I generally don’t like bluffing games. They’re hard to start, as it usually requires everyone at the table to have such a firm grasp on the rules and potential outcomes, that I don’t think they’re worth overcoming that barrier to entry. Also, I just don’t like lying to people. Trying to keep a poker face, or convince someone else that I’m telling the truth or lying, just does not bring me joy. So let me tell you about Cockroach Poker.
Cockroach Poker is a deck of 64 cards. 8 different insects have 8 cards each. At the start of the game, the whole deck is dealt out to all players. Sometimes players won’t have the same number of cards in their hand, and that’s okay. Someone will argue that having an extra card gives that player a modicum more information, and therefore the games balance is totally thrown off, but I’m not that person.
In Cockroach Poker, the active player has to pick a card from their hand, put it face down on the table, and slide it to someone else. They make a declaration of which critter is on the other side, and the chosen player has to make a choice. They can either engage with the active player, can say that the active player is telling the truth, or lying about what card they presented. Once they’ve made their declaration, they reveal the card, and if the chosen player was correct, that card lives face up in front of the active player. If the chosen player was incorrect about the active players assertion, then the revealed card lives face up in front of the chosen player. The other thing the chosen player can do, is choose not to engage the active player, and instead look at the card. At this point, they become the active player, they then must put that card face down on the table, and slide it to someone else, and make an assertion about what critter is on that card. It can be the same assertion as the previous player, or it can be different.
Cockroach Poker ends when one player has 4 of the same critter face up in front of them. They are the closer of the game, and must buy the next round. At least, that’s what I tell my friends the consequence for losing is, no matter what context we’re playing this game in.
It can feel like players have no control over their fate in cockroach poker. When a card gets slid towards you, and your parter says “bat”. You either say true or false with no further information, and reveal your choice. Of course, there’s always the chance that there are already 5 bats on the table, and you happen to be holding 3 in your hand, in which case you can catch them in their bold faced lie, but that situation happens so rarely it’s almost not worth mentioning.
Players at the table can gang up on a specific player, sliding them every card, trying to dump all manner of critters onto their lap. It can feel unfair, and pointless. But Cockroach Poker excels at providing players genuinely exciting moments. The glee you have when you catch someone in a lie makes the whole table oooooh and ahhh. The tension builds like a pot of water coming to a boil. At first, nothing happens, but when two players have two of the same critter in their lap, and someone slides them a card that would give them a third, is it a gambit? If you look at it and slide it to the other unfortunate soul, someone is going to walk away with another face up card, potentially bringing them one step closer to utter ruin.
Or consider the audacity of someone with 3 face up spiders, and then sliding a card to someone, claiming it’s a spider. Did they just hand you the key to their own defeat? Would they be so bold? They’re usually so reserved and careful, it seems completely out of character for them to do something so daring. But maybe that’s what they want you to think. Clearly, you can’t choose the wine in front of you, and clearly you can’t choose the wine in front of them!
-ahem- Sorry. I slipped into Vizzini Mode for a second there.
Cockroach Poker excels at building tension, and when that tension snaps and someone is left holding the bag, it’s utter joy. Every game of Cockroach Poker I’ve played has ended with someone shouting with glee. It’s a raucous good time, a perfect pub game, and one that is especially good when you have a guilt-tripping aunty over for dinner. Highly recommend.
Cryo starts with a disaster. A mission gone wrong. A colony ship crash landing onto a desolate, frozen planet. The ship utterly broken with crew in cryostasis pods strewn about the mountainside. Players take on the role of separate, hostile factions, competing to accrue resources and shuttle their tribes stasis pods into the nearby caverns before the sun sets and everything left on the surface is lost to the unsurvivable cold.
The actions you take are via drones, flying off your personal player board and landing on the various docks around the planet, either gaining or consuming resources to gain other benefits, such as better resources, energy, cards, or resource chips that you can slot into your player board to create your own resource generation spots that get activated when you recall your drones.
