Vodafone Yanımda
Utilities
App
By downloading “Vodafone Yanımda”, you can easily manage your account and keep updated with our...
Fruit Ninja Classic
Games and Entertainment
8.0
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App
Slice fruit, don’t slice bombs – that is all you need to know to get started with the addictive...
FotoRus -Camera & Photo Editor & Pic Collage Maker
Photo & Video and Social Networking
App
FotoRus - THE All-In-One Photo App you will ever need! Including Professional Edit, Beauty, Special...
Dictaphone
Business and Productivity
App
Dictaphone is the definitive voice recording app! *** Special Gift: in-app purchases are FREE on...
Drum Pad Machine - Beat Maker
Entertainment and Music
App
Now that’s easy to be a beatmaker! All you need is Drum Pad Machine and a little imagination. ...
Zombie Teenz Evolution
Tabletop Game
Zombies are attacking the entire town! Cooperate with your friends and launch an expedition to drive...
Summer of Salt
9.0
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Book
A magic passed down through generations . . . Georgina Fernweh waits with growing impatience for...
young adult lgbtqia fiction
I Kissed a Girl
6.0
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Book
Can an up-and-coming horror actress and the makeup artist for her newest "creature feature" turn...
ClareR (5674 KP) rated Twisted Roots (After the Storm#2) (The Eye of the Storm) in Books
Jul 30, 2023
These novelettes (this is the second, and there’s more to come) are for those who have already read The Eye of the Storm series, and they add just an extra special something to the story. If you like werewolves, I’d highly recommend the series. I loved them - pure escapism. And we all need a bit of that sometimes! I’m just glad that Dianna Hardy is writing again, and excited for the two worlds of The Eye of the Storm and The Witching Pen to combine in a novel planned for the future - I'm just going to have to wait!
My opinions are my own (as anyone who knows me will fully agree with!) and many thanks to Dianna Hardy for sending me an ARC to read and honestly review.
Dean Gregory (18 KP) rated Scotland Yard in Tabletop Games
Jun 5, 2019
The board is a map of London divided into numbered stations and linked together by coloured lines, depicting routes and different modes of transport - yellow for taxis, blue for buses and red for the underground. There are also a handful of black routes for ferries, which are available only to Mister X under special rules.
The mechanic of a player moving in complete secret on a tabletop game is one I never would have thought was possible, but Scotland Yard manages to pull it off, and make it work well. Mister X plots their movements with the use of a special pad and paper by writing down the station number they occupy, covering it with the ticket they used to make their move. This is the only clue the detectives have as to where X might be. It works extremely well.
Mister X also has access to two special tickets - a X2 ticket allows them to make two moves in one, and a black ticket allows them to use any mode of transport, with the added bonus of showing them to take ferry routes. Smart use of these powers is necessary to get out of scrapes, as they also have to reveal their location every 5 moves, starting with move 3.
Detectives have a limited number of tickets for each mode of transport, so in order to win they need to coordinate their movements so they don't waste tickets unnecessarily. However, if there are less than 4 detective players, each detective not controlled by a player is replaced with a police officer who is universally controlled. The police can move freely without the need for tickets, making them far more versatile than detectives. This is presumably to balance the difficulty for smaller teams, but it ends up making a game with all 4 detectives considerably harder than a game with only 3. The level of care and consideration that must go into each move makes playing the detectives a completely different experience to playing as Mister X.
I came into the game thinking it would be heavily skewed in Mister X's favour. After all, most of the moves they make are in secret, they're completely unhindered by tickets, and they get a couple of special powers to boot. On top of that, the detectives first two moves are complete guesswork, so X gets a head start. In practice though, staying 3 steps ahead of the detectives is vital to survival, and when they work together well it can be ready for X to put themselves in an impossible situation. It takes careful planning to stay ahead of the game.
There is a beginner mode which is aimed at younger players. The differences are that the number of rounds Mister X needs to survive for is 13 instead of 22, red underground routes are unavailable to all players, and most of all, Mister X remains in the board all game, only disappearing on the turns where he would appear in the regular game. I can't really offer an opinion on this version, but I can see the appeal of it, even if it defeats the concept of the game a bit.
This is a bonafide classic, and a solid challenge no matter which role you take on. As long as the game doesn't devolve into a series of guesses and lucky breaks (which, due to the nature of Mister X's movements, can be a regular issue), it offers an evening of smart gameplay with a solid replay value.