29 Ottobre 2018

Father in the Messe 2018

                          Ecco il mio consueto resoconto del viaggio ad Essen con i mie bambini. Quest’anno, per la prima volta negli ultimi 8 anni, senza Caterina. Resoconto primo giorno Resoconto secondo e terzo giorno e conclusioni

13 Agosto 2014

Hexemonia: anteprima e qualche domanda all’autore

L’esagono torna di moda, almeno tra gli autori Italiani: Hyperborea, GodZ e ora anche Hexemonia. Con le regole sotto mano e con l’aiuto dell’autore, Fabio Attoli, e dell’editore Andrea Vigiak, ecco a voi un’anteprima del primo gioco della Pendragon Games Sudio. Once upon a time there was hexes: every game with the ambition to be […]

18 Aprile 2014

L’Arte dell’inventare giochi: interviste agli autori di giochi – #25 Paolo Mori

Ed ecco qua la 25 intervista per la serie L’Arte dell’Inventare giochi.

Stavolta sono andato a pescare l’amico ed autore Paolo Mori, in Italia famoso senz’altro per Agustus, vincitore della prima edizione de Il Gioco dell’Anno di Lucca Comics & Games e nominato anche per lo Spiel des Jahres 2013.

All’estero forse più famoso per Vasco da Gama (finalista nell’IGA e secondo al DSP) e per Libertalia.

L’intervista in inglese è pubblicata su Opinionatedgamers.com

Here I’m again after a long stop. Organizing PLAY: The Games Festival becomes years after years more time demanding and dry up all my free time.

I hope to be able to start post again with regularity on Opinionated Gamers. Here my interview to Paolo Mori, a friend and on of the most interesting Italian designers. Paolo ha designed more than 10 games starting with UR in 2006. The three best rated Mori’s games are Vasco da Gama, Libertalia and Augustus, that got a nomination in the 2013 Spiele de Jahres.

Paolo is an Italian designer colleccting ispiration both from German and American designing school. I’m not sure hot to collocate Paolo, he told me “while a great mechanic can stand and live without a good theme, the opposite is not true” but also “there are several themes I really like, so as soon as I have a mechanic in mind, I try to match it with one of these themes I would love to dive into“.

On Opinionatedgamers.com my interview to discover Paolo Mori’s designing style!

7 Settembre 2013

News from Italy: early September update

Hi gamers

as told I’m decided to move here (for a while) my News from Italy column since now, in the Essen preview whirlwind is too difficult to post something in BGG news. Of course in these days my column will be most focused on Italian Essen releases but there are also usual news about Italian market.

Here the details …
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3 Settembre 2013

Super Fantasy: una nuova stella nel Dungeon Crawling ?

Sembra proprio che il genere del Dungeon Crawler sia una miniera inesauribile per gli autori di giochi da tavolo. Da HeroQuest (che proprio nel 2014 festeggerà il venticinquesimo anniversario) a Warhammer Quest, vere pietre miliari, ai più recenti Descent, Dungeon Venture e Mice & Mistics.

La lista completa sarebbe sicuramente troppo lunga e non è negli scopi di quest’articolo. Quello che secondo me ancora manca è un titolo davvero introduttivo che possa essere giocato dai bambini pur offrendo emozioni e divertimento anche ai giocatori incallitti. LEGO era andata in questa direzione con la serie HEROICA che purtroppo è stata intererrotta e, in ogni caso, aveva regole troppo semplici ed un impatto della fortuna troppo alto per essere di reale interesse per i giocatori.

Red Glove presenta quest’anno Super Fantasy, un gioco di Marco Valtriani, che provo a colmare questo spazio tra i più complessi Dungeon Crawler e i semplici tira e muovi. L’idea è quella di un gioco che possa essere scalabile in complessità, con scenari introduttivi ma anche avventure complesse per reali giocatori. Sarà un successo ? Chi lo sa … Red Glove al momento ha lasciato trapelare davvero poco. Ecco qualcosa preso dalla pagina Facebook ufficiale.

Immaginatevi il classico dungeon crawler fantasy, con gli eroi, i mostri e una missione da compiere…
ora immaginate orde di mostri che invadono questo dungeon, a centinaia, mentre i vostri personaggi acquisiscono consapevolezza e figaggine estrema. Mescolate tutto con magie, abilità speciali, tantissime mazzate ed avrete come risultato il primo hack’n’slash da tavolo 100% Made in Italy.

It looks like the Dungeon Crawler genre is an endless mine for game designers. From HeroQuest (next year will be the 25th anniversary) to Warhammer Quest, real milestones, and the most recent Descent, Dungeon Venture or Mice and Mystics.

Of course the full list will be really long and it is not the intent of this article. What I think it is still missing is a real introductory game that can be played by kids but also challenging and enjoyable for adults/gamers. LEGO gone in this direction with the HEROICA series but, unlucky, decided to stop the production and anyway the rules were too much simple and lucky-driven for be real of interest for gamers.

Red Glove will present this year Super Fantasy, a game from Marco Valtriani, that try to fill this gap between complex Dungeon Crawl and too much simple roll-and-move. They idea is a game that can be scalable in complexity having some introductory scenarios but also challenges for real gamers. It will be a success ? Who knows … Red Glove is very provident in offering information about this game. Here something from the official (Italian) facebook.

