It's New Game Friday! David Wiley (Cardboard Clash) is here to tell us about the new games.
Here’s what is new this week:
- Bandada
- Bunny Party at Maple Valley
- The Cloud Dungeon 2: The Sunken Dungeon
This week's new games are all available at https://www.pnparcade.com/collections/new-games
The Cloud Dungeon 2: The Sunken Dungeon
The Sunken Dungeon was intended to be the escape room to end all escape rooms - there were puzzles, life-threatening challenges, mysteries, and actual red herrings (the dungeon was underwater, after all). Of course, when funding dried up, investors started fleeing the project like rats from a sinking ship. The building was built, the puzzles were completed, but the sunken dungeon was boarded up, and left to rot at the bottom of the Mariana trench. Rumor has it there was a tremendous prize for anyone who completed the entire sunken dungeon, making it through all the floors to the very bottom of the dungeon, and the bottom of the ocean. This is where you come in. You’re sick of doing nothing with your life, sick of spending so much time lying on the couch. You and your friends are “borrowing” a submarine from your great-great aunt Jacqueline, and you’re setting out for the Sunken Dungeon.
We’ve had games like this before, where you can cut and color your way through an adventure. Only this one is underwater, which makes everything about 5000% cooler. There’s some fun humor laced into the game, some interesting quests and adventures to embark upon, and there’s even spreadsheets to roll on as you go along. Yep, that’s right. Whether you’re looking for something fun to make and play with the family, or something unique to play with a group of friends...The Sunken Dungeon is sure to be unlike most things you’ve ever experienced in a board game.
Bandada
Birds have escaped from the local zoo and it’s up to you to get them back. Attract the birds to your personal bandadas by putting out different types of food. Some birds want a variety of food while others only like a single type. Can you strike the right balance?
I know what you’re thinking. I was, too. This isn’t quite like Wingspan, even though there are food dice, bird cards, and card abilities. Like Wingspan, it does feature some fun bird-themed artwork on the cards but this is a unique game on its own. You play exactly four rounds with a friend (or against a solo AI), and each round both players draft a card from the common pool and score it, and then will score all of their birds again at the end of each round. Which means the dice manipulation in this game is vital, both for maximizing your own point potential but also to slow down your frenemy across the table. This one is sure to be fast and fun, and comes with two variant additions and three different optional modes of play to allow you to tailor the fun to what you enjoy. This is also on Kickstarter now, where you can go to see even more about this little game.
Bunny Party at Maple Valley
You’ve come to visit at a very special time - the Night Sky Party is approaching! This is a particularly important holiday for the bunnies of Maple Valley. Play as a bunny furiously trying to decorate for the party and have the honor of hosting. The first one to decorate their house with enough moon or star decorations starts the party and is the winner! Well...One of the winners! The winner’s decorations will point to a lucky neighbor who gets to co-host the party and also wins the game.
This one has a delightfully short set of rules, letting you get to playing quickly in this game designed for four (with rules for 3). The unique twist in this one is that there is not just a single winner in the game, but also a co-winner who is the person to either the left, or the right, of the winning player. How? The decorations have arrows at the bottom, pointing in either direction and whichever direction has more arrows determines that co-winner. This one is simple enough where you’re playing cards, gaining the help of villagers, and trying to be the first to play five star and/or moon decorations. Two people get to that mark on the same turn? You keep on playing until one person is the clear winner.
Check out all of the new games here: https://www.pnparcade.com/collections/new-games
Game of the Week: Alert: All Hands on Deck
Your planet is under attack. Using your fleet you must defeat all incoming threat waves and save your planet. The game ends if you defeat 21 threat waves or if you lose all 3 ships. After that, you will calculate your high-score and acquire Pilot Rank. It is a solo game, played in hand, without a table. To defeat each wave, you need to use your ship’s actions to move and shoot threats. You can also collect power-ups and use ship’s special abilities!
This 18-card game from Designer Milan Zivkovic will be sure to please those with nostalgia for the shoot-em-up arcade games like Space Invaders, because you’ll be using your ships to try and survive the threats coming your way through basic actions, or special actions that you gain through power ups. Those familiar with Palm Island will feel at home with having power ups rotated out to the side for later use. The special thing here is the spatial aspect, moving via rotating your ship card 180 degrees or flipping it, each of which has your ship in a different position. This is important because you need to be aligned with the threats to fire and destroy them, you need to move through a power up space to collect it, and you can position yourself for the next wave of threats (you can see the current wave and the upcoming wave during gameplay). And there are major threats with 3 waves on the one card. Taking down your 2nd major threat will bring the game to a successful end, allowing you to tally up your final score. Failure will result in the destruction of your world which, in all probability, will go down in history as being Mostly Harmless anyway.
Check out Game of the Week here: https://www.pnparcade.com/collections/game-of-the-week
See you next week with more information on our newest print and play games!