems a mass hysteria has plagued the town. But not everyone is mad, and the players have no idea what role they are playing! As a therapist in the asylum, you find a pattern and realise that your patients are not mad at all, in fact, they are all cursed! Well, some are! Their visions all seem the same and you need to solve the riddle of their shared nightmares. Although, real patients who are suffering from insanity bring their random dreams to you as well, which will affect your ability to make a rational deduction. And the other players wont help. No one has any idea if they are insane or not! Designer Kedric Winks was an absolute gentleman, and it made me realise how much the people behind a game mean to me when it comes to the games I enjoy. 5. Cursed Empire Universe - Cursed Empire - A 30 year old RPG that inspired a Dungeon Crawler, two cards games and many more! Find out more here. I love a sprawling universe and there are not many bigger worlds to explore than this. 30 years ago, designer Chris Loizou created an Table top RPG set in the world of Thargos. The universe he created was deep, full of adventure, and has since spawned multiple spin of games, all set in the same world. I was drawn in by this gorgeous map, but the story behind the various games all set in the same world really captivated me. The art is wonderful. So thematic, deeply engrossing and vibrant. The games all looked highly linked to every part of this world, and intrinsically inter-connected. There was so much to explore, and so much to come. Top 5 suggestions to have a good time at a convention - based on things I witnessed there and many complaints I have heard since. The vibe in every convention I go to is generally 99.9% positive. But you get the odd spat here and there. Inevitable really. With so many people, and the physical and mental challenges a crowded, loud room brings this is to be expected. But there are things we can all do to avoid this. Each convention has its own style. Airecon is more for gaming. Essen is all about the exhibitors and international relationships. UKGE seems to sit between these. I sense some always want a convention to be all about one thing over the other. Which leads me to tip number 1. Know what you are walking into. If you are a solo gamer looking for other players, UKGE is not perfectly set up for this. But there are ways you can still have a great time and meet other gamers. Play some demos and start chatting to the other gamers around you. Try some of the talks and events, and see who else may be sat alone there and go say hello. Although, I appreciate, this sounds incredibly daunting to some, so I also suggest reaching out to other like minded people who are going prior to the con on Instagram. Instagram is a very supportive and inclusive community. But sometimes you may need to make the first step as people may not know you are going or going alone and looking for friends. Reach out and say hello to people who you know are going. This is a great way to start a conversation that could end with them asking you for a game when you are there or introducing you to a group that will be present at the show. I for one would be happy for anyone to reach out and say hello to me on insta, and I know many others who would be the same. Jenny from Board Game Family Uk for one. She is amazing at bring new people in and making them feel welcome. Understand the reason for the show. Exhibitors are there to try and cover the huge costs they have put into the last four or five years or their lives, trying to make a game. I appreciate getting to the fair is not cheap and easy for the visitors either, but I saw some unjust behaviour when people were not able to haggle an already discounted price to be even lower from a small independent seller, or got upset when they were asked to cut a demo short for others to sit down and try their game. Just be mindful that they are humans too and probably operating on a tiny budget with minimal profits if any. They desperately need to get as many people to try their game as possible. It's a demo, not full play. But if you want to try the full game, talk to the team there, most I am sure would find time to meet after the convention in open gaming and set up a full game and they would love your enthusiasm. The larger stalls with the bigger publishers and distributers will have less pressure on them but the staff will be mainly volunteers that don't work for the company and are not being paid to be there. They are just having their costs covered so they can experience the show too. If someone cannot teach you the game perfectly have some patience. They are not a professional, probably only just saw the game that day, and may be suffering from the same anxieties many others at the fair have too. Bring your own food and drink. Food and drink is often expensive at a convention due to high rents. Queues can often be long too. So, instead, perhaps bring some food of your own and use this as an opportunity to get some fresh air. Relax outside for a bit, take some time for yourself, refresh, and come back stronger. Still with money in your wallet for games and no time wasted in lines. If you have travelled far, then you can always look at going to a local supermarket, or if that is not possible, reach out to locals who could help. I'd happily bring some sarnies along if only I lived closer myself. Slow down and be open to new things. There is so much going on, you will find it hard to stick to a pre-arrange schedule all the time. Rushing from one end of the hall to another to try and get somewhere will cause you stress, and potentially others too. Moving through the isles can be tricky as it gets busy, some have children or buggies and many are carrying lots of bags! Be mindful of this and don't expect to be able to glide through long distances quickly. Take your time. See what you can spot on the way. Something cool may catch your eye! Hopefully see you at the next one!

Chicken vs Hotdog WBG Score: 8.5 Player Count 2-10 You’ll like this if you like: Silly party game fun Published by: Big Potato Some games just instantly grab you. Perhaps it is a clever use of a new mechanic, or a cool component. Or maybe even a design team you love. In the case of Chicken vs Hotdog, it was the crowd of laughing people around the stand at UKGE 2022 that first attracted me. Everyone who walked by this stand seemed to want to try this game out. And I was no exception. But does it last beyond a few fleeting flips at a stand? Let's get it to the table and find out. Set Up Split your players into two equal groups. Each team must first decide if they are going to play with the Chicken, or the Hotdog. This may cause huge arguments, and rightly so. It's a big decision. But fight it out as best you can, mainly so the game can start. The pizza will be here soon. Then, divide the cards into the challenge cards, character cards, and bidding cards. Shuffle, then give each team four bidding cards of their colour, and their character cards so they can be laid out, grey side up on the table. Lay the challenge cards face down on the table. Stretch out a little. Death stare the oppositions star player. And you are ready to go. How to Play The first challenge card will now be revealed. Each team will then decide based on the challenge cards potential difficulty to their starting player, how high they want to bid to attempt this card. They will have bidding cards showing various numbers between one to four. The higher their bid, the more likely they are to win, and they will then have to attempt the challenge. When both teams are ready, they will reveal their bid, and the highest bidding team will then have to give it a go. If it is a draw, a Flipperrama ensures. Both teams must quickly grab their Sling'em (Chicken or Hotdog) and start flipping. The win will go to the first team to land two single flips successfully. The winning team gets to decide if they want to try the challenge or hand it to the other team. The challenge will then be attempted. This could be a simple flip, or perhaps one under the legs, or maybe even with your eyes closed. There will be a certain amount of attempts that you can use to try and complete this challenge. If you are successful, you will be able to flip over the bottom gray character card. If you fail in the challenge, then the other team can flip their bottom gray character card over. The bidding cards used that round are then removed from the game, and the next challenge card is revealed. You will now have one less bidding card to use. When all of your bidding cards are used up, you can draw four new ones. When playing in a team, you cannot choose who attempts the challenges, you have to simply take it in turns. The first team to flip over all of their character cards to the coloured side is declared the winner. They will be lauded at the true champions by the other team, and will have first choice of what movie to watch that night. You can even invent your own challenges using the blank challenge cards in the box. Or play a dueling game. Whereby two players stand six to eight feet apart. You must attempt to flip your sling'em trying to land it in front of your opponent on the floor. If it sticks, then they can try and flip one back. If their flip fails, you get a point. You can play this up to three, or however you so decide. This game can even be played late into the evening after a few drinks. Not that WBG endorses that at all! But, from strict market research purposes, it has been proven to be a lot of fun. Is this Fun? Yes. Any other questions? Chicken vs Hotdog is nothing but fun. There is no strategy. Zero mechanics or rules to learn. Just throw the thing, try and make it do a thing, then celebrate wildly either way. It's just hilarious. My kids love it for quick bit of family fun. I love it for a game to play with friends when we are too "tired" for anything else. The game is just so accessible. Everyone has tried to do a "flip" with a half full bottle of water. This game just takes that idea and adds a few extra challenges and a scoring mechanism so it is a "game." And it works so well. I would strongly recommend that anyone who regularly plays in larger groups try this one out. It's the perfect game to get out at the end of a long day, that anyone can have a try at, that will almost certainly guarantee laughs. You will be up and running with new players within minutes, and people will be focusing on trying to do something relatively easy with a bit of plastic but that gives huge pleasure when you succeed right away. And I am all for that! I have taken so much pleasure from playing this game. Even after many turns, I am hilariously still terrible at it. But the odd occasion I do land a flip, it feels great! But what feels better, is cheering on my team and laughing when the opposition team bids high and fails on their turn. This game brings a brilliant level of friendly competition to the room. Winning and loosing means absolutely nothing. But at the time, when the chicken is in your and, and one flip could guarantee you and your team victory, it means everything. EVERYTHING! As such, I cannot recommend this game enough. It won't be for everyone. It really is very silly. But if you have got this far, I would wager it may well be something you and your friends could be talking about for a long time to come. I can see the twinkle in your eye now as you think about bringing this box out after a nice relaxing bottle of your favourite red, and you place it down in front of your friends ready to do battle, Chicken Vs Hotdog style. From this point onwards, I feel the board game community will be split into people who have landed a reverse, double, wrong hand flip and those of us that haven't. BGG should probably create a badge for this. it's kind of a big deal.

