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    Lifeform

    Lifeform

    8.5 (2 Ratings) Rate It

    Tabletop Game

    9.1 Lifeform (2018) 16 Ratings & 43 Comments · GeekBuddy Analysis Gameplay 2–4 Players ...

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Dillon Jacoby-Rankin (202 KP) rated Wargroove in Video Games

Jan 18, 2020 (Updated Jan 18, 2020)  
Wargroove
Wargroove
2018 | Strategy
Turn Based Strategy (7 more)
Various Unit Types
Expandable
Player Count
Map and Campaign Creation
Unlockables
Online Play
Crossplatform
Advanced Wars Refresh!
If you have ever played Advanced Wars in the past, get ready for a refresh and a brand new experience. This game takes Advanced Wars and blows it out of the water.
Turn Based Strategy: The game brings back classic turn Based strategy that we have all come to know and love.
Various Unit Types: There are so many unita u. This game. Ground, Air, and Water types make the strategy as simple or complex as you want depending on the maps and style you want to play. Great for many different play styles and friends.
Player Count: Although you can only add up to 4 human players, the max the game plays is 8 if you include AI's. Therefore you could totally do a 4 vs. 4 with your friends on one team and the AI on the other. So 8 total, 4 human players
Expandable: The game is setup fine as is but has the capability to be added onto constantly whether it be new maps, units, commanders, etc. By the way. First free dlc update adds new units and commanders in February 2020. So if you don't have the game yet, enjoy the free dlc bonus next month when you get the game.
Unlockables: Beating the campaign will unlock you new commanders. So will earning a certain amount of stars for each of the missions you clear in the campaign, as well as various other things you may need to complete. All in all, there should be 3 commanders to unlock in the game.
Map and Campaign Creation: All the tools used to build the in game campaign are actually available to the player community to build your own maps and campaigns that can be shared and downloaded online. These maps are also crossplatform as well as the whole game. So I can make a map or campaign on one platform and you can download it on another. And then we can play said map on two different platforms at the same time with each other. It's great!
Online Play: Works great and is also crossplatform.
Crossplatform: Game is currently crossplatform on Nintendo Switch, PS, XBOX, and PC.
  
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Jamie Towell Cook (13 KP) rated the PlayStation 4 version of Sonic Mania Plus in Video Games

Apr 6, 2020  
Sonic Mania Plus
Sonic Mania Plus
2018 | Action/Adventure, Platform
Finally a Sonic game that lives up to the reputation that the mega drive days left us all begging for.

Sonic Mania sees you take control of Sonic and his team mates, Tails and Knuckles as you revisit some very familiar stages from Sonics past to take on Dr. Eggman (or Robotnik if your old school) and his latest creations. In a race to collect the seven chaos emeralds and save the day.
Mania Plus also sees the return of two characters that have been locked away in the vaults for some time now. Mighty The Armadillo & Ray The Flying (Gliding) Squirrel. All characters are equipped with their own unique skill set to help you traverse the levels and discover new areas and secrets.

Mania ditches all the gimmicks that have been the sonic series' shortcomings and returns to simpler times of side scrolling fast paced action that are plucked straight from the early 90's. Familiar levels to any fan of the golden era and even more familiar soundtrack. This also brings back the dread of the underwater level and that inevitable countdown sound that has haunted your childhood dreams and will do once again.

The game isn't just for single players though, the main story is as much fun now with sonic and tails as it was for sonic 2 & 3. Where you will be constantly shouting at the player controlling sonic that they've left you behind and then using Tails as a meat shield to defeat the end of level bosses. There is a race mode for other players to join in on, time attack mode to keep besting your own personal score. An endless supply of blue sphere stages to unlock and even the return of Dr. Robotnik's Mean Bean Machine. There is plenty in this game to keep you entertained for a very long time.

Heres hoping that Mania 2 isn't too far away. Hopefully with even more character selection redeeming all those newer characters that have been unfortunate enough to be featured on some of the more questionable sonic titles. I personally would love to see Team Chaotix, Amy Rose, Cream & Chao, Big, Rouge, Shadow, Blaze and maybe even the babylon rogues. Maybe even a few blasts from the past like Johnny Lightfoot, Porker Lewis and Shortfuse from the sonic the comics.

