It's New Game Friday! And David Wiley (Cardboard Clash) is here to tell us about the new games.
Here’s what is new this week:
- Looking For A Healer
- Royale
- The Language of Magic
- Tiny Farms
This week's new games are all available at https://www.pnparcade.com/collections/new-games
Looking for Healer
Your party has run into lava. Forgotten mana and started fighting on empty. And you’re pretty sure one of them isn’t wearing both boots. But it’s finally time to fight the boss. Keep them from dying (or killing themselves) and prove you can heal anyone. Even these idiots. Good luck. You’ll need it.
Oh man, the THEME of this game appeals to me on so many levels, as way back in the day I played Final Fantasy XI. While I never went farther than necessary as a White Mage, my first main was a Red Mage and so I still had plenty of moments where the party did stupid stuff and I had to save their bacon. This game has super simple rules, can be played solo or cooperatively, and is sure to be a riot to play. Maybe I’ll just “forget” to heal that Archer in order to teach him a lesson about damage output...
Royale
Trouble is brewing in the Kingdom! The greedy Queen rules with an iron fist, but suspects that a rebellion is forming to overthrow her. Can the citizens coordinate the uprising as they go about their daily lives, or will the Queen discover their plans and throw them all in the dungeon?
Looking for something to do with four others? This game is all about trying to shift cards around the Queen player, preventing her from finding all of the Gold or the Glory card. A clever little game for sure, as the Queen can pay a Gold to inspect said cards being shifted, and the recipient can then pay 3 Gold to the Queen to bribe her and prevent that - but they won’t know if what is being passed is safe or something the Queen needs to win. This also comes with variants to play at 3-4, and has some of the most appealing artwork I’ve seen in a while, so check out this upcoming Button Shy title!
The Language of Magic
The Language of Magic is a deck building card game which was inspired by the works of Richard Garriott and my long-time appreciation for the world he created. Players of The Language of Magic take on the role of the Avatar, the defenders of Spirituality, in their fight against the vile lich, the Master of Hythloth. The Avatar amass their collection of the Words of Power and combine them into powerful spells. The battle will be fierce and those with the most potential, best strategies, and loudest voice are likely to come out alive.
Card-based game here with three ways to play: solo, cooperative, or duel. This one is interesting for several reasons. There’s always fun in a team/solo game where you take on the big baddie and his minions, but the mechanics here are what I feel is going to stand out. You cast spells using 2-6 words from your spellbook cards, and the more words used for the spell the greater its potential power, but also there’s a higher risk that the spell doesn’t succeed. There’s also time spent on spells, and more unique things. This game won’t be for a casual pick-up to learn, but if you want a dedicated game system to explore, this one promises to have a rich, rewarding system unlike most games out there.
JUST ADDED: Tiny Farms!
[ Jason Tagmire here: This one came in too late to send to David to check out, so here's the description from the publisher. But what I can say personally is that everyone involved is great. The Ridback team and Mike Mullins are all part of the Button Shy family, so I'm excited to try out this game. Mike's been telling me great things for a few weeks now.]
Tiny Farms is a fun and engaging family-friendly roll and write game. Tiny Farms features a simple but unique dice rondel with shared pawns that you will use to collect animals for your farms.
Each turn you will draft one die and move either the blue farmer or the red farmer to collect animals from the space you land on, writing them in your red or blue farm on your farm sheet. After each round, the patent-pending Rolldel Wheel-o-Matic rotates to change the animals available at the locations.
Each of the animals scores points in unique ways, so choose carefully! After 10 rounds, you add up your scores and the player with the most points wins.
Tiny Farms also has a great solo mode, designed by Mike Mullins.
Check out the new games here: https://www.pnparcade.com/collections/new-games
Game of the Week: Stellar Leap
Explore the galaxy in Stellar Leap! Take on the role of an alien species as you discover new planets and complete missions in this family-friendly space exploration game. Become the most prestigous alien species in the galaxy by completing missions, discovering new planets, increasing population, and fulfilling your hidden trait’s objective.
It feels like ages ago when I first saw tidbits of this game being made and shared by Weird Giraffe Games, and I remember being extremely excited about the game. So much so that I printed off the files and helped playtest the solo mode for the game, offering some suggestions. And this game is really fun, playable 1-6 with dice mitigation, resource gathering/conversion, objectives to accomplish, combat with other players, and more. If you only try one Weird Giraffe title, it would be this one (or the recently featured Fire in the Library, as both are stellar games).
Check out Game of the Week here: https://www.pnparcade.com/collections/game-of-the-week
See you next week with more information on our newest print and play games!