Welcome to Kara and Peter on their first visit

Cozy Cafes prototype (led by Peter) A similar spatial puzzle to Tiny Towns, paired with a mid-weight engine-building system. Score points by serving regulars at your cafe, all while learning new recipes, hiring staff, and buying appliances. 2–5 players, 45-75 minutes.

Tiny Towns

– 2x (led by Nicole/K-ban) 2019 drafting and pattern building game. Each player’s town is represented by a 4×4 grid on which resource cubes are determined by that turn’s Mayor and are then placed in everyone’s towns. Each type of building has a specific layout for construction and earns VPs and scores victory points (VPs) in a unique way. Players also have their own private objective. When no player can place any more resources or construct any buildings, the game ends, VPs are totaled and any squares without a building are penalized 1 VP. 

Fit to Print

(led by Peter) 2023 newspaper layout game played over 3 turns (Friday, Saturday and Sunday). We played the team version with 12 players in 6 teams of 2. Each team consisted of a reporter who gathers stories in 3 varieties and multiple shapes as well as photos and advertisements and an Editor, who puzzles out the layout subject to specific rules. Players simultaneously collect newspaper tiles, stacking them on their desks until they think they have what they need to make the perfect front page. Then, they will yell “Layout!” and begin to lay out the page by carefully considering the placement of centerpieces, articles, photographs, and advertisements. When everything is just right, they yell “Print” to be the first off the press and gain their choice of centerpiece for the next round! This hectic spatial puzzle features over 100 unique newspaper tiles, 6 characters with their own special abilities, as well as 3 decks of Breaking News cards — so that each and every time you play you will be solving a new puzzle! There is a twist however, as the paper with the least ad revenue goes bust.

Antiques prototype (led by Peter) A light polyomino game with an auction system. Run an antique shop, filling it with items of all shapes and sizes and varying values to sell them to a shifting market. 2–5 players, 30–60 minutes.

Dandelions

(led by Armando) 2022 light dice game that works best with 3 players. Players roll a group of dice in their color, then choose one to move to a beautiful garden. Along the way, players can harness the power of the wind with three special actions — float, puff, and gust — to get the most points. The game ends after all the dice are used, and whoever receives the most victory points as combined from two different scoring methods wins.

Blazon

(led by Tony) 2023 set collection and pattern building game with a Heraldry theme – the design of shields used in medieval battle. On their turn players either draft cards to add to their hands or place cards onto their shield boards. Each game there are different scoring goals based on the elements on one’s shields.

Splendor

(led by Armando) 2014 classic game of chip-collecting and card development. On your turn, you may (1) collect chips (gems), or (2) buy and build a card, or (3) reserve one card. If you collect chips, you take either three different kinds of chips or two chips of the same kind. If you buy a card, you pay its price in chips and add it to your playing area. To reserve a card you place it in front of you face down for later building; this costs you a round, but you also get gold in the form of a joker chip, which you can use as any gem. All of the cards you buy increase your wealth as they give you a permanent gem bonus for later buys; some of the cards also give you prestige points. In order to win the game, you must reach 15 prestige points before your opponents do. 

Steve