All in all, a much better addition to the wounded Sonic series.
  
    San Juan

    San Juan

    Games and Entertainment

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    App

    Boardgamegeek.com: 4/5 – “San Juan is one of my favorite card games and this implementation on...

    VIROID

    VIROID

    Games and Entertainment

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    App

    VIROID is a strategy videogame that consists of expanding or defending a virus along the game board,...

    Teamer - Sports Team App

    Teamer - Sports Team App

    Sports and Social Networking

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    App

    Teamer is the leading sports team management app for any sports team, club or group looking to...

    MILLIONAIRE TYCOON™

    MILLIONAIRE TYCOON™

    Games and Business

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    ••• #1 ITUNES BOARD GAME ••• ••• IN 3 COUNTRIES & TOP 10 ••• + BOARD GAME IN...

    Bridge Baron

    Bridge Baron

    Games and Entertainment

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    App

    Rated "A" by the American Contract Bridge League Internet READY!!! Play Online with your partner...

Deep Blue
Deep Blue
2019 | Nautical
A couple of months ago, Travis was in town, so he and I went over to Josh’s place to get a day of gaming in. It was an awesome time to play together, and to get to experience some new games for each of us. While we were there, we got to talking about some of the games in Josh’s collection, and he pulled out Deep Blue. He’d had it for a while, but had since gotten another game that he felt did the same things but better. So he asked if either of us wanted to take it off his hands. I said sure, as I’d never played the game before. Now that it’s a part of my collection, is it going to stay there? Or will my feelings mirror Josh’s with regards to the gameplay?

Deep Blue is a nautical game for 2-5 players of deck building, hand management, and a bit of push your luck. In it, players take on the roles ship Captains who are racing to collect treasures from undersea wrecks. Players will be hiring Crew members, sailing across the sea, and sending divers down to wrecks to salvage any valuables. The race is on, though, because you are not the only Captain on this treasure hunt… Throughout the game, players will stumble across 4 Wrecks that make up a Sunken City. Once all 4 areas of the Sunken City have been discovered and searched, the game ends. The player who earns the most VP from their collected treasures by the end of the game is declared the winner!


To setup for a game, follow the instructions in the rulebook – there are simply too many to detail here. The basic gist of setup is to create a market of Crew cards, shuffle and randomly distribute Wreck tiles across the board, and create a Gem pool. Each player will receive a player mat and starting cards in their chosen color, as well as 2 ships to be placed on the starting space of the board. Players will also get a treasure chest, in which they will keep their VP throughout the game. Set the Dive Site board, Gem bag, and VP tokens off to the side. Select a starting player, deal out starting tokens accordingly, and the game is ready to begin! Pictured below is the setup for a 3-player game.
On your turn, you will take one of four possible actions: Recruit a Crew Member, Sail, Rest, or Dive. Throughout the game you will be building your personal deck by Recruiting Crew Members. These new Crew offer unique abilities and scoring powers to be used during Dives. In order to recruit a Crew Member, you must pay the corresponding cost listed by its location in the market. To do so, you will play cards from your hand with $ symbols that equal the required cost. Once you play a card from your hand, it goes facedown onto the Rest area of your player mat. Take the Crew Member you just hired directly into your hand, and move the Market cards down to fill in the empty space, drawing a new card for the final slot. If you choose to Sail, you will play a number of cards from your hand with the Propeller icon. The number of icons dictates how many spaces you may sail. You can use all of your movement on one of your ships, or you can break movement across both ships. If you end a move on a face-up Wreck tile, you will ‘anchor’ your boat to one of the open scouting spots. These scouting spots offer special scoring benefits during the Dive on this tile. If you end movement on a face-down Wreck tile, first you will flip it face-up, and then anchor your boat. When landing on a buoy or an empty dive site, nothing happens.

