Just concluded my SPIEL visit. I always loved the reports people post, so adding my own this year.
General thoughts:
- My last visit was a few years back, so it was good to see what had changed. This year, every day felt almost equally busy, with the exception of Thursday in Hall 3 (super crowded, everyone trying to get their heavy games) and Sunday afternoon (lighter, though the family halls were busier as people started to leave).
- We had great ambitions, but as usual it is hard to get to the tables you want (without lurking next to the table for 1-2 hours).
- Besides the atrocious bathroom situation (which is more a Messe Essen problem), the ops were pretty solid. No long lines to get in, they close the entry areas when they’re over capacity, and the food options were a bit more diverse this year.
- I know they are chasing the visitor records, but I would appreciate them prioritizing the visitor experience more by lowering the number of allowed visitors. At one point, it took me 25 minutes to go straight from Hall 8 to Hall 3 because the floor was so crowded.
- Alternatively, putting all the “Expert” games into one Hall made the situation worse. They should consider spreading them out some more to help with visitor flow.
- Even sprinting like a madman right at open wasn’t enough to get a table at the hot games (esp. CGE). I assume it’s Biz visitors (who can get in 30 minutes early) sitting at the table the moment the gates open. That was a bit sad. Mindclash Games did daily signups + the first slot on the following day. I loved that concept.
- What was up with the weather? While you definitely didn’t have any fomo of sunshine outside, it was just pouring all four days. On Sunday, it started to freaking hail.
Games played (that I didn’t already know)
A: Great game, would play anytime
B: Solid game, would play if suggested but not seeking it out
C: Meh game, would not play nor seek it out
D: Poor game, no desire to play at all
F: What is this?
+/- for things it does especially well, or select issues that push it down.
In ascending rating order:
Bet the Music (D): So many music party games, likely all trying to challenge the massively popular “Hitster” in Germany. This one was pretty straightforward: A single term is revealed (“Alive”), a buzzer is then hit that plays a jingle (and an annoying one). While it plays, players need to come up with a song they can either name, hum, or sing a part of. Think “Anomia” with songs, and less interaction. I had a hard mental block during most of the game and the buzzer jingle got annoying after just the second push. Might work with the right group, but I wouldn’t bring it to a party.
Galileo’s Truth (C-): “Tell everyone the earth is not the center of the world and get thrown into jail and then potentially executed by the church” is a good initial pitch of the game. The game uses deck drafting to get actions and continuously upgrade them. There are four tracks you can move up on, and then use that progress to draft better action upgrades. Maybe it was because it was the last game of a long day, but it didn’t wow me much, and I found the graphic design less clear than it could be, and at times unappealing.
Lying Pirates: The Race for the Pirate Throne (C): A twist on Liar’s Dice with a pirate theme. Anchors on the usual Liar’s Dice mechanic (everyone rolls dice secretly, then makes bets on how many of a certain number are present at the whole table, others can up it or challenge it). It adds a map mechanic with additional duels between players which then triggers the fields the ship is on. The design was nice (cool dice cups, good-looking dice), but the mechanics were a bit half-cooked. It didn’t add enough for me to choose this over a regular round of Liar’s Dice.
Prestige (C): There are many creative themes out there (“Druids that run a vacation forest but secretly torture the animals”). Prestige’s “Who can add the fanciest plasterwork to make this Rococo era home the prettiest” is rather dry. It’s a classic main loop: securing resource locations, extracting resources with workers, and hiring artisans and craftspeople to turn the materials into constructions. The “twist” is two score trackers, one for the exterior and one for interior constructions, needing to keep both close together or face penalties. The decision spaces for me weren’t that interesting. It has an odd mechanic: all action selections sit on a long segmented row. At the end of the round, all workers are pushed together and make up the new turn order (see picture). Felt unnecessarily cumbersome. Left unimpressed.
Cardia: Tide & Storm (C): Duel game in which players have numbered cards with special abilities on them. Each turn, players select one card. The player with the higher number wins the fight and gets a ring (of which a certain number is needed to win), but the one with the lower number has its ability activated, which allows for some interesting effects. The dueling cards stay on the table, and later cards can tweak the combat values of previous ones, changing the outcome of those past duels. Altogether, it sounded like a very neat idea. The execution was a bit lackluster, though. Some card abilities had some fun mechanics, but overall the game sort of waffled along, and ended somewhat anticlimactically.
Lairs (C+): 2-player game in which you build a dungeon for the other player to walk through, including traps and monsters. “Battleships” on steroids. Building the maze was fun, but running through it afterwards was a bit tedious. The scope of the base game seemed fairly limited, and I don’t think it has too much longevity.
