So, I got to play all three of the games I signed up for over the weekend with Gen Con. It was interesting because I got to try Tabletopia for the first time and I then played the other two games on Tabletop Simulator, which I was more familiar with, all while chatting via Discord. But let’s talk about the games themselves.

Fruit Picking

Fruit picking is an Mancala style game where you are taking seeds, moving them around your own player board until you have enough in a storehouse to buy what you want from the market. All of this while you’re racing to collect the right fruits in combination to be able to complete one of four different hands as a winning condition. This can be one of all five different fruits, a full house, three pairs, or four of a kind.

There were a few things that I really enjoyed about this game, first there was the speed of the game. Even on Tabletopia, and digitally they always go slower, the game was really fast. Turns are very simple, you pick your seeds from one location, move them, and if you have enough seeds in the storehouse and there is a fruit card you can buy in the market of the fruit you landed on, you can buy it. But, while turns and the whole game are fast, you can still do some awesome combos, and this is the second thing I really enjoyed. When moving the seeds around, if you place your last seed in the storehouse you immediately go again, so this is a spot that you can really strategize in the game, and honestly, there is probably an ideal strategy from the beginning with only the market messing things up. But if you don’t strategize from the word go and just enjoy the game, you can find yourself in some really great turns of building up your storehouse so that you’re ready for the whole game. That’s basically what happened to me. Finally, I also like that there are multiple win conditions, four of a kind needs the fewest cards but is easier to block by buying up what someone needs, and is the most dependent upon what cards come out. I won by getting a full house, bu we had a player close to four of a kind and a couple other players who were lagging behind a little bit.

Final thoughts on the game, I really enjoyed it, the game play was slick and had a good family weight to it. I could see playing this with my parents who don’t play a ton of games, but I think because it’s fast, I could see playing it as almost a filler in a board game night. The one downside is that the US distribution is limited right now. It is coming to the BGG (Board Game Geek) online store, and right now that’s it. If you are looking for a new family weight game, though, I’d definitely recommend it.

The Librarians Adventure Card Game

Let me preface by saying that I really like The Librarians movies and TV show. They are goofy and campy, but a lot of fun. If you aren’t familiar with them, the Library here is not just a place for books, it’s a place for lost and magical artifacts in the world that could cause catastrophe if you aren’t careful with them.

In the game you are doing basically the same thing, with the base game going to have you playing through season one and an expansion for the first movie coming in the kickstarter as well. This will be kickstarting either in September or October, and sounds like everything is done and playtested so it’ll kickstarter and then go to print right away, which is fun. In the game you are dealing with a scenario, in the case of the first scenario, it starts with the library being broken into, and you are one of three librarians or a guardian tasked to stop it, you have different skills that you can use. You start by putting into play any sidekicks, attachments, or artifacts that you want an can afford. This is done via spending energy. Then you, for each player, flip over a card from the event deck, this might cause you to flip a bad guy or an obstacle that goes onto the board and you have to overcome it. Or it might be a complication which is a one time thing you have to deal with right then. Then, as a group in whatever order you want, you take actions to overcome the obstacles and defeat the bad guys. To deal with these things you are generally using a skill and rolling dice. But you can give yourself successes on the blank sides of dice by discarding cards.

This game did a number of things that I enjoyed. First off, each character has their own unique deck of cards, so playing Jacob Stone, I would get different cards than the person playing Eve Baird, and so on. And each of the characters has a skill they are stronger at than the other players and a skill that they are weaker at. I also like that basically everything, minus drawing the events for the scenario, can be done at the same time. I can play my sidekicks and artifacts while you play yours and it doesn’t matter. Now, I will say that the main actions, fighting, dealing with obstacles, etc, should be announced when you are taking them because sometimes order can matter for those things. But it allows you as a group to optimize what you are doing. But the game plays fast because people can do things at the same time. I also liked the scenario, there was a main scheme that the bad guys were trying to do and in the actual scenarios I have to imagine it might be a multistep scheme, and there are then things that you are trying to do as well. It is pulled straight from season one of the TV series and it works well. There are four scenarios in the box that can be played a campaign and unlock new cards for your decks and things like that, but you can also just play a single scenario.

Final thoughts on The Librarians Adventure Card game, this was heavily prototyped though the cards themselves had the right information. So I can’t really comment on the look of the game, but the game play is what matters and I really enjoyed it. If you are a board gamer and a fan of the show, it’s worth checking out the game. If you are a fan of Warehouse 13, probably worth checking out the show and then the game. And I think if you haven’t watched either, it’s still a good game, if you don’t like the show, it won’t be for you. Overall a lot of fun and coming to Kickstarter in September/October.

The Night Cage

Now, I’m going to say that this was a bit of an odd experience. Some of that was because I was quite familiar with the game having watched a Gloryhoundd Playthrough of it. Some of it because the other four people in the game were physically sitting around a table with each other on their laptops. So early on there were some communication issues because they’d be talking muted or showing on their screen to someone what they were thinking by pointing but not using the mouse pointer.

In The Night Cage, you wake up in a labyrinth that is constantly changing and you have only a candle and a little bit of nerve as you crawl your way through tunnels searching for a way out. You are trying to avoid monsters and find not only keys but also a gate so that you can all escape. Every player needs to get a key and be at the gate before you run out of the tunnel tiles and can’t all make it to a gate. And if you get hit by a monster, your candle goes out so you’re moving one space at a time, and if you get hit again, you die. So if anyone can’t make it to the gate, you lose, if anyone can’t get a key, you lose, and if anyone dies, you lose, so there are plenty of ways to lose.

So, I don’t think that my experience was fully representative of how the game works. Like I said, I came in knowing how it worked already and since it was towards the end of the day and Gen Con online, I feel like only some of the people at the other table were paying full attention to the rules, or how to use Tabletop Simulator. With that said, the game was still fun. I like the push and pull of wanting to spread out and find a key as quickly as possible and then having to race back together before time runs out, as spreading out means you’ll see more of the board faster and burn through tiles faster, or you can stay closer together, move around slowly, but the risk of that is that someone is going to get hit by a monster if one pops up. There’s also a good amount of pressure because you can see the number of tiles you have left dwindling, in TTS via a counter, but in real life it’ll be removing them from a stack of tiles that is your candle burning shorter. So you feel the pressure you’re up against and you know that you only have 4 gates and 7 keys, I believe, for a five player game, so you can’t afford to lose too many keys or gates, or you risk not being able to complete.

The Night Cage was a good time to play, like I said, some stuff made it weird. But got to learn more about the other monsters in the Kickstarter and how they’ll work and how they can change up the game and how it works. Overall, it was a fun time, and I think this game in person when you can see the stack of tiles getting shorter and shorter as the candle burns down, it’s going to e great. I’m really glad that I had played it and definitely confirms that I want to back it, as it’s on Kickstarter right now.

So that’s what I played over the weekend. Which one of the games sounds the most interesting to you? Did you do any Gen Con online events?

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