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:
- Escape from Planet X
- Food Truck Madness
- Food Truck Madness: Demo
- Battle Pages: Kingdom of Willowtown, Marching Order 1
- Power Creep: Yaya - Uptown, 2120
- Dangerous Space: Jareem, Deliver Mission
- GRIMLORE Profane Truths - Case File #36 - Lilian Marstone, Mythos Professor
https://www.pnparcade.com/collections/new-games
Escape from Planet X
Blasted from the stars, you ejected just in time but are now stranded on a nightmare world! Your ship lies in ruins across the wastes. Without two vital repair components, you’ll never escape. The skies burn atomic red. Mutant horrors prowl the shadows. The ironclad warlords of Planet X hunt intruders. The planet itself wants you dead. Find the parts. Reach your ship. Escape before it’s too late.
A simple, yet fulfilling, solo game loop of exploring a new space, rolling on the terrain table, checking for encounters, and then resolving those encounters. You’re trying to locate two repair units and make your way to the Crash Site, allowing you to flee the planet. For those who hunger for a little more, there’s even a supplement to aid you with prompts for journaling your adventure, which is a great way to go deeper with this solo adventure.
Food Truck Madness: Demo
Score as many points as possible, delivering food to the different monsters in town.
A quick and simple game that is going to challenge your spatial skills as you try and trace a path through to maximize your points. This is a great sampler to give the game a try and see how it all evolves - especially if you are like me and just dive in without preplanning prior to putting the pen on the page to trace your line. With different scoring tiers based on how many times you cross over each different monster, and since not all of them score best by visiting as many as possible, there’s plenty of thinking to be done here!
Food Truck Madness
Hop in your trusty food truck and race across town to feed a hungry cast of monsters! Each one craves a very specific order—too much or too little and your score takes a hit. Plan your deliveries, keep your portions perfect, and avoid mistakes… but beware: rack up 3 tombstones and your route ends for good! Fast, funny, and a little spooky—can you keep the monsters satisfied?
If you thought the above was fun with just a few puzzles, then you ain’t seen nothin’ yet! This version of the game features 142 different puzzles - that’s the better part of a year if you do a single one per day with, say, your morning coffee. Or your afternoon tea. You get the idea. Drive that truck, visit the various monsters, and rack up those high scores as best as you can!
Battle Pages: Kingdom of Willowtown, Marching Order 1
The spiraling towers provide an impressive view of the tree-filled kingdom.
We have a new kingdom once more, and this one looks like a fun one! As usual, we start off the series of the new Kingdom by looking at your unique hero: Freyla. She is pretty cool, as she can attack flying units which is always a huge help. She shoots diagonally, so keep that in mind. However, the really awesome perk for her is placing her on a mountain, which lets her attack a flying enemy anywhere on the page. Yes, you read that right. She’s officially my favorite hero so far!
Power Creep: Yaya - Uptown, 2120
Some survivors still see a path forward and are willing to sacrifice for the greater good. Will it be enough? Only time will tell.
We’re back with a fresh new slate for more Power Creep, and I’m always excited to see the new changes that each character brings. The Creep Track has two events that trigger, with the second one being a simple 2-damage from a traitor living among you. However, the one to watch with Yaya’s series of maps is the Leader Emerges trigger, which is going to have you upgrade a non-leader threat in an unplayed structure to become a leader. That’s always going to be a tough blow, since they tend to trigger easier and do more damage, like the Creeping Eyes this week. Those basic ones cost you 1 health when you put an odd number next to them, but the leaders hit you for 2 instead when that happens.
Dangerous Space: Jareem, Deliver Mission
His father was 1st in his class. Some would say due to the species’ longer lifespan. Still, expectations are high for young Rendar.
This week we have the return of Jareem, and he’s got his Deliver mission up first. This requires him to survive and have the kit survive the journey - the caveat being that he takes an extra damage on any turn when he takes any damage. However, he can assign damage to the kit instead of himself, which may not even be vital for this mission since both Threats only hit for 1. Sure, that Clever Leech is annoying by making you lose odd dice in your pool, but hardly deadly. This should serve as a nice warm-up for Jareem before the following missions are assigned to him…
GRIMLORE Profane Truths - Case File #36 - Lilian Marstone, Mythos Professor
Exham Prior was ink-black by sundown, its stones veined with saltpetre and something older. Lilian Marstone felt the floor breathe, a slow, verminous heave beneath her boots. After the sea case, she’d promised fewer ruins, yet the old letter - family seal scored by tiny teeth - pulled her inland. Somewhere below, a chorus scratched like quills, writing hunger into the masonry. Her salt-stiff jacket carried a faint reek of tar and run, the memory of a mutinous deck steadied her hand. She touched the brassbone charm hidden in her cuff and listened. The house answered with a skitter, then many. Downward, always downward.
While we don’t have Ratigan here (I’m starting that petition now!), we have plenty of Ratkin to deal with as you help Lilian navigate through this week’s installment. I love the Ratkin Shaman threats, since they have you test Willpower and, when successful, the Shamans deal no damage this turn. That’s huge! This week features tiles that can be blocked via Constellation Effects, and Lilian is more than equipped to handle the challenges ahead of her. Grab your Mystic Scalpel, toss on your Hexbound Cape, and get to work to beat back some rats!
Check out Game of the Week here: https://www.pnparcade.com/collections/game-of-the-week
Button Shy Game of the Week: Twin Stars III: Save the Spacewhales
While the war has consumed everyone’s time and energy, the spacewhales have been consuming everyone’s junk. They eat anything and everything, which is partly why we need them around. Nobody can inhale a full command center like a spacewhale. You must raise enough awareness to eliminate the junk for once and for all to win.
As a solo game, this system offers a light, fun loop to play through. With some luck, the game doesn’t risk overstaying its welcome while offering small, yet sometimes interesting decisions on how to allocate dice, which one to reduce and which to reroll, and when to trigger those optional Instant effects. A huge part of the appeal for this series will be mixing and matching the characters across scenarios, customizing your own duo to make things easier/harder/more interesting as fits your play style (see the entries to follow!). The scenario itself is interesting, but not nearly as interesting as either character and the decisions they offer (as it should be, right?).
Check out the new Button Shy releases here:
https://www.pnparcade.com/collections/new-games
Games of the Week: Twin Stars: Adventure Series I & Adventure Series II
Two cosmic adventurers are in a tricky scenario and must work together. By rolling and manipulating dice for special abilities and combos, you can be the one that guides them to victory.
Each Adventure Series contains a group of 6 scenarios and 12 characters, which makes for 396 unique combinations per set and tons of solo replayability to last you until you arrive at a galaxy far, far away. There’s a lot of fun packed into the use of just three cards at any given time, although you’ll need to provide dice and tokens. Tinkering with who teams with whom, and against what scenario, genuinely can change the dynamics on how you approach a strategy to reach those victory conditions.
Check out Game of the Week here: https://www.pnparcade.com/collections/game-of-the-week
Coming Soon:
Coming to Kickstarter in September is the newest PNP Arcade Publishing Roll and Write Game. Following our releases of Dungeon Pages, and Battle Pages comes Coin Pusher: Galactic Surge!
https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/jasongreeno/coin-pusher