Living Forest WBG Score: 8 Player Count: 2-4 You’ll like this if you like: Port Royal, Furnace, Mystic Vale. Published by: Ludonaute Designed by: Aske Christiansen Distributed in the Uk by: Coiledspring Games. Each year in Germany, a group of very knowledgeable and influential people within the board game industry come together to discuss, play, and vote on the best games that were released within Germany that year. The spiritual home of modern board games. They have three awards. Game of the year. Children's game of the year. And then the Kenner spiel. The "Gamers Game" of the year. The game that they think is the best for more serious board game enthusiasts. Previously, this has seen winners such as The Crew, Istanbul, and Paleo. This year, the winner was Living Forest. A game from 'new kid on the block' Aske Christiansen. The win didn't surprise many people, but there was comment that it was perhaps better suited to the main award aimed at more family gamers. Particularly as that category was won by Cascadia, a game ranked with a weight of 1.87. Living Forest has a weight of 2.2. But in fairness, previous winners of the Kenner spiel had similar rankings. Paleo is 2.67, The Crew is 2.01. And Istanbul is 2.58. So, if you can get over the fact that the "Gamers Game" award is for a mid to low weight game, and not a mid to heavy weight game as many may prefer, we can all just move on with our lives and get to the review. Cool? Great. Let's get it to the table. Set-Up Living Forest has a bit of set-up the first time, making the trays for the trees, and a fair bit of popping. But once this is done, it is a relatively simple process. And who doesn't love a good popping session!? Place out the main Circle of Spirits board, tree dispensers, and smaller Fire Varan board in the centre of the table. Give each player a forest board, three victory tiles, a Spirit of Nature standee and protective tree in their chosen colour. The tree is placed in the central space on the Forest board and the standee goes onto the specific spot on the central board based on your player count. Then give each player their 14 starting animal guardian cards in their colour. These are shuffled and placed face down in front of each player. Place the Fire Varan cards onto the Fire Varan board along with the Fragment tiles. Then lay out the Guardian animal board and after sorting the cards into the three groups, of level one, two and three, lay out four cards face up on each row and leave the rest face down on this board. Place the fire tiles divided into the three values on this board. Finally, decide the first player and give them the Sacred Tree standee. You are now ready to begin the game. How to Play Living Forest works incredibly simply and fast. There are three main phases. The first phase, all players play simultaneously. Players will take their 14 cards and flip them over, one by one, forming a line running left to right from the indent on the right of the Forest board. This is called your "help line." They can stop at any point, but for each card they flip, more symbols are revealed allowing for a stronger set of actions in phase two. However, in each deck, five solitary animals reside with a dark round symbol. If three of these are revealed then that player can only use one action on the second phase. If they stop with two or less, then they can take two actions. Later in the game, players will be able to add new cards to their deck. Some of these cards are Gregarious cards. These act as a way to neutralise the Solitary animals. One Gregarious and one Solitary animal revealed into your cards in a round would mean you are still on net zero. Once all players stop or bust, they move into phase two and can take either one or two actions. The actions include taking a fragment tile, which can be used to place a card drawn in phase one into your discard, avoiding a solitary animal. The fragment tiles can also destroy the fire Varane cards if you get these. More on that later. Other options are to buy a new Animal Guardian card from the 12 face up choices. Based on the cards you draw in phase one, each player will have revealed a number of Sun symbols. Each Animal Guardian card has a Sun value you need to match in order to draft that into your deck. Any new cards you add will increase your ability to get more symbols in the first phase. On the Circle of Spirits board there will always be at least one fire token with a value of two. Another option for an action in phase two is to extinguish these fires. Using the water symbols you revealed in phase one, you can put out as many fires as you have water symbols. Removing the fire helps in phase three, which we will cover later. But also is one way to win the game. Again, more on that soon! Using the stone symbols revealed in phase one, you can move around the Circle of Spirits board as an action in phase two. The space you end on will give you an action such as buying a card, putting out a fire, or taking a fragment tile. But if you ever hop over another player, you can take any one of their Victory Tiles from them. The final action you can do in phase two is to plant a tree. Using the tree symbols in phase one you can now buy one tree. The trees are immediately placed into your Forest board, touching orthogonally one tree you already own. They can cover a bonus which gives you an immediate bonus action such as to buy a card with an extra three sun symbols, or put out a fire with an extra two water symbols. The tree also offers an ongoing bonus, with extra, permanent tree, sun, stone, or flower symbols. We will come onto the flowers soon! Also, when completed, some rows and columns offer additional ongoing bonuses too. Players takes these actions in turn order, moving clockwise around the table starting with the player with the Sacred Tree. Once all players have taken all actions, play moves to phase three. First, all fire left in the Circle of Spirits is tallied, and any player who does not have enough water symbols in their cards turned over that turn, or from their trees or forest board will have to take a Fire Varan card into their hand. One for each fire token present. Then, new fire tokens must be added to the Circle of Spirits for each card that was bought that round. A two value fire token for a card from the top round, a three value for a card from the middle, and a four value for each card from the bottom. If no cards were bought that round and there is no fire in the Circle of Spirits, a single fire token to the value of two is added. Next, add new cards if any animal cards were bought that round. Move all your cards from your help line into you discard. Then pass the Scared Tree to the next player clockwise round the table. You are now ready for another round unless someone has won! How to Win OK, hope that all makes sense? If not, don't worry. When you play, it really is very simple. But how do you win this thing? There has been no mention of victory points, or health meters or damage. No talk of a finish line. Well, herein lies the reason I think this game won the Kenner Spiel. There are three ways to win this game. The first person to achieve either one will trigger the final round, all players will finish their actions and then the person with the highest score after this final round in either of the three areas wins. If there is a tie, is is the person who scored the highest overall in all three areas. The three areas are fire, flowers, and trees. You need twelve or more of one to trigger the end game. In the case of trees, they must be unique. In the case of flowers, these can be on trees you have bought, lines of trees you have completed in your forest, and from face up cards in your line that turn. In the case of fire, this is from the fires you have put out in the game. A three or four value fire still counts as a single fire token, just like the two fire token. They are all just one token when it comes to final scoring. Now, don't forget the three Victory tiles you were given at the start of the game. These count as one for each area you have in your possession. And you may have more or less of these at this point, depending on how many times you hoped over other players on the Circle of Spirits board and taken one from another player. Or in turn, how many times you were jumped over yourself. This can be a fun, and significant varying swing in reaching this goal of 12 in the later stages of the game. Say you start your turn with just seven fire tokens, but you draw enough water to put out three fires, and then hop over two opponents and steel both their fire Victory tiles. This would allow you to reach the goal of 12 after starting at seven in one go. Pretty cool huh! Is this fun? Playing Living Forest is a lot of fun. The process of learning this game is very smooth. The bulk of the above is explaining the actions available in phase two, which really are more simple than it sounds. And once you have played this for one round, which will take five minutes, you will fully grasp it. With your mind free of any rules queries, you can focus purely on your strategy. Will you chase fire, flowers, or trees? The options for the way you want to play, and ultimately, try and win the game, is highly satisfying. I very much enjoy the strategy this game asks you to deploy. Do you focus on just one of the three goals? Do you try and run an even game, looking to build up all three areas? Or do you follow what other players are doing to try and counter their strategy? If another player focuses early on in the game on fire, you certainly need to bare this in mind. If you don't they will have free reign to get as much fire as they like each turn, and will probably win. If multiple people go for fire, they will neutralise this elements ability to grow to a high number quickly, and force players to look into another approach. Trees works well, you can acquire two trees on some turns with clever play using the Circle of Spirits. If you get the tree with a value of 11, this then allows you to do the same action twice, which makes getting two trees per turn even easier. The trees of course also increase your abilities to grow the power of your turns with additional symbols. There is an element of engine building here that is very rewarding and ultimately I think the best way to play, for me at least. Along side this, there is obvious hand management, push-your-luck, deck building, tile placement, and of course a race element to this game. This smorgasbord of mechanics works very well together. It doesn't feel clunky or disjointed. Everything works together in harmony for one highly polished and seamless game. Everything in the game looks gorgeous too. The nature setting is a very popular one in modern board gaming. And the artist has done a phenomenal job with the cards. The icons are clear but unobtrusive. The symbology is simple and easy to understand. The artwork on the characters is stunning, atmospheric, and deeply absorbing. I would recommend this game to anyone looking for a light, filler game, that works well in a family or adult scenario, for players who enjoy games that are light on rules, but rewarding in strategy. You have to enjoy push-your-luck games too, but unlike other popular games that employ this mechanic, failing in this part of the game does not punish you so much that it becomes a chore. Two actions is of course preferential to one, but another card that bumps your line over the three solitary animals maximum doesn't just block your second action. It of course adds new icons to your line too, there is one more card. Which could make your one action now more powerful than taking two actions without these symbols. This in truth, is not that likely, but it is not a black and white situation. And one action can still sometimes deliver a second bonus action when placing trees onto certain parts of the Forest, or landing on certain spaces on the Circle of Spirits. Living Forest deserves its fame driven from the Kenner Spiel victory. It perhaps is not the best "gamer game" this year. But "gamer game" doesn't mean what we all think, or perhaps want. We already established that in the introduction didn't we. Calm down... Haha! OK, but for a low to mid-weight game, it looks beautiful, plays quickly and smoothly, and rewards multiple plays with different strategies being developed. I would predict that more than 50% of people who play this game will go after Fire on their first few turns, and will probably win. They will then try Trees, and see the benefit to having your action not only advance your progress in the game but also increase your engine. This is a good thing. It shows a learning curve for a game, rather than a game you instantly get and can do well at. I enjoy this process, and will enjoy playing this game many more times, to try and figure out how to win with a flower strategy!

