Project Gaming Unplugged loved our new game, Godfather A New Don!

Here’s a very in-depth overview of the rules for the game – along with some pictures – and a nice review of his thoughts! Some of the highlights include:

“I love that you have plenty of opportunities to manipulate the dice”

“I really like the offering phase.  That is something that is a little different for this type of game.”

“Despite the mafia theme, this is a great family weight game with nothing inappropriate about it.”

“Overall, I think this is a solid, well-designed area control, dice game. “

Thanks for the kind words Austin!

-Jay Cormier

 

 

Another Great Review of Orphan Black: The Card Game

Joel Eddy from Drive Thru Reviews has posted a video review of our new game, Orphan Black: The Card Game – and he loved it! This game has had a very slow launch, but with Tom Vasel giving it the Dice Tower Approved stamp and now Drive Thru giving it a positive review – here’s hoping the game gets onto more gamers’ tables!

A few of the things that stood out for me in the review:

“We have had a ball with this game!”

“It’s got an interesting way of approaching social deduction. It feels like a Werewolf or Resistance style of game but with a little bit more to it.”

“If you like the show, I think you’ll really get a kick out of this. I would get this if you’re a big fan of the show.”

“I would recommend this across the board, regardless if you’ve seen the show.”

-Jay Cormier

Opinionated Gamers review Akrotiri…twice!

It’s a privilege to be reviewed by the oh-so-opinionated reviewers known as Opinionated Gamers! Due to an oversight we actually got two reviews by them – and both reviewers liked the game – huzzah! You can read the whole thing here and the second review here, but here are a few quotes from both reviews that I liked:

“The map building is fun, and there is a lot of thought that needs to be given when placing tiles”

“it does give different viable scoring options”

“Overall, Akrotiri is an enjoyable and challenging 2P game”

“it’s a nice meaty game that I’ve enjoyed playing”

“I find Akrotiri to be a nice relatively meaty two player game”

“I played it once and was favorably impressed”

“It packs a lot of game in a small box”

Thanks for the reviews guys!

-Jay Cormier

Akrotiri is now available to purchase…and to play!!

That’s right – our hit 2-player game that the entire world* has been waiting for is now available to purchase from Coolstuffinc.com! Soon it will be popping up on all online board game stores – and soon it will be in actual stores around the world!! Pretty exciting – and good timing too, what with Christmas coming up and presents needing to be bought for your game-loving loved ones…!!

Get your copy here and be the first person in your hood to have a copy of the coveted 2-player game from Z-Man Games …. AKROTIRI!!!

-Jay Cormier

*might be a smaller subset of the entire population of the world.

Train of Thought Experiment on Twitter

Jay and I still love Train of Thought after all these years and we’ve been using Twitter a lot lately, so it just seemed like a natural fit!  We’re going to do a little experiment and try to run a Train of Thought game (kinda) on Twitter next Tuesday at 3:00 p.m. EST.  If things go well, we’ll make it “a thing”.

The goal will be slightly modified in that the Conductor (me for the first one), will be trying to get the team (all y’all out there in the Twitterverse) to get to 10 Destinations in 10 minutes.  Can we do it?  YES WE CAN!

The Tweet format will be important for game flow:

<round number> <Guess> <hashtag>

e.g. 1 starfish #ToT

Got it?  Good!

Now review the rules, follow me on Twitter @SenFoongLim and hop on board this crazy train!

ALL ABOARD!

~Sen-Foong

Tom Vasel from Dice Tower reviews Tortuga!

While we already got a Dice Tower review from Ryan Metzler about Tortuga, we now have Tom Vasel weighing in as well!

Here are a few things that Tom liked about Tortuga:

“The game has a lot of interaction”

“The game has a really cool look to it.”

“It’s very easy to teach and fun for families to play.”

“I liked it!”

“A fine game and I think a lot of people will like it.”

Thanks Tom for the review! Just so I’m not super biased I will point out that he didn’t like that there was some set collection with the treasures – that you got more points by collecting a set of red, blue, and yellow. He said it wasn’t very thematic – and I totally agree with him on that one.