At its heart, Cryo is about sending drones out to collect resources and recalling them to trigger bonuses and upgrades, gradually transforming your platform into a more efficient rescue operation. The game is medium weight in complexity, there are only 4 resources, and 4 main sections where you can place your workers. Half the actions on the board do the same thing, just in different locations, and the other half of the actions convert one of the 3 main resources into the other 2 special resources, or cards. The section off to the right is a bit special in what it can do, but even it all makes sense after just a minute of explanation. Despite the simplicity of the gameplay, the setup feels unnecessarily fiddly for a medium-weight euro: separating sunset tokens, organizing player-count-based stacks of resource chips, and sorting multiple tile types adds an early layer of tedium that contrasts with the otherwise smooth turns.
Unlike many other engine building point scoring eurogames, Cryo has a distinct arc. You aren’t swelling and deflating with resources like a pufferfish. Instead, the whole game has you shuffling your cubes up and down in service of slowly shuttling the pods containing your crew into the caverns. The majority of your points will come from that, both from just existing underground, and from the area majority aspect of the caves.
Cryo is probably the perfect name for the game, because the pacing can feel glacial. One of the things I complained about when reviewing Rajas of the Ganges, was that I get annoyed when the growth of an engine is just trading one resource for 2 others. Giving up a green resource to earn a pink and a grey resource is not what I find exciting in a board game. Cryo , is a little better than Rajas in doling out bonus resources that enable you to take just one extra action before needing to recall, but it’s a tiny step forward that still leaves me a bit frustrated.
As I said, Cryo has a distinct arc. At first, you’ll spend your time playing cards as upgrades to give you a bit of a leg up, and you’ll take the resource tokens from the main board and slot them into the little formulas on your player board, so when you recall your drones, you can activate those resource conversions. Then, later on during the game, you really need to focus on playing your cards as ships, dismantling those formulas you built earlier in the game for a bonus resource, and shuttling full loads of your workers into the underground. You aren’t doing the same thing at the end of the game as you were doing at the beginning of the game.
The production of Cryo is pretty excellent. The dual layer player boards help players see how to build their platform, the plastic drones stack together very satisfyingly (although there’s never a reason to stack the drones). The art direction is excellent, with thick lines and flat pastel colours, I’m reminded of landscapes of Moebius’ sci-fi comic strips, or Scavengers Reign. The premise of the game should be applauded too. Instead of the same old boring story of economics and wealth generation, we’re treated to a bit of a sci-fi struggle. A tiny bit of tension, pushing you to get your pods underground before the sun sets, is something I enjoy much more than the generic game plot of earning money for the sake of earning money.
There’s nothing wrong with Cryo, but also nothing that makes me want to return. It’s a solid game with a cool theme and competent design, but in a hobby packed with engine-builders, Cryo doesn’t give me a reason to reach for it again. If someone eagerly brought it to the table, I’d play. But it’s not one I’ll be suggesting anytime soon.
Cooperative games can be a bit tricky for my group. Otter, absolutely loves them. He specifically loves the discussion and collaboration that comes from working together to solve a problem. He wants to analyze every possibility to arrive at the correct conclusion that will lead the team to victory. Unfortunately, this also means that it takes 4 hours to play Pandemic.
It doesn’t actually take 4 hours, but it sure feels like it sometimes. I’ve already mentally decided what I think the best course of action is, but he wants to talk through every possibility to be sure. And to his credit, sometimes we find a plan that is more efficient or just plain better than the one I had in mind. I should also point out that Otter wins at more games than I do.
Regardless, it was his desire to play Paleo when we met at our local board game café. I was a little hesitant to spend our evening with a cooperative game when we could be playing any of the new and exciting games that were in the library, but I’m nothing if not adaptable.
Paleo, as mentioned, is a cooperative game for 1 to 4 players. Designed by Peter Rustemeyer, with art by Dominik Mayer, Ingram Schell and Franz-Georg Stämmele, and published by Hans im Gluck in 2020. In Paleo, each player controls a group of pre-historic humans in their quest to create art. Kind of, the victory condition is to acquire 5 cave painting tiles, while the loss conditions is accruing 5 skulls. Each player is given a deck of cards, and each turn, each player draws 3 cards face down in front of them. The card backs depict a scene from nature, such as a babbling brook, a snow-capped mountain, or a dense forest. These backgrounds give you clues as to what is likely on the other side. There isn’t much wood on the mountain top, but there is meat and rocks up there.