Village Rails WBG Score: 8.5 Player Count: 2-4 You’ll like this if you like: Sagrada, Century Spice Road Published by: Osprey Games Designed by: Matthew Dunstan, Brett J. Gilbert By Steve Godfrey It’s not often that I’m immediately sold on a game based on a tag line alone. In fact I think this might just be the first time. When I first saw this game I saw emblazoned on the box the words “A game of locomotives and local motives' and I was immediately sold. The problem is I've been excited by tag lines before and been disappointed, yep I’m still mad at you Phantom Menace! So has this one drawn me in and kept me engaged? Does it locaMOTIVATE me to keep playing it? Only one way to find out. Rules of the Village Each player receives a lettered border tile at random and then takes the rest of the tiles for that letter and pieces them together. If you’re a fan of jigsaw puzzles then consider this a tiny bonus. Place down the deck of double sided cards, track face up and lay out seven track cards in a row and then place out four goal cards both going away from the deck. On your turn you must take a track card and you may also take a goal card. The track card furthest from the deck is free but if you want one closer to the deck then you pay one pound onto each card you skip to take it. Goal cards always cost three pounds but again you pay an extra one on every card you want to skip. Goal cards are placed on the outside edge of the border tiles and there can be a max of two per line. Track cards are played on the inside of the border tiles which will eventually create a 4x3 grid. They must be played next to an existing track, this includes the border tiles. If, when you place a track down the line connects from a cardboard edge to one of the two invisible edges then you score for any features on that line and any trip cards attached to that line. Features may give you straight points, some will score for terrain types, either the same or different and the signals will score based on how many you have on a single line. Lastly you’ll have the sidings which will score at the end of the games based on how many lines have sidings on them. You’ll then play a terminus card on that line which will earn you money based on the cards criteria (always a minimum of £3) and then will be placed on that line to indicate that it’s closed off and can’t be scored again. After twelve rounds when everyone has filled their tableau and scored their tracks, every player will score for their lines with sidings and one point for every £3 they have and the player with the most points wins. Meeting in the Village hall When I first read that tagline and saw the art it immediately evoked images of small English village mystery tv shows where crimes are often solved by nosey citizens and not the local constabulary. The game is nothing like that of course and that’s not how it’s trying to sell itself, but that’s nothing that should put you off of it. You may not be solving crimes with Father Brown but you will be spending time with a fun brain burner of a puzzle. Much like a passenger staring at the frankly ludicrous amount of train ticket options, your first turn in a game of Village Rails may seem a bit scary. You'll be faced with a blank board, track and trip cards with all sorts of scoring options on them and your terminus cards all screaming at you to make a commitment to a strategy. You’ll have a lot of options of where to start but luckily the game will give you a few hints. Your border tiles have all the terrain types and one without a terrain type but with a scoring type on it. The terminus cards in your hand are a good place to start for a nudge in how you want to approach a couple of your lines and even the mix of trip cards and track cards could give you a good foundation. What seems quite intimidating at first may actually turn out to be a pretty simple choice. They’ve even simplified the track cards into two distinct types so the only thing you have to worry about is which way you want to rotate them and not if they’re going to actually connect. There’s a strange thing that happens though. Because the second you lay your first track down you get this instant sensation that you do now have a plan and you’re not sure what you were worrying about in the first place. I've likened this to Sagrada and while that may sound a bit odd hear me out. Both games start with a similar blank canvas. But, as the game goes on the decisions you make are easier. That’s not to say you’ll be breezing through them, you won’t and the great thing about this game is you’re faced with this brilliant puzzle as to where you’re going to lay cards to maximise your score. What I mean is that as the game goes on and you begin new lines you’ll know exactly what you need and where it should go. Of course knowing what you want is easier but the real trick is being able to get what you want and that’s why money is so important. We’re having a bake sale to raise money! As Pink Floyd once sang “Money, it’s a gas. grab that cash with both hands and make a stash” and I’m fairly sure they wrote that line based on Village Rails. Money management is just as important as the cards your drafting. So much so that you may want to sacrifice a couple of lines just to bring in the cash. Without a half decent stash of cash you could easily end up stuck with taking no trip cards and only taking the free tracks which, in turn, limits your choices and how you maximise your lines. It creates this really fun balancing act that gives this game a little economic twist. Do you choose between taking that track now for a couple of points or doing something that gets you money in the hope you can get bigger points in the future. The thing that brings this all together for me is this system of drafting. Coupled with everything else going on in the game it works really well in helping to create a bit of tension and giving more credence to your choices. Even more so than in some games with this particular mechanism. Take Century Spice Road for example. It’s easy there to take a card and then barely use it if at all. In Village Rails every card you take, certainly the tracks are important to what you're doing so it won’t be uncommon to see people agonising over those choices. This is because every track card you take you HAVE to use. It means that you’re less likely to hate draft because you’re going to want to squeeze every last point from your board. That and the fact that you’re spending so much time trying to figure your own board out that you won’t be able to spare the brain power to work out someone else’s. In terms of tension I’ve had many turns where I’ve had no money (nice to see life imitating art here) and desperately needed a card a few spaces along. It’s pretty tense watching and hoping that everyone takes the cards in front so it slides down enough to make it free so you can complete your line for maximum points. We’ve had a village council meeting and…… There is one major gripe I have with the game and I’m pretty sure I won’t be the only one to have this. The terrain type symbols on a majority of the cards are really difficult to see and in some cases nigh on impossible unless you bring the card right up close. For example the forest card art is mostly dark green and the symbol in the corner is a very close dark green colour, the same with the water type and the water symbol. I’d say in each of these cases they’re as different as space grey and military gray. The art on the cards is different for each terrain and you will most likely get used to it after a few plays but it would have been nice to have the symbols clearer so that players could make that association a lot quicker. These symbols are so important for scoring that they should be prominent on the card. I’m all for showcasing the art on cards and it is beautiful art, but I would much rather sacrifice a bit of that for functionality and ease of use. I think the gameplay stands out more than enough that most people will persevere with it but it’d be a shame if something that is such an easy fix would be the thing to put some people off of a game that they might otherwise love. Choo choo choose Village Rails When I first pulled this out at my game group, one of my friends said something along the lines of “ah a game about trains that looks really dry but it most likely brilliant” In some sense he’s kinda got a point. The art is lovely and for me perfectly fits the tone but I can see a lot of people maybe passing this game by if the art doesn’t grab them and I think that would be a mistake. What you get in Village Rails is a wonderful little puzzle that’s fairly quick, easy to teach and will keep the old grey matter chugging along nicely.