That is definitely a gamey solution to a challenge we had as designers. The challenge was trying to motivate players to attack one player over another – but have that choice be interesting. When we tried it with either ‘all treasure worth the same’ or ‘different valued treasure’ –  it became a non-decision since you’d always go for the highest valued treasure. The way we have it now you have to think about what colour you need – and you can even push your luck by stealing a white treasure (as white can be any colour – but only if you can get it all the way to Tortuga)! So the game works better with the current rule – but yes, it is thematically a bit wonky!

He also points out the possibility of King Making on the final turn – which is half-true I think. The game allows players to collect face down treasure tokens and the other players never know if each one has 1,2 or 3 treasure on the other side. So this reduces the ability for a player to know who is going to win and therefore affect the outcome on the final turn. That said – if a player can choose player A or player B to attack on the final turn – it definitely will impact their ability to win…so I do see his point.

Regardless – he liked the game and recommends it to families!

-Jay

Tom Vasel Reviews Tortuga on The Dice Tower

Spoiler Alert:  He liked it!

Good to see Tom playing the game and having fun with it.

~Sen-Foong Lim

Fan Expo Toronto 2014

Wow, what a busy day that was!  I went to Fan Expo on the busiest day of the convention with Jessey Wright (who worked at the Flux Capacity booth) and our friend Vince Londini.  We drove up, parked the car and entered utter geek chaos!

Once I made my way to the relative calm of Room 718 (the gaming area), I was greeted by many familiar faces and the rest of the Z-Man crew.  We promptly punched out 4 copies of Akrotiri and got to work teaching people how to play!  Here’s a picture of the punchboard and the nice thick coins.

I think I taught about 12 people how to play, including my old friend Julian Sammy, while Daryl Andrews and Daniel Rocchi taught to even more people (including our good friend, Elly Boersema).  It was wonderful to see people play the game and to hear the overwhelmingly positive feedback.  Now that I’ve played it with people other than Jay, I can see the merit in the decision to pare it down from a 4-player to a 2-player game.  That won’t stop me from getting a second set of components and colouring them differently to make a 4-player homebrew for myself, though!

All in all, I’m very pleased with the game overall.  Chris Quilliams did a great job on the artwork and the whole team at Z-man made sure that the rules are solid and the game plays really well.  It’s a deep and meaty 2-player game that we hope you will enjoy playing just as much as we enjoyed designing it!

After that, we added to the chaos of the room by helping to judge a round of Pandemic Survival, which is a super cool way of making a good game even better!  Imagine 10-20 tables playing Pandemic in teams of 2…and everyone gets the same set of cards and deals with the same outbreaks in the same order.  The only thing that separates each time is what they decide to do with those cards and their actions.  It was pretty intense and down to the wire as several teams had 3 cures in the race for the 4th, but several were eliminated from play as outbreaks started to run rampant!  Oh yeah, and the prize?  The winning team gets to playoff against other winners for a chance to be airlifted to anywhere on the Pandemic map – you know, like…Montreal!

The last thing we did was cap the night off (after eating at Burrito Boys) by playing one of Eric Lang’s prototypes that he co-designed with Antoine Bauza (he of 7 Wonders fame).  Needless to say, it was pretty good.  I’d tell you more, but you know the deal…I’d have to kill you.

I’m looking forward to next year’s con but there’s many more between now and then!  For my next guest appearances, I’ll be at CastleCon in Pickering on October 18th and London’s own Forest City ComiCon on October 19th.  So if you’re local, come on out and play some games!

~Sen-Foong Lim

Reviews of all of our games keep coming in!

Reviews seem to be popping up all the time for one of our games so we thought we’d share wheat people are saying about all the Bamboozle Brother games recently. Check out these great comments! Really makes me happy to see so many people enjoying the game we’re making! Thanks for the kind words everyone!