Each player picks one card to attempt, and returns the others to their deck, then, everyone reveals their card simultaneously. Most cards will give you a couple challenges you can attempt to earn some resources, or give you the opportunity to help others complete their quests. Many of the cards will have you discarding cards off the top of your deck in return for resources, or asking you to acquire the correct number of tags amongst your tribe and tools to triumph over a challenge. When your deck runs you, you ‘go to sleep’, and when everyone’s decks are depleted, you move to the night phase. In the night phase, each tribe member requires a food, and there are a couple of end of day challenges that must be met. Falling short in any of those objectives will earn you one of those game losing skulls.
Earning the victory point mural pieces are no small feat, but they can be found in a variety of places. Some appear in the crafting deck, others appear after a particularly difficult battle, and so on. Either way, once you gather 5, you win the game. Paleo offers several scenarios, which has you adding some extra secret cards, different nighttime objectives, special crafting recipes, and adding a couple scenario specific cards to the main deck. The first scenario is focused around hunting mammoths, so most of the cards you add will have you hunting down those oversized dust bunnies.
Paleo rose to prominence when it won the 2021 Kennerspiel des Jahres, one of the most prestigious awards in cardboard, edging out fellow nominees Fantasy Realms and Lost Ruins of Arnak. While I personally don’t put a lot of stock into the Spiel des Jahres, I can’t help but pay attention to the games that get the Spiel nod, and Paleo is no different.
Starting the game with only two members of your tribe, doesn’t afford you a lot of leeway. Because all the game’s objectives are shuffled into a single deck, there is the chance that your first draw will be something that you cannot accomplish, even if everyone at the table pooled together to overcome. I’m talking specifically about the mammoth that requires 8 combat tags that I drew on my very first turn. But we can also blame me for making an ignorant decision.
The tribe members each generally have one tag, and often will come with a one time use benefit. If you can get lucky, you can start to build an engine. Acquire wood and rocks to craft a hand axe, giving you a perpetual combat and craft tag. If you’re unlucky, you’ll spend your one time use tools to overcome a challenge, and then be left weakened for the rest of the day. Do you want to discard your pelt to avoid a wound now, even though you need two pelts to craft the required tent for everyone to sleep in at the end of the day?
Most often, the cards aren’t difficult, but they do evoke a strong theme. The deer and dodo cards offer a large supply of food, but are then completely exiled from the game, as, they no longer exist after you eat them. The berry bush can either supply one food, and be used again next round, or three food and a wood but is then exiled from the game, evoking a little story in your head about your tribe ripping the bush out of the ground for a short term gain, long term loss.
The collaboration is pretty gentle, one player might announce they’re going to try and tackle one of their bramble cards, which will inspire others to choose more friendly cards so they can have the opportunity to help each other out, should the situation require it. Sometimes, you’ll pick a card thinking it’ll be a leisurely stream, but it turns out to be its own hazard, preventing you from helping others. There is a memory element to Paleo. Sometimes you’ll fail a challenge, like if you flip over the mountain card with the mammoth, only to be asked to produce 8 weapon tags. You’ll remember that every time one of the mammoth mountain cards comes up in the deck, and while you might skip past it for a few days in a row, eventually you’ll find yourself in a position to take it on.
Because all the events you’ll undertake are part of the same deck, there is the chance that you’ll just happen to pick the ones meant for the end game and are wildly too expensive for you to overcome at the start of the game. Sure, now you know what you’re working towards, but a string of these in a row will set you up for failure, all with little to no opportunity for players to avoid it. There were more than one rounds where players couldn’t resolve their own events because they were missing the required tags, and none of the other players needed their assistance. It’s not interesting to skip whole turns, thank you very much.
So many interesting decisions…
What I liked most about Paleo is the same thing that fills me with excitement when it comes to playing any Legacy games, and that’s the discovery. I LOVE earning the secret cards or revealing new dreams and crafting recipes, just to discover exactly what this treats the game has in store for us. But I also felt quite frustrated, as it felt like we were embarking on a quest of attrition. We started the game with 5 food, and at the start of each subsequent round, we had less than that. We were never making a surplus, instead, our resources were slowly dwindling as we milled the decks, searching for those victory conditions. I loved the moments when we found them, it was genuinely exciting. But I don’t believe that Paleo holds up to repeat plays. For me, once I’ve discovered the secrets and surprises, I have no motivations to return.