Song of Tales from Man O'Kent Games is a new story telling game from the team behind SSO, Turing, and Moonflight, one of the most clever deck-building (or un-building, check the review for more info there) games I have played. I am always keen to see what is coming next from the team at Man O'Kent. Song of Tales will come to kickstarter soon, you can find out more information from here. This is an early prototype provided for free for a preview, that does not have final artwork and the rules are subject to change. In Song of Tales, players compete to be the best story-teller. This is done in a very clever and engaging way. As much as the bulk of this game is made up by the players own creative thinking, there is a real game in this box. That is not something that can be said for other story-telling games. Let's get it to the table. Set-Up First players need to choose which character they want to play as. This is more than an aesthetical choice. Although the art is stunning! No, this is about how you want to tell the story. Each character rewards you for weaving your tale in a certain way. For example, Shahrazad has to rhyme every fifth thing they say with a word on the current story card. Tanuki must include at least two sound effects, a good one for younger children! And Kitsune has to recite their story in the form of a Haiku, which is a little more tricky! Once everyone has made their choice, or the cards have been randomly assigned, however you want to do it, each player is given the start and end card relevant to their character, and their oh so cute meeples. Then finally, all players are dealt four random story cards. The first player is randomly determined or you can pick based on whomever has the best seat! And the person to their right is given the last player marker. Flip the box lid to show the score chart on the reverse side, and place one large and one small meeple for each character on the zero space. The game can now begin. How to Play Song of Tales begins with the starting player placing their start and finish card in front of them on the table, with a gap big enough to fit their four other story cards in-between. They can then place those other four cards in any order they see fit, creating the best flow for the story they want to tell. This forms the story tellers core story line. Each other player, starting with the person to the story tellers left, can then add one card from their hand, either above or below one of the four core story lines. When doing so, they may add as many of their meeples, known as envoys. This is to show that this card was laid by them, but also to tempt the story teller into allowing this player to use this card to take over the story, giving them a chance for some points on this round. Each Envoy placed gives the story teller one point that round if they choose it. You are bidding for the chance to join in and score some points yourself, but need to provide a reason for being chosen. Players will add cards above or below the core story cards until there is no more space, or all players pass. Then, the story can begin! The story teller will then place one of their Envoy meeples down between the first two cards and begin weaving their story. Each player has key words on their character card, that if said, gain them a point if they have a spare envoys left to mark the word. The story teller needs to use specific words, all other players just need to have a synonym from a certain category said. A food for example. As such, all players are involved at all times. Not just the story teller. All players can score at all times. Plus, you would hope, they would be enjoying listening to the story! The story teller needs to keep their own key words in mind when weaving their story, whilst thinking about what the previous and next cards are, but most importantly at all times keeping in mind their characters story telling style. You must not forget to construct your story in the way your character wants, meeting the requirements of your character for each card. If you think you are done, you rotate the card you were on 90 degrees. If the other players agree and are satisfied that you have met your criteria, they rotate it a further 90 degrees so that is it now upside down, and completed. When a card is finished, if the next card in line has one either above and/or below, the story teller has a choice to make. To continue their core story, or take the path offered by one of the listeners. If they choose one of the other players cards, they can then take any envoys placed on the card as points for that round, and then the story telling duties pass to the player that played that card. If a new story teller takes over, they can place as many other cards that match the current card paths colour as they like below/above the card they are on, in the same column, so long as they keep the story moving to the usual rules. When they are done, the envoy meeple moves back to the core path, and the story ends when the meeple hops over the last card in the line. All players will then score one point for each envoy meeple on their character card showing a word was used, or envoys collected from other players played cards. One point is also awarded for each card of each players colour that was used in the story. The main reason you would play more cards when you take over as the active story teller. Players will then draw back up to four cards, collect back all their envoys, and pass the story teller marker to the next player. The game ends when each player has had one turn starting a story, and the player with the most points wins. But hopefully, everyone wins, with the funny and engaging stories that have been told. This game won't be for everyone. When you play Song of Tales there is some expectation on the story teller to weave an entertaining and coherent story which not all players will enjoy. But if this is your idea of fun, then this game will create a wonderful experience for you to do this in. Essentially, I think this is a marmite sort of game, in that you will either love it or hate it. (British reference to a food product that polarises the consuming public) Your feeling wont have much if anything to do with the game if you don't like this sort of thing, it's just that making stories up isn't for you. But if you do enjoy telling stories, then the reason you will love Song of Tales will have everything to do with the game. The characters feel so well crafted from history, folk lore, and stories passed down the generations. The art is thought provoking, full of mystery, and just so beautiful. The flow of the game is brilliantly constructed. All players feel connected at all times. All players can score at all times. And each story woven creates a new memory, unique only to this game, and your friends and family that witnessed it. I love how the box is used as the scoring board. But the star of the show for me is the unique character meeples. They are all specifically made, linked to the characters, and look stunning. Everything about this production screams of passion, care, and attention to detail. My family enjoy story based games, and have enjoyed many hours with story cubes and DnD. Song of Tales feels like it sits somewhere in the middle of those two experiences. I have enjoyed trying the game out with different characters, and seeing how different members of my family react to the different challenges each one brings. I like the sense of a game this brings to a story telling experience. But would like more control over my character. If you are looking for something different to play with your family and friends that involves creative story telling, I cannot think of anything that would deliver a better game experience than Song of Tales, other than DnD. There is a solo and cooperative mode too, and so much replayability on this game, from your imagination alone. I look forward to seeing how this game does on Kickstarter and would urge anyone who feels inspired after reading this to go check out Man O'Kent on instagram to follow this games development.

TEN WBG Score: 8.5/10 Player Count 1-5 You’ll like this if you like: Port Royal, Quacks of Quedlinburg, Lost Cities. Published by: Alderac Entertainment Group Designed by: Molly Johnson, Robert Melvin, Shawn Stankewich Card games have been a staple part of my life since I was very young. I vividly remember long summer days, sat playing Solitaire until it was time for tea. Every now-and-then a new card game will come out that be billed as the next 'must have.' Point Salad, The Mind, and The Crew come to mind for some recent examples. It's usually as they are seen as bringing something new mechanically, such as The Mind and The Crew. Or, something seen before, but in a fresh and fun way such as Point Salad. I am always interested to see what the next 'hot' game will be in each genre, and how and why certain games rise to the top of the hype lists! TEN seems to be the next game gaining this sort of traction for card games, and I think I can tell why. It's not a secret, or a clever marketing ploy. It's simply this. Ten is a really, really good game. Let's talk about why. I enjoy games that take one mechanic and that find a way to deploy that one mechanic well. Furnace recently gained a lot of hype, I think from positive early reviews and a stunning box art. But this was driven by a game that took engine building, and distilled it into its purist form. TEN does a similar job with push-your-luck. There are some excellent card games out there that use push-your-luck very well already. Port Royal being the stand out example for me. However TEN brings this mechanic into its purist form. Port Royal requires you to recruit a crew, fight of ships, complete missions. It is a fantastic game, don't get me wrong, one of my favourites. But TEN distills this mechanic further. It does not deviate from its core objective. To make a great push-your-luck card game. The abstract theme, the simple rules, and basic scoring; TEN is not trying to do anything clever. Other than avoid the superfluous. Which TEN achieves with flying colours. Even the name! Everything is stripped back to the bare mechanics. Now, this could make the game simple, or even dull. But it absolutely does not do that. TEN is a fantastic experience. Made better by the simplistic play. Without the worries of trying to be clever, or weave in a redundant theme. TEN is left to focus on pure game play and fun. So, how does it play? In TEN, players are given five currency tokens and a reference card if they need it. They are really not needed, but can help determine the starting player. The deck is shuffled and you are ready to play. The first player will take the draw deck and flip over the top card, placing it face up for all to see. In the deck, there are a mixture of cards numbered one to ten in four different colours, wild cards, and currency cards. On your turn, you can keep flipping cards until you chose to stop, or go bust. Going bust can happen in two ways. First, if you turn over numbered cards with a value of more than ten, you will go bust. Second, if you turn over currency cards with a value of more than ten you will go bust. However, currency cards deduct from the total of your numbered cards. A pink six followed by a green two would see your current total being eight. However, if you draw a currency card with five pips on, your current total will drop to three. Your currency total is not affected in the same way, but the number of these cards in the deck is a lot less, and the highest value currency card is a five, so the chance of going bust here is lower. You need to be wary of drawing a nine in numbered cards, so a threat of going bust appears on card two if the first was a numbered card. But with the currency cards, you have a bit more room for pushing-your-luck. If you choose to stop before you go bust, you can pick to either take currency to the value of the currency cards currently turned over; or all of the numbered cards. You are also then able to buy cards from the market. The cost is the value shown on the card. If you go bust, you will loose all of this, but gain three currency. If you don't go bust and take the numbered cards, all other players will gain currency to the value of the currency cards drawn that round. If you take the currency, the other players will not gain anything, but the numbered cards will be moved to the market, available to all players at a later stage. If you draw a wild card, the game must immediately pause whilst this card is auctioned to all players. Starting with the player to the left of the active player, each person can bid on the wild card. You don't have to bid, but you only get one chance to bid. The highest bidder takes the card and then the active player continues their round. If all players pass, the card is discarded. The game runs until the deck is exhausted at which points all players have one final chance to buy something from the market, and then all players will score their their cards. During the game, you are looking to create runs of sequential numbered cards in each of the four colours. You can use wilds to your advantage, and at the end of the game, you will score one point for each card in an uninterrupted run. It's a simple task, within a simple game. But believe me, this game will get you! It all sounds very simple. Basic even. But as someone who very much enjoys a good three hour crunchy euro, this game does exactly what a good card game should. It is simple, short, but very satisfying. I love it! TEN is getting the hype for very justified reasons. The distilled game play, rewarding push-your-luck mechanics, and quick and simple scoring, provide the perfect filler card game experience. I love push-your-luck games. But often they can be too brutal, or simply, just not fun. A push-your-luck game that punishes players for going bust in too harsh a way is just not for me. Playing games should be enjoyable. I appreciate that sometimes you want difficult choices to make. But in a push-your-luck, where you are doing just that, pushing your luck; I am not sure this the place for this. Its not a big strategic decision. It is a throw of the dice. Or more accurately put, a flip of the cards. I don't think push-your-luck games is the time that this hobby should punish players for doing the wrong thing. Sure, you can play the odds. Count the cards and work out the percentages of what may come next. But it is still random, and ultimately, who wants to count cards. Especially when there are 129 of them! No, pushing your luck should be more like playing the two-penny games at the arcade. You really enjoy it when you win and turn 2p into 6p! But when you lose, and 2p turns into someones else's 2p, you don't care as it was fun trying and the loss isn't too great. The net live score in the push-your-luck here is a clever way of adding to the tension, and encouraging players to keep going. But the reward of the three currency tokens if you go to far is enough to soften the blow if you turn one too many cards over. Missing out on the market phase if there is something specific you want, that you think another player may take before it comes round to you again is frustrating. But on those occasions, play it safe and only turn over a few cards. The game ending with the exhaustion of the deck is a clever way to moderate the strategy. Knowing that there is a predetermined number of cards available, by watching the amount of cards other players take cards on their turn; players can actively see what is left for them. And how other players may be doing. On your turn, you may want to get something specific, a green three to join up with your green one, two, four, five and six. But this phase is less about trying to get a specific card, that really is more a job for the market. And more about just trying to get as many cards as possible. Even if you duplicate cards you already have. You cannot score more than one run per colour, but taking a card you don't need but other players may need will still increase your chances of winning. Watching as other players slowly build up there runs, bidding for the wilds as they come up, and creating long, satisfying runs of your own is highly rewarding. The sense of satisfaction from playing this game is in direct opposition to the simplicity of the game itself. In terms of fun factor to the level of rules and difficulty, this game has to be considered right up there with some of the greats! Multiple plays are rewarded too as you can employ different strategies. Trying to become the wealthiest player so that you can win all bids and buy whatever you need from the market is a fun way to play TEN. Gaining every numbered card you can, no matter the use for you is a sneaky way to get through the deck quicker, and make the game shorter. Or, you could focus on simply building your runs as best you can. But you could simply play the same way each time. Just playing this game is fun. TEN brings more of an event than a deck of cards should bring. The bright vibrant box helps this game stand out. But what will keep players coming back to it, is the fun and satisfaction gained from playing the game. If you like push -your-luck games you will love this. If you don't like push-your-luck games, then you should try this to see if this changes your mind.

