You know that advertising phrase “new and improved?” It is one of those pieces of fluff text that bugs the heck out of me. If the thing we are discussing is new, then it has not been improved upon because there is nothing that came before to which it should be compared. If the thing we are discussing is improved, then it is not new because the implication is that this was a modified version of something that did come before.

I believe I have found the item that finally makes that mumbo-jumbo make sense. Trekking the World (Second Edition) is a new and improved version of Trekking the World!

Before we get too deep into the comparisons, though, let’s look at how Trekking the World (Second Edition) plays. If you’re already familiar with the game, skip on down to my thoughts at the end of this review.

[caption id="attachment_308898" align="aligncenter" width="600"] Nice new box![/caption]

Overview

In this game, you are a traveler (called a trekker in the rules, but that term reminds me too much of the more serious side of Star Trek fandom, so I am not going to use that term in this review). Your traveler starts on one of the airport spaces on the board (one…

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The PARKS brand—featuring the most popular game in the Keymaster Games catalog—is well known in my circles. Multiple players love PARKS as the casual game of choice both for core hobbyists (as a medium-length filler) and those looking for an easier time at the table with a handsome, well-produced experience.

Each time I play PARKS, I come away uttering a version of “yeah, that was pretty good” while being thankful that the teach takes about five minutes and decisions are not too taxing. And the cards are so beautiful! Even if someone doesn’t like PARKS for the gameplay, everyone loves the look.

In that same vein, I was pretty excited to hear that Keymaster was working on a roll-and-write game in the PARKS universe…and now we have Parks: Roll & Hike, hot off the press and ready to go. (I clarified with the Keymaster team that going forward, game titles in the PARKS line will not be written in CAPS.) During a recent trip to the beach, I was able to unleash Parks: Roll & Hike four times—a mix of solo and multiplayer play, using four of the six included maps—to get a solid feel for the experience.

If you liked PARKS, I think you will enjoy Parks: Roll & Hike. The game is easy to teach,…

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I adore the 2014 bag-building classic Orléans so much that I didn’t feel right “reviewing” it, at least in the traditional sense. My mind has been made up for years, so I filed an article in our Games We Love series.

So, let’s clear the decks on that first: Orléans is amazing, and I won’t accept any argument to the contrary. But I love the base game so much that I really haven’t played the expansions, despite the fact that I bought both the base game and all the available expansions in 2020 through a deal with GameNerdz: $42 for the base game and the three expansions available at the time. That was probably worth at least $125, if not more.

The deal was really good because GameNerdz had a stock of Orléans content published by Tasty Minstrel Games (TMG). TMG lost the license to publish Orléans, so GameNerdz had to push that stock out. For those of us without a life on a Black Friday, this news was solid gold.

Then the box arrived, and I never bothered playing the expansions. Our partners at Capstone Games (the current owner of the rights to publish Orléans products in the US) provided a review copy of the 2023 expansion Orléans: The Plague, so I thought this was…

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One of my crotchety opinions is that, like racing, the concept of “adventuring” doesn’t often translate well to board games. The latter function as systems that often help us think about other systems, and adventure isn’t really a system, at least, it’s not a feeling or an idea that can be easily transmogrified.

The gold standard for adventure games, in my book, is Mario Papini’s De Vulgari Eloquentia, a game where you wander around Italy collecting books to create a language. While this isn’t exactly swashbuckling, it captures how hard it was to just move around in the early modern era. Crossing an ocean? Forget about it. Every decision in DVE is built around a simple question: you can do it, but do you have the horses? Tension, consequences, and stakes–that’s what an adventure needs.

[caption id="attachment_302375" align="aligncenter" width="768"] A fun cast of player characters.[/caption]

Like DVE, The forthcoming Ultimate Voyage (Final Quest of the Treasure Fleet) is a resource management eurogame that’s got its hiking boots on. Ultimate Voyage continues the trend of not exactly being a game that feels like adventuring, but it does have some novel mechanisms that blend together in new and interesting ways. As far as mapping new horizons for the genre, it makes some interesting,…

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Japan, a nation that has seamlessly woven itself into the fabric of our daily lives, defies the need for introduction. From the vehicles we navigate our streets with, to the gaming platforms that transport us to realms of fantasy, and the captivating animations that grace our screens, Japan's influence is something we cannot ignore. Yet, its significance extends far beyond media manifestations and cars. Even its long, rich history has lured the eyes of Hollywood as it tries to capture its historical grandeur on the silver screen.