Paleo is a good, fun game, but I don’t see how it’s game of the year. The frustrations of an unlucky start kneecapping your ability to grow makes me hesitant to recommend Paleo in the first place. It certainly provides a unique experience, but I didn’t feel like I was having ‘fun’ in the strictest sense of the word. When we lost, it felt unavoidable, and when we won, it just felt like luck was on our side. There are many scenarios still to explore, but when I have the itch to play a cooperative game, there are so many others that I would rather pull off the shelf. For a thematic experience, Burgle Bros and Burgle Bros 2 are eminent favourites, and for a more puzzly experience, Pandemic: Fall of Rome and Viticulture World are both very strong contenders.
Mountain Goats was pitched to me as a competitor to Can’t Stop. Let me be upfront. It’s not. Can’t Stop has pure tension and excitement in the push your luck mechanism. The moments when you’re rolling and rolling and rolling, crawling towards the top, the table chanting to keep pushing, just two more “5’s” and you’ll hit the summit, only to cheer when bust. Mountain Goats on the other hand, is a more directly cutthroat. It’s more deliberate in its malice, relishing in the pain you inflict on others, rather than revelling in your opponents own bad choices. Let me explain.
In Mountain Goats, you’re sending your climbers up six different mountains, one tied to a different die result from 5 through 10. Just like Can’t Stop, you make combinations from four dice, then move the goats to based on those combinations, and slowly (or quickly) climb the numbered tracks. Once you get to the top, you start scoring. Stay there, and you can keep scoring, so long as you continue to sink die rolls into that goat. But if someone else reaches the summit of a number after you, they boot your goat off back to the start. It’s important to note that the only space that you can boot off and get booted from, is the summit, any number of climbers can bide their time on the penultimate tile. So Mountain Goats becomes less about reaching the top and more about reaching it at the exact right moment. Summit too soon, and you’re a sitting goat. Too late, and someone else has already plundered the number for all the points it offers.
Mountain Goats is a game of gentle aggression. It’s king of the hill with goats and pastel dice and a serene backdrop. You’ll constantly scan the table, trying to gauge how close someone is to the of the 9 mountain? Can I afford to park a goat on the 6 and hope for two quiet rounds before someone rushes up and usurps your spot? Or should I spend my time throwing my own goat at their goat, just to keep them from scoring that last 9-point token? This isn’t really push-your-luck, it’s tactical goat placement with some luck elements.
The dice selection is more forgiving than Can’t Stop. You don’t have to pair the dice off, if you roll low, you can choose to use all 4 dice to move a single goat. Similarly, if you happen to roll four 6’s, you can run that number 6 goat up four spots in a single turn. I do like how simple the rules are. You roll, combine, then move. It’s lean and easy to teach, which makes it perfect for family nights, casual settings, or winding down after something meatier.
That said, Mountain Goats falls short for me, especially when comparing it to the thrill ride that is Can’t Stop. There’s less tension, less holding your breath and waiting for your opponent to bust. There’s more straightforward math. Most turns, you’ll just do the best thing your dice allow, and that’s that. You can make choices, deciding which number combo to pursue, or whether to block or take a slightly less efficient turn to earn SOME victory points, but it rarely feels like the game hinges on a specific turn. It’s more about who rolls the numbers they need, when they need them.
And while there is player interaction, it’s narrow. You only knock players off the top tile. You can’t block progress, you can’t deny paths, except for exhausting a number from all its victory points. I’ve found it plays best at 3. Two-player feels oddly slow and open, while four players is too crowded. But even at its best, this is a game that peaks early. You’ll have fun getting one of your goats to the top, perhaps smirk when you punt someone down who just summited the turn prior, then you’ll wait. You aren’t that invested in other players turns, just waiting to see what they choose to do.
Still, It’s a quick dice game in a small box with some actual player agency, and just enough interaction to keep things lively. Mountain Goats earns its spot on the shelf, if only because it’s easily portable, and especially if you need something you can teach to just about anyone in three minutes.
It’s not Can’t Stop. But I can’t haul that plastic stop sign everywhere I go, so Mountain Goats does have something going for it.