On any turn, you may instead choose to Rest. To perform this action, you will shuffle all cards that reside on the Rest area of your player mat, and then draw only the 3 topmost cards into your hand. This is the action that allows you to refresh your hand, as you play more cards and your hand starts to dwindle. The final action choice is to Dive. This action is the crux of the game. When you have a boat on a Wreck tile, you may choose to start a Dive. The first step is to declare your Dive – decide which Wreck to Dive if your boats are on different Wreck tiles. Before the Dive begins, any opponents who have boats on adjacent Wreck tiles may move their boats to your Wreck in hopes of also profiting from the Dive. When all eligible boats have been moved to the Wreck, you will then officially begin the Dive. Take the Gem bag and Dive Site board. You will then draw Gems out of the bag, one-by-one, resolving them as necessary. Red, Gold, Silver, Green, and Purple gems are treasures, and can earn you VP. Blue and Black gems are Hazards that must be defended against in order to continue the Dive.


After a Gem is drawn and placed on the Dive Site board, players may choose to play a Crew Member to increase their VP earned. For example, one card allows you to earn 8 VP for a Green gem, instead of 0. To defend against hazards, players may play Crew from their hands who have the ability to negate the hazard, or may use the special ability of their scouting spot on the Wreck tile. If you are unable to defend against a hazard, you are forced to resurface and leave the Dive. The Dive continues in this fashion, until either the active player decides to end the Dive, or when they no longer have the ability to defend against hazards. Any players who still have boats at the Dive Site will collect VP from Crew cards they played, as well as a base amount of VP for the different Gems that were drawn. Once a Dive has been performed at a Wreck, that tile is removed from the game, leaving an empty dive site behind. If players have performed a Dive at one of the 4 Sunken City tiles, it is removed from the board, but placed on its corresponding space in the corner of the board. After all 4 Sunken City tiles have been moved to the corner of the board, the game immediately ends. Players will count up all the VP collected throughout the game, and the player with the highest score is declared the winner!
So how do I feel about Deep Blue overall? I would have to say that it’s fine. Just fine. There are some elements that I really enjoy, but others that kind of frustrate me. What I enjoy – the bits of strategy involved, and the awesome components. What I don’t enjoy – the pacing of the game and the imbalance of actions. To touch on the pros first, this game does require some strategy. You have to decide where to Sail, which Crew to recruit, which Crew to play and when to play them, etc. VP are earned by participating in Dives, so you want to make sure you can be at as many Dives as possible. That means keeping ships close to opponents to profit from any dives they may choose to initiate. Another interesting strategic element is the Rest action. You shuffle your discard pile, but then only draw the 3 topmost cards into your hand. You might not always draw what you were wanting, but you are always allowed to take a Rest action, regardless of how many cards are in your discard. There is no hand limit in this game, so do you rest every other turn to ensure you have almost all cards in your hand? Or do you dwindle your hand down in order to perform other actions instead? It’s all about your strategy, and you never quite know what your opponents are trying to do.

Now for the cons. The pacing of the gameplay feels really slow to me. You are only allowed to perform 1 action per turn, so it seems like the game takes a while to really get going. At first, everyone is going to be wanting to Sail, as all players start in the same starting area of the board. You want to get your ships out there ASAP. But then you run out of cards, so you have to take a turn to Rest and get those cards back. You’re taking a bunch of little turns to accomplish any one bigger thing, and that bogs down the gameplay for me. If you were able to perform 2 actions per turn, that would probably alleviate some of this frustration, as it would allow you to progress more quickly than by taking only a single action. Another aspect I mentioned is the imbalance of actions. The Recruit, Sail, and Rest actions all feel to me like they are on the same level, but the Dive action is different. Which in and of itself isn’t necessarily a bad thing. But the process of the Dive action is vastly different than any of the other actions, to the point that it kind of feels like a different game to me. For half of the game, you’re playing this game of strategy, deck building, and optimizing placement across the board. But for the other half, it turns into a push-your-luck frenzy that seems disjointed from the rest of the game to me. No matter how strategic and careful you are with your actions, it ultimately comes down to the luck of the draw.

