New Games for October 20th, 2023 -Blackwood Hunter and the Cursed Ghost's Fortune

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:

• The Cursed Menagerie
• The Cursed Menagerie: Dark Fortunes Expansion
• Roll & Ghosts
• Dungeon Pages: Sygrid, Thirdrealm Hunter

https://www.pnparcade.com/collections/new-games

The Cursed Menagerie

You are a gifted individual, imbued with the ability to detect and dispel evil spirits. Haunted objects are your speciality! Once again you’ve been called to the home of a citizen whose brush with the supernatural has left them shaken and desperate for help. WHile you certainly value your role in the community as caretaker and guardian, part of you knows there is another appeal to your line of work. You like to collect these dangerous objects. Something about locking them up safely in your vault makes the world feel just a bit safer, and more orderly. And that’s good, right?

A fun little game of rolling dice to collect items and vanquish ghosts. The neat thing is you’ll be able to see the items in their three tiers, and you know which tier of ghost is in each spot but not which ghost until you work toward acquiring an item. As you unlock more parts of the item, you reveal more of the ghost abilities until, at the end, you get to take down the ghost itself. Manage your resources carefully in order to make it through all 6 items or, if you are really bold, run the campaign to try and get even more items without losing all your health. It even comes with a shorter mode that lets you set up and play even faster - you won’t want to miss this haunting good time.

The Cursed Menagerie: Dark Fortunes Expansion

Four new cards to expand your Cursed Menagerie experience. Mix in the three ghosts to add variety into your experience, making it a little more challenging to predict which ghosts might remain to face down. Not only that, but these baddies have some pretty unsavory abilities that you’ll want to clear quickly in order to vanquish them when they show up. Also the expansion adds in a new item: the Fortune Machine. You’ll want to grab this if you’re already checking out the base game, as it is that perfect sort of expansion which changes nothing in the game yet expands variety and replay value.

Roll & Ghosts

You are a couple of ghost hunters that make a living exploring haunted places. Recently you’ve been told about an old creepy house on the hills that is full of shiny treasures and paranormal activity. This sounds like the perfect job for you!

I always welcome seeing a roll-and-write game with plenty of chances to make meaningful decisions on the way. Here you have dice for movement, and those for actions, and you’ll only choose one of the movement dice to determine which room you visit this round, meaning the leftover movement dice are rolled into action dice. You’re trying to take down and capture ghosts and collect treasure, both of which to earn you points. There’s mission cards to give players shared objectives to accomplish, bosses to mix in and take out with a little planning and a lot of luck, and plenty of other small modules to mix-and-match into your experience. If you enjoy the genre of roll-and-writes, then you probably won’t want to miss checking this one out.

Dungeon Pages: Sygrid, Thirdrealm Hunter

With their world on the brink of destruction, infant Sygrid and her mother escaped through a strange portal. Sadly only Sygrid survived the trip. Now the young warrior spends every waking moment trying to find answers to her own mysterious past.

It’s a good thing Sygrid comes with some armor you can unlock, as you’re probably going to need it to navigate the Ancient Ruined Temple successfully. Not only are there lava spaces abound in here, but the Fiery Ghast will do extra damage for each unmarked Lava space…making you have to decide how best to allocate your dice and plan your turns. If that wasn’t challenge enough, the Soul Feaster is lurking and it gets stronger after every attack. Factor in the tricky trap of the week, and you have a certified challenge on your hands - something that those who’ve been playing regularly are sure to appreciate and enjoy.

Game of the Week: Visitor in Blackwood Grove on sale for just $4!

A spacecraft crashes in Blackwood Grove, and the Kid is the only one watching. Federal Agents hunt down the signal, but no one can get near the craft due to its crushing forcefield. Why can some objects pass through it, but others are repelled? Hiding in the craft, the Visitor hopes the Kid can figure out the rule before the Agents and help it escape. The agents want to dissect the Visitor and keep the ship.

Not exactly a social deduction game, but in an adjacent genre for those who enjoy the more interactive aspects of gaming. However, rather than working together each person is trying to piece together the pattern of what the Visitor allows through the forcefield and be the first to make that proper guess. Think you have what it takes to break the code? Well, the Visitor wants you to succeed if you are the Kid...but you have to earn its trust enough to be able to attempt it. An interesting little game, where even when you are guessing the code...it isn’t done with words. Yes, this game could be played in complete silence. My guess if your table won’t be very silent, though...