Encapsulating the essence of Japan's vast cultural tapestry is a daunting task, and it's the perfect backdrop for a game about vacation planning. Let’s Go To Japan is a game that focuses on the dilemma of every traveler longing to immerse themselves in Japanese culture. In this game, you are thrust into a crucible of decision-making, forced to prioritize and curate your journey with watchmaker precision. The objective? Craft a vacation plan that eclipses the experiences of your peers.

Vacation Planning Enigma

The game tries to facilitate this conundrum through card drafting. For those unfamiliar with the term, card drafting is where you get a hand of cards, pick one card to play, and pass the rest to a neighboring player. Unlike most card drafting games like 7 Wonders and Sushi Go,…

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Many co-operative games feature a predictably linear progression: showers of bad things and good things—let’s call them cats and dogs—followed by a series of player actions. Rinse and repeat, ad finitum, until the players either survive or die. 

On a human level, the real mortal threat to co-operative games, the awkward uncle at the family gathering, is the quarterback—the over-assertive player who talks the whole time, telling everyone what’s best. Not every danger fits in the box. Not every danger plays by the rules.

If I’m being honest, I avoid most co-op games because I constantly fight the urge to take over. That’s right. I’m the uncle. Now, I realize I don’t always know best. I’m actually pretty good at suppressing the impulse to speak. I just prefer making all the decisions. Rather than make everyone dislike me terribly, I stick to competitive games.

I initially passed on reviewing The A.R.T. Project for that reason, even though I was struck by Vincent Dutrait’s eye-catching cover and the anti-heist premise of the game. The design pedigree of Florian Sirieix and Benoit Turpin wore me down, however, and I decided to give it a shot. 

Uncle-proof?

While largely sticking to the co-op script, The A.R.T. Project makes a solid attempt at uncle-proofing the proceedings. Players receive two cards at the…

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As I started to make my way through the instruction manual for Five Peaks, from designer Adam Strzelecki and publisher Trefl, I quickly realized that I’d seen this game before. “Oh,” I said, “this is Concordia.”

At this point in my life, having played so many games over the years that my mind is a free-associating cloud of mechanisms and rules, I often read rulebooks and think of comparative benchmarks. It’s only natural. Despite the rumors, I too am human, and we love patterns. I don’t believe I have become uncharitable about this, though. It isn’t often that I look at a game and think, “Oh, this is [insert title].” The bar for that remains high.

Five Peaks clears it with ease.

It uses the same hand management system as Concordia. Each turn, you play one card from your hand and perform the action shown on the card. These cards allow you to move about the board, or collect resources, or buy new cards from the market. Any cards that you play stay down on the table until you play the card that lets you pick up all your cards.

Five Peaks uses the same resource management system as Concordia. You’re restricted to ten items, represented by the ten slots on your individual board. You have to manage…

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Without a doubt, Namiji would have been the first Kickstarter I ever backed—had I been into that sort of thing at the time. Instead, months later, that honor fell to Marvel United, a far less frustrating venture in the end. I watched the anticipated fishing game from a distance as delay after pandemic-fed delay pushed the eventual release back years from the original projection. I can only hope those who persevered got a badge or a really nice sticker for their troubles.

But here I am, four years later, with a copy of Namiji on my table, the seafaring sequel to the chillest game in a white box, Tokaido. Our family has walked the Tokaido road countless times, often in both directions. We have expanded and deluxified our copy and guarded it with our lives. Well, except for that one piece that my sister’s dog mangled. Consequently, if anyone has a spare purple base ring for the Collector’s Edition minis laying around, drop me a comment and I’ll make you an offer.

