The Contenders:

First, why are these two battling right now? Both of them have a common mechanic between them, in that they are card-drafting games. You are passed a hand of cards, you select one, all players reveal cards at the same time, and then your hand of cards passes to the next person and the process is repeated. But one of the games is about picking out your meal at a conveyor belt sushi restaurant, and the other is about building the seven wonders of the ancient world. So the themes are very different, but mechanically, there are a number of things that are similar about these games. Like I mentioned, they use card drafting, but there is also an aspect of set collection in each game.

7 Wonders

7 Wonders has you building one of the seven wonders of the ancient world. You build up a tableau in front of you and your wonder, getting resources, buying those you don’t have, getting goods, studying, building military might, and building up your wonder. There is a cornucopia of points in this game, as well; you score points at the end of the game based on the sets of buildings you have, different things you’ve studied, your military might (in fact that’s at the end of each age), and other things. The big upside of this is that you can focus in on a few different areas and have a chance of winning. However, you do need to diversify some; otherwise, you won’t be able to get quite enough points to win. But if you try to do everything at once, you likely won’t get large enough chunks of points to win.

Sushi Go! Party

Sushi Go! is about putting together the best sushi meal you could possibly have. Maybe you want some maki, miso soup, and green tea ice cream — while you can get this combination of foods in this game, it might not give you the most points. The game is played in three rounds (similar to 7 Wonders’ three ages), in which you try to collect sets of different things to get the most points possible. If you have three sashimi, for example, you will score 10 points at the end of the round, but if you have only two, you get no points. Or if you have two tofu, they’re worth 5 points, but if you have more, all your tofu are worth 0 points. Desserts are scored after the meal, and are the only thing you keep between each round. It makes sense as a meal, since you eat your dessert at the very end.

Compare/Contrast

The card drafting is a huge similarity between these two games, but there are a few differences, too. In 7 Wonders, you are drafting from a new set of cards each round, whereas most of the cards in Sushi Go end up going back into the pool of cards to draft, and only the desserts see their numbers reduced as you go. In 7 Wonders, if you get off to a poor start, it is harder to catch up for that reason, and makes the card drafting a bit more tactical. There’s also the set collection aspect to both of them, as you are looking to collect a variety of buildings that can stack off of each other in 7 Wonders, as well as collecting the various studies and gaining military might. In Sushi Go!, there can be a bit more variety in the set collection because sometimes you don’t want a big set of cards. Having more than two eel cards isn’t a bad thing, but it doesn’t do you any good; you just want to have two eels for sure so that you don’t get negative points. Compare that to tofu, which I mentioned above, where you don’t want more than two of them, or they become worthless.

Another big difference is the variability in both games. In 7 Wonders, the variability from game to game comes in the number of players, using more cards with more players, and which wonders are being built. If you consistently are only playing with two people, the cards you are drafting from are going to be the same. In Sushi Go! Party, you have a wide variety of different rolls, appetizers, entrees, specials, and desserts to combine and choose from. While it isn’t endless and you can repeat stuff fairly quickly when building out which ones you are using, you have a very large number of combinations.

The Results

Who wins? Sushi Go! Party

While these are both great games, I’m giving the win to Sushi Go! Party. There are two big reasons for this — the first is that I think the variability in the game is higher. Now, if you are playing 7 Wonders with a varying number of players, you do get to see more cards, but if you buy it to just play in a group of four people, you will quickly learn what those cards are. Because of this, there are more defined strategies for every game of 7 Wonders than there are for Sushi Go! Party. The second reason is that I see Sushi Go! Party as more accessible for new players. There aren’t as many mechanically heavy bits, and the artwork is cute. It’s going to be easier to get to the table with a wider group of players. If you want something that is more mechanically challenging, I’d recommend 7 Wonders as a great other option for card drafting. I honestly don’t think there is a wrong choice for picking one or the other of these two games, though. Finally, I’ll leave you with one important thing as a comparison between the games — if you just get the basic Sushi Go! game, you lose all of the variability that is in Sushi Go! Party, and 7 Wonders immediately becomes the better game. However, Sushi Go! Party is a cheap game for what you get, so it is definitely worth the money.

Who is your winner?

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So what’s the crazy Peder talking about? Board Game Battles is going to be a new article series where I or Kristen or a guest poster, writes about two similar board games, compares and contrasts them, and then declares a winner. The games can be similar mechanics wise or theme wise, just something consistent across them that people compare them. The first match is Exit versus Unlock.

