Last time I discussed Pandemic, and while I was on that train of thought, I figured I might as well discuss another cooperative game featuring emergency professionals in Kevin Lanzing’s 2011 offering Flash Point: Fire Rescue (published by Indie Boards & Cards). As might be surmised from the title, Flash Point is a game about a team of firefighters battling a burning building while trying to save the victims trapped inside. Why there are so many victims (as many as ten) in that building is never explained, but fortunately that’s not really an obstacle to enjoying the game. READ MORE
Poisoft’s eShop offering Kersploosh! is a difficult game to evaluate, due to its almost-insignificant price point. In an era where even re-releases of decades-old NES titles go for five dollars (like my much-beloved Mega Man 2, which I have effectively purchased for the fourth time now), how does one accurately value a game costing a little more than half of that? Even a mere hour of mediocre gameplay should be considered insane value for that price by most metrics, no?
Fortunately, the gameplay in Kersploosh! is quite above mediocre, and I’ve already put about an hour an a half into it. It’s a difficult game to play for long stretches, especially with the 3D on, but as bite-sized time killers go, I have enjoyed far worse. READ MORE
I’m pretty sure I’ve mentioned Pandemic a few times before, most notably in my review of Matt Leacock’s other major cooperative offering Forbidden Island. It also made a brief appearance in my Best of 2008 list, but I’ve never given it a column to itself. Now seemed like a good time to correct that, as a new edition has just hit the shelves of your local game store — and, perhaps more visibly, your local Target and other mainstream retailers as well. READ MORE
Roberto Fraga’s Dragon Delta, first published in 2000, was nominated for several awards that season due to its simple-yet-engaging cross-the-river gameplay for up to six players. Similarly to RoboRally, each player programs five actions each turn, but whether or not those actions will play out as intended remains to be seen. Dragon Delta has been out of print for a while now, but Asmodee recently reissued it under the new name of River Dragons, which is the version I’ll discuss here, although with one exception the two editions are essentially identical. READ MORE
Thus far the offerings of designer Xavier Georges have been somewhat mixed in my eyes. I appreciated the Wild West development of Carson City, but it was a little too much work for the amount of entertainment I got from it. Troyes, on the other hand, came up with some interesting dice-worker mechanics but got bogged down by too many options. His latest Z-Man published title, Ginkgopolis, is much more streamlined and as a result faster-playing, but will it stand up to repeated plays where his others have fallen flat? READ MORE