Harry Potter: Mischief on Diagon Alley WBG Score: 7 Player Count: 3-5 You’ll like this if you like: Escape: The Curse of the Temple, Pakal, Loading. Published by: The Op If your children like Harry Potter, and you want to buy a new simple game to bring some fun to your table, then this may be the one for you! Its fast, chaotic, and very easy to learn. And every time it has hit the table here, has caused barrels of laughs! Or should that be cauldrons? Let's get it to the table to see if this is one for you. Set Up There are a few variations of gameplay, but I will focus first on the main game. For that, each player must choose one shop place mat and put it in front of them. Then, depending on player count, they must add either three or four of each of the items available, other than the ones their own shop sells to their mat. Then each player must take one of each of the three dice, and set the cobblestone board in the middle of the play area with the remaining pieces placed on this. How to Play You are now ready to begin. One player will say out loud "One, two, three, Windgardium leviosa!" With the right inflection of course, and the game begins. Each player will pick up their three dice and roll each one together in front of them. All players are looking to be the first person to remove all items from their shop that should not be there, and collect only the items that should. The first person to do this shouts "Mischief Managed" and the round ends immediately for all players. The items are moved on or off your board by rolling the dice, and from the affect of the dice rolled by the other players. As each player rolls their dice, they must immediately, and as quickly as they can, follow the dices instructions. When they have done this, they can then roll again. You do not need to wait for other players to be ready, or roll in turn. This is real-time frantic fun! Play as fast as you can. The dice will show either a right, left, cobblestone, or question mark on one. Telling you the direction you can move items too, or take items from. The Number dice will show one, two, or three, telling you how many items you can take or move. The final dice will show which item you can take or move. If the item rolled is the item you are trying to collect, the one that belongs in your shop, then you can take that item from the direction the dice tell you and add them to your board. If it is any other item, and you have some of them in your shop currently, then this is how you remove them from your shop. As you do this, other players will be doing the same. So your items will be constantly changing. Sometimes to your advantage. Other times, not so much! It is a chaotic experience, that I found works best when people constantly talk. "I am taking two Owls from you Jacob." "Ok, Mya, here are two broomsticks coming 'atcha." Everyone of course is talking all at once, but you will be surprised at how your brain focuses in, and you can process all this information as you play. There will be screams of delight as you give people want them want or take items from them they do not. And wails of despair as you give them back some unwanted chocolate frogs! Is it Fun Well, this will very much depend on your attitude towards real-time and simple games. If you enjoy the fast-paced nature of real-time games, you will enjoy this. It is nothing but frantic! However, the game is also very simple. Designed primarily for younger children, there are not many tactics or strategies you can employ here. It's just a case of who can roll and process the information from the roll the fastest. I love this experience, but my children did not. They found it initially a lot of fun. Then, a little too chaotic. And finally, a little unfulfilling as they found it too luck based. But, they still asked to play. Whereas for me, I was the reverse. I initially found it a little too limited, but latter embraced the luck based chaos and really enjoyed it. Ultimately, we all enjoyed playing but were getting different things from it. The game works to a race to 11 Galleons. You gain three Galleons for being the first player to end the game, and an extra Galleon is awarded to each player for every item in their shop that should be there, after you have deducted one point for every item in the shop that shouldn't be there. However, we have often played well beyond this score limit as you can reach this within a few games, and games can be over in a matter of minutes. Really you can play for as log as you like and score however you like. The fun is in the game, not the scoring. There are also two other variations of gameplay. Pack Your Trunks asks players to flip their board to show their trunk instead. In this version, they must place one of each item on their trunk. Each player takes the three dice and the remaining items are placed on the central cobblestone board. The game plays just like the base game, but here players are simply trying to get as many things into their trunk as possible. The game ends when the cobblestone is empty and then players score one point for each complete set of the five items in their trunk. You're a Wizard! works similarly where each player starts with an equal number but random assortment of items and three dice again on their trunk. Play works as usual again, but this time, instead of trying to fill your trunk, you are trying to empty it. The first to do so gains one Galleon. The first to get three Galleons is the winner. It's interesting to me that how in a game like this, based purely on luck, in one game when you are looking to move things into your trunk, you eventually will do so. Whereas, in another where you are looking to empty your trunk, you will also ultimately always achieve this too. I don't quite get the math here. Perhaps in a game where you are looking to empty your trunk, you will often have a lot of things in there, but forget those moments. And only focus on the single moment where you have nothing. And equally, in the game where you are looking to fill it, you forget the moments when you are empty. I do not know the science. But what I do know is that despite these variants having exactly the opposite goal, they both feel very similar, and also play just like the main game. These variants will not make you like this if you didn't already. But if you did enjoy the main game they are a welcome addition. The only issue I have with the game is the dice. They are far too small. In a game of speed, where you are picking up, rolling, then assessing a group of dice as quickly as possible, these are not big enough. Whereas the tokens are beautifully thick. Look below. They are so chunky and easy on little fingers to pick up and move around with ease. Whereas the dice are tiny. Hard to pick up quickly. And hard to read in a time pressured environment. It's strange. The designers clearly thought about this, otherwise why make the tokens to ridiculously thick? So, why then not do the same to the dice? Cost I presume. But is is a shame. And you cannot replace them as they are custom dice. Maybe Etsy will fix this?! Overall, this is a nice addition to a family collection if you enjoy the fast-paced frantic nature of real-time games with limited strategy, and lots of luck based dice throwing. I find this to be highly entertaining myself and a pleasant distraction from the more serious games I play. And I am a real sucker for anything HP branded! But this won't be for everyone. So consider your family and group wisely. But if you ever want to throw some dice down with me, One, Two, Three, Wingardium Leviosa...