To touch on components for a minute – the production quality of this game is awesome. The board, Dive Site board, and VP tokens are nice chunky cardboard. The cards are colorful, have cool artwork, and are sturdy. And the treasure chests are awesome little plastic chests that definitely are holding up well. The Wreck tiles are big and thick, the Gems are cute, and the ships are fun to play with. So overall, this game is made very well.

You can probably tell by now that I have mixed feelings about Deep Blue. There are aspects that I like, but other aspects that negate some of those positive attributes. I was psyched for a cool nautical deck builder where I could really flex my strategy, but got more push-your-luck than I was anticipating. Deep Blue will probably stick around in my collection for the time being. But, like Josh, I will probably find something that gives me the same vibes but done better. It’s a game that I’ll pull out from time to time, but definitely not one that’s going to break into my Top 10. With that said, Purple Phoenix Games gives it a sunken 4 / 6.
  
Horrified: Universal Monsters Strategy Board Game
Horrified: Universal Monsters Strategy Board Game
2019 | Horror, Murder & Mystery
The Universal Monsters (3 more)
The Strategy
Replay Value
Think Ten Steps Ahead
The Excellent Universal Monsters Board Game
When I heard about Horrorified, i wanted to buy it right away. A board game that has the universal monsters and it revolves around them, i really wanted to buy it. Cause i love the universal monsters. My favorite being The Invisible Man and Dracula. So lets talk more about it.

The Gameplay:

Horrified is a cooperative game in which all the players win or lose together. The players win if they defeat all of the Monsters they are playing against. In order to defeat a Monster, you must first complete a task.

Each Monster's task and subsequent defeat is unique:

Creature from the Black Lagoon: Find the Creature's hidden lair, then drive the Creature away.

Dracula: Smash Dracula's four coffins, then overcome Dracula.

Frankenstein and the Bride: Teach Frankenstein and the Bride what it means to be human so they can live peacefully.

The Invisible Man: Supply evidence to the police of the Invisible Man's existence, then trap him.

The Mummy: Break the Mummy's curse, then return him to his tomb.

 The Wolf Man: Discover the cure for lycanthropy, then administer it to the Wolf Man.

The players lose immediately if one of the following occurs:

 Terror: Each time a Hero or Villager is defeated, the Terror Level will increase. If the Terror Level reaches its maximum, indicated by the skull, the Monsters have overrun the village and the players lose.

Out Of Time: Each turn, you will draw a card from the Monster deck. If you need to draw a Monster card but the deck is empty, you have taken too long to defeat the Monsters and the players lose.

Each turn has two phases, performed in this order:

Hero Phase: Take as many actions as indicated on your Badge. In addition, any player may play any number of Perk cards.

Monster Phase: Draw one Monster card from the top of the Monster deck and resolve all three parts of the card. After completing both phases, play proceeds clockwise, starting with the next player's Hero Phase.

Hero Phase: Actions: Take up to the number of actions indicated on your Badge. You may choose to take fewer. Actions may be taken multiple times and in any order. The possible actions are:

Move: Move your Hero along a lit path to an adjacent space. You cannot move to water spaces and can only cross the river using one of the two bridge spaces. In addition, you may take any number of Villagers in your Hero's space with you when you move.

Guide: Move one Villager from your Hero's space to an adjacent space, or move one Villager from an adjacent space to your Hero's space. Villagers also cannot move to water spaces, and Monsters do not affect their movement.


Special Action: Some Heroes have a special action, as indicated on their Badge. Just like other actions, special actions count as one of the total number of actions for your turn and can be taken multiple times.

Pick Up: Take any number of Items from your Hero's space. Keep all your Items in front of you, next to your Badge.

Share: All Heroes in the same space as your Hero may freely give or take any number of Items from each other.

Advance: At a specific location, use one of your Items to advance a Monster's task.

Defeat: In a Monster's space, use your Items to defeat that Monster.

Monster Phase:

Draw a card from the top of the Monster deck and resolve the three parts of the card, from top to bottom. After resolving the entire Monster card, put it in a discard pile face up.

