Yup, I just picked it up on GoG. POE has endless delve running for 10 days right now, which is my favorite POE mode, but will look at this when that ends.
Does anyone have any inside info from a newsletter or anything about the state of Unmatched for mobile? Last I heard it was supposed to come out this yearā¦
Paging @RachetAcram
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Not sure about Unmatched but it looks like Maracaibo is in a couple weeks on iOS and Android.
āLocal pass and play is also supported for up to 4 players.ā
Canāt say I am surprised at the lack of online multiplayer.
Do/have any of you ever played a game pass & play? Something longer than, say, Lost Cities? I donāt see how this is a popular way to play, but maybe Iām truly in the minority.
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Absolutely. Itās a great way to play Pandemic while traveling (and nicely avoids quarterbacking). Weāve done it a few times at home just to skip setup, but thatās rare, and I think Iāve only tried it once with information that genuinely needs to be secret. Seems like someone always messes up and sees someone elseās hand.
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Maybe itās included because itās an easy feature to add? Iām making an assumption, but presumably hotseat mode exists for testing before the ai is coded, so itās literally built into the game anyway
North Star Games have released the expansion to evolution - Climate!
Auto download for me - kids and I regularly play pass and play on this one
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Looks like $7 currently, though I donāt know if that is a sale price or permanent.
I think the app is pretty good though the async development was a master class in how not to do it. I think itās fairly functional now, though, if not as highly polished as it could be.
One nice thing about the game is that only one person actually needs to own the full version in order to set up async with friends. I wonder if Climate works the same way.
I can set one up if you want to try?
Nope, you need climate, I canāt add you
h/t for the legit lol at this
My wife and Iāve play Sagrada and Potion Explosion pass and play when we are out and looking to pass the time.
I first got introduced to board gaming on an iPad while waiting for a delayed flight home (that got cancelled). Developers of Haunted Hollow were playing and it caught my eye, and that of my son. We played that game a bunch using pass and play. It didnāt have async and my son didnāt have an ipad at the time so it was perfect.
I think pass and play is a great way to get to know a game (rules enforced) without having to do setup and allows for games to be played where there is no space for them.
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Fitting that the developer capable of the best presentation is adapting a game with great presentation. This seems up Dire Wolfās alley.
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How is Everdell, design-wise? No one in my gaming circles has played it.
I literally just play tested Everdell today and was thinking about buying it tomorrow here at Pax.
Itās like an engine-building, worker placement hybrid game. Essentially gather resources with workers in order to build parts of a village that become part of an engine and also score victory points.
I was going to try to find a full game of it tomorrow instead of just the partial game demo I played.
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Iāve played a few times with my kids, and once or twice solo. Itās not bad! There are a variety of ways to approach efficiency, and, in each game Iāve played, Iāve felt like I had less than a complete understanding of how best to maneuver some of them, so itās not so utterly straightforward that it rests purely on its marvelous presentation. But itās a pretty normal tableau-builder with a few different resources and various special mission-type things to get you more points. So, as a game, Iād say itās fine, and maybe has some depth that wasnāt obvious, but the presentation does really elevate it.
We tried the Spirecrest expansion once, and I found that to be substantially more exciting. In the base game, what you do that works really well is largely a gestalt; you might have plays that are clever, but their value lies in their relation to everything else. In Spirecrest, all of that is still present, but sometimes you might recruit a beast of an oversized meeple which gets you big, splashy effects. It might not be the best choice, but itās fucking cool, and helps the game feel a little less uniform, so even playing a quieter optimization game feels more like a choice, and so more exciting. Thereās also a journey element which gives you long-term planning opportunities which are a big more legible. Itās a bit like what I like about Tzolkin, come to think of it. That game has these big gears which are essentially action conveyer belts, which make the impact of what you do now on future turns much easier to see. That makes it very likely that, even if you get absolutely wrecked in the game, youāll have pulled off some pretty intricate plans and youāll have something to feel good about.
So, my read on base Everdell is that itās always pleasant because of the presentation, but the rewards one gets from gameplay tend to be subtler dividends payed by attentive play in which one learns the dynamics over several games. I think thatās good, but doesnāt fire the imagination to quite the degree Iād like (and which Spirecrest offers).
Havenāt tried any of the other expansions; honestly, I mostly got Spirecrest because of the bunnies, but I really liked it.
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Did you know that today is Christmas?
Well, it seems for me it is at leastā¦let me explain in 343.784 words (or more):
Thursday Evening:
As usual, my cousin, a buddy of his, and me meet online for our weekly dose of playing games together (Valheim, Borderlands 3, etc.) and rambling about the good old timesā¦you know as we oldtimers tend to do 
It so happens that we start talking about Warhammer 40k games and it has been forever since a true AAA experience has been had in that setting, aside from some really nice efforts on real-time-strategy/ turn-based-strategy / deckbuilders / etcā¦
Ideal chance for me to delve into my pet peeve with the bit flawed but still masterful Third-Person-Shooter/Slasher/Dismemberer that is SPACE MARINEā¢. It has been ten years since its release and nothing quite like it was released since then, and so much garbage is released each year instead andā¦[here I predictably decent into my usual ramblings/grumblings and profanity-ridden-incantations to the chaos gods for the rest of the session]
Friday Evening: (a.k.a. Christmas Eve for me)
This little gift dropsā¦
Butā¦Iā¦Iā¦have noā¦I canāt evenā¦[I am at a loss for words[probably for the first time ever?]]
In an industry where leaks appear at an ever-increasing rate over the past couple of years, it is really REALLY astonishing to me that this one was kept under wraps until yesterday.
Now it only has to live up to my expectationsā¦
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I did a mega pledge on this game last time it hit kickstarter - havent got it yet, but looking forward to it!