How To Play Project L

Project L is a game about basically playing Tetris, or with Tetris pieces. You are trying to complete shapes by filling in pieces to it. At the start of the game, you have two pieces a single square and two squares, but you get more as the game goes along.

On your turn you have a number of actions that you can do. And you get to take three of them per round. You can pick up one of the shape cards that you need to fill in and put it in front of you. Next you can upgrade a piece, and they have different levels which determine how you can upgrade. Or you can take a basic piece. You can clear a row, or one important one is you can master. Master you can do once per turn, but allows you to put a piece in every shape that you have.

The game continues until you get down to none of the harder tiles left. After that you finish out the round plus one more. That way each person gets a similar number of turns. Then you count up points on your shapes, and most points wins.

What Doesn’t Work?

The base game is a lot of fun, and I have more positives than negatives. However, I am concerned about how the base game will play over a lot of plays. I expect it to stick in my collection because the game is very accessible, more on that later. But for me, without the Finesse expansion or Ghost expansion which I want to get, will it be interesting enough.

The game play itself is simple, and after a handful of plays. I feel like it doesn’t change up too massively. Now, I think it can change up with different players because if I go for the higher scoring cards and push the end game faster, that will make it feel different. But if I build up a really strong set of pieces and go from there, it’s going to feel like what I’ve done before.

What Works?

The ease and time of play are great on this game. In a two player game, turns are snappy. And while there is decision space with what shapes you take, how you allocate your pieces, things like that, it isn’t daunting. I felt like I could sit down and play this game with anyone.

The game also looks great on the table. The bright colored pieces that you are fitting into the black and white cards makes the game pop. It makes it feel easy to get to the table and play. And the pieces are a lot of fun, very high quality game.

Who Is This For?

I think that this is a great game for gamers to teach people getting into the hobby. Or to teach players who gravitate towards that Splendor, Ticket to Ride, and Smallworld weight of game. I don’t know that this will work for a group of heavier gamers. It might work a few times but it won’t be one that sticks around because the decision space and strategy for the base game is a bit limited.

But more casual gamers, I highly recommend this game. Project L is a game that should be in Target and sell a million copies or at least one hundred thousand, because it is fun, it is easy to learn, and it looks great. Put this on a shelf next to a lot of games and it’ll stand out.

Project L- Final Thoughts

I think that this is going to be one that sticks around in my collection. And I think that even though it won’t be one that I always want to play. Because while the game play is fun and easy, I’m not sure the base game has the level of strategy that I want.

I am hopeful, with looking at the expansion, that will improve the game for me. This is a game that should have staying power on my shelf for a lot of people I game with. And I don’t think it is going to be a game where I will turn down playing it. I also think that the expansion is going to make that even less likely that I’ll turn down playing it. Mainly because it looks to add to the puzzle of the game.

Finally, this isn’t part of the review, but there is a insert or Game Trayz for Project L. I’m not sure if it’ll be something you can buy later, but man, is it nice. Takes what could have been a bit of a messy table and a slower set-up and makes an easy game easy to get to the table.

My Grade: B
Gamer Grade: C-
Casual Grade: A

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Numbers

A’s – B’s – C’s – D’s – E and F’s – G and H’s

I, J and K’s

ICECOOL (and ICECOOL 2)

Yes, that is how the name is listed on Board Game Geek, so I’m going with that. ICECOOL was a flicking game, that I forget where I stumbled across it, probably the Dice Tower, and what was interesting about the game is that not only were you flicking the penguins, not something that I had done before, but the box formed the penguin high school that you were flicking the penguins around. Just how the different parts of the box formed the board and stuck to together was cool. Add in ICECOOL 2, now you can play with up to 8 people, you can either do the normal way with hall monitors trying to catch the students ducking out of class or race around the board if you want another mode to play. The game is a ton of fun, and has always been a smashing success at game nights.