Unless you’re reading The Last March of the Ents, trees are not often associated with violence. In most media, forest scenes are often accompanied by slow woodwind instrumentals, quiet moments of reflection, with gentle, babbling brooks nourishing the woodland animals who happen to be passing by. Nature, however, is far from protective and nurturing. It’s ruthless, amoral, and truly neutral. And yet, if I had a nickel for every cutthroat tree game in my collection, I’d have two nickels. Which is not a lot, but it’s weird that it’s happened twice.
Photosynthesis by designer Hjalmar Hach and published by Blue Orange Games in 2017 is deceptively gentle. You’re growing trees. How bad can growing trees be? You earn light points when your trees bask in the sun and spend those light points to cast seeds, grow trees, and eventually “harvest” your most majestic specimens for victory points. It’s the circle of life, in cardboard form.
The central hook of Photosynthesis, the rotating sun, is quite an elegant mechanic. The sun moves along the edge of the forest board, changing the direction the sun is shining down at, so with every turn, the tactical landscape changes. What used to be covered in light is now cast in shadow. The trees that earned you so many light points just a few rounds ago, are now fallow and useless. I don’t know if you picked up on this rule, but trees cast shadows, and any tree sitting in the shade of a bigger or same size tree does not earn light points. So not only are you plotting your trees and their shade patterns to maximize your light point generation, you’ll be purposefully trying to shade your opponent’s trees, to deprive them of the light they need to flourish.
There’s a moment, somewhere around the start of the second revolution, where you look down at the board, past the whimsical canopy of cardboard evergreens, and realize you’ve become the thing you despised: a cutthroat botanical tyrant. You didn’t mean for this to happen. You were drawn in by the colours. Seduced by the promise of a quiet, serene forest, the relaxing energy of trees basking in the sunshine as you sit in their shadows. But then the sun moves, and your opponent’s prize sapling suddenly casts a long, greedy shadow across half the grove, and you feel something twist in your heart. That’s not just shade, that’s purposeful sabotage. And you swear. Out loud. At a cardboard tree.
People generally come to Photosynthesis with one of two minds. They either want to maximize their own light, or, purposefully, try to minimize the light their opponents get. You’ll find yourself stunting enemy trees on purpose, planting your own just to create shade in exactly the right spot. Not because you need the space, but because it’ll choke out a rival’s main income. I’ve ended friendships for smaller things.
Mechanically, Photosynthesis is as sharp as a monkey puzzle tree. It’s totally deterministic, with absolutely no luck involved. It’s all down to planning. It’s the kind of game where misreading the board state two turns ahead will leave you gasping for light while it feels like else is rolling in solar power. The rules themselves are straightforward, the rulebook is only 4 pages long. But the decisions Photosynthesis offers are dense. It’s chess-like at two players, while being crowded and choking at four. It feels like a different game at every player count.
I do want to mention that the process for buying and growing trees feels a little disjointed. You collect sun points on the south end of the board, but the trees on the north end are the ones that grow? You can’t grow trees unless you unlock them from your player board, and when you replace pieces on the main board, the pieces go back into the locked spots on your player board. There are some interesting cadence decisions, as the size of the tree determines how many light points it collects, but only the biggest trees can be harvested for points. You finally finish your 7 turn project just to pay light points to lose your ability to earn more light points. The timing considerations are intense.
And while I admire the no-luck, pure strategy design, There’s always the potential of someone getting the short end of the proverbial stick. Bad starting positions and cutthroat players can kneecap someone’s ability to earn sunlight for most of the rounds. While everyone else is pulling in 7, 8, or 9 sunlight, one person is only bringing in 1 point. When you have no income, you can’t pivot your strategy. The rich get richer in the worst sort of way.
And then there’s the downtime. Especially at higher player counts, because the game is so deterministic, every turn can become a grind of analysis paralysis. The board state shifts constantly, And because turns are solitary, as in, one player takes all their actions for the round, then the next player goes, players can be considering 5 or 6 actions at a time. You’ll spend a lot of time in silence waiting for someone to make their decisions, before you start considering what you can do, based on what they just did.