Break The Cube WBG Score: 8 Player Count: 2-4 You’ll like this if you like: Mastermind, Break the Code. Published by: IELLO Designed by: Ryohei Kurahashi Rule book here Break the Cube is a follow up to the 2017 Break the Code, and a reimplementation of Yomen, also released in 2017. It's a classic puzzle game where you are looking to figure out what pattern your opponent has made through a series of simple questions. Eliminating incorrect options, one by one. Anyone who played Mastermind through the 70's and 80s will be very familiar with this process, as well as the satisfaction when you figure it out. Does Break the Cube keep this charm? Let's get it to the table to find out. Set Up Each player will take a screen and two small, two medium, and two large blocks of the same colour and place one of each behind their screen. Take two foundation tiles and place one behind your screen and one in front. Give the other three blocks to the other player, and take their three unused pieces placing them on your foundation tile in front of your screen. Then, with the three blocks behind your screen, create a shape. You must have no overlapping pieces, at least one piece on a second height level, in a 3x3x3 max layout. How to Play Now, taking it in turns, each player needs to try and guess what the other player has built using the three pieces in front of their screen. These pieces will match the three pieces behind the other person screen and you need to try to arrange them into the same shape as they have. You can do this by asking one of three questions in turn with the other player. Question 1. What can you see at a certain letter? This will give you information about the view from a certain letter for the other persons shape. For example, in the picture above from letter H, the near side player can see purple, white, blank. One purple cube with a white one on top, and then nothing in the third possible space. From F, they can see, purple, purple, purple. From E they can see blue, white, blank. Now of course, in the case of H an F, what you are seeing is right in front of you, whereas with E, what you are seeing is positioned one space back. However, the other person will not know this information, and needs to work this out through other questions. You are working in three dimensions, but getting clues in two. Question 2. What can you see at a certain number? This will give you top down information in terms of what can be seen when looking directly down on the shape. So in the case of the shape above, when looking at nine, the space on the bottom right of the grid, you would simply see purple. With this view, you never see more than one colour, but can sometimes see blank. Such as if you looked at six, you would see blank. Which would help piece together information from above after seeing what was viewable from E. Starting to make sense? The final question you can ask is 3. Does the shape I've built perfectly match your shape? Or more commonly, "Have I done it!?" If the answer to this is yes, then you have won. The other player will have one more turn to try and also win if you were the first player, otherwise that is game over. Multiple players can share the victory if you both get it on the same turn. But ultimately, this is a race game. Who can figure out their opponents pattern first. There is an element of memory to this as well, trying to remember all the pieces of information you have learnt as you play the game. However, if you don't enjoy that, you can use the below score pad to record your notes as you ask each question. I found this to be a lot easier, but much less of a challenge. Try both, see what works for you. To make it more difficult, you could also try playing with shapes made from four or five blocks instead of three. And this is a good way to even up a game between players of different ages or abilities. Trying to figure out a shape made of four or five blocks may initially seem quite daunting. But after a few plays, you will start to work out clever ways to learn the information more efficiently. You will get there. The most useful thing I learnt as I played this game, was not to set anything in stone too early. Always try to get at least two pieces of information for each space before you make an assumption. Ideally, you want to check both the X and Y axis before guessing where something is. Although of course, you cannot dally to much! This is a race game after all. Is It Fun? Playing Break the Cube moves very quickly from intriguing, to frustrating, to confusing, to incredibly satisfying. Starting off the game, you want to find out what shape your opponent has made. There are so many possibilities. But you know the players are in the same position, so don't feel too worried. But you want to find it out. You will then make some progress, maybe even thinking you have solved part of the puzzle, only to then be told something that utterly baffles you. How can B be blank if 2 is orange? You will spend a turn or two assessing all the possibilities, before something clicks, and you work out the solution. At which point, your brain will reward you with some lovely juicy Dopamine and you will feel on top of the world! It's a nice little journey. There is a pure joy from working out little puzzles like this. Each game will last between 5-10 minutes. I have found that the losing player is usually only a turn or so away from figuring out the puzzle as well. So, as much as they may be frustrated at not winning when they were so close, they won't feel out of it, and reluctant to play again. In fact, starting a "quick game" of Break the Cube, often results in me playing this over and over. It is just so darn additive! This game will appeal to those of us who enjoyed playing Mastermind in our youth. This game definitely harps back to that game. Those simple pleasures of slowly getting closer to the solution. The time pressure of trying to solve it before you ran out of turns. The satisfaction when you get it correct. The advantage though with Break the Cube is that both players are doing this at the same time. In Mastermind, you obviously have to take it in turns to guess. Whilst the other player essentially acts as a facilitator to your game. Here, both of you are playing and facilitating at the same time. A perfect example about how modern board gaming can take a classic idea and develop it to something a little better. I would recommend this game to families, and couples who enjoy a quiet little puzzler. It works up to four, but really has a sweet spot at two. There is a simple pleasure from games like this. Two people. Sharing a peaceful moment together. In light-hearted competition with one another. Both racing for the satisfaction of solving the puzzle first. When you loose, it is frustrating. But not so much that you don't want to play again. More so, enough that you do want to play again. You will always want to end with a win. Which makes this game run and run in a delightful way.

Chronicles of Avel WBG Score: 8 Player Count: 1-4 You’ll like this if you like: Castle Panic, Forbidden Island, Horrified Published by: Rebel Studio Designed by: Przemek Wojtkowiak By Steve Godfrey There have been many great Chronicles over time. The Chronicles of Narnia, The Christmas Chronicles and, well, the movie Chronicle. None of these however have given kids the freedom to create and truly invest in their own fictional character…….unless you count Christmas of course. Rules Chronicles Set up by first creating the map using the four start tiles and then shuffling the rest of the tiles and placing them face down in the configuration you’re using. Give everyone a duel layered player board and a character sheet and then colour in and name your character. Yes, even you, I don’t care if you’re a grown adult, this is an essential part of the game and we all know colouring is fun no matter how old you are. Decide how difficult you want the game and place the corresponding tile at the back of the map and you're ready to go. Chronicles of Avel is played over two main phases. First, what I would call a preparation phase and Second is pretty much a tower defence game. On your turn you can perform two actions. You can move to an adjacent space and if your on a space with a portal then it’s adjacent to another portal. If you move onto a face down tile you flip it over and spawn any monsters on it if it’s a monster space. You can trade items or money with another player on your space, you can heal two damage or you can use a tile action. These come in a variety of flavours which include, putting out a castle wall, getting new equipment, selling equipment, sealing off monster tiles and laying traps to name but a few. Getting equipment will see you pulling items from the bag with a five second time limit and equipping them to your hero or putting them in your backpack. Warning though as you can only fit things in your backpack as long as you can physically fit them in your backpack. The last action you can do is fight a monster in your space. Hero’s will take two green dice and any dice given to them from equipped items and roll them against the monster dice. Hits and shields will be compared and both will take any damage. This will go for either three rounds of combat (don’t worry it’s very quick) or if either the monster or the hero is defeated. Once all players have gone the round will move on and either players will heal two damage or monsters will respawn depending on which round you enter into. Once all the rounds have passed the Beast (not the one from The Chase) will appear and depending on the difficulty and player count will spawn more monsters. From then on once all players have activated all the monsters will move one space forward. Any traps will trigger when their space is moved onto potentially doing damage and any monsters who try to move into the castle space with walls up will be repelled back but a wall section is destroyed. If any of them or The Beast successfully move into the castle space then the heroes lose. If all the monsters and the beast are defeated then the heroes win. A game of two halves I often find that making a game that has two distinct parts like this one can either be hit or miss. If one half isn't as good or is too wildly different than the other then you leave players wishing that the designers had just made a full game and focused on the good half. It’s a bit of a gamble. Luckily Chronicles of Avel pulls it off really well and manages to blend the two halves well enough that you see the second half as an escalation of the first and one that serves as a payoff to everything you were doing previously. The first part of the game is where you get to level up your character so to speak. You’re going to be adventuring round and literally laying out the map and discovering new areas. Your initial turns will more than likely involve players doing at least one move action into an unexplored tile and seeing what’s there and potentially using any abilities there. It won’t be long though before you're all discussing plans, figuring out who’s in the best place to lay a trap, seal off a gate and put up some walls all in preparation for the oncoming storm. All of that is really satisfying to be able to do because you know you're helping out the team and hopefully making the endgame a bit easier. What else is arguably more satisfying though is powering up your character. From the simple system of delving into a bag and hoping to draw something awesome to upgrading those items to something better. You really do get a feeling of being more powerful. At the beginning of the game, taking on most monsters will feel a bit risky and winning those fights you will feel like a hero who had to dig deep to secure victory and reap the rewards. As you gain items with the ability to reroll or even gain extra dice you’ll feel more confident taking on the bigger monsters. If all works out and the beast emerges you’ll have no problem walking up to it and saying “bring it on”! That’s not to say you can rest on your laurels though because if you take enough damage then you will lose items. Once the big bad is finally released it’s time to put that training to good use. The game does play as normal and aside from walls, traps, and sealing gates you can still use any tile for its action. It’s more than likely though you’ll be racing around the map trying to herd the monsters and fight your beastly nemesis but this really is the make or break part of the game. Replayability Don’t be fooled into thinking this game is going to be a breeze every time you play it. It’s not going to have its difficulty turned up to eleven but it will give you a fun challenge. There are so many ways you can tweak the difficulty from the Beast token to the map set up, even the player count has some bearing. On the times we have lost this it’s been a close fought battle. Whilst that may sound frustrating to some, I much prefer it that way. It means that just because you’ve levelled up your character the game isn’t going to be a walk in the park and that the second half of the game is still worth your time playing out. Character creation 101 Let’s get into one of the big draws for this game, character creation. Aesthetically that player board looks fantastic the duel layer board does more than just look good, it actually has a really cool function. As an aside, if you can have a dual layer player board then you should. Having the backpack be used for its proper space is genius and being able to physically see the upgrades on your character is a really fun idea and is visually pleasing. My youngest's one gripe with that though is that you now can’t see her character properly but I think she’s willing to give it a pass for how cool it looks. I worry that some people may be tempted to skip colouring in their characters and giving them a name just so that they can start playing. While you're free to play the game how you like, I would say that you’re missing out on a really fun element if you do. It adds a level or personalisation to the game which the kids get a huge kick out of. The kids now want to play this game so that they can take their character through the game. It’s all well and good being able to play a pre-made character, it’s so much more fun to play one that you’ve made. Plus there’s no arguments over who gets which character! If you don’t want to make characters right before a game then why not make it into an activity one evening, get everyone to create one or even many characters and then you're all set for when you do want to play. If you're doing that why not even let them create a backstory for them on the back of the sheet! Chronicles of Avel is up there for us as a family favourite. There's enough there to keep adults and children engaged and the scalable difficulty and replay ability means that this is gonna stick around in your collection for a good while. If that wasn’t enough there is an expansion that adds boots to your character for all you footwear aficionados and another bigger expansion in the works and I for one am keen to get my hands on both.