When the first copies of Namiji delivered, I had a chance to play a friend’s deluxe version, complete with painted ships and 3D paper boats. I never really doubted that I’d enjoy it; but I hadn’t seen it again until now. It has all the…

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At Meeple Mountain, we’ve been in a bit of a ‘fine’ rut. So many games come through the Meeple Mountain base camp, but few have the crampons to climb all the way to the top. It’s been a barrage of average, plenty of perfectly good, but few that truly stand out. As my colleague Justin argues, perhaps there are simply too many games.

It’s an inauspicious start to a review. Ominous. Unpromising. Discouraging.

I’m not too sure that Roll to the Top: Journeys does much to buck this trend of the tolerable. Except…

Let Me Roll It

A remake of a 2018 release, Roll to the Top: Journeys (just Roll to the Top from hereon) from designers Peter Joustra and Corné van Moorsel is a lovely production. Its gorgeously illustrated boards are inviting, its colourful dice ridiculously playful.

Gameplay is simple. Someone rolls the dice, everyone writes the numbers rolled or sums of those numbers in their grid. You start from the bottom, building up brick-by-brick until a vague silhouette of a famous landmark is complete. Numbers can’t be lower than the numbers directly below them, and no number can be written in a space that isn’t ‘supported’ by the number(s) below it.…

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Navigating the Ruins

In Mayan Curse, players are explorers who have stumbled upon an ancient Mayan temple. The path to the inner temple is divided into several sections, each with a series of tiled rows containing different symbols. It’s a long sprint to get to the end of the temple, but that’s where the most remarkable treasure awaits! Along the way, explorers can pick up Mayan monuments and artifacts (called stelae) that reward them with knowledge, the all-important resource needed to win the game. There is a catch, however: there are three giant boulders precariously perched along the walkways, and as the explorers get further into the temple and make more of a stir, these boulders will inevitably be shaken loose and start rolling towards the entrance of the temple. You must make it out of the door before all three boulders reach the entrance, or else you’re sealed inside the temple forever and automatically lose!

The key to navigating this temple comes from the ancient stone floors. In each round, players will draw three sacred stones from a bag. These stones are decorated with symbols matching the collection of symbols on the temple floor. Players can then make up to three slides, bumping the physical location of the floor tiles around to create a pathway. Then, players spend…

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K3 is the 17th tallest mountain in the world (at just over 26,000 feet). It’s part of a range of mountains collectively known as Gasherbrum, located on the border between Pakistan and China. While not the tallest mountain in the world, the primary massive exposed rock face, nicknamed “Shining Wall,” is thought to have inspired the name of the entire mountain range.

First ascended in 1958, K3 remains a favorite of serious mountain climbers all over the world. And even though playing this game isn’t quite as heart-poundingly exciting as climbing the real thing, I think you’ll agree that it’s still a clever puzzle on its own.

Let me tell you about K3.

K3 Overview

Presented in a square box barely larger than a fist, K3’s simple Swiss-style graphic design will catch your eye. After opening the box and spilling out the mega-sized hexagonal pieces, your attention will be captured as well.

The goal of K3 is to be the last person who can place one of their pieces on the mountain.

All red, yellow, blue, black, and green hexagonal pieces are placed in the bag to set up the game. Draw 9 out and line them up to act as the base of the mountain. Next, each player…

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“SCOTLAND YARD BABY!!!”

My brother and I were texting about an upcoming family beach trip a few years ago; he had secured an updated copy of Scotland Yard at a toy store and he was going to bring it to the beach.

We love Scotland Yard. We played it a bunch as kids with our family and other kids in the neighborhood. The fight was always the same, because everyone knew that playing as Mr. X, the game’s bad guy in the one-versus-many hidden movement experience, was the most fun.

Mr. X had a little notepad that was covered by a grid. This grid had a few callout spaces that required Mr. X to appear on the board from time to time, aiding the detectives as they used their limited set of tickets to move around London trying to catch Mr. X.

We played Scotland Yard only once during that beach trip, but it was a blast. It’s more accurate to say that it was a blast for my brother and I to play; our extended family was less enamored.

“Playing as a detective is kinda boring, bro.”

“Jeez, this game is long. Mr. X has eight more turns?”

Someone always wants to drop the logic bit into the proceedings, too. “How is it that the cops only…

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