Gameblog

Tag: abstracts

  • WYPS

    I’ve been playing WYPS recently. It’s a new abstract game that combines word game with a connection game. It’s like The Game of Y, except the pieces have letters on them and must form words. The goal is the same: connect all three sides of the triangular board with a chain of your pieces. While…

  • Shogi and Race for the Galaxy

    I met Olli for a quick round of two-player games. Since the ever-friendly postman brought me my Shogi board, that was what we played. Olli has this thing with abstracts: he doesn’t really like to play them, because he basically dislikes their deepness, I suppose. In a sense, I mean, that he sees there’s potential…

  • Da Vinci’s Challenge

    Review in Finnish here DaVinci’s Challenge is yet another game trying to milk the popularity of Dan Brown’s books. Once again, any connection between this game and Leonardo Da Vinci is fairly thin and based on art alone (and even the art is mangled: let’s just say the Vitruvian Man is less of a man…

  • Pentago

    This review in Finnish Pentago, the Finnish Adult Game of the year for 2006, is a twist on good old naughts and crosses. Players try to form five in a row on a 6×6 grid. That’s fairly boring, but fortunately that’s not all. The twist is in the board, which is divided into quadrants of…

  • Da Vinci’s Challenge

    I played Da Vinci’s Challenge with Johanna yesterday. She hated it, and I didn’t like it much better. Basically it’s a simple abstract game, where pieces are laid on a board with a Flower of Life pattern. It’s nice, except the game is somewhat boring, counting points is tedious as you must check carefully to…

  • Quick touch with Pentago

    I played Pentago, the Finnish game of the year, yesterday with Johanna. My darling wife was amazed when she heard that was the winner. She may not be a hardcore gamer, but she isn’t clueless either! The game sucks, simply put. It’s your typical naughts-and-crosses on six by six board; one board quadrant is rotated…

  • Terra Nova

    Review of Terra Nova in Finnish. Terra Nova is a fairly abstract game of fence-building. Players try to move their men on the board and fence off as much land for themselves as possible. If the land features just one landscape, it’s even better. The game reminds me a lot of Amazonas, but there are…

  • Board game club: Terra Nova, Viva Topo!

    Board game club was a big hit yesterday, with almost a record crowd of over 20 gamers. I made a quick visit and had time for just a few games. I’ve wanted to play Terra Nova to get it off my system. Now I tried the game with four players and found out my expectations…

  • Farlander

    Farlander reviewed in Finnish. Estonian Revaler published Farlander back in 2002, but now it’s out from Finnish Tactic. This pretty game is warfare as simple as it gets. The medieval theme is pretty stale, but actually the game is very abstract. The game is split into two parts: setup and fighting. In the setup phase,…

  • New game session: Farlander, Terra Nova

    Once again I met Olli for games, this time focusing on new material. We started with Farlander, since Olli had just bumped into it in a shop. The game looks nice, and inside the pretty box lies a simple war game. It’s so simple and minimalistic that I’m having a hard time calling it a…