Status: Played

InBetween

Another game that I know I learned about on the Dice Tower, this is a two player only game that has a theme that reminded me of Stranger Things when Sam Healey would talk about it. This game has one person playing the InBetween or basically the upside-down nd the other person playing the real world. There are a group of people, and you are trying to put your influence on them and make it so that the people go to your side and not your opponents, So it’s an interesting tug of war sort of game as you try and figure out through card play how to influence that. That concept really drew me to the game, and the them, because playing a Stranger Things game, basically, sounded like a lot of fun.

Status: To Be Played

The Isle of Cats

This game has cats, that’s a selling point, but it also has your drafting cards and playing down polyominoes, think Tetris sort of pieces, which are the cats onto your ship, all the while trying to create “families” of like colored cats to score points. Plus you have objective cards, and there are sections on the boat that you need to fill up. But you have to be able to pay for this call, so you get baskets to pick up the cats you have to pay for, you have to pay for the cats with fish, because fish lure cats into baskets, and you have to pay fish for the cards that you draft that you decide to keep. There’s a lot going on in the game but all of it seems to flow together quite well.

Status: To Be Played

Just One

Party games can be hit or miss for me, but Just One is a really good game. Firstly, it’s cooperative, which I think can be an issue with other party games. I get that something like Cards Against Humanity or Apples to Apples are supposed to have the in jokes created, but it eventually just becomes people playing those in jokes because they are funny versus because they are trying that hard to win, even games like Stipulations, which I also like, eventually has people starting to put down the same jokes. Just One, however, since it is cooperative, has people focused on helping the group by coming up with a good one word clue that hopefully no one else will have. I also like how those clues work so well, one word, if it’s duplicated by someone else, you can’t see either clue. That really ups the ante for people putting out unique clues which makes guessing the right thing harder, but maybe with all the clues together a more obscure clue will make more sense.

Status: Played

King of Tokyo

My only K game as well, King of Tokyo was one of the earlier games I got. You’ll find that a lot of the earlier games are one’s that I saw on Wil Wheaton’s TableTop show. This was one that looked like a lot of fun, and still gets played probably a couple of times per year. The game works well because it is a nice simple step up from other games. You are rolling dice Yahtzee style and either getting numbers for points Farkle style, getting punches, getting energy (think currency), or healing up. Now there are more rules, but for the most part the punches and the points are what you really care about because you can either win by knocking everyone else out or by getting enough points. That’s one thing that I really enjoyed about the game is that you have two options to win as well, that wasn’t super common or possibly even a thing, in the games that I’d played before.

Status: Played

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10 – Choose Your Own Adventure: House of Danger
If you’re familiar with the Choose Your Own Adventure books, you’ll know that they are silly books where they are taking you through some sort of crazy scenario, and if you make a wrong choice, generally almost at random, you’ll end up dying. Now, that doesn’t sound like that much fun, and it was annoying in the books at times where you’d feel like you were in a dead end and have to go back and start over again. In the board game version, something bad will happen if you die, but then you’ll reset to the previous decision and you always have a chance to go back. This game has some great writing, and is meant as silly fun for a group of players to sit around a table, make poor decisions and work through this cooperative story together. It’s extremely light and is just a fun time at the table for everyone as you go through the nonsensical story.

9 – Tokyo Highway
There are some games on this list because they are silly fun, there are others because the aesthetic is just amazing. Tokyo Highway is one of the latter. What’s basically is just little wooden cars and Popsicle sticks ends up looking like a piece of artwork on the table as the crazy roads interweave between everything. Can you get your roads to go over or under other roads in order to place your cars, and with that can you do that without knocking over precariously balanced roads with little to no room between them? The games rules are extremely simple, but there’s a little bit of tension at times as you place things, but mainly you’re just appreciating how cool it looks on the table.

