Hachette USA had its usual conglomeration of individual publishers melded together into an exhibit hall booth whole. Wander the tables and you could find any number of publishers happy to tell you about their fine games, usually with a nice French accent. There were games for every taste. Scorpion Masque was showing Flashback: Lucy as a sort of goth picture-puzzle time-travel game as well as Monster Chase, which is a reprint of an excellent monster-themed kids memory game. Unfortunately, the new expansion to their popular 2-player co-op, Sky Team: Turbulence was not in the booth. Sorry We are French were showing off In the Footsteps of Marie Curie, a quick-playing game that uses a cube tower to determine the resources on offer. Studio H had Middle Ages, a reprint of Majesty: For the Realm that has a less luck-driven tile selection with a couple new buildings. Possibly the hit of the booth, Unfriendly Games had the cat-on-a-powerline dexterity game, Nekojima. Gigamic was eye-catching with their Pac-Man themed version of Quoridor, complete with an alternate video game style mode. We’ll finish off our tour with La Boîte de Jeu and From the Moon which has players competitively building up their economy on the moon to cooperatively launch three missions to the solar system.

Unfriendly Games

Nekojima

Nekojima has 1 to 5 players building up a set of high wire power lines throughout the city, making sure they don’t touch, even when burdened with the occasional cat. Players roll a die and pick a pair of wooden dowels attached by a string. The dowels are of varying lengths. Some are high, others low, often it is mixed. The dice determine which two of the four areas need to be connected by the towers. A colored cube is drawn to determine which dowels are used by the color of the string connecting them. When a black cube is drawn, a second cube is drawn to decide the rope color but then the player must also hang a cat token from any string of that same color. Not only must the wires never touch, but any hanging cat should not touch any wires either. Players can play competitively – with one loser who knocks things over, or cooperatively to see how high they can build. That may be quite high indeed as there is no rule against stacking new dowels on top of old ones, perhaps just to find some open air.

Scorpion Masque

Flashback: Lucy

Flashback: Lucy uses the same mechanics as the cooperative adventure game Flashback: Zombie Kidz. Players search through pictures, jumping from one perspective to another to sort through images to piece together the answers to the game’s questions. In Lucy, players take on the role of a young girl with psychic powers to explore a creepy mansion and dark events (not too dark, it is still ages 7+.) Jump around in the past and present, exploring the mansion in each case, to meet the shadow haunting the mansion and find the answers to the questions you are asked. There’s even an interactive comic strip featuring her cat, Gredin, in between each of Lucy’s visions.

Monster Chase

A reprint of the 2009 kids memory game, Monster Chase has young players cooperating to banish ten monsters by finding the specific toy (on the back of a tile) that scares each one back into their hiding places. A monster comes out, the players have three chances to find its toy before the next monster comes out. Monsters continue to come out and once the last one appears players only have 3 chances left to scare away any remaining monsters. The game can be made harder by including extra tiles that rearrange the other toy tiles or immediately spawn another monster. I had a good time with this one back when my kids were little and am glad to see it have a new update.

Sky Team: Turbulence

I’m an unabashed fan of Sky Team and have found it an excellent 2 player co-op game for a wide range of situations. I’ve played with gamer friends who are pilots who loved it, with a gamer friend who wasn’t – also like it, and I even brought it out to play with my wife. She’s willing to play it again some time, high praise from someone who doesn’t like to learn new games. Therefore, I’m very excited to see an expansion come out. It has 20 new scenarios and includes modules such as Turbulence, Low Visibility, and Alarms. I didn’t get to see the expansion at the show but I know that at least some of the new material messes with your dice rolling – forcing you to roll and/or place fewer or more dice than you might want at a given time. 

Sorry we are French

In the Footsteps of Marie Curie

Similar in name to In the Footsteps of Darwin, but In the Footsteps of Marie Curie is an entirely different game. In Marie Curie, players chuck cubes into a cube tower and then may pick some of them up as resources. These resources can be transformed into other ones (this is radioactivity, after all), cashed in for things like cards or improvements (to gathering or hoarding cubes, etc…) and hopefully setting things up to meet your Objective tile or other game requirements. General opinions from the OGers seem to be that lady luck can play a factor with the cubes but it’s a pretty good game if it stays around its recommended 20-30 minutes.

Studio H

Middle Ages

In Middle Ages, players draft tiles to add to their little kingdom. The tiles come in several different colors/types and you draft one and add it to your tableau, stacking tiles of the same type. You also then score tiles of that type, pushing people into specialization if possible. Most tiles are resolved within one’s own kingdom but there are some aggressive tiles that mess with other players’ boards. Middle Ages is a reimplementation of Majesty: For the Realm. Now using nice cardboard tiles instead of cards, Middle Ages adjusts when tiles come out. They appear in a sort of semi-schedule and players can sort of look-ahead on what they want to take. This new version also has new tiles that, when collected, can modify (improve) the scoring of other tiles in your kingdom.

La Boîte de Jeu 

From the Moon

From the Moon is a medium weight 1 to 4 player game of resource gathering and worker placement as players progress toward shared goals. Of course, you want to do better at those goals than everyone else. Players are building up their economic engines so that they (communally) can launch expeditions to Mars, Titan, and Europa – ending the game once the third one launches. Meanwhile, players want to suck up to the administration/public and work toward the Progress Track for lots of fun bonuses and which, when completed, can also trigger the endgame. Players’ workers are three little lunar rovers and you place them out to do things and when they’re all placed you can call them back, possibly triggering some effects. All the typical features are there – research and buildings add to your capabilities, etc… Of note, each player faction is different, giving players a little nudge one way or another towards certain specialties.

Gigamic

Quoridor Pac-Man

A new Pac-Man themed version of Quoridor was on display. It can handle the standard game of Quoridor – placing walls to try to prevent your opponent (Pac-Man or one of the ghosts) from crossing the board. However, there is also a variant provided that tries to recreate the vibe of the iconic videogame using four ghosts, Pac-Man, and some power pellets.