It's New Game Friday! Before David Wiley (Cardboard Clash) tells us about the new games, we want to announce a new scholarship that we are offering at PNP Arcade:
The New Heroes Scholarship is intended to recognize a standout member of the board game community who is among an underrepresented group. Each year PNP Arcade will announce which group(s) will qualify for participation. The 2020 New Heroes Game Industry Scholarship will focus this year on applicants from the black community. A committee will award the scholarship to the person based on the criteria listed below.
Scholarship Mission: The Mission of the scholarship is to improve and diversify the board game industry by welcoming and fostering new professionals, and by acknowledging the efforts of previous contributors.
Prize: This scholarship awards a monetary prize of $500
For full details, including how to enter/nominate someone, check out our page at: https://www.pnparcade.com/pages/new-heroes-game-industry-scholarship
Onto the new games:
Here’s what is new this week:
- Chain Mail: Welcome To Darkhill Adventure Kit
- Food Chain Island (Kickstarter Preview)
- Night Class (Episode 2): Extra Credit - REMASTERED
- Night Class (Episode 3): Teacher's Pet - REMASTERED
This week's new games are all available at https://www.pnparcade.com/collections/new-games
Chain Mail: Welcome to Darkhill Adventure Kit
The Heir of Darkhill has been imprisoned! You must track the location of the prison, rescue the Heir and get them back home.
Chain Mail is one of those under-the-radar great games that released in 2019. If you were part of the Button Shy BGotM Club, you might already know that. But those on the outside looking in, this game is one I never play as often as I’d like, and always enjoy it when it hits my table. This adventure, released in November, has you breaking someone out of prison and escorting them back “home”. The neat thing here is not just the process of searching for the prison on the map, but in moving back after you rescue them - you cannot move the same direction twice while being pursued by the enemy. A hero dies? Well, that’s a game over on this adventure so plan for battle well as you try and flee to the beginning.
Food Chain Island (Black and White Kickstarter Preview)
On this forgotten island in a tiny corner of the ocean the animals are hungry! Your goal is to influence the wildlife - and arrange their meals - so there is only one animal left!
If you like a clever puzzle for your solitaire experience, this game is bound to delight with its gameplay (as much as its artwork!). Can you get the ultimate victory with only one animal remaining of the 16? Each animal can eat the animals up to 3 numbers below its value (all listed on the card), meaning with every move you make to eat an animal, you reduce your options as well as create open space on the grid. This one feels like the sort of game you’d play - and fail at - a dozen times in one sitting as you try to figure out how to move the animals optimally - each play will be different, and every animal has special powers that trigger as they devour.
The Kickstarter campaign for Food Chain Island ends tomorrow: https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/239309591/food-chain-island
Night Class Episodes 2 and 3 (Remastered)
Your family thinks you’re pursuing your college degree. Well, that’s partially true. By night, you’re a champion of justice, protecting the neighborhood from the criminal underworld - but you’ve still got a lot to learn.
This roll-and-write has you playing as an up-and-coming superhero setting out to defeat villains while training and honing your abilities. I’ve personally played some of these and greatly enjoyed the experience, which wasn’t always easy to balance what the optimal thing to do might be. I really enjoy the feeling of progression over the course of the game, and how there’s always a use for even low die rolls - although you’ll always want the player rolls to be high to open up a bigger range of options for how to best use and allocate them. Pro tip: plan your movement path before you start moving...my first failure came from moving into a bad area of the map long before I was ready and got obliterated. Thinking it through led me down a different path the next game which went much better, although it was still a close call at times!
Check out the new games here: https://www.pnparcade.com/collections/new-games
Game of the Week: Wordsy
Wordsy is a game of longer words! Over the seven rounds of the game, you are trying to find a single word that scores as many points as possible. Unlike other word games, you don’t need all the letters in your word to be available, but you’ll want to use as many as you can. So go ahead and use those really long words; they may just pay off here!
Enjoy word games but hate players taking too long to play a word on their turn? Ever wish you could use letters not in your hand to make that perfect word? Wordsy has your back, friends. In this game you have 8 common letters, each worth 2-5 points, and players simultaneously come up with their best-scoring word using at least one of those letters. You only score points for the letters shown, and only once per card with that letter (Sorry, Supercalifragilisticexpialidocious isn’t going to win it for you every time). And here’s the catch: the first person to write their word flips a 30 second timer, and once that runs out the round is over whether other players have a word down or not. Most points from a word gets a bonus, too. Played over seven rounds, to see who is the best wordsmith from 1-5 players. Curious about the solo mode? Me too, friends. Me too.
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!