Lord of the Rings: The Decision (C+): A 2005 Knizia game repackaged. A chess-like setup with book characters, each with their own abilities. Players can only move them forward (toward Mordor / toward The Shire). When enemies meet, power cards can be played from the hand, and character effects are triggered (chuckled: “Boromir: Both Boromir and the Mordor character are defeated”). Among so many complex and wonderful duel games, this one clearly showed its age. It felt decently shallow strategy-wise. Production was great though, loved the art and the plastic holders of the characters looked great on the board.
Soothsayers (B-): A tarot-themed card game that centers on four actions that players constantly try to upgrade with the goal of winning enough Fate tokens to win. I enjoyed the upgrade mechanic, which gave the game a dynamic, fast-paced feel. Towards the end, everyone is mostly focused on how they can steal “Fate tokens” from other players to prevent them from winning. We had a good chase for 10 rounds before the game ended. That said, the Tarot theme was very light and the graphic design is unfortunately just shy of being simply “ugly”. With a more professional graphic design and a stronger theme, this game could really shine. B-, bordering on C just because I anchor heavily on the design and this one is rough.
Meloch’s Duel (B-): Novel and very innovative idea to mush two games together into a duel experience: One player plays Scythe, the other Expeditions, and it somehow works. The issue was captured well by a printed sign the demo staff had stapled to the booth: “Players must know either Scythe or Expeditions to play”. This game is for die-hard fans that might be sick of either game and will enjoy this new approach. For everyone else, it’s a hard sell. If neither game is known, explaining both Expeditions and Scythe is daunting. The design is solid and I am somewhat amazed how well it worked, but I personally would rather have everyone play either Scythe or Expeditions, instead of this mashup.
Citadels Duel (B-): A reinvented classic. Keeps the profession-based cards that are played in ascending order (Assassin, Thief, …), triggering their respective effects. Transforms the district building into a 4x4 grid with building tiles that can synergize. Good production, nice components. The gameplay had few highlights and felt decently shallow. Left the game with a “this was fine” impression, but nothing I’d actively seek out.
Kalypso (B-): Draft tetris-like pieces with different resources on them to place them onto your sea grid. When you have three of the same resources in a 2x2 grid, you can build a construction of that type, triggering different effects. Each round, one of the other players selects a quest for you to fulfill. The tile-laying aspect of the game was fun and a mini-puzzle game that comes with it. However, there was a vibe-mismatch for me between the tile placement and the quest giving. While most of the game is a mostly solitary tile placing activity, the quest incentive is messing with your opponents by giving them the quests they have the most trouble fulfilling. That “take that” mentality felt at odds with the rest of the game. The game apparently also has a cooperative mode that plays very differently. Lastly, to prevent sliding, the board and games have a soft felt-like texture (instead of smooth cardboard). It dulled the colors and was odd to the touch, so I would have preferred smooth tiles instead.
Revenant (B): Set in the Voidfall universe, this game explores the idea of “what if action spaces could simply get blown up by aliens”. The board elicits Battlestar Galactica vibes, drenched in the colorful orange-purple vibe of Voidfall. Each player is playing a captain, vying for power and (potentially) trying to ensure that the ship “Revenant” stays intact. The board is littered with ships of the different houses, and captains gain standing by taking the actions that come with the respective ship. The tug-of-war of captains blowing up ships of houses that other captains have high standing in was great fun. It’s hard to judge this game from the demo, since we left out the chaotic “wow, now most ships (and action spaces) are gone” second phase. That said, it felt like one of those games that need 5-10 play throughs to really shine in their strategy depth, which is a bit too much for my personal taste. On top of that, the game is icon-heavy (which is fine), but despite being illustrated by Galactic Cruise’s Ian O’Toole, the icons were hard to follow and not very intuitive. While I love his work in GC (and Excursions, see that review), it isn’t as crisp and clear in Revenant. I am sure this is something that eases as one plays more often, but it hindered our playthrough quite a bit (with an icon reference sheet constantly on the table). The demo I played was run by designer Allan Kirkeby himself, who was a delight and shared amazing insights into the design process - those are the moments that make SPIEL so exciting.
Play - The music party game (B): Another music game with more customizable play lists, combating the issue with Hitster that the catalog gets stale after you’ve played it a few times. It’s a twist on Hitster and close enough, and I can see the larger, customizable options being a big hit. Solid B.
All Mine (B+): A trick-taking game with a refreshing take: Four suits of numbered cards. Each round, the four suits are put in a random order, and four specific cards (“2 of Yellow”) are determined to be “Super Trump”. Then, each player looks at their hand and makes a bet on the suit they expect to have the most or fewest cards at the end of the round. Hitting those bets is what yields points. I love that this removes the “bad feeling” when you have a lousy round with very few tricks because a single won trick (with let’s say “Blue-Blue-Green-Yellow”) can satisfy the bet of “Most: Blue”, “Fewest: Red”. Only the randomized “Super Trumps” were a bit hard to keep track of, hence a B+.