The Contenders:

Exit and Unlock are both escape room board games. You’ve probably heard of the trend of escape rooms around the country. These are rooms where you are “locked” in and maybe given a clue of where to start, but then, in a time limit, you need to figure out various puzzles and find clues to get the code or key to unlock the door and escape the escape room. The two games battling are like this, but instead of going to a physical location, paying a chunk of money, these all come in small boxes. I don’t really know what they weigh, I just needed it for the intro. Both of the games come in very small boxes with cards, maybe a book, or possibly a few other things. These are very small games, but there is plenty of game to each of them.

Exit

The Exit game that I’ve played had a booklet that you used for solving your puzzles. You’d look for clues, fold pages, and mess with the box and other odds and ends in the box to try and figure out the puzzles. If they got too tricky for you, you could flip over a card to get a hint depending on what puzzle you were working on. Then once you think you’ve solved the puzzle, you would match the characters of the key to the symbols on a wheel and that would give you a numerical clue. You’d then flip a card with that number and see if you got the right key or not. If you did it would give you more information to solve future puzzles, if you didn’t, you’d know to go back to the drawing board. Once you’ve gotten the whole thing completed you check your time and you get a ranking on how long it took you.

Unlock

Similar to Exit, however, Unlock doesn’t have a booklet and it has an application instead. The application is where you enter in the various keys and codes you need to throughout the game. And instead of counting up, the time counts down. So you’re trying to combine cards, look for clues, and make equipment and figure out the answers confidently. However, if you get it wrong, you have to press the got it wrong button in the app (if a card tells you to) and now you lose time. And suddenly your hour of time to solve everything is getting shorter faster. When the time runs out you “lose” technically, however, you can continue with the time counting up now and you still get a rating at the end.

Compare/Contrast

There are a few big differences. The first being the Exit games booklet. This means that you are all crowding around a booklet and that they can lay out some elaborate puzzles. This was sometimes put to good use in the Exit game that we played, and also allowed you to manipulate the pages to line things up differently to solve puzzles. Beyond that, the Exit games use the whole box. The one that we played, you had to use the box insert to figure out one of the puzzles and really you should have pulled it apart, but we were playing with a store copy, so we couldn’t do that. The other big thing is the timing. While the Exit game counts up and you can play for as long as you want, the Unlock game counts down. In my opinion, I like counting down a whole lot better. This means that you can’t just agonize over a puzzle for a long time, instead you’re feeling the crunch to come up with an answer and get the puzzle solved. And with that, then you are torn between taking a stab at something and solving it quickly or potentially losing time because you got it wrong. Finally, the app is different as well, there was actually an audio clue for the unlock game we were playing, and that was fun. It also has a nicer way of giving hints as you can do that through the app.

Both of them have interesting puzzles though, and they do try and develop a little bit of story as time goes by. For a very small game, both of them pack a ton of content in as well. each of them has a number of puzzles to solve and while you have to solve all of the puzzles to get out in the end, you don’t have to solve them in a certain order. Sometimes there are a couple that you can be working on.

The Results

So, who wins the first board game battle? I’m giving the victory to: Unlock

There are a few main reasons why I think unlock is better. First, while Unlock is more limited on the puzzles it can do, because it’s only using the cards, that makes it easier for more people to be engaged. Some people can be looking at other cards than other people, and you can spread them out more on the table. Even with three people playing the Exit game, it was hard for all of us to be at the book at one time, and that was what was really needed to get a lot of the puzzles completed. Secondly the timing makes a big difference in the game. Counting down and worrying about running out of time is way  more stressful than counting up, and it makes you want to work faster. That pressure is a good thing as it makes the game seem like it means more to complete. The app is also very nice as it allows them a bit more that they can do with puzzles, and it’s less fiddly to get a code entered in than for the Exit games. Finally, the Exit games are not reusable. Yes, I played a store copy, so that means I am technically wrong, but really the box/insert/booklet should all be mangled to a point that no one can play it again. Sure, with the unlock games we’ll play them once and not be able to play them again, but we can pass it on to someone else, that is not the case with the Exit games.

Final Thoughts

Both games are fun, and if you are fine dropping the money, about $15 into the Exit games for a one off experience, they are a lot of fun still. I think that the Unlock games just work a little bit better and are a bit better thought out in terms of a board game experience. Neither are bad though, and you aren’t guaranteed of having a good time, but if you like those puzzle sort of games or if you like escape rooms, you’ll likely enjoy either of these games.