by Ludologo

19 Ottobre 2012

Father in the Messe: Day 1

Today we wake up early to be able to be in the Spiele at opening time, 9:00 for press-tickets owners. First all we make a quick tour in the press room to take our press kit: the usual book and some press information including a list of personalities attending the fair.

Trivitia – Trivitar

We started with Trivitia by Trivitar. A game mixing dexterity and trivia. You have some wooden piece to place on a wooden basement (different basement’s shapes for different games). During your turn you just roll a die. On 1-4 you have to answer a question from a card. (Every card has 4 questions and the number you roll indicate the question). If you get the green face is like you got the right answer and if you got the red face is like giving the wrong answer. This make you place one of your pieces or have to place someone else piece, building a sort of tower/pile. When the pile collapse the player with less piece still in front of him is the winner. A nice variation of trivia but, still a trivia: I think could be nice for people liking trivia games but I’m not in this group.

Caterina says “Nice game a too much trivia”. Caterina rate 5.

Slavika – Rebel

The next game was Slavika from Rebel.pl, a really nice polish fantasy card game. Players have a company of 6 heroes fighting monsters and looking for treasures. You display 4 terrain cards (with different monsters and heroes values) and give each player a hand with his 6 heroes and some monsters cards. During your turn you have to play 3 cards: if possible 2 heroes and 1 monster otherwise 1 hero and 2 monsters. Heroes and monsters are played on different side of the terrain cards and when a card reaches the listed number of monsters (varying from 3 to 5) there is a fight. Monsters and heroes have fighting values and to beat the monsters the sun of the values of all the heroes at the terrain must beat the total of the monsters. The player with most valued heroes score much more points and get the treasure card than monsters are discarded and heroes came back in hands.
What make this game really nice is the different power of heroes and monsters: every player has 2 fighters (6 and 5), an archer (4), a ranger and a thief (3) and a wizard (1). Heroes have special power like wizard giving a plus two to all the fighters in that fight. Monsters range from 1 to 7 with few of theme with special abilities.
The game is nice and I think it really play much better with 3 or more players.

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by Ludologo

6 Dicembre 2011

L’Arte dell’Inventare Giochi: Vlaada Chvatil

Eccomi con il 15 appuntamento per questa serie di interviste. Man mano che la serie procedo divento sempre più esigente con gli autori. Fortunatamente Vlaada sembra essere un vero giocatori e ha sopportato i miei colpi con stoica pazienza. Nell’intervista ha detto che lui è soddisfatto da “come i giocatori gradiscono i suoi giochi e si divertono a giocarli … credo allora abbia valide ragioni per essere soddisfatto. Vlaada non è un autore “alla Tedesca”. come si evince dalle regole dei suoi giochi. Dice “di solito preferisco la strada che sembra meglio adattarsi al tema” e questa, almeno per me, è una gran cosa. Dice inoltre di avere “una leggera tendenza a ipercomplicare le cose” che, in effetti, è vero, ma il risultato finale è davvero buono! Alla fine dell’intervista dice “sono di sicuro più un geek che un artista” … se questo ha catturato la tua attenzione puoi procedere con la lettura dell’intervista.Hi, here I’m with the 15th installation of this series. As the series is going on I’m becoming more and more demanding with the designers. Luckily Vlaada seems to be a real gamer and sustained my hits with a stoical patience. He told me that his satisfaction come from “how do the players like and enjoy them”, so, I think, he has to be really satisfied. Vlaada is absolutely not a German designer, as you can see from the rules of his games. He told “I always try to prefer the ways that seem to fit the theme best.” and that’s is, for me, great and also he told that he has “[…]a slight tendency to overcomplicated things” that is also true, but the final results are really good! In the end of the interview he also says “I am sure more a geek than an artist” … if you are interested enough you can go on with the interview!