Cryo

PoPoteetstar8,2

Streamlined joy to play.

EvEvanstar4,6

Worker placement game where you get three workers. On your turn, place a worker, or pull all your workers. The design is focused on making those reset turns more interesting, so it gives you a player board with upgrade slots. When you return a worker during a reset action you assign it to an upgrade slot, and gain the benefits. Some of the slots define the costs of pre-printed benefits, where another lets you define both the cost and the benefit. Much of the scoring of the game comes from an area majority contest in the lower section of the board. It takes a few steps to get your player markers into those regions, particularly as you have to unlock your player markers from the various board sections before the game timer causes them to be removed from play through disaster effects. This puts some tension between building your engine and trying to claim your markers. If too many are lost, you don't have much hope of winning, and the pace at which this happens is somewhat player driven. There are a few downsides. The process of play to build your engine or collect resources from the board is quite slow. It begins to feel as though your reset turns are the more interesting ones in comparison to your regular actions. The game end timer can be a little unpredictable, leading to an uneven number of turns between players. The deck of cards add some pretty strong effects that only some players benefit from with luck of the draw in comparison to other, lesser cards. The experience of play also doesn't seem like it would be substantially different game to game. The game ultimately has one focused goal and one way to get there. This is usually fine if the core mechanisms are interesting enough, and especially fine if player interaction is applied in an interesting way. I'm not sure this game has enough of either to have a lot of staying power. :star: Art, Iconography and components functional :star: Clever or interesting mechanisms :star: Reasonably low downtime between turns with mildly AP players :nostar: Multiple plays stay interesting :star: Low or mitigatable luck elements :star::star::star::nostar::nostar: Raw enjoyment

GaGarfieldstar2,0

#36 Just too boring to keep it.