What Super Fantasy is ? Imagine the classic fantasy dungeon crawler, with heroes, monsters and a mission to accomplish … now imagine hordes of monsters that invade this dungeon, hundreds of them, while your characters acquire awareness and extreme coolness. Mix everything with magic, special abilities, and you will have as a result of the first hack’n’slash table 100% Made in Italy.

6 Agosto 2013

News from Italy: Asterion Gaming Days and much more

Since BGG News is starting his usual pre-Essen rush I decided to move here for a while my News from Italy Column. I’ll try to post twice every months updates and comments on what’s happening here in Italy: events, new releases, previews, small reviews and everything I find enough enteresting also for an international audience. This first issue is mostly about Italian events. The next one will be on Essen releases.

Asterion_400BAsterion Press, one of the most active Italian companies (you can look here their impressive catalog and the planned releases) organize the first edition of the Asterion Gaming Days, a three days convention all about Asterion games.

For the Italian market it is really something new. The convention will take place in September from Friday 13 evening to Sunday 15 at the Admiral Park Hotel, near Bologna. All the gamers attending the Con will get special gifts (promo materials from Asterion).

The access to the event is free (of course you need to pay the room and food if you want to sleep/eat at the Hotel).

24 Ottobre 2012

Father in the Messe: Top 10

Here we are with our last report of the Father in the Messe series. We really hope you liked mine and Caterina report of this convention. If you are a father gamer I really suggest you to think about attending a Convention together with your sons. Maybe it could be Vienna Spielefest or PLAY: The Games Festival (in this case you, for sure, will meet me and Caterina!).

Of course me and Caterina play games all the year and I hope to be able to post some more reports and reviews of the games (bought or received from publishers) we played: here, if something of interest for all or somewhere else (maybe on my blog or BGG) if something already seen here.

It is now time of lists, results, GeekBuzz, Fairyplay … so here our top 10 (actually my top 10 and Caterina top 7 … asking why she says “this are the games I would like in my top 10” and I wasn’t able to change her decision, not asserting that, usually, a top 10 is made of 10 games … anyway in the end I added the 3 games she ranked higher during the Messe … but only the first 7 are really in Caterina’s top 10! Crazy!).


22 Ottobre 2012

Father in the Messe: the day after

Hi all,

me and Caterina are back home safe. Was a great Essen 2012. Of course we are been able to only scratch the surface of the iceberg of the Essen release and we have still a lot to play.

Tomorrow we will publish our Essen top 10.

I have also edited the past articles adding titles and making some small editing (but don’t worry, they are still wrote in Ligish and not in real current English!)

Father in the Messe Day 1
Father in the Messe Day 2
Father in the Messe Day 3

Despite the fact I write about games for Fantascienza.com, the Italian greatest portal and web-site about sci-fiction (here my preview article of Essen sci-fiction releases) I wasn’t able to play any sci-fi games during the Spiele because Caterina really likes Fantasy but she is not interested in sci-fi … too bad!

22 Ottobre 2012

Father in the Messe: Day 3

Dear gamers, our story in Essen is come to the end.

Tomorrow (Sunday) I and Caterina will have to take our flight back home (if we will be able to store all the games in our suitcases!).

Maybe we will be here again next year. If you liked this report and would know a more detailed opinion about this games and/or other games write us at andrea.ligabue@ludologo.com or drop an email to Dale (my editor here in OpinionatetGamers.com) and ask about me!

Card City – Ludibay

It was the last day but I and Caterina really played a lot, starting from early in the morning when you went to Card City booth. The game is a strategic game about the building of a town where you have to build commercial areas (to earn money) and residential areas (to earn VPs) as much bigger as possible.

During your turn you have to draw cards from a deck twice the number of players in play. Then you have to arrange in stacks of two cards each and the player to the left will start to choose. The buildings (cards) have to be placed on your city that could occupy a hypothetical 5×5 grid. There are some easy to learn rules: you need Industries to make big cities; commercial areas will give you money and residential points. There are also Leisure cards (needed to evolve residential and parking cards.
The evolve phase is the core of the game: if you have more Leisure adjacent to a residential area than the actual number of cards in that area it evolves and you can add a residential to the area. Commercial do the same with residential. Finally you need to build orthogonally to an already evolved building.

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20 Ottobre 2012

Father in the Messe: Day 2

Hallo gamers. Here we are with the report of our second day of gaming. Today I have had to attend both the International Gamers Awards Committee lunch and also the presentation, so we are not been able to play as much as we (especially Caterina) would like but I think we got a good performance anyway.

The real problem is that Essen is also the opportunity for me to meet peoples I’m using to see just once every year and sometime (too often, according to Caterina point of view) I stop gaming to talk a bit.

Twin Tin Bots – Flatlined Games

Today I also discovered there is a kickstarter project I was not aware of, Twin Tin Bots: it is a new Philippe Keyartes game resembling RoboRally and since I’m totally crazy for RoboRally it looks promising. I know the kickstarter campaign will end the 15 of November so I’ll rush for it as soon as I’ll be back in Italy. Eric from Flatlined Games told me that the game will see the light anyway but without reaching the needed money with Kickstarter it will take more than one year. If you light the idea of a Philippe Keyartes game with robot and programmed movement that can be easily played in just one hour this one is for you!

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