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.
I have to admit something. Uwe Rosenburg has always been one of my favourite board game designers. From simple classics like Patchwork, to resource management farm simulators like Agricola and Caverna, and even weird hex tile placement games like Applejack. That said, I haven’t gone out of my way to play everything he’s ever designed, but if a board game box has his name on the cover, you can be sure I’ll be at the very least, interested to try it.
Ora et Labora is Uwe Rosenburg’s big game from 2011. It’s a resource conversion game at heart, which you might realize when you see the 450 double-sided resource tiles sprawling across the table. Beyond the mess of cardboard, Ora et Labora features a large resource wheel overloaded with large wooden tokens, and each player has a flimsy, thin player board with a couple of cards covering some of the spaces.
Gameplay is very simple. On your turn, you take one action. You can either place one of your three pawns on one of your buildings to activate it, pay someone else to put a pawn on their building to reap the rewards, or harvest resources from one of the cards on your tableau.
Right off the bat, Uwe shows off his nonintuitive yet elegant design chops. Players take turns clockwise around the table, but to move the ‘first player’ advantage around the table, each round has the start player take two actions. In a 3 player game, it goes A, B, C, A, then round shifts, so B is the first player. B takes their turn, then C, A, and B again. It sounds complicated and obtuse, but in gameplay, it’s a pretty smooth way to keep the flow of actions moving around the table.
At set points during the game, new buildings are added to the supply. Similarly, a pair of resources aren’t available right at the beginning of the game, but get introduced a bit later. Some buildings do give you access to those resources, but they’re prohibitively expensive. If you can make it work to get access to stone early, I’m sure it would pay dividends, but never in my plays have I had the gall to chase down early access to stone.
There are just under 20 resources to play with. Some, like wood, stone, clay, and straw are used to build new buildings. Wood, peat, straw, and coke provide heat. Wine, sheep, mutton, wheat, flour, and bread all provide food. You may have caught that some resources carry double duty as both a building resource and heat source. Most of the buildings will have you spending certain resources to generate new ones, with the end goal generally being to create resources that generate the most victory points.
Ora et Labora is a sandbox that lets you choose which mix of the 20 resources you want to goose to generate the most points possible. You and your opponents can all chase different paths, and end up at nearly the same space. The freedom to choose which way can be a bit overwhelming, however. During our first play, we all spend a fair amount of time reading over each of the cards, and trying to piece together some kind of engine to chase. While there are two different sets of cards depending on the mode you choose to play (French or Irish), all the cards come out every game, so if you find an engine you particularly enjoy, you can run it in future games fairly reliably.
Interaction between players appears in two ways. First, when you take a resource, you move the resource token on the central dial. The number of rounds since that resource has last been actioned on. There is that feeling of playing chicken with your opponents that’s palpable in Uwe’s other games, such as Agricola. The pile of wood is growing larger and larger each round, how long can you let it build before using your action to take it?
The other point of interaction is the worker placement mechanism. What sets Ora et Labora apart is that everyone has the option to use everyone elses buildings, in a nice twist of friendly player interaction. Just because someone else stole the building that would be the linchpin to your engine, you can always just toss a coin or two their way and use the building anyway. There is a bit of tempo to consider when you use someone else’s buildings, however. Because you only get to take back your workers when all 3 have been deployed, choosing when to use someone else’s building to tie up their workers can be the difference between victory and defeat.
It’s kind of fascinating, returning to some of Uwe Rosenburg’s older titles. Ora et Labora features ideas and mechanics that have been reworked, reimagined, and fleshed out in newer games. The resource wheel getting an upgrade in Glass Road or Black Forest, or the dozens of resources coming in from Le Havre. These familiar mechanisms have a very distinct style to them, a brand that when you interact with the mechanism, it’s like greeting an old friend. I think Le Havre is the closest cousin to Ora et Labora, specifically with the emphasis on building buildings to give players access to a confusing tech tree of resource conversion that after 17 turns, manage to turn a lump of coal into something resembling victory points.
