New games for March 13, 2020 - The Venus Shipwreck Beavers

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:

• Beavers Be Dammed|
• Paper Pinball: Squishington Goes To Venus
• The Shipwreck Arcana

This week's new games are all available at https://www.pnparcade.com/collections/new-games

Beavers Be Dammed

It’s time to build a new lodge and you’ve picked the perfect spot downstream. By damming the right spots in the stream with access to the right resources to best suit your lodge, you’ll win! Beavers Be Dammed is a ‘trick-taking - worker-placement and write’ game where you compete for actions and use the actions you win to draw on your player board.

I mean, if you weren’t already interested from the ‘trick-taking - worker-placement and write’ description of the mechanics there might be no help for you. Using a deck of cards, a few tiles, and some writing sheets you’ll be ready to reroute the flow of the river on your sheet by winning tricks to gain actions related to the action tile it was played upon. If you are familiar with trick-taking games, a lot of the basic mechanics will feel familiar to you, and play for each round will last until everyone had five turns. After that, the river advances and, if you do well, will be headed in the direction you want via the dams you made and the canals you added nearby. A clever little game that provides a fresh twist on some familiar mechanisms, including the ever-popular roll and write family of games. This one can play 1-8 players, meaning there is a lot of flexibility for group sizes!

Paper Pinball: Squishington Goes to Venus

Paper Pinball is a dice game that tries to capture the feeling of playing pinball. All you will need is a pencil, three dice, and about five minutes.

It is all the rage: Paper Pinball. Those young kids dropping dice like they are burning holes in their pockets, tapping pencil tips and erasers on the paper as they try to beat their high scores. Yep, it is time to declare a Paper Pinball epidemic here at the PNP Arcade. And you can help spread the love by checking out the newest entry in Season 2: Squishington Goes to Venus. If you have some dice, a pencil, and five minutes then you have everything you need for this addictive little game. But be warned: you won’t want to stop after just one play.

The Shipwreck Arcana

Trapped in a drowned world, you and your allies are doomed - or are you? Using a mystical deck and a healthy dose of logic, you can predict each other’s fates and escape unscathed.

If cooperative, hidden information games are your jam then you won’t want to miss out on this one. There are numbered tokens, and players will be trying to guess the active player’s token without getting extra information from the player. Since the bag has numbered tokens, and players will be placing one of two tokens they possess out by an Arcana card, this can lead to some intense moments - especially since those numbers could potentially make an Arcana fade and bring your group closer to losing unless they make a correct guess that turn. The game goes until you either score 7 successes, or the Doom track makes it to 7 - which means you can have it begin further along the track for a greater challenge. Playable from 2-5 players, this small game will pack a great experience for a small group.

For all of the new games, visit https://www.pnparcade.com/collections/new-games

Game of the Week: Blood Royals

Blood Royals is a game about two relatives trying to claim the throne from a dying king. Secretly choose your action, reveal and then use your skills (and a bit of luck) to conquer lands and gain the favor of influential people with powerful abilities.

This is a roll and write game. All you need to play is the perforated game sheets in this book, some pencils, and some dice.

2 players, 30 minutes, 88 game pages

Oh boy, if you love roll and writes you are in for a treat here with this 88-page series of games to play, advancing across four ages as you vye to gain influence and use abilities to help claim the throne. Which team will you be rooting for across each of the ages? Depending on which noble wins that age, the game will change in various ways to add a small legacy element to your gameplay. This one will be a lot of printing, but can easily be done in small batches (such as by age) to make it feel like you aren’t overwhelming your printer. Drop by the Button Shy Discord channel and find an opponent if you lack one in your area, and compete to be the best of the Blood Royals. Yes, there is a subchannel just for Blood Royals. I know I’ll be seeking a partner in there. Join me and let’s enjoy this little roll-and-write game together.

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!