Marvel Dice Throne WBG Score: 8.5 Player Count: 2-6 (but really 2!) You’ll like this if you like: Disney Sorcerer's Arena, Dice Throne, Marvel Champions. Published by: The Op, Roxley Designed by: Gavan Brown, Nate Chatellier, Manny Trembley Dice Throne first came out in 2018. It was billed as a Yahtzee style fighting game. Pitting warriors from different backgrounds in a fight to the death. Or at least, to the end of your hit points. Death seems a bit much in retrospect. Clever card play was added to the dice chucking fun, and a legendary game was born. I was never that attracted to it as the characters all seemed a little too generic for my liking. But then, after the success of Season one and Season two, kickstarter and franchise money came to play and the Marvel version was made! Thor vs Captain Marvel?! Yes please. Let's get it to the table and see how it plays. Set Up The hardest thing in this game is picking who you want to play as! All the characters are so cool, you will want to try them all! You can randomly determine the characters, but where is the fun in that. Sit there, look through each one, pour over all the cool powers, and agonise over who you want to try first. When that is done, grab a drink, perhaps have a comfort break, then go back and change your mind a few more times, then collect the character you have eventually settled on. Change one more time, then open that characters box of treats. Each character is set up in their own box, with their player mat, health and combat power dials, cards, and dice all neatly stored, ready for you to play with. Open them all up in front of you, and you are ready to go. The simple accessibility to get this game to the table is one of the huge highlights to this game. How to Play On your turn, you will roll all of your dice. You can re-roll as many of them as you like up to three times. Each player has their own special abilities, clearly shown on their player boards. Your aim is to match the dice symbols to one of your powers to enact its abilities. This part is very much like Yahtzee where you are looking for straights or groups of the same symbols. When you have finished rolling and decided what power you want to use, you then announce the Offensive Ability you have chosen. Your opponent can then try and change your roll with their own powers and cards. If they do, you can then change your attack if required, or use any un-used re-rolls. Once the dust is settled, generally what happens here is your opponent will then roll for their own defense against your attack. Each character has a different type of defence, either blocking some damage or giving damage back. Both players will adjust their health accordingly and then the attacking player does it all again! That's right. You get two attacks per turn! The game will go like this, back-and-forth until one player looses all their health. There are Upkeep phases where players resolve any effects of status tokens played on them, an Income phase where you increase your Combat Points dial by one and draw one new card into your hand. But the bulk of the game comes with the dice. Roll dice. Choose an attack. Enact damage on your opponent. Great fun! Despite the dice being the obvious star of the show, it is the clever card play that makes this game for me. You start the game with two Combat Points and get one more each round. These are used to play your cards. Each card needs a certain number of Combat Points in order for you to play it. The cards will allow you to manipulate your or your opponents dice, increase the powers available to you on your player board by upgrading them, and as a way to gain your own Status tokens, taking them from your character sheet, and adding them to your player board for later use. The status tokens are all unique for each character and offer hugely varying selections of abilities. I am a big fan of Spiderman's ability to create Combo's and essentially have extra turns. That feels great. Loki has suitably tricky powers allowing him to foil his opponents attacks with special cards that only he has access too. And I loved Captain Marvels Cosmic Ray, that allows her to add one dice rolls number from two dice, to any attack. Each power felt suitably thematic and accurate to the characters abilities from the comics and movies we have all loved over the years. The status effects are all very easily explained and used. Each character has their own character sheet which holds the tokens, and details each one very clearly. Everything about this production screams quality and careful planning. Is it Fun Getting Marvel Dice throne to the table is so simple. The game trays are so good and useful for a quick set up and put away. Each character feels very different and it will take a while to learn their own particular strengths and abilities. But the game itself is a breeze to learn and teach. Playing Dice Throne feels fast and fun. Sure, it is often luck based due to the dice, but there are so many options for most dice rolls, and a lot of opportunities to manipulate your luck with your cards and powers. There is a lot more strategy to this game than first meets the eye. As you play, you will become obsessed with rolling what you need for your Ultimate move. Each player has their own unique special move, activated from rolling five sixes. Which, on its own, sounds hard and rare. But with your re-rolls, dice manipulation, and extra powers, it does happen usually once per game. And when it does, oh goodness does it feel good! You just hope you're the first one to roll it. Do You Feel Lucky? There is something magical about dice. Throwing dice. And getting cool things from throwing the right dice feels good. Sure, there is a luck involved, but I think that this is where a lot of the joy comes from. No one would cheer as loudly at a Vegas table if someone won big after clever card play. Watch the Poker finals to prove this. I am not saying it isn't absorbing or fun to watch, I am just saying the cheer from winning big from something luck based like Roulette is often bigger than winning something strategy based like Poker. Why? I think this comes from the instant result. Generally, a good move in a board game comes with careful planning over time. Whereas something good happening to you that is luck based happens in a moment. Flip a card. Push your luck. Roll a dice. As these five dice crash and roll around your table (or dice tray) you will be hoping for some luck. And when it comes in, it feels great! You go from zero to hero in a moment. That quick progression and instant success is a spectacle to watch and experience. Some games can be ruined by this. If you are working hours with clever strategy only to be blighted at the last moment by another playing getting lucky, that does not feel good for anyone. But when a game is built on this mechanism of luck and dice throwing, this frustration is replaced by joy. It wont be for everyone, but if you want a game that involves a bit of luck from throwing dice, than this could be the one for you. It's not all luck, such as a game like Strike, but you cannot avoid the fact that luck plays a big part. Each player has access to their own special status powers and cards that can affect your luck, and manipulate your fortune to your advantage. Some characters are trickier than others, but they all take a little bit of working out. And this process of studying your character and developing an understanding as to how best use each one is a real joy to me. There is something to be said about working out the best match ups, although I don't think I am quite there yet. But I am enjoying trying to understand each character more, depending on who I am up against. This game is billed as a 2-6 player game. But for me, this is all about two players going head-to-head in a dice chucking battle. The down time in higher player counts does not work for me. It feels fast and frantic in a two, but tedious and slow in anything higher. I understand why they made this compatible with higher player counts, but I feel it adds very little with more than two, and the game would be better placed to simply market itself as a two-player only game. The cards are all clearly labeled with a clever colour frame which quickly highlights what type of card it is, and when it can be used. This is displayed on the side of the card too, just under the symbol showing you cost of the card in combat points, and also showing the phase it can be played in. All the symbology is very user friendly and will become very quickly understood wen you are at the table, with your character board and sheet in front of you. The art used is fantastic, and really brings alive what you are doing, although this does lead to me to my only real complaint with this game. Will you Like this or Love this? The theme of this game is fantastic. Marvel characters fighting out using awesome moves activated by clever card play and dice throwing. What's not to love!? However, the theme does feel a little absent as you play. You can forget who you are, and what you are doing, and move into a war of attrition, simply trying to get your opponents health dial to zero before they do the same to you. I think the difference between people liking and loving this game, will come from those who can bring the theme to the table and keep it there. The bright and vibrant art on the cards and character boards will help, but it will rely on you as the player to keep the theme front of mind. Will you be throwing threes, Illusions, or helmets? It's all the same. But how you interpret your dice rolls will affect the immersion into the theme as you play. The status powers help with the theme and the players being swept up into the Marvel world. They are all thematically chosen and relevant to the characters you are playing as, and if you can add a bit of flavour text and story as you play and use them, it will bring a little more drama to the table. Although I appreciate not everyone will want to, or enjoy doing that. For me, it adds a lot to the game, and helps me enact my lifetime fantasy of being a super-hero just that little bit more. Which really is what this game is all about. Do you want to get lost in the Marvel universe for half an hour? Pretending you are Loki or Spiderman. Fighting Captain Marvel or Thor. Reenacting scenes from The Avengers movies. If this sounds like fun to you, I would wager you are going to absolutely love this. if you like clever card play linking to a bit of luck from dice throwing, you will enjoy the game but think perhaps it's a little over produced. If you don't enjoy luck based games, this will not be for. But as someone who loves dice chucking games, who is a huge Marvel fan, and is very happy to get lost in the theme of a game by throwing myself into the universe it creates, I love this game. It will come to the table more due its accessibility. The simple set up provided by the game trays is a huge plus. But this is not something that would last for long if the game wasn't fun. But the game is fun. A lot of fun. The satisfaction that comes from getting the right combination of dice to enact huge damage on your opponents is huge. Achieving this from a combination of luck, clever card play, and the use of your player powers feels great. There are some real highs in every game of Marvel Dice Throne. Addictive highs that will make you come back over and over. Battle after battle. Learning how each character works in a joy in itself, and will make the first few games with each character a lot of fun. Mastering how to use each one feels great too. Feeling as if you are becoming comfortable with each characters strength and weaknesses and learning how best to use them feels great. There is a lot to love about Marvel Dice Throne. I would recommend it to anyone who enjoys the Dice Throne franchise already. Anyone who is a fan of the Marvel universe. Or anyone who likes games with a bit of luck, a bit of strategy, and a lot of high moments. To Battle!