8 – Small World
Now, I call this game a Risk killer, and for a lot of people, Risk isn’t a feel good game, so how can Small World be a feel good game? It’s because not only does it encourage conflict and encourage wiping someone else off the board as much as you can, it does that for everyone so you’re never down and out. If your race gets overrun, just get a new one and do it back to them, and you always have a special power, maybe you have something that makes sense, like pillaging orcs, but you might have something more out there like seafaring giants or flying sorcerers. Just the combinations, the massive swings from round to round, this game is meant to be light, and the combat doubles down on that, no more rolling lots of dice like Risk, now it’s just simply put down your tokens, and if you have two more than your opponent you take over their territory. If it wasn’t for the fact that you can always come back with another crazy combination, this wouldn’t make the list, but you’re never really down and out, and facing off wealthy ratmen against barbarian elves is just fun.

7 – Draftosaurus
If you haven’t seen Jurassic Park, you probably know about it. And the idea of a park with dinosaurs in just a lot of fun. Draftosaurus is a dinosaur drafting game where you’re trying to get pairs, as many different or as many the same, or other combinations, of dinosaurs to score the most points. You draft from a handful of dinosaur meeples that you have, and the game just is fun and vibrant. The dinosaur meeples look amazing, and the game play is very simple. The only thing that I don’t like about this game is that it doesn’t come with a score pad. It’s on the list of things to do for me to find one and print it off and laminate it so that the scoring will be more fun. That said, the game is simple, fast, and looks amazing because of the dinosaur meeples, it’s hard not to have fun when you’re playing it.

6 – Century: Golem Edition
This game is such a simple but beautiful game as you are building up an engine through a hand of cards to trade gems for other gems and get more gems so that you can activate golem that give you points. This is a feel good game because the artwork is amazing, the metal coins are nice, but it really comes down the gems that you are trading around. The gems are just beautiful translucent plastic pieces, that you can find in other games as well, but they just make the game because it’s fun to play around with them. In the end, you’re really playing a solitaire sort of puzzle with a shared pool of cards to purchase from. The game move incredibly fast as you have a card that you’ll play or purchase each turn, so you don’t have a lot of things to think about. There’s a more standard version as well where you are trading spices, but in my opinion, the Golem Edition looks better and is more feel good.

5 – Homebrewers
I wasn’t sure if this game was going to make the list, but as I thought about it, as a beer fan, I feel like it really is a feel good game. It might be less so for people who won’t like/drink beer, but what makes it feel good might even give them a good laugh as well. In this game you’re trying to build up the best engine to become the best homebrewer out there. You do this by adding ingredients to your beers and brewing them. What is fun about it is that you can make all sorts of crazy combinations. If you want a beer with smoke, oyster, and lime, you can do that, and you might end up with that because that makes the most sense for scoring points. At the end of the game, which is a fast game, you can look and see what crazy beers you’ve created. So even though the game is competitive, it’s over fast and not that cut throat in it’s competitive nature, and the beers are just a fun thing to see what you come up with.

4 – Second Chance
This roll and write, or flip and write, is just a fun little game where sometimes you are pulling for a shape to come out, but most of the time, you’re just doodling in the various shapes with their own unique look so that at the end, your board looks different than everyone else’s board, and has it’s own artistic flair to it. In the game you’re trying to fill in as much of your board as possible so that you have the fewest empty spaces left. Whomever has the fewest spaces left is the winner. But the game encourages you, as you’re filling in Tetris like shapes to have some fun with it and doodle in different backgrounds for the shapes so that you know what you put where, but also so that you have your own unique board when you’re done. If you give people the time they need to doodle, it is a very relaxing and feel good game.

3 – Sagrada
Now, with Sagrada there are some more stressful moments, at times, as you hope the right number is going to be rolled on the right color of dice to help you complete your stained glass window, but it’s hard for it to be too stressful because you are making stained glass windows. The game is just beautiful on the table, and the rules are quite simple, really, so when you’re drafting dice, you know what you’re going to want. The fact that the dice are translucent makes it even better because the aesthetic really is reminiscent of a stained glass window. The game also plays quickly, so the end game where you’re more worried about the dice that come out, goes by very quickly and then you can look at what you put together.

