Connections

Hello, and welcome to Galactic Cruise. Here, we offer our guests something special: the comfort of a luxury cruise with the innovation of space travel. As the first company to offer extended-stay space vacations, we are excited to have you working for us! As a supervisor of this company, you’ll be expected to not only build these ships and satisfy our guests, but also to help the company thrive by enhancing our company network, inventing new technologies, and growing our workforce. We are a united company, and you’ll often find that what another supervisor does will make your job easier. Let me be clear, though, this is a competition. Our current CEO will be stepping down in three years, and the supervisor who comes out on top will take his place.

On your turn, you will either place a worker to take two actions in the ever-expanding network, launch a ship and send one of your workers to space as a pilot, or recall all your earthbound workers to collect funding bonuses. Actions include acquiring blueprints, constructing ships, attracting guests, and building developments–connections between locations that increase action selection throughout the game. You will also be affecting resource markets that ebb and flow with the actions of all the players.

Throughout the game, you will also be competing with your fellow supervisors to complete company goals, which will earn you progress cubes throughout the game. Progress cubes are also placed when you launch ships, and when a certain number of cubes are placed onto the company’s progress track, the game ends, and the player with the most Victory Points becomes the new CEO of Galactic Cruise.

Do you still think you have what it takes to work for us? You do? Great. Let’s get started.

—description from the publisher

Sir Ocelot and Professor Penguin are exploring a newly discovered cave system and competing for precious gemstones found inside. To locate and collect gemstones, players use tools — compasses, lamps, and pickaxes — and their trusty companion's good instincts. Gemstones, geodes, celestites — the deeper the rivals go into the cave, the more valuable the treasures to be found!

To set up Sir Ocelot's Cave, place the amethyst tokens for each of the three cave levels into their appropriate bag, then randomly place the level 1, 2, and 3 cave tokens on the empty spaces in the appropriate levels. Each player starts with a companion and a set of fifteen double-sided tool tokens that have different tools on opposite sides.

Each turn, place one of your tokens — either tool or companion — on the game board. After placing a tool or your companion, check to see whether any cave token is "seen" on three different sides by all three tool types. If so, you claim that token by removing it from the board. If you collect a geode or a complete set of celestites, you draw a random amethyst tile from the bag matching the appropriate level. Each amethyst has a fixed value or scores based on the cave tokens you collect or the cave tokens left behind.

Once both players have taken sixteen turns and placed all of their tokens, the game ends, and whoever has the more valuable collection of gemstones wins.

In Rivages, players explore the legendary islands of Myr, searching for remains of its long-forgotten wisdom.

Each player starts with their own map of an island that's divided into several colored areas. Every turn, they strike out the available symbols from one of the two cards in their hand, check matching fields on their map, then pass the cards along to their neighbor. By exploring certain areas, achieving goals on the island, looting treasures, and progressing on their own wisdom tree, they gather valuable parchments. Reaching a boat allows them to move to a new island full of new opportunities.

Whoever has the most parchments at the end of the game wins.

—description from the publisher

In Pixies, you move through the seasons to meet little creatures emerging from a flower or sheltering in the hollow of a tree. Choose one of the revealed cards, but be careful which ones you leave to your opponents!

Place that card in your playing area according to its number. Cards placed one on top of another are validated and earn you points at the end of the round, as do your largest color zone and your spirals. Easy...yet you'll find that the other players won't be short of bad advice.

—description from the publisher

Yama (å±±) is an abstract strategy game inspired one of the classics - Connect Four.

The goal still the same; make a line of four-in-a-row of your color and win. The twist here is that the rotating board of Yama contains triangular slots that stand the cube up on its corner - revealing three sides, each of which can be seen from a different point of view. And it is in one of these three point-of-views in which you must try to form your line of four-in-a-row.

With Yama we strove to design the components such that they convey the rules. The cubes are painted such that no matter how you orient it one side will show a different color to the other two. The way placing three cubes in a cluster forms a valley for placement of the next level which covers up and block your opponent, or cliches your victory. These all contributes to making Yama one of the easiest and most intuitive game to learn.

However the game itself is treacherously easy to lose yet deeply strategic and tactical when played by two equally skilled players. The three dimension aspect of the victory goal and the three dimensional aspect of the cube placement can be very tricky to wrap your head around - leading to surprising twists and turns that belies it simple rules and components.