1. Items: Draw the number of Items listed at the top of the card, if any, from the Item bag. Place each Item at the location indicated on the Item.

If you need to draw an Item when the Item bag is empty, place all the Items from the discard pile into the bag, mix them up, and continue drawing.

2. Event: Each Event either involves one of the Monsters or the Villagers.

The card's color, as well as the symbol above the Event's name, indicates who the Event is about. Gray cards are about the Villagers. Colored cards are about a specific Monster.

If the Event Monster is not in your game, completely ignore the Event and continue with the Monster Strike. Otherwise, read the Event out loud and do what it says.

3. Monster Strike: Certain Monsters move and attack, as indicated by the symbols at the bottom of the card. In order from left to right, move and attack with the first Monster before proceeding to the next Monster.

If an indicated Monster is not in your game, ignore that symbol. If the Frenzy symbol is shown, the Monster with the Frenzy Marker moves and attacks. This could result in the same Monster moving and attacking twice in one turn.

Move the Monster the number of spaces indicated on the card towards the closest person (Hero or Villager). As soon as the Monster is in a space with a person, they stop moving. If the Monster started in a space with a person, they don't move at all.

Attack one person in the Monster's space by rolling the number of attack dice indicated. If there are no people in the Monster's space, the Monster does not attack-do not roll dice. If there are multiple people in that space, the Monster will attack a Hero rather than a Villager.

If there are still multiple people the Monster could attack, the current player chooses one to attack before rolling.

Perk Cards: Each player starts the game with a Perk card, and more Perk cards can be earned by getting Villagers to their safe locations. Keep all your Perk cards face up in front of you. It's a good idea to discuss your Perk cards, and when to play them, with the other players.

Perks may be played on any player's turn, but only during the Hero Phase. When you play a Perk card, do what the card says, and then put it in a discard pile face up. Playing a Perk card does not take an action.


Items: Items are important for advancing tasks and defeating Monsters, as well as defending yourself from the Monsters' attacks. Each Item has a color, indicating its type, and a strength, which is the number at the top. Each Item also has a location, which indicates where the Item is placed when it is drawn from the Item bag.

Hit by a Monster:

Heroes: To ignore being hit by a Monster's attack, a Hero may discard one Item for each Hit symbol rolled. If the Hero does not have enough Items, or does not wish to discard any Items, they are defeated. One hit defeats a Hero.

When a Hero is defeated, increase the Terror Level by moving the Terror Marker one space and remove that Hero from the board.

At the start of that player's next turn, they place their Hero at the Hospital and take their turn as normal, including their full number of actions. A defeated Hero does not lose any Items or Perk cards.

Villagers: A Villager does not have any Items and is therefore defeated immediately when hit. When a Villager is defeated, increase the Terror Level by moving the Terror Marker one space and remove that Villager from the board.

End of the Game: The game can end in one of three ways:

Heroes Triumph: If you defeat all the Monsters, the game immediately ends and the players have won! You've saved the village from a horrific fate, and perhaps even the Monsters themselves.

Terror!: If the Terror Level reaches its maximum, indicated by the skull, the game immediately ends and the players have lost. Everyone, including the Heroes, are too horrified to continue. You abandon the village to the Monsters.

Out Of Time: If you need to draw a card when the Monster deck is empty, the game immediately ends and the players have lost. You've taken too long to save the village. The Villagers have fled and you aren't able to continue.

Solo Play: The Villagers are more fearful if there is only one Hero trying to save the village. Begin the game with the Terror Marker on the "3" of the Terror Level Track.

All the rules remain the same. However, do not play as the Courier-that Hero's Special Action cannot be taken in a solo game. Also the Perk cards "Special Delivery" and "Conduct An Investigation" cannot be used.

Either remove these cards before playing, or when drawn, immediately discard and draw a new Perk card to replace it.

Its a fantasic excellent strategy game based around the universal monsters. I love it so much its such a fun game. If you want to learn more go to BoardGameGeek, Dice Tower Review or One Stop Co-Op Shop.