I really enjoyed playing Ora et Labora. At the end of each play, I felt satisfied, my brain not completely cooked, but feeling well-worked. I enjoyed building an engine, mathing out the best possible locations for my buildings, and cutting off my opponent’s access to actions or specific resources a moment before they were going to leap on them makes for some very satisfying moments. And yet, Ora et Labora doesn’t demand to be replayed. Because it feels very Uwe Rosenburg, if I have a craving for his style of game, I’m still much more inclined to pull Agricolaor Le Havre off the shelf. Ora et Labora lacks features that make it unique, it doesn’t stand out from the crowd of farming themed resource management Euro games that Uwe Rosenburg has filled the niche with, all by himself.
As a conclusion, Ora et Labora is a fine game, a good game. But it doesn’t do enough to get out from the formidable shadow of Uwe Rosenburgs titans, especially Le Havre. I do think Ora et Labora stands the test of time, at no point during my plays did I feel like “this feels like a 15 year old game!”. The only thought that came through my brain was comparing how each of the mechanisms that make up this game have made appearances before and after Ora et Labora‘s initial debut.
I have a bit of a history with designer Daniele Tascini. I bounced off Teotihuacan years ago (although can’t quite remember why), and while I initially disliked Tzolk’in: The Mayan Calendar, I have to admit that it has grown on me more each time I’m coerced into playing it. Tascini’s games tend to feel like intense cerebral puzzles. Dense and demanding, but rewarding to those willing to put the work in to gain some mastery. So when I sat down to play Tekhenu: Obelisk of the Sun, I braced myself. Would it push me away again, or pull me in?
Let’s start with the obvious: Tekhenu: Obelisk of the Sun is a looker. A towering plastic obelisk dominates the board, casting a literal shadow across the action spaces, and in doing so, dictates which dice are pure, tainted, or outright forbidden. It’s an immediate table presence, big and weird in the best way. It kind of serves a gameplay purpose, but it kind of feels like it just exists to create that table presence. As the sun shifts (the obelisk rotates every two turns), so too does your ability to draft dice. This mechanic is actually a decent metaphor for the game as a whole, what’s good now won’t be good later. you’ll need to adapt, or be left behind.
The core loop of Tekhenu is a six-action dice drafting puzzle. Each turn, you take a die from around the spire, and either generate resources or activate the associated action space. The value of the die affects how many resources you gain or the potency of the action you’ll take. Adding to that, each die also has moral weight, giving your soul points toward the pure or tainted side, and must be placed on your karmic scales before the end of the round. Lean too far toward imbalance, and the game will punish you. Strive for harmony, and you’re rewarded with points. It’s a clever twist that keeps you constantly recalibrating all of your decisions.
And you’ll need to be constantly adapting. Tekhenu is a game about forward planning in a system that refuses to cooperate. That perfect plan you spent 10 minutes building? Gone, because the die you desperately needed turned forbidden, or someone else snatched it first. Tekhenu demands backup plans, backup backup plans, and when all else fails, throwing caution to the wind and just taking the action that you gut says ‘feels best’. It’s a brain-burning experience that constantly asks you to throw your plans out and pivot.
The actions will have you building statues for passive bonuses, erecting pillars in a shared temple grid, expanding your city with buildings that boost your income and end-game scoring, and throwing lavish festivals to increase the happiness of your population. There’s a card market featuring cards that give you either end-game scoring benefits, or ongoing gameplay effects, and your ability to access those cards is tied directly to how happy your people are. The interconnectivity of the actions here is impressive, like a gear from Tzolk’in, everything touches everything else. Make one good decision, and it pays dividends. Make a bad one, and the whole thing wobbles like a Jenga tower.
I don’t think there’s that much theme to the actions here, but I don’t really mind. It’s Ancient Egypt in aesthetics only, lots of sandy browns and beiges on the board, but that boring-ness is offset by bright player pieces in purple, pink, orange, and blue. The dice are chunky and satisfying, and the graphic design of the board helps players compartmentalize the actions very well. Tekhenu has a rhythm, every four turns, there’s a karmic Maat phase. After two Maat phases, a scoring round. Then repeat, and the game is over. This cadence, once learned, feels smooth and intuitive.
