I have played a ton of Spirit Island over the last several days. I went through all of the spirits (not Branch and Claw though) and played 1 spirit games with them. At first I kept it really basic - no blight card, no adversary, and the automatic progression. After a couple of wins I turned off the automatic progression and then soon after started with the blight card. I had some trouble in the beginning, but then started winning more often then not. The only one I couldn’t beat it the ocean-based one that can’t go inland.
Then I went back to the basic spirit and played against an adversary and just barely won. Then I tried a 2 spirit game for the first time with a different adversary and won that one too. After looking at the different levels for the adversaries I wonder how anyone can beat those! I don’t think I’ll progress that far.
In any case, this is such a fun game. Each one is like a changing puzzle to try and solve. When I played with 2 spirits, it look me forever to decide what to do for my turns. I had to keep jumping back and forth between the 2 spirits and the island. Right before I won, things were looking pretty bleak. Two areas had a ton of invaders because i kept corralling them there. After going for some high power cards I was able to take one out after building up 17 defense and putting 4 meeples in there with some damage spells. On the other one I dropped a tsunami + the power that does 1 damage to all invaders - which had like 7 explorers. Between the two powers I wiped them out.
I found playing solo really helped me learn the game better than when my wife and I played the physical game twice. Also, playing by my self allowed me to take all the time I needed without feeling like I was taking too long, or feeling the pressure of that I better make a good play.
The PC version is so good for learning too, because it allows undos, up until the point where you reveal new information - like drawing a new power. I was making mistakes checking the range of powers, but in most cases it wasn’t a problem to undo the choice - which would have been difficult in the physical version.
I always recommend Sentinels of the Multiverse as my favorite digital boardgame, so unsurprising that I’ve already backed/picked up the Sentinels of Earth Prime - more heroes and villains designed by Chris Badell (who did the designs for SotM) but instead of the SotM universe it’s all set in Green Ronin’s Mutants and Masterminds setting.
It’s a separate game, but if you own Sentinels of the Multiverse it will import all the Sentinels of the Multiverse content (including mods!) and vice-versa so regardless of which app you can play with all the content (including bringing Earth Prime heroes along to whack on Oblivaeon)! On Steam (and ios and google play).
I played a game and took down Hades with Captain Thunder, Lady Liberty, Bowman and Raven. It’s only a slice of the content but easily feels like another polished expansion to the Sentinels content!
Friend sent me this pic earlier that’s making the rounds. Apparently snapped during setup for the Essen Spiel convention about to start. Twilight Imperium 4 on BGA? Asmodee owns FF so it seems legit…
If that pic is right, isn’t really a digital copy/app, but available for play on Board Game Arena (.com) . I play stuff there with RL friends when we can’t make our Tuesday in-person meet up, and I really love it. Super no-frills presentation (fancy modern html), but if you can get the hang of each games’ interface, it makes things run super smooth (compared to platforms like Tabletop Simulator, etc). Unlike a program or app, I don’t think the games have any AI (I’ve never had interest or cause to look).
I paid the $30 for the plastic key that gets you into Adam Poots’s beta of Kingdom Death Simulator. And I have to say it’s pretty slick so far, like a bespoke TTS mod with all the edges filed off. I’ll try to post some impressions and screenshots once I get some more experience with it
I gave Nemesis Lockdown a try for the first time and I’m not quite sure what to think. I did the pretty extensive tutorial and then a normal game solo. To me it felt like:
Randomly try and find rooms to help me complete objectives.
Try to control noise markers well enough not to get 2 in one corridor so not to trigger alien.
Decide if I want to use a card to collect items from rooms with lock boxes.
If alien shows up fight or run.
Since there is a round limit it seems like moving around efficiently is necessary. The 10 card deck feels limiting as it didn’t seem like there are a variety of actions. I almost won my first game. I completed the objectives and made it to the room to hide in (forgot the name) in the final round. A damn alien decided to join me in that room so I could only enter the lockdown spot if I could get the alien out / kill him and still have a card to enter lockdown. As I didn’t have any weapon I had to melee attack - missing all 4 times and I died.
So I worked on this game for a while earlier in the year when I contracted at Dire Wolf. The log is actually one of the systems I had a big hand in designing, and I tried really hard to make it more useful and readable than logs in DW’s past games (which were adequate but never got much love). So this little tidbit in your first impressions made me happy!
From what I recall, they’re not puzzles exactly, just games with special rules and/or victory conditions. Skirmishes are probably just challenges that rotate out every week.
If you were waiting for digital Spirit Island to catch up to the big fancy Jagged Earth expansion those cardboard warriors have gotten to play for years and years - rejoice! Handelabra has released Spirit Island - Jagged Earth on Steam (steampowered.com) - unfortunately it’s Early Access, so it’s currently incomplete. But it does mean that Handelabra has committed to eventually implementing the whole expansion, and the current price ($19.99 USD) gets you a 20% off the final price and you’ll get the rest of the expansion as it rolls out. You can think of it as a subscription or season pass with regular content drops - but with none of the usual question marks since we already know exactly how much content there is in the expansion (Handelabra is one of those that targets 100% parity with the physical game, to the point that digital Sentinels is often considered one of the best ways to check edge cases in the rules)! Currently Spirit Island is mainly aspirational - I recall some enjoyable but brain burning on the base game but one day I will graduate from Balatro!
I’m always happy throw a couple bones to make sure Handelabra keeps plugging away at their projects - they mentioned Sentinels of the Multiverse Definitive Edition starting development in 2024 (so really I just want to make sure they get around to that!!) I hope they understand that while I appreciate all their current projects I’m subconsciously/consciously buying them mainly to make sure they do Sentinels DE!
I did the tutorials and played a game of Everdell and it didn’t make a great first impression. It’s probably a me problem as I didn’t like having so many options for cards between each play between the 8 in my hand and the 8 in the common area. Then in the digital edition I didn’t like having to jump to different screens to see the events and other player areas. Moreso the events as the event screen doesn’t show what buildings I already have built. I do like how workers grow each season to ramp up.
Not many people in my friend list put much time into the game. Any other opinions on this?
The digital version was my first exposure to Everdell, and I really didn’t like it. It felt like a game that just shoved together elements of a worker placement game and a tableau builder without bothering to make them really work hand in hand. Something about the card market in particular really bugged me… Like, it often never had anything I wanted in it? I don’t know. It’s a game that seemed to want to give me aggressively mediocre choices to make.
I’ve not played enough Everdell to have a solid opinion about it but I do think it’s a game that would likely be harmed by the digital transition because part of the appeal is stuff like the Evertree being a big 3d thing and having cute animal meeples and so on, and you just don’t get that from the digital version. (Though, the tree ends up getting in the way more than it’s cool IMO.)