2 – ICECOOL
Dexterity games can sometimes be stressful, late game Jenga where you’re worried about knocking the tower over, might not be a feel good game for some people. But ICECOOL does a good job of not making it stressful. You can get good at ICECOOL, but with a theme of being high school student penguins who are trying to skip class and not get caught by the hall monitor because they want to get fish, the whole game is just silly. And whether you are trying to jump a wall, or get a crazy ricochet and go through several doors, it’s just a fun time. The theme and game play seems like it’d be best for younger kids, but I’ve had great success with this just with adults as it’s always just a silly fun time that everyone can enjoy.

1 – Marvel Champions
This game is just a fun game to play. It’s shown up high on a lot of my lists, but that’s because it’s a good game, and because you get to play as your favorite superhero. All the schemes of the bad guys are super villain schemes, and being able to play as Captain America and throw your shield to hit Ultron or Black Panther and break out all the Wakandan tech to take down Klaw is just a fun time. It feels like playing as the comic book characters, and while there is a good amount of strategy to the game, it doesn’t feel bogged down in that, and most of the time, you just do the thing that feels coolest and most like the hero would do and it works well.

There are more feel good games out there, cooperative games can as a whole lend themselves to that because you’re working together. But I didn’t include things like Gloomhaven and Pandemic, because while the end can be a feel good moment as you beat the game, there is a lot of stress in the game. I think out of the ones that I put down, I’d say that only Marvel Champions has some of that stress to it, the rest are very much lighter games throughout. And even with Marvel Champions, playing as a super hero is just so much fun that it has a lot of a feel good vibe to it.

What are some of your favorite feel good games? Are there any that you want to checkout from my list, or that you think I should checkout?

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In Second Chance, everyone is getting their own unique starting shape which they have to fill in on the center of their grid. After that, two shapes are flipped which players then get to pick one and add it to their grid, touching a previous one. This continues until someone can’t put one of the shapes on their grid. A card is flipped for only them, giving them a second chance. If they can’t use that, they count up how many empty squares they have, and that’s their score. Other players then continue until someone has either filled up their board or until no one can play a shape. At that point in time, everyone counts up the number of empty spots they have, and the person with the fewest remaining open spots wins.

Second Chance is technically a flip and write, but it falls into the genre. And it falls into a nice spot where people who aren’t board gamers can pick it up quickly. Most people are familiar with the concept of Tetris, and this game has a bit of that feel to it as you try and optimally place shapes. That helps get this game to the table a lot and helps get multiple plays in of the game. The game also plays fast, so that helps keep the non-board gamers attention as well.

As compared to some other games in the roll and write games, Welcome To…, Cartographers, or Cat Cafe, Second Chance is a bit of a simpler game. The strategy of the game basically surrounds deciding if you want to go early with larger shapes in hopes that the smaller ones needed to fill it in will show up later. But that’s a bit more luck based than anything. Now, that’s not much of a knock on the game. It’s 100% a filler game and while there are times that I want to play a bit more strategic roll and write game, the fact that Second Chance can play a larger number of people as well works nicely.

But that is also a knock on the game. I think that it’s very much targeted for the casual gamer, and while that’s great, it isn’t one that gamers who like those heavier decisions are going to love for as long a time as a casual gamer. The tactics are light, the interaction doesn’t exist, and while that’s perfect for that introductory style game, it will feel like you’re doing something similar over and over again the more that you play it. For me, I haven’t found this to be an issue, as I do like a fair number of lighter games, but I can see how it could be. The other thing that helps keep the game from feeling like there isn’t enough going on, is that the game is fast. Once you know how to play, you can play in ten to fifteen minutes. The game definitely doesn’t overstay it’s welcome, even with playing a couple of games in a sitting.

