New Games for October 6th, 2023 - Cursed Raiders Dig for Skulls

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:

• Bako: Dig & Write
• The Cursed Menagerie (KS Preview, B&W)
• Dungeon Pages: Tomas, Sarcastic Raider

https://www.pnparcade.com/collections/new-games

Bako: Dig & Write

The ruins of an unknown civilization have been discovered and archaeologists from all over the world began their work to unearth all the treasures and stories that the island of Bako has hidden. You will take the role of the prestigious archaeologists Ka and Koro. During each round you will try to unearth the different fossils, treasures and ruins that are hidden. The bigger your discoveries, the more points you earn, but the greater the risk because the other archaeologists can ruin your strategy by making holes. What are you waiting for? Grab your tools, and let’s dig up the past!

If you long for a little more player interaction for your roll and write experiences, you’ll enjoy the small changes in Bako: Dig & Write. Every three turns one of your opponents will put a hole in your grid, potentially ruining what you’re working hard to unlock. Thus some careful planning with time considered, along with some luck of getting the right rolls while you press toward a bigger objective, might just feel a little more satisfying when you pull it off.

The Cursed Menagerie (KS Preview, B&W)

You are a gifted individual, imbued with the ability to detect and dispel evil spirits. Haunted objects are your speciality! Once again you’ve been called to the home of a citizen whose brush with the supernatural has left them shaken and desperate for help. WHile you certainly value your role in the community as caretaker and guardian, part of you knows there is another appeal to your line of work. You like to collect these dangerous objects. Something about locking them up safely in your vault makes the world feel just a bit safer, and more orderly. And that’s good, right?

A fun little game of rolling dice to collect items and vanquish ghosts. The neat thing is you’ll be able to see the items in their three tiers, and you know which tier of ghost is in each spot but not which ghost until you work toward acquiring an item. As you unlock more parts of the item, you reveal more of the ghost abilities until, at the end, you get to take down the ghost itself. Manage your resources carefully in order to make it through all 6 items or, if you are really bold, run the campaign to try and get even more items without losing all your health. It even comes with a shorter mode that lets you set up and play even faster - you won’t want to miss this haunting good time.

Dungeon Pages: Tomas, Sarcastic Raider

Parted from his crew, young Tomas found himself at a crossroads. On the one hand, he’d often dreamt of knightfood, but gold had always been his passion. When the Elders offered both, and said his ferret, Peanut, could stay, Tomas couldn’t say no.

Another exciting installment for Dungeon Pages this week. Who wouldn’t want to use Tomas and his ability to use his relics an extra time? That’s incredibly useful, especially with Gabriel’s Timepiece which lets you use Good Dice twice that turn. You’ll likely need it, because the baddies in this one get stronger: the Berserk Guards when you defeat a guard, and the Dire Golem when you mark a trap in the Dungeon. Odds are, one or both of those will be triggered, so you’ll want to drop damage quickly in order to blast through this week’s dungeon.

Game of the Week: Skulls of Sedlec on sale for just $2!

The Black Plague and Hussite Wars have overcrowded the graveyard. Help the Bone Collector, a half-blind monk, by exhuming graves and arranging the skulls inside the crypt.

You are novice monks, competing to create the best arrangement of skulls. Dig up graves from the graveyard to reveal cards, take cards into your hand to collect skulls, and arrange the cards from your hand into a stack. Whoever better honors the deceased’s last wishes will score more points. The Bone Collector will then declare one player's stack as the most exceptional.

This one I can speak to the fun inside the game’s package. You’re making a pyramid with the cards, each card having a top skull and a bottom skull, and different skull types have varied scoring conditions that center around things such as adjacency in relation to other skulls. For instance, the Lovers’ skull scores when two are adjacent to each other - wherefore art thou, Romeo? Dig up graves, assemble some skulls, and have a ton of fun in 15-20 minutes with 1-2 other players.