New Games for August 19, 2022 - Bandana Skate Park, Irukandji Panic

• Potion Panic
• Irukandji
• Skate Park

Potion Panic

In Potion Panic, players will prep, smash, and brew powerful potions to create unique recipes and synthesize the all-powerful Philosopher’s Stone! It’s an all-out-brawl as players race to become the best concoction-crafter and earn the “hoity toity” title of Alchemist a la Mode!

I love it when a game forces you to be aggressive. In this one, you are forced to take three actions every turn, and because you also have limits on hand size and the number of potion cards in front of you, it is inevitable that you’ll have to make moves you weren’t planning to make in order to meet that action requirement and not just sit waiting for the perfect combo to arise. Add in the ability to save several recipes, preventing others from snagging them before you can pull them off, and you have a fun game of push-and-pull with an exciting theme. This should be fast-paced fun on the table!

Irukandji

You have swum a long way out, and it is now time to head home. Race back to the beach without coming across one of the most venomous jellyfish in the world: the Irukandji.

It isn’t every game that teaches you something and this one is going to let you learn a little about a very small, yet very dangerous, jellyfish. Add in fun gameplay where players swim to grab a beach ball and make it to the beach, use tiles on their opponents to foil plans, reveal tiles that could contain the dreadful jellyfish, and more, and you have the making of a fun little game. There aren’t many games where the objective to win is to finish a round with 2 VP, but in this one it might just take several plays to get out of negative if your luck runs sour/

Skate Park

Execute your best tricks over a series of obstacles to claim the title. Flip, Grind, and find Air to win each challenge, without hitting the concrete!

It’s a matter of pressing your luck a little to score higher than your opposing players, pairing the right trick card with some good dice rolling to rack up the points. The neat thing here is that you’ll play across 7 different tricks, so there’s time to correct your score from a bad run, and to catch up if someone really nails the early tricks. With simple rules, good artwork, and a pretty unique theme, this game is really going to bring back memories of the days when Tony Hawk was a household name. At least it will for me.

Game of the Week: Bandada

Birds have escaped from the local zoo and it’s up to you to get them back. Attract the birds to your personal bandadas by putting out different types of food. Some birds want a variety of food while others only like a single type. Can you strike the right balance?

Bandada features some fun bird-themed artwork on the cards where ou play exactly four rounds with a friend (or against a solo AI), and each round both players draft a card from the common pool and score it, and then will score all of their birds again at the end of each round. Which means the dice manipulation in this game is vital, both for maximizing your own point potential but also to slow down your frenemy across the table. This one is sure to be fast and fun, and comes with two variant additions and three different optional modes of play to allow you to tailor the fun to what you enjoy.