Overall, this is a roll and write (or flip and write) game that I really do enjoy. I personally like some of the bigger roll and write games better, but Second Chance, because it plays so fast and you can play it with almost anyone, because it’s so simple, has a spot on my shelf. It’s one that I can take to a family gathering, or that I can pull out at board game night and get rolling (flipping) in a few minutes without any questions once the rules are taught. If you are looking for that light weight roll and write game, Second Chance is a great choice.

Overall Grade: B+
Casual Grade: A+
Gamer Grade: C

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Cartographers is a mapping flip and write game where you are trying to create the best area of land for scoring. Your cartographer goes out and is trying to place Tetris style shaped pieces and other shapes onto your map. These shapes are different types of land, and depending on how the land is laid out, it is going to allow you to score throughout the game. But watch out for monsters, if can you can’t get them surrounded in your map, they are negative points, and your opponents are going to be the people who are putting the monsters onto your map.

Cartographers is scored over four seasons, each with two different scoring criteria. In spring you score A/B, summer – B/C, fall – C/D, and winter – D/A. So you have to both be planning ahead and trying to score as much as you can on each round. The first round is generally lighter scoring, because you haven’t built up anything for either the A/B scoring. And the scoring can be having squares surrounded but not filled, having forests surrounded, having six or more buildings next to each other, etc. These can really change up how you play the game, and help make it unique because maybe in spring I am not set-up to use something right then, but I can plan for the summer. Or you can really focus on a couple of them in hope that they are going to score you more points. Plus, you can get coins by surrounding mountains or using smaller areas, and those give you points each season that you have them. And the monsters are going to be negative unless they are completely surrounded, and each spot open by them is a negative point, and that can add up fast.

Now, there are a ton of roll and write or flip and write games out there, is there anything that makes Cartographers stand out from other games? First, there is no down time, not something that makes it stand out, but something that is nice. On each card flip you are placing land on your map or a monster on your opponents map. So you are always going to be able to play, and even if you can’t fit the shape, you then get to place a single square of any type, which you’ll be able to fit for sure. I also like the scoring throughout the game. Cat Cafe has a little bit of this, as does Welcome To… but Cartographers leans into that a whole lot more. And the scoring changes for each season which adds to the puzzle nature of the game. I think if the scoring was just static, the season scoring wouldn’t work. So like Welcome To… the scoring is going to change up every time that you play the game. Finally, having other people put things on your map and you putting things on other peoples is really interesting and different. You can really mess someone up with a monster and give them a lot of negative points.

The theme works fairly well in this game. I think that the land types being next to each other or surrounded, etc. for the scoring makes pretty good thematic sense. I think that you can argue the mountain being surrounded gets you a gold can make a bit of sense if they are paying you for completing a percent of the map. The monsters, however, being negative points if they aren’t next to anything seems backwards. I think that any that they would be next to would be negative because you don’t want to be by monsters, but I understand from the point of the game, that doesn’t work nearly as well. Like most roll and write games, the theme is a bit abstracted away, but as someone who likes drawing maps, I don’t mind, and I think it works well enough. I can get that itch for making Dungeons and Dragons maps out of my system with Cartographers, which is technically set in the same world as the game Roll Player.

I also think that while this roll and write is a bit more complicated than some other roll and write games, that it isn’t going to be hard to teach, and the visual representations on the board are easy to see and the different terrain types are easy to draw. I’m not sure that I’d lead with this game for a roll and write if someone hasn’t played any, but if they know what a game like Second Chance is, Cartographers is a logical next step. And just teaching it to someone who isn’t familiar with roll and writes would probably work, might just be a bit slower teaching than you’d expect for a roll and write game.

Overall, I think this is a very good roll and write/flip and write. It gives you some challenging decisions, and I really enjoy how the scoring works. I think that the scoring and the monsters make the game feel different than most other roll and write games. Definitely feels a bit like a mash-up of Welcome To… and Second Chance, and that’s great, because I really like those two games. I definitely would recommend this one for the theme, which is light, but easy to sell, and the mechanics.

Overall Grade: A-
Gamer Grade: B+
Casual Grade: B+

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