This Town Ain’t Big Enough for the 2-4 of Us

• Recommendation: Yes! Games won’t take longer than 15 minutes, max, if that. For what it is, it is an excellent little game. If you were panning for gold, this game would be a real gem. – Kevin Garnica
• A really fun tile laying microgame. Plays fast and has interesting moments. I really liked how you score points based on how many symbols your OPPONENTS have in the same town. Very creative. Worth checking out. – Andrew Bellavie
• This is an EXTREMELY good/fun game for the price. Impressed with the “bones” of this one.- Xenothon Stelnicki
• Great lunch time game and filler. Simple rules and plays well at all player numbers. Can add multiples of the game to make the game longer. – Pat Gagnon

But Wait There’s More

• Once you’ve had a taste of “But Wait, There’s More!” you’ll never want to go back to the relatively lacklustre fun of games like Apples to Apples and Snake Oil again. The genius of this game lies in the fun of the pitch – you have a little bit to go on from your hand of attributes & some randomness when you draw from the deck, and it’s all 100% hilarious and fun. Best of all, everyone gets a pitch for the item each round and then everyone votes on what they thought was the best pitch – a nice touch to make sure everyone’s participating and having fun. Highly recommended! – Nicole Hoye
• One of the very few party games I enjoy – at all. And it’s freaking hilarious. – Sean Ross
• Can’t wait! I love this game!!! I laugh until I cry every single time I play…- Tim Sowers
• Played this Saturday night at Gen Con with a full table of 10. One of the best gaming experiences we had all weekend. We fit in two complete games in under an hour (and that included the time it took to learn the rules) and everyone had a great time. This was an easy buy and I’d have bought the game on the spot were it ready. – gescott01

Tortuga

• Tried this at GenCon 2014 and really enjoyed it. – Arthur Rutyna
• This one was a very fun time for us. Sure, there’s not a lot of strategy going on here but, the mechanics make for an enjoyable game. I like how the treasures move from the island to Tortuga throughout the game depending on how many crew members or boats you have available to you. We were a little confused at first but, really got into the swing of things and enjoyed ourselves. The best part to me were that the scores were super close, with the winner only winning by one point and the loser only losing by three. As I said, this is a very fun game! – Joseph Peterson

Belfort

• Had low expectations due to its fantasy setting, but it is surprising fun game to play. Another one where I feel every game I have played was time well spent. It has become a staple in my top 10. Expansion(s) have only enhanced it. – Bob Nash
• Belfort is a very good worker placement game. I like how the points are score in this game. The guilds available being different each game adds a lot of replay value. The production of this game is one of the best that I have seen. The rules, the boards, the player aid, the cards and ressources (each with a different shape) are all great. – Dominic Morier
• The theme and mechanics combine for a really good game. – James Hatfield
• What a wonderful worker placement. It has lot going on, but it all seems to blend together seamlessly. The card drafting and area control are not to be overlooked. Overall, one of the best WP games I have ever played. – Brian Thomson

Belfort: The Expansion Expansion

• This is my all time favorite so its a Always Wanna Play List for me – Adrian C
• Great expansion for Belfort. When I buy this, I don’t see myself playing without the expansion anymore. – Miguel García

 

 

Train of Thought 

• This is such a great idea, having players guess a word but by only being able to speak 3 words and with having to incorporate the previous answer to explain the next. We loved this and for any fans of party word games, this is a winner. – Joseph Peterson

And the winner is…

Wow!  Can’t even lie – it’s a shock to both Jay and I.  We were watching the Geekies online, chatting with each other and BAM!  There it was, our game up on screen with the name right next to the word:   “Winner”

It was sad that neither Jay nor I could be there to accept.  No one from TMG was able to be in attendance either due to GenCon2014 responsibilities (Jay and I were both at #GenCant2014 instead…).  So the hosts, Greg Grunberg and Brea Grant for accepting on our behalf.  Greg’s telepathy just didn’t have the range to reach us up here in Canada.  Brea might have been able to run really fast and get some words from us, I suppose….

So what does this mean?  I dunno!  Only that this blue baby is ours for at least one year!

Thanks to everyone who’s ever played the game, reviewed it, told a friend about it, and loved it.  We make games so that other people can have fun playing them.  If not for the gaming community, we couldn’t have achieved so much!

And thanks to Daryl Andrews for the screen caps (Look out for his game “The Walled City” with co-designer Stephen Sauer to hit shelves in the near future – it’s awesome!)

 

~Sen-Foong Lim