Witchdom is a family card game designed by Michal Peichl and published by Albi. We lead a witch clan, recruit promising apprentices, gather magical ingredients, and brew potions worth victory points. It all comes in an accessible package that is easy to explain while still offering several clever decisions.
“The Elements” is a light card game designed by Filip Barcik and published by Elementorum Studio. Fire, water, earth, and air compete for dominance, while players develop their own card stacks in a race to become the first to create two Elementals.
Uwe Rosenberg is best known for his extensive economic games. These include Agricola, Caverna, Atiwa, and the monumental A Feast for Odin, which can be considered the designer’s magnum opus. His portfolio also contains abstract games such as Nova Luna and Patchwork, as well as acclaimed card games including Bohnanza and Mamma Mia!
Fields of Arle belongs to the first of these groups. It is an economic game for one or two players in which we develop a farm in East Frisia. We grow grain and flax, raise animals, drain moors, build dikes, process materials, and transport goods to nearby towns and villages.
Reiner Knizia has designed many excellent games. A considerable number of his designs combine simple rules with one small idea that makes the gameplay much more interesting than it might initially appear. “Blooming Sea”, published in Poland by Red Square Games, is no exception.
This time, our task is to restore a coral reef. By placing tiles, we will connect corals into increasingly large groups and create habitats for the fish swimming among them. Beneath the calm and colorful theme, however, lies an engaging competition for points and space on a shared board.
Nemi is a small Italian town in the hills near Rome, overlooking a lake of the same name. It is best known for its wild strawberries and the Strawberry Festival, which has been held there since 1922. During the event, the streets fill with flowers, music, and market stalls, while women dressed in traditional costumes, known as Fragolare, hand out fruit to visitors.
This colorful festival became the theme of Nemi: The Strawberry Festival, a game designed by Valeria Cavasin and Edoardo Elbenstein and published by Fiammingo Games. As participants in the preparations, we will gather fruit and other ingredients, make strawberry desserts, and decorate the town. The player who contributes the most to the event’s success will receive the Golden Strawberry.
We received a pre-release copy of the game for testing. How did this sweet trip to sunny Italy turn out?
Drużyna do zadań specjalnych is a cooperative card game set in the world of Marcin Mortka’s books. Players take on the roles of an unusual group of heroes who join forces against the Evil One, facing monsters, intrigues, and the more mundane problems of the Valley’s inhabitants along the way.
We are not familiar with the books, so we can only judge the game based on its gameplay and how well the presented world works without any knowledge of its literary source material. As it turns out, reading the books is not necessary to enjoy the game, although it would certainly help players recognize more references and jokes connected with the individual characters.
If you know the classic Disney Villainous, then Villainous: Unstoppable! from Ravensburger is a completely different game. It is neither another expansion nor a simplified edition of the original game, but rather a standalone title inspired by Villainous, aimed primarily at families and younger players. The biggest change here is the level of complexity.
Detective games have always been a welcome sight on our table. The kind where observation, logical thinking, and deduction matter. Both the more interactive ones, where we influence the investigators’ actions, and those where we are given a stack of documents and have to find the clues that will lead us to solving the mystery. This is exactly what the “Cold Case” series, published by ThinkFun which was acquired by Ravensburger, is built around.
Today we are taking a closer look at three cases: “A Story to Die for,” “A Pinch of Murder,” and “Murder with Interest.” Each of them is a separate case in which we receive the files of an unsolved investigation and try to get to the truth. There is no app guiding us by the hand, no board, no classic turns. Instead, there is a stack of documents, photos, reports and clues that we have to organize on our own and figure out, “What does not add up here?”
Pigeon Explosion is a new party-style card game from Muduko in which we feed our birds, sneak food onto other players’ pigeons and try to make ours happy while making theirs… explode. It sounds like a fast and intense game with a solid dose of negative interaction, but does it have to be that way?
Pacific is a game by Donald X. Vaccarino, best known as the designer of Dominion, which already suggests a straightforward game that still leaves players room for various strategic moves. This time, players invest in tourism, industry, transport, and nature, while the game gives them space for some light business-minded scheming, wrapping the whole thing in a neat card-and-board puzzle for 2–5 players. Let’s take a closer look at what it is all about.