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Game Reviews

Blooming Sea

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.

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Game Reviews

Nemi: The Strawberry Festival

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?

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Game Reviews

Disney Villainous: Unstoppable!

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.

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Game Reviews

Pigeon Explosion

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?

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Game Reviews

Habitats

Rezerwat (eng. Habitats), published by Allplay, is a board game in which players take on the role of wildlife reserve managers. The goal is to create a thriving ecosystem filled with animals, suitable habitats, and attractions for visiting tourists.

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Game Reviews

Dice Realms

There’s a good chance that Dominion from Rio Grande Games has caught your eye, or that you’ve even played it. It’s a classic example of a game built around the deck-building mechanic and is widely considered one of the genre’s flagship titles. The same publisher has another game in its portfolio that strongly resembles Dominion—at least in many aspects, it repeats the mechanics that made it such a great game. The key difference is that this time, instead of building a deck, we build dice that we roll every turn. That game is Dice Realms. It sounds great. Let’s see whether it actually delivers.

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Game Reviews

Panda Spin

Carl Chudyk is one of those designers whose name always promises something unusual. Panda Spin is no exception — it’s a trick-taking card game where the competition for each hand is combined with a clever card-flipping mechanic that boosts your cards’ power. Published by Muduko, the game takes us into the world of the Chinese zodiac, where a panda decides to join the other animals.

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Game Reviews

Removal

Removal is a title you can find on your table thanks to Albi. Designed by Michał Reszka, this game lets you step into the shoes of a moving company employee and feel the weight of all those boxes—and some rather unusual objects too (people really do collect the strangest things!). 🏠🚚 Let’s get moving with our review!

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Game Reviews

Mycelia + North American Expansion

The forest is a living organism, where beneath the surface an intense, silent struggle for survival takes place. In Mycelia, you take the role of a mycelium that expands, fruits, and spreads spores to gain dominance in a world full of competition. This title combines the feel of biology with tactical competition over space. And if things get too cramped in this underground realm, the North American Expansion comes to the rescue, introducing trees, symbiosis, and an option for a fifth player.

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Game Reviews

Whispering Woods

Whispering Woods, published by Muduko, is a title that many board gamers following the international market have been eagerly awaiting. Created by Cristian Bustos and Bernardo Vásquez, this engaging abstract game puts you in the role of animal guardians of the forest, expanding it while fulfilling goals whispered to you by the trees.