If it sounds like I’m being down on Photosynthesis, it’s not on purpose. It’s clever, elegant, and unique. The aesthetic is gorgeous. It’s the rare abstract strategy game that has a genuine presence on the table. It looks like a dream and plays like a knife fight in a phone booth. I quite enjoy my plays of it, even if I come away feeling like I fell from a height and hit every branch on the way down.
I’m never quite sure whether I prefer reviewing light games or heavy ones. Light games get to the table more often. They’re easier to teach, quicker to reset, and rarely leave your brain excited. But sometimes I wonder what is there to really say about them? Then I play something like Juicy Fruits, and I’m reminded that simplicity doesn’t always mean shallowness.
Juicy Fruits, designed by Christian Stöhr and published by Capstone Games in 2021 under their Family Game line, at first glance looks to be a simple, childish game, with its bright art, the fruity theme, and chunky wooden pieces. But what lies beneath the friendly exterior is a satisfying tactical puzzle that the whole family can enjoy.
Each player starts with their own little island grid, blocked in by boats and populated with five fruit-crate tiles. The core mechanic is basically a slide puzzle: move a crate in any direction a number of spaces equal to how far it slides, then collect that many fruits of that type. Use those fruits to either fulfill shipping contracts (by sending those pesky boats away) or build shop tiles that grant points, bonuses, or the ability to deliver ice cream for mega-points!
At first, you’ll feel accomplished when you manage to squeeze just 2 or 3 goods in a single turn. but as you send those pesky boats on their way, earning 4 or 5 goods every turn will seem trivial. What really makes Juicy Fruits feel satisfying is that every turn feels like you’re building towards something; that sense of incremental progress. You’ll send a boat away, giving up two of your bananas, and you’ll combine your extra banana on your next turn with the grapes you just picked up to send another boat away, all the while opening up your board to chain into your next tile slide to earn more fruit to earn more points. The action chain is what gives Juicy Fruits it’s bite.
As you spend resources to send boats away, your island gradually begins to open up. What started as a 3 x 3 grid now has some 4 or 5 square rows and columns, giving you the opportunity to make some real big slides. I tend to focus on sending those boats away as I like having an open playing field, but the big points lie in either delivering ice cream, or refilling your island board with large, point scoring attractions.
The only interaction between players comes in the form of a race. The first player to deliver ice cream or milkshakes will earn the most points. In one of my games, a player manged to deliver 5 of the most valuable ice cream in a single turn. It took him most of the game to set up for that turn, and that represented most of his points at the end of the game, but he managed to come in second overall. In some games, I’ve won by clearing out the island, while in other games that strategy leaves me in the dust as the other players rush building contracts and force the game to end early.
While it might look friendly, Juicy Fruits has a special kind of tension. It starts mellow and chill, turns fly by, but there’s an undercurrent of pressure that builds steadily. Players achieve more with every passing turn, and suddenly you can feel when the pace is about to snap. That moment when someone suddenly starts clearing boats or spamming shops and you realize: “Oh no. I’ve got, like, three turns left, and I have so much left to accomplish!”
The player scaling can feel a bit off. At two players, that race-to-the-end vibe is very palpable. More than once I’ve found myself able to rush the game’s conclusion with minimal resistance, and win, not because I was really the better player, but because I saw the machine my opponent was building, and decided to crash the game before their plans came to fruition.
And while I’m being honest, the game does show most of itself in just a handful of plays. That core loop, while satisfying, is really all there is to Juicy Fruits. It doesn’t have a ton of replay variability, especially once you’ve tried the solo mode and the played with the Juice Factory mini-expansion. It’s not a dealbreaker, not every game needs to be eminently replayable, but if your shelves are already crowded with gateway titles, Juicy Fruits might not elbow its way into regular rotation.
Juicy Fruits features simple, satisfying turns. The actions are easy to understand, and the ramifications of your decisions are obvious and apparent. Once players are in the flow of the game, it manages to move along at a decent clip so you aren’t feeling bored in-between your turns. There’s enough tactics and strategy for avid gamers to dig into, but it’s also accessible enough for kids to play alongside the adults. Juicy Fruits won’t change your life, but a game only takes 30 minutes, making it a perfect choice to wind down with after something more complex, or as the starting experience during family game night.
