It's New Game Friday David Wiley (Cardboard Clash) is here to tell us about the new games.
Here’s what is new this week:
- Quests Over Coffee: Journeys
- Cursed!?
- Exploring Galapagos
- Dungeon Pages: Zafinn, Mortal Wizard
https://www.pnparcade.com/collections/new-games
Quests Over Coffee: Journeys
Quests Over Coffee: Journeys is a fast, easy to pick up, solo adventure card game where you explore in depth a quest from the Quests Over Coffee quest board. Each journey spans multiple cards, where the choices you make can lead you to one of multiple outcomes. Pick your favorite character, your favorite brew, and go on an adventure today!
If you want to feel like you’re following along a journey in your morning solo gaming, then you want to check out the new Quests Over Coffee: Journeys. Each card will lead you to a different card based on success or failure, and both the game itself and combat are relatively straightforward to understand and start playing. With the artwork you likely already know and love, and some dice chucking, you probably will find that you can’t function in the mornings without your Quests or your Coffee.
Cursed!?
You’ve been cursed by a Witch! You are quickly dying - Everything you touch turns to ash after just a few moments. She promises to lift the curse and let you go if you capture 8 monster’s souls from the nearby forest for her. Can you capture them using only the weapons and items you find in the forest left behind by unlucky adventurers?
If you like fast games (~10 or so minutes) that will hook you into a loop of replaying them, then you might want to check out this little game. There’s a good amount of press-your-luck here, as you need to match an enemy’s stats perfectly to avoid taking damage - something that you’ll hope happens often in order to survive through the 8th encounter. Because they all come out in a random order, you will get some good replay out of this as you try to puzzle out when to push a little to try to take less damage and when you should just accept some damage.
Exploring Galapagos
As a field research photographer, follow in Darwin’s footsteps by exploring the Galapagos Islands and cataloging their unique and diverse wildlife.
There’s an interesting line of tension in this game, as you know the clock is ticking. You have three turns, at most, to prepare your hand and lock in the scoring you want to lose before you run the risk of having no score. Locking in a scoring method is key - most of the time - but once you do, you’re out of the drafting rounds so you can’t do it too soon. With some shared cards to consider as well, there’s a lot of information to parse in a small footprint. You’ll want to come for the animal and nature theme, but it’s really the gameplay that will bring you back for repeat plays.
Dungeon Pages: Zafinn, Mortal Wizard
Zafinn was badly injured as a young boy. The accident that took his arm also gave him the gift of Aethertouch. Now the young man can push and pull on the fabric of the universe to cast his spells. It’s an unusual method still being studied at the Elder School.
To no one’s surprise, the highlight once again is less about the cool character and more about the epic dungeon appearing. There’s all sorts of trickery going on here, from a monster that crosses out unearned items if you mark the same number twice, to a boss that has a 50% chance to be an illusion, to the exit being 50% a trap forcing you to traverse to the other side instead. Of course, those who prefer deterministic outcomes might be a little frustrated by this dungeon, but imagine the stories you can tell!
https://www.pnparcade.com/collections/new-games
Game of the Week: Naturopolis on sale for just $2!
Wind whistling, bees buzzing, rivers rolling along: the sounds of the great outdoors are everywhere. This open countryside is unspoiled by human hands, and it’s your job to keep it that way.
You might be thinking: I’ve played other games in the Sprawlopolis line, why would I want or need another one? Well, apart from the cool approach of encouraging the presence of the natural instead of urbanization, you’ve got two different types of features that might cut across any given card: roads and rivers. Some have one, others might have both, and they can never connect to each other. This not only adds an extra layer of decisions to your experience, but also comes at a cost. Roads are worth -2 at the end, reinforcing that we want the natural to win over the human desire to turn everything into roads and buildings. This will be familiar enough to pick up quickly, but just a little tricker with the scoring that you might find it easily can sit alongside the rest in that series.
Check out Games 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!