Don’t Eat the Meeples, Issue Four

In this week’s issue of Don’t Eat the Meeples, Asmodee is continuing their strategy of dominance in the gaming landscape, a couple prominent Kickstarters launched, and a pair of Renegade Games releases got their announcement.

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News

Let’s lead with news this week, because there’s some big news: Asmodee Group acquired another company to add to their portfolio, Lookout Games, the publisher of many very recognizable games, like Agricola, Caverna, and plenty of other very successful games. As a point of reference, they’re the publisher behind seven of the current top 100 games on BoardGameGeek. Luckily for all of us, Lookout will continue as an independent studio, and Asmodee will assume publishing from Mayfair Games. On that note, Mayfair — who you’ll probably recognize from a number of games — is stepping out of games publishing and will be handing over all of their IP to Asmodee. Very interesting! [BGG] [Asmodee NA]

In other games publishing news, Game Salute launched three new imprints: Starling, Spark Works, Flying Meeple. That’s been generating a little bit of controversy, of course, because of issues designer Phil Eklund had with Game Salute’s Dan Yarrington — and while I don’t pretend to be an expert, it’s always troubling when a designer has issues with a publisher or shipping provider. [BGG]

Joining the ranks of people who are trying to navigate the retail landscape with Amazon as the dominant player in the market, North Star Games is restricting who can sell their games on Amazon. They’re behind the Evolution series, but most prominently, they publish Say Anything and Wits and Wagers, both of which are huge mainstream hits. [North Star Games]

New Games

CO2: Second Chance [Kickstarter]

It’s a bit expensive, but this second edition (I… think?) of CO2 is probably the most exciting Kickstarter to launch this week, at least in terms of established board games. It’s not just a pure reprint, and it does include some new elements, like a cooperative mode and a solo mode, and some upgraded components and the like. It also promises to play in a shorter timeframe, which suggests some significant streamlining.

Sonic the Hedgehog: Battle Racers [Kickstarter]

OK. I get it. I like Sonic the Hedgehog well enough, but you’re not really paying for a game here. You’re paying for a bunch of Sonic minis that come with a board. Is that right? Because I look at the game here, and I don’t really have any desire to play. The sections of track look drab. The tokens look uninspired. Maybe at $50 I’d consider pledging, but at $100 for an action card-focused racing game — plus stretch goals that just give you an opportunity to buy more things — I’m not even considering it.

But! Here’s the interesting thing. I think they got that was a problem when they funded about 20 percent on opening day — that’s a real departure from the games that fund well over 500 percent on open. They introduced $50 and $150 pledge levels, where you can either get more or less of their miniatures. Sure, you can still buy loads of unnecessary miniatures and optional expansions if you want to, but you’re not strictly required. I guess that’s something. It still looks boring as sin.

Space Park [Kickstarter]

Filler games are one of my favorite types of games to back on Kickstarter — and that’s largely because it’s fairly low-risk for a game that can provide a lot of fun, and also because I probably play more filler games than anything else. Space Park looks like good, clean fun, and I can get behind that. There’s only one level, and it includes free shipping to the U.S. — not bad at $29. The creator talked about his experience getting his first game to this point. [Reddit]

Subatomic [Kickstarter]

There’s a certain difficulty with games featuring an “educational” theme: It’s just too easy to focus on the educational aspect and sacrifice the gameplay, or simply not understand how to craft good gameplay. I don’t think Subatomic falls into that category, so hopefully it strikes the right balance. This one has an interesting deck-building mechanism to it.

Other Kickstarter games

• Prehistory — a Euro game with at least 184 wooden pieces, so you just know it’s going to be … heavy to carry around. [Kickstarter]
• Planetopia — a deck builder that focuses on a pattern-matching mechanic [Kickstarter]
• Billionaire Sergeant — a social deduction game set in 1960s Hong Kong [Kickstarter]
• British vs Pirates Volume 2 — a sequel to another game; this features a bunch of pirate ship miniatures [Kickstarter]
• Treasure Mountain — Dig Deep, But Not Too Deep! — a worker placement game with dwarves [Kickstarter]
• Fields of Agincourt — this “combative tile-placement” game probably won’t fund, and I think it’s largely that the art looks like it’s from an early 2000s German game [Kickstarter]
• Business Panda Beach Party — a party game from the maker of Superfight [Kickstarter]
• Act of Treason — another social deception game… [Kickstarter]
• Strongholds & Followers — a D&D 5th Edition supplement that looks very polished [Kickstarter]

Prowler’s Passage, set for May release [Renegade Games]

This is a two-player game from J. Alex Kevern, the designer of Gold West and World’s Fair 1983, among others — you both play as thieves tunneling under a city to steal valuables. I bet this one will be a fun, light game.