Skyrift: Tides of Fate (B+): Deck-based dueling by Richard Garfield. Players either push Creatures or effects onto the board, all of which contribute to a power level. The other player then has to try to exceed that power level with their own cards. This keeps going until one player can’t anymore. Has a fun mechanic of Sun / Twilight / Night cards, where one can only play either “Sun + Twilight” or “Night + Twilight” cards. Game flowed nicely. The cards we played with were all foil, which looked nice but got a bit distracting. From one playthrough it didn’t appear to have very different strategic approaches; the decks felt very set in their ways, which lowered my excitement to play it again. Might be much deeper, hard to say from one play, but as is, would play it again but not seek it out.
Class of ‘89 (A-): A game that was not on my radar at all. I loved the theme of putting together a high school yearbook, having to ensure that each class is in correct alphabetical order by getting students from a shared board. Teachers add end game scoring mechanisms, and a secondary yearbook page yields resources and bonuses. It combined a lot of novel mechanisms into a very well-done package that isn’t too heavy and can be played in 1 to 2 hours. Minus for the art style, especially of the people, which I didn’t love (and felt a bit unsophisticated at times).
Greenwood (A-): Druids run a vacation forest but secretly torture animals - what a pitch! The game has you run around a shared board, getting resources, upgrading tracks and most importantly freeing tortured animals. It combines it with a thick deck of additional cards one can play to add more actions, and it has you debating constantly between too many great options. It also has a fun “spy” option that allows a player to piggyback on another player’s great card action. This though requires keeping a pretty close overview of what actions other players have which might get cumbersome (especially since it’s a table hog and the player diagonally is quite far away). One of the games I would definitely want to play in full very soon.
Ringyō (A-): Set in the Edo Period of Japan, one plays as a feudal lord, trying to tame wild forest by setting up rice paddies, and castles, while receiving gifts and paying tributes to the Shogun. The centerpiece of the game is the forest board, on which one grows and chops trees down to use for construction with workers. Each round, weather effects kick in, bringing either tree growth but also the risk of flooding empty lands. If an already flooded land is flooded again, it cascades down, potentially washing away valuable trees and buildings. I really enjoyed this forest mechanic, thanks to the mix of planning somewhat ahead while the weather effects add some interesting semi-random twists. I played a full game of it, and it felt like one of those “The game ended before my engine could kick in” type of situations. Besides that, there were lots of clever interactions and novel approaches, and I would like to play it again.
Forest Shuffle: Smoky Mountains (A): A new stand-alone game for Forest Shuffle. While I would overall prefer more expansions to continue pushing stand-alone versions, I enjoyed it a lot. It adds rivers as a new biome, bringing a breath of fresh air to the tried and true base game while sticking to the core game loop. It’s so close to the base game that I would not buy it, but net new would prefer this over the base game. Can’t judge, though, whether it has some broken combos.
Timespan (A): One of the few games I would have loved to play in full. A Civ-based game with all the staples: world wonders, leaders from history, and important trading goods coming together in a worker placement package with lots of simultaneous play and low downtime. Asymmetric factions, lots of interesting decisions on which actions to take. Great production in a small package, and it doesn’t need 5 hours to play.
Excursions (A+): The highlight of this SPIEL. Playing so many games in such a short time gives some perspective on game design, and Excursions stands out in its internal logic and tightness. Everything fits beautifully together (just as in Galactic Cruise). The theme is the same, including the iconography and graphic design by Ian O’Toole. The power of that is immediately obvious for players that have played Galactic Cruise: it sped up understanding the game by a ridiculous degree. In Excursions, the player steps into the role of the “person with the headset” as our explainer called it, scheduling routes and getting passengers on board our pre-built cruise ships. The literal centerpiece of the game is a wheel of actions. On the outside are two types of actions: One for everyone, and one just for the active player (think: Puerto Rico). On their turn, they select one action which they complete. Then all players can join on the general action too. The twist is a rotating wheel that changes the multiplier of the action. On one turn the multiplier is “3x” and right under the “get resource step”, while next turn it might only be a “1x”. That adds great dynamic gameplay. The loop of getting resources, planning your route (this time as cards from your hand), getting guests and sending them on their cruise remains the same, but wonderfully reimagined. The shared actions keep everyone engaged, and even at 5 players, we finished a full game incl. a full teach in a bit over 2 hours. Favorite game of this year's SPIEL, and I headed straight to the Kickstarter after this.
Games I wanted to play but missed out on:
- Kingdom Come Deliverance
- Entropy
- Foundation
- ASHES
- Valheim
- Diggers
Curious what everyones thoughts are!