Small Islands WBG Score: 8 Player Count:1-4 You’ll like this if you like: Carcassonne, Fjords, Cascadia Published by: MushrooM Games, Kobold Spieleverlag, Lucky Duck Games Designed by: Alexis Allard By Steve Godfrey Have you ever asked yourself the question? If I was trapped on a desert island, what would be the best size of island? I love the show Lost but even I’d have to say that that island would be a bit too big. That series was on for six seasons and even they didn’t get round all of it. So, having weighed up all of the options I’ve decided that a small island is probably best. Besides if this game is anything to go by then there’s tons of resources on them! You probably wouldn’t want to leave! Small Rules Set up by giving each player their pieces and two tiles each from the stack. Then place out the four starting tiles on the table in any orientation following the rules for placement, I’ll get to those in a bit. Then place six tiles on the exploration tile and place three from the main stack face up next to it. Place all four ship tiles in a row above that. Each ship will be placed faced up depending on which colours are in play the rest will be on their grey side. At the start of each round players will get three objective cards. You will pick one for this one round, keep one in reserve to potentially be played next round and then discard the other. On your turn you’ll either take a face up tile then place down one of the three in your hand or land a ship. Tiles have to be orthogonally adjacent to tiles already on the table and all terrain types have to match the tiles they’re touching. Then replace the tile you took with one of the six. At this point you can now place one of your resource tokens on an island over an existing resource. Players continue taking turns like that until the stack of six tiles is empty. From then on players have the choice to carry on laying tiles and replacing the tiles from the main stack, or they can now land a ship. When you land a ship you’ll take the ship of your colour (or a gray ship if there are less than four players and your coloured ship has been used) and place it using the same placement rules. The round then immediately ends and players score their current objectives. The regular objective cards will have two halves on them. The left hand side will have the prerequisites for scoring on them. The right hand side will tell you how you score points for those islands. To be able to score a card you need to place one of your buildings on islands that meet the prerequisites. You can place a building on each island that meets it as long as a) there are enough empty building slots and b) you haven’t already placed a building on that island. The game will play like this until either four rounds have been played out, you can no longer create a six tile stack at the start or a round or there are no tiles left to replace a tile that has been taken. You’ll then score your last objective card and score points for any exploration tokens (you get these from some objective cards) and for every port symbol on tiles surrounding your ship. A tiny island across the sea. The first time you play Small Islands there’s a good chance you’ll make a mistake. It’s nothing to be ashamed of, we’ve all done it and in fact it’s part of the learning process of the game. In the first round you’ll try and make this huge island that will earn you loads of points and when you score that first goal it’ll feel great and you’ll pat yourself on the back for a job well done. Then the second round will hit and around the time you choose objectives for the round you’ll have that sinking feeling and you’ll realise that the Island you so proudly spent the entire last round working on, you won’t be able to score again. It sounds like that could be frustrating and it can be. But once you realise that, you come to understand how you should be playing the game. Small Islands is a game all about self control. In a game like Carcassonne you want to build that city out for big points. Here, you have to stop yourself doing that and spread out lots of profitable islands across the map. They’ve even gone and given you the strategy in the game's title! It might sound simple, you just don’t build big islands, but it’s just so tempting when a perfect tile comes out to just add one more onto it, just to eek out a couple more points. You know you should be planning for the next round as well but what will a couple more points hurt! In some games maybe that wouldn’t be a big deal but in this, where anyone could end the round at any point after that sixth tile has been taken, adds an incredible amount of tension. It could be the difference between you starting the next round at a bit of a head start for your next mission or being on the back foot. I love when games have round based goals but then give you the goals in advance, either privately or publicly. Think Wingspans goals as a comparison. It gives you so many options for how you want to approach the game. You tend to see a decent variety of tiles come out per round but if for some reason the tiles just aren’t coming out to make this goal work, well you can just as easily start to work on next rounds goal. Something else I love about this game is that you're not bound by the goal you picked for the next round. Being able to change tactics before each round is so freeing. There’s nothing worse than being stuck with goals that you just can’t achieve and this alleviates that to some degree. This again really opens up the game and means that everyone has a decent chance of maximising your points each round and keeping in the game. Small islands is a tile laying game and with it brings all the satisfaction that tile laying brings. It’s great to see the islands as they get built out, what shape they’re going to take and exactly how small they end up being (spoiler, maybe not that small) You’ll often find yourself wanting to place placing tiles in spaces just to finish off islands regardless of if it scores you points or not (or maybe that’s just me) yet again proof that they should put a disclaimer on the box saying “warning will power required”. The problem with that of course is that not many people have a friend called Will Power (that’s my one dad joke for this review) Just be sure to give yourself space on the table because this one is going to spread out and moving tiles isn’t easy. I’m still lobbying to get magnetic tiles but it’s just not attracting any attention! (Ok maybe one more for the road) The real trick is knowing when to stop. Small islands is a game of four rounds………maybe, because it could last three, or maybe less? That of course all depends on how long each round goes on for and when or if the stack of tiles runs out. This is a part of the game that I have a love / meh relationship with. On the one hand it’s a fun system that, like I said earlier, really ramps up the tension. It puts the end of the round in the players hands and when you decide to do it could be used for a tactical advantage. On the flip side though there are a couple of things about it that I don’t love. You end a round when you land your coloured or one of the grey ships. The lower the player count the more chances you personally have to end the round and at two this gives you control of half of the rounds. At higher player counts you have less control over this and as such, once you’ve landed your ship you’re waiting for other people to end the round. This means if they’re reluctant to do that then rounds have the potential to outstay their welcome and there’s nothing you can do about it. It doesn’t happen all the time and sometimes it may actually be to your advantage but If you happen to have a goal card that isn’t getting you a lot of points that round then you may be begging for it to end just so you can get new cards. Advanced mode After a few plays you’ll more than likely see most if not all of the goals. To stop these becoming samey Small Islands comes with an advanced mode. There are going to be two decks of cards. One missions deck and one rewards deck. Players will have three of each at the start of each round and then make up their own goal cards, again having one for this round and one for next. You’ll want to start using this variant as soon as you feel ready. They add a lot more variety to the game, and offer an even better chance to score based on how the map is looking at the time you put them together. The base goals are great but have the possibility of being a bit more limiting. That being said you can still enjoy Small Island without ever needing to use this mode so don’t feel that you’ll be playing a lesser game if you don’t. Small Islands, big game The art, the look and the gameplay all come together to make a brilliant, strategic tile laying game that’s another fantastic addition to your collection of tile laying games and may just want to make you visit one of the islands you create. Make sure you finish it first though. No one likes construction work when they’re on holiday!

Mayhem In The Library WBG Score: 8 Published by: Big Potato This is a new one for WBG. Our first jigsaw puzzle review. This site is dedicated to board games but I felt inclined to write a review for this puzzle for three main reasons. It feels like more of a game than a puzzle. Once the pieces are all assembled, there are still things to do. It comes from Big Potato games who generally make board games. This is a little side adventure for them too. It's really, really, fun! Mayhem in the Library is a combination of a traditional puzzle, a Where Wally/Waldo book, and a picture riddle quiz. 1000 pieces will initially stretch your puzzle building skills, before 101 hidden classic Novels need to be found to fully "complete" this puzzle. The Jigsaw Puzzle The Puzzle itself is quite tricky. I don't do a lot of puzzles, but my wife and Mum do, and they helped a lot with this and said it was a little harder than usual. The shapes of the edges for example were not obviously edges. The hard lines that you can usually spot are not there as you can see, but this added to the challenge to me. As someone who is an occasional puzzler, I do not have a system. But for my wife and Mum who wanted to find the edges first, they said they found this frustrating. I liked it. Another reason it is quite tricky is there are a lot of things that look the same all over the picture. Making it hard to determine where certain things need to go. Books for example. Oh my! There are books everywhere! The Hidden Puzzles Then, when you have finished the jigsaw, you need to find 101 hidden books within the picture. Some are instantly obvious, or at least become easy once you get the way this puzzle works. But others will take a while for you to figure out, depending on your knowledge of classic and popular fiction! I enjoyed having this to do. Generally when you finish a jigsaw, you just pack it away. Something you have had out on your table for a while, reaches it's magnificent ending, and then, boom. That's it. Pack it up, Put it on the shelf to gather dust. You'll never look at it again. What a shame. Whereas with this puzzle, its been out on my table now for close to a month. A few weeks to do the puzzle, and then a good few more weeks to find all the hidden books. I am still not quite there. I like the fact that I am coming back to it, time after time day after day, to stare at the puzzle I finished. Not just to bask in my glory, although that is a large part of it of course, but to find the books. Its a nice excuse to enjoy the picture you create. And they make this part easy for you. On the back of the picture you can use to help complete the puzzle, it shows where all the hidden books are, numbered, and with a space to write your answer. Also, on the Big Potato website there is a place you can check your answers, or if you are stuck, simply get them! Overall, I have to say I absolute loved doing this puzzle. Both the jigsaw part and then hidden book part. It brought my family together in a way games have not for a while. The simple peace and quiet of sitting together, and every now and then screaming, "yes!" It feels good. I am very pleased I went through this process, and would very much like to try some other jigsaw outs and see what other tricks puzzles have now-a-days. It's nice to see how industries advance and develop. Especially when you haven't looked at them for a while such as myself and jigsaws. I wonder what will come next?