Page 8 - Spielbox Special 2022 - English

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tle pawns around action spaces to move landscapes, journey them all over the board, or have them study. And we need to focus on not blocking the required action spaces for ourselves. Of course the tableau allows for many improvements to our indi- vidual abilities. If you have enough imagi- nation to see how a few small islands can turn into a mountain, without the others spotting it first, then you will find optimi- zation opportunities aplenty in this game by Brandt Brinkerhoff. The original was published by Aesc Games. Oros has been announced for the end of the fourth quar- ter of the year. (sd/cs)
ICorax Games
t took Australian publishers Good Games Publishing almost five years
to find a partner for the localization of Unfair on the German-speaking market. The reason may be inherent in the theme, which also shines through in the title. It’s about building an amusement park and throwing obstacles in each other’s way, for example by sending in the safety in- spectors and making sure their rides are shut down.
Corax has now tackled the confron- tational task. And the rules, with their flippant, seemingly handwritten remarks,
really capture the mood of the game. Of course you want to be successful and attract guests to your park. So you build up to five high-scoring attrac- tions to the right of your entrance card and hire staff to the left of it. Three actions are taken
per round, which may also include fun stuff like collecting the small change from guests’ pockets that fell into the cracks between rides. So many things make us smile here. You can also score points with blueprint task cards, and you can upgrade rides or catering with addi- tional cards.
At the end of the game, you count the collected symbols on all cards in your dis- play, which is why you should never lose track after all those building, demolish- ing and repairing actions of your fellow players. Two to five can play Unfair for up to two hours, and you need some ex- perience to tackle the 20 pages of the rulebook. The game is announced for January. (sd/cs)
ODays of Wonder
ut of all the sports games, racing usually works best. Perhaps because
everything from galloping horses to For- mula 1 cars can easily be implemented as a game? In Heat: Pedal to the Met- al, Asger Harding Granerud and Daniel Skjold Pedersen send one to six racers, over ten years of age, onto the courses in France, Italy, Great Britain and the USA to show who will be the first to cross the finish line after 60 minutes. And indeed, there‘s hope that this might really feel like racing, for Granerud also designed Flamme Rouge, one of the best (bike) racing games ever.
In each turn, you first switch gears up or down. This determines how many of your seven hand cards you can play, which in turn sets the speed to up to four spaces. So in fourth gear, you can make a good pace. And of course you don’t wanna keep doing that, or you skid off the road in the corners. But you are not always in full control. The stress cards make sure of
that. They block your hand, make you less flexible, and you ab- solutely want to see them gone—which adds an element
of randomness to the game. For a stress card, you draw from your draw pile until
a speed card is
revealed. Stress
here translates
as: The driver
becomes un-
focused, los-
es speed, or speeds up too much.
And then there are the signature Heat cards that need to be added to the deck from time to time. For example, when you want to boost your turn to accelerate, or when you’ve hit a turn too fast. These just clog up your deck and are a handicap, so you try to get rid of them by driving sen- sibly in the lower gears.
Once you’re familiar with the basic rules, feel free to fire up the turbo: Three modules and a championship racing system are included in the box to pimp gameplay and take it to the next level. Heat is available at Essen in English and French; a German version is not in the pipeline. (ab/cs)
DTelicious Games
he way it touches, how beautiful it is, how good it smells: Wood does some- thing with us; it’s an exciting raw mate- rial. And in Woodcraft, the new game by Vladimir Suchý (this time with Ross Arnold by his side), we indulge in some fabulous wood crafting—to become the best at our trade, true to the old adage: “A good woodcrafter has the sensitivity of a gardener, the eye of an artist, the vitality of a smith, and the acumen of a merchant.”
The cute illustrations by Michal Peichl make Woodcraft look family-friendly, but that’s an optical illusion, as it is so obviously an expert game with a plethora of detailed rules. Up to four woodwork- ers from age twelve can spend 60 to 120 minutes optimizing everything and wield- ing the carving knife as well as the saw.
The classical part is about fulfilling or- ders. In other words, the familiar “hand
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Photos: Days of Wonder, Good Games Publishing