Castell, set for Feb. 21 release [Renegade Games]

This is a game about building human towers … but it’s not a dexterity game about placing meeples in towers; it’s abstracting part of that away. It’s designer Aaron Vanderbeek’s first published game, and it’s definitely a pretty-looking game. Maybe it’s fun, too. Here’s hoping the two aspects meet.

Carcassonne expansion 4: The Tower, on the boat to the U.S. [Z-Man Games]

I’m a big fan of Carcassonne, but honestly, I’ve never actually played with the Tower expansion. Maybe it’s too direct for how we play the game — I’ll certainly buy it and give it a try, but it certainly doesn’t get a lot of love on BoardGameGeek. Really, I’m including this because A) I love Carcassonne, and B) I love that Z-Man Games gives detail on the progress of their games from out-of-print to reprinted to distributed.

Lowlands announced [Z-Man Games]

“Only those who strike a delicate balance between selflessness and self-interest can thrive on the wave-battered coast of the North Sea,” writes Z-Man Games. I don’t know anything about the game (except for what’s in this very detailed post,) but I’m in.

Pandemic: Somewhere in Italy kind-of, sort-of announced [Z-Man Games]

In a post from just over a week ago about Pandemic Survival, a Pandemic tournament (fun!), Z-Man Games dropped this juicy tidbit: They’re releasing another “Survival Series” Pandemic game, this time, set in Italy. We’ll see if it returns to diseases after Pandemic: Rising Tide, or if we’re dealing with a different problem altogether. If they could wait until I get Rising Tide to the table to release this, that’d be great.

What we’re playing

A friend (Dan!) and I got a game of Hunt for the Ring in, which was a hidden movement game I was particularly excited to play — especially because you don’t have to play the whole game in one sitting. It divides very cleanly into two sessions; in the first, you’re going from the Shire to Bree, and in the second, you go from Bree to Rivendell. (War for the Ring kind of, sort of, covers the timeframe of the journey from Rivendell to Mordor.) I played as Frodo, and I did make it to Bree without being completely corrupted. The theme permeates the game extremely well, but it didn’t feel like it forced any of the mechanics. That’s a difficult balance to strike, and they hit it well. [BGG]

Several of us played a couple games of Beyond Baker Street last night, which was a nice little cooperative game in the style of Hanabi. This is sort of on the opposite side of the theme-mechanics balance, as each player having only partial information — not knowing the cards in their own hand — doesn’t necessarily contribute to the theme, but the mechanics are easy to grasp. [BGG]

At our monthly work game night, I played Keyper, which is the latest in the Key-series by Richard Breese. Incidentally, it was also the first I’ve played, so it served as my introduction to Breese’s designs, too. There were plenty of decisions to be made every turn, and even though I scored in last place, I felt like I’d done something — and with a first play, that’s really all I need, anyway. [BGG]

Finally, I played Bohnanza on Friday with some new friends, which is nearly always a lot of fun. In a five-player game, we all scored between 15 and 19, which seemed remarkable enough to me. A good, close game is always nice. [BGG]

What I’m looking forward to this week

Dan, who hasn’t played Scythe yet, wants to play that this week, and I’m looking forward to it. I still haven’t hit five plays on it all-time, so it’s definitely still fresh for me. It’s quite a game, but it does take some precise explanations in parts to make sure that important scoring rules aren’t missed. [BGG]

While I’m on the topic of Scythe, I’d love to play more of Jamey Stegmaier’s games, like Viticulture and Euphoria — and I’m in the middle of our Charterstone game. Now, I don’t own either of those, so I’ll have to bide my time here. [BGG — Viticulture] [BGG — Euphoria]

With Valentine’s Day looming, there’s no better time to get a game of Fog of Love in, so if we have time for that this week, I’m sure we’d both enjoy it.

I’ve been contributing code to a games collection site, Gameshelf, and it’s been a nice way to experiment with a Javascript framework I don’t actively use at work, and it’s great to work with somebody else on a side project. [Gameshelf]