Derailments of Thought

A brief look at some games I got to try out (somewhat) recently.

Walking in Burano

Walking in Burano is a spacial card game in which players choose building sections to add to their area under ascetic and other point related restrictions. There’s an interesting balance created by the different sections needed for building, elements on cards that lead to scoring, placement restrictions, and the cost of taking actions. It all gives a nice layer of depth here. Subtle aspects of needed strategy might not be immediately obvious, but the gameplay itself is easy enough to jump into.

I’ve only played this 2 player thus far, and there’s a mechanic specific to that version that really makes long term strategy difficult in how quickly cards disappear. I imagine it will be a VERY different game with more players because of this. Still enjoyed it quite a bit though and look forward to playing again. 

Chronicles of Crime

Here’s another game to join things like Watson & Holmes and Detective  right in my sweet spot of providing decent mystery complexity in a way that’s still accessible and fun. This is incredibly application heavy, needing use of a phone to analyze clues, check answers, and even look around crime scenes. But it’s extremely well done and integrated. Excited to continue to progress with this one.

Planet

Planet provides an interesting variation on tile placement games as players fill in the twelve sides of their planet trying to maximize sections of their secret land type collected while satisfying certain conditions to claim animal cards (both of which provide victory points at game end).

The gimmick is a fine one, although the all important magnets that secure tiles in place should be stronger. It’s much too easy to knock off a piece accidentally when turning the planets around or otherwise handling them, which is pretty much what the whole game is based on doing. 

The variation of goals and rules surrounding them is reasonable, as is the drafting aspect that governs who gets what tile. It feels like there could have been a little more to this, although I’ll admit I’m not sure in what respect. Decent, quick playing, reasonably unique game none-the-less.   

Montague Island Mysteries is a collection of logic puzzles thematically presented as a series of visits to a remote island. Your hosts, as well as the fellow guests, are fellow puzzle enthusiasts who gather at the island for twelve weekend visits, during each of which a mystery puzzle is presented along with several ancillary ones. The theme is used nicely as the reader will be determining things like the guests’ backgrounds, what room everyone’s in, further details about the island, etc.

Of course with a book like this the quality of the puzzles is paramount, and in this respect MIM is spot on. Classic grid based logic puzzles are mixed in with a nice variety of spacial reasoning, unique visualizations, etc. The mystery puzzles feature a mechanic I particularly adore that involves the “culprit” secretly being among the guests and giving statements that might or might not be true. It provides a nice twist and was used with just about the right frequency (although a few more in this style would have been great).

There are a couple of minor missteps. A few puzzles are based on every attendee, including the player, being given two cards or something similar with the instructions “don’t show them to anyone else” and the solution based on determining who has what. But the reader’s own cards are not revealed, their persona just presents statements that may or may not be true like everyone else. This does not affect solving the puzzle, but is thematically awkward given the presentation and a bit of a missed opportunity as well.

Some of the puzzles were too long and/or required too much brute force for me, although given the scope and variation of what’s presented a few puzzles not being to my particular tastes is no big deal. One pushed mathematical logic versus linguistic logic a bit far for my liking, but again that’s personal preference.

Overall Montague Island Mysteries is a wonderful collection of puzzles with a solid connecting theme. I enjoyed this book quite a bit and look forward to checking out the sequel.

Note: The rules treat the main aspect of how the game is played as a spoiler, which is beyond ridiculous but consider this a “warning” that going by the rulebook my discussion starting below the box image includes “spoilers.”

Welcome to “waiting: the game.” In The Mind players try to play cards of increasingly large hands drawn from a deck numbered 1 to 100 in order without sharing any information or signals about what cards they have.

So the communication becomes “teasing” playing cards and how long you wait to play. They dress this up with a “vitally important” phase where all players put a hand on the table and concentrate on the level they’re about to play (no, I’m not joking) and other mumbo jumbo about being in tune with the flow of time.

Some will get into the window dressing. Personally I wish that effort went into adding something to the actual game instead. It was a curious experience for a couple of rounds, but seems way overrated to me.

I’m a mathematician, and this largely bored me. This game is simply subconsciously playing the deck odds (which is a pure crapshoot with few cards in hand) and guessing how long a pause is appropriate (which is close to a pure crapshoot with many cards in hand). I felt no real engagement or investment in whether or not I can guess with no contextual info whether my fellow player was holding a card between the one I just played and the ones left in mind hand nor felt much of anything but annoyance when we lost a life because he happened to be holding say a 71 instead of 73 when I played a 72. There’s no “better move” to have been made there, nothing to be learned or refined.

Put another way, I could simply count to myself and play my cards as I reach it’s number (without telling the others players that what I was doing, because it would be cheating otherwise) and achieve roughly the same level of success. The only way to get better at this game is subconsciously learning how long my friends mentally wait to signal a jump in numeric value of 25 vs a jump of 10, etc and that just holds no interest for me whatsoever.

So as the meaningful experience the instruction book (jokingly?) implies this falls flat. As a filler game it’s just feel so slow (the main mechanic is *waiting* after all) not matter how short the rounds are and I have a closetful that are more interesting and fun. For games that do no talking / contextual info only better I have things like Magic Maze, Ravens of Thri Sahashri, etc. Kudos for trying something different and to each their own, but this was a big miss for me.