Page 12 - Spielbox Special 2022 - English

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temple to get or upgrade something, or to a special place to brew a potion, for example. So it’s all about gathering resources to turn them into something more profitable.
For Oak, designer Wim Goossens, who has so far only self-published Castle Madness, reaches deep inside the pot of magic ingredients and pours out a cor- nucopia: Each order has special abilities. Druids can be upgraded to Old Druids; a Bard generates a player tableau expan- sion. An Ovat uses fewer ingredients to brew a potion. Players can gain creatures such as Slúagh na Marbh or Dobhar-Chù as allies. And there are artifacts as well. And yes, the great oak tree has three branches for druids to climb up to earn points and permanent income. Shrines provide more space for working druids who can then do more than just gather mushrooms or blueberries. Menhirs bring lots of points. Oak is ready for release in October. (ab/cs)
GAame Factory
highly unusual party game is Hot and Cold. It combines associations, speed and tactics. So it’s better to start with a slow approach, even if the sand timer sets a limit of 90 seconds. Two team partners have to take turns finding words that match a secret, overriding theme. Say for “dinosaurs,” that could be “extinct,” “Jurassic Park” or “killer lizards.” To call them out loudly would be risky, though, for the other players, the “detectives,” are listening in and trying to guess the over- all theme and to snatch up points. So it’s
better for the two teammates to scatter their terms around a bit and cause some confusion.
But before you say anything at all, you always draw a card that either states “Hot,” “Cold” or “Warm.” The terms men- tioned above fit the “Hot” category, with “Warm” one could perhaps associate
words like “huge,” “fossil” or “dangerous”. Accordingly, “streetcar” or “athlete’s foot” would clearly be “Cold.” In order for the team to score points, however, the other partner must be able to guess which tem- perature card their teammate is holding in hand. And be quick, because the de- tectives can steal the “Cold” cards. Once
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The Game Builders
Once again, designer Uwe Rosenberg is helping a new publisher to get started (as he did in 2019 with Robin of Locksley for Wyrmgold or in 2016 with Cottage Gar- den for Edition Spielwiese; so he actually does this kind of thing regularly and by con- viction). With Rosenberg‘s Applejack, The Game Builders now publishes a family-level tile-laying game. That‘s probably why the friendly gentleman under the tree on the box
bears this nice name.
The fact that “Applejack” is actually a
freshly fermented cider is only revealed at the very end of the rulebook. Which, by the way, is quite easy to follow: Each player gets
a personal orchard on which to place tree tiles. These are determined by the dice called “Applejack,” and it ad- vances around the central harvesting map. From the segments to the right and
left of the dice, players can choose a tree tile to put in their display.
The goal is to collect as much honey as possible. This can be achieved when the beehive edges of the tiles are adjacent to each other, but also when the dice moves over a mark showing an apple variety (there are seven different ones in the game). Then it’s harvest time, meaning the same types of apples on adjacent tiles are count- ed. Depending on the number of rounds, the “Applejack” has already been running, honey points are deducted, and the same happens in the grand final scoring. The box contains, of course, a solo variant. One to four busy bees from the age of eight can take part here, and one game lasts about half an hour. Applejack is due to be released in October. (sd/cs)
Photos: The Game Builders, Giochix.it