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At a Glance. Zoom in Barcelona Antiquated
MORE THAN RCELONA IS A CITY OF DRAGONS, WITHTOGRAPH THEM BA0 TO DISCOVER. AND THOSE WHO PHO 40 T GREAT REWARDS.
GE
By STEFAN DUCKSCH
alking along La Rambla, taking the aerial tramway at the har- W
bor, or admiring the Casa Milà: Barcelona has so much to offer! In the family game Zoom in Barcelona, you
are supposed to take pictures of the attractions. To this end, you have an old-fashioned camera lying in front
of you that you will use, trying to get close enough to the sights.
On your way, you move your ordinary wooden pawn across the map with the eight districts of
the city. Once you reach a loca- tion that is shown on one of the displayed photo cards, you get
this card. You can also stop and
zoom in from a distance. You have three zoom points per game. The player who collects his eighth photo
card ends the game.
Not every picture you take will nec-
essarily score. There are four additional photo cards on the “Natural Light” track at the bottom of the gameboard, and
you move your marker along this track. At the end of the game, every step you made there al- lows you to actually score for two photos you took. Besides this, there is a dragon loung- ing around one of the districts. If you reach him, you’ll get a
reward.
Such a bonus can be a sky-
line building token, for example.
These eight different locations mark the greatest sights of the city. Interestingly enough, each player is supposed to use them to build
a secretly assigned skyline where the proper tokens lie directly next to one another. This gives you plenty of points; therefore, a run
on these tokens soon sets in. The one or two steps you are allowed to move with your pawn don’t suffice for making headway in Barcelona. It’s bet- ter if you play a transport card,
but then it is gone. Therefore,
you should take new ones at an information point from time to time. And you can
also use the metro.
The problem lies with the other players.
If a space is blocked, you can pass through, but not stop there. That seems nicely thought out, but with four or more players, this makes Zoom in Barcelona annoying. And with a large number of playe
rs, the cards you have been aiming for will have disappeared anyway by the time you have
your next turn. This feels like a game from the 1980s and makes an antiquated im-
pression. I had hoped for more.
(sbw)
Title: Designers:
Illustration:
Publisher: Players: Age: Duration: Price:
Zoom in Barcelona Núria Castellas, Eloi Pujadas, Joaquim Vilalta Craig Petersen, Sophie Wainwright Cucafera Games
2 – 6
about 8+ years about 30 minutes about 29 euros
Reviewer
Stefan Ducksch
Playing appeal
5
5 Christwart Conrad 5
Andreas Becker
Pre-modern game design.
52 spielbox
3Motion
Abstract
By CHRISTWART CONRAD
At the beginning of a game of 3Motion, 18 plastic game piec- es—three shapes in each of the three colors—cover the bottom half of the nine squares; each of these squares consists of two times two spaces. The two players alternate turns. On your turn, you move one piece orthogonally, without jumping over others. You may
change directions several times. The object of the game is to have three pieces of the same shape or of the same color in one of the nine squares.
After that, your opponent moves one piece that has neither the same shape nor the same color. Since this rule is easily broken, we lay the just-moved piece on its side, just to be safe.
Since you know which color and shape your opponent is not allowed to use, in most cases you move your piece towards one with a matching shape or color. Your opponent needs to fend off this threat; otherwise, the trap will snap shut. The easiest solution would be to place anoth- er piece in the last remaining unoccupied space in the square, but this wouldn’t generate a counter-threat. Instead, you try to cleverly block paths and, at the same time, set up as many threats as possible.
It can actually happen that you walk into your own trap after a smart count- er by your opponent. Usually, you lose if you cannot parry all of several threats. In the illustration shown above, the two cylinders at the top right and the two purple pieces at the bottom right raise threats. Since the last piece moved was a yellow cylinder, yellow and cylinder are now taboo; consequently, the purple cyl- inder cannot be moved to the adjacent space. The only thing you can do is to choose a purple piece, in order to pre- vent your opponent from doing so on his
Photos: Becker, Conrad, Cucafera Games, Ducksch, Göldenitz, Korea Boardgames, Piatnik