By the end of each game, I was exhausted, and impressed. Tekhenu is one of those games that doesn’t show you its brilliance upfront. You need to unearth it’s brilliance. At first, it feels like a mashup of mechanics you’ve seen before. But over time you start to feel the harmony. If you like games where you’re constantly wrestling with your own plans, desperately trying to keep Plan A alive while Plan B, C, and D scramble into action, Tekhenu is for you. It’s crunchy. It’s tough. And it’s immensely satisfying. It’s my favourite game from the T-series, but I’m alone in that opinion. Everyone who’s played this with me prefers Teotihuacan or Tzolk’in, but that’s okay. They’re all great games in their own right, and I’m just happy that I found one that really sings to me!
My wife and I recently had the opportunity to check out a new board game café that opened near our house. I love going to new board game stores and seeing what weird or unique games they have on their shelves. I generally assume the majority of the games come from the owner’s personal collections, or at least the ones that aren’t the owner’s absolute favourites. I suspect that’s how IOTA, designed by Gene Mackles and published by Gamewright in 2012 made it onto this shelf. The sole reason my wife picked it off the shelf was because it was JUST SO SMALL!
IOTA contains a deck of 66 cards. 64 of the cards are unique, displaying a symbol, colour, and number. Each player takes 4 cards into their hand, and on your turn, you play cards onto the shared play area to create lots, which are rows or columns where every aspect of the cards in a particular row and column are either completely the same, or completely different. A row can contain cards that all have the same colour, but different shape and number, or they can be the same number, and colour, but have different shapes, you get the picture.
Each time you play cards, you score all the lines you create or extend by the value of the cards. If you happen to complete a set of 4, it doubles your score for the round. There are 2 wild cards that will assist, but other than that, every card will appear only once. So if you’re holding out hope for that blue sqaure with a 3, and you notice it’s on the table somewhere else, well. You’ll be waiting for a long time.
The game that immediately sprung to mind when playing IOTA was Qwirkle. The similarities are immediately obvious, playing lines of shapes and colours that either all match or don’t match to score points. IOTA adds a 3rd dimension for players to consider with the value on the cards as well. It creates some depth, especially when it comes to scoring. Playing two cards next to a 4 is better than playing three cards next to a series of 1’s. IOTA pares down the symbols from Qwirkle‘s 6 shapes to 4, which is both a blessing and a curse. There are less shapes to keep in your head, but now all the lots are stubby. You’ll likely end up creating tiny staircases that sprawl all over your table.
The whole reason IOTA even made it onto my radar was because of it’s comically small tin. The tiny square cards don’t feel great to hold, and more than once we had to awkwardly slide the entire shared play area so that the game didn’t run off the table. For a game that comes in such a tiny tin, I did not expect it to be such a table hog. Furthermore, the shorter rows and columns made it surprisingly difficult to expand the play area at times, if you just so happened to not be able to play off anything. If you and your opponent have been competitive and pairing cards off well, not being able to strike off into a different direction is frustrating.
While my wife was a pro right from the start, I had a strange amount of trouble figuring out how to play my cards. I kept trying to play a series of cards that were not completely the same or different in all aspects. Adding that third element really seemed to throw me off my game. A lot of “I’m going to put these down right here, except I can’t do that!” “How about over here? Nope, can’t go here either!”. It’s no fun having the wind constantly taken out of your sails.
As more cards got played and the number of lots grew, the analysis paralysis grew in turn. There were more and more places to play cards that were worth almost the same amount of points each. I kept checking over and over for which lots needed that fourth card to get a double score turn, only to realize that a lot of the necessary cards were already on the table. It slowed the game down to a crawl, and I’m sure if we were playing more than 2 players, the wait between turns would have been atrocious.
At the end of the day, IOTA offers a more cerebral experience than Qwirkle. The potential for huge turns is much higher, if you manage to play 3 cards in a turn, and complete a lot, doubling your score for the whole round. But it’s less satisfying to play. Tiny cards are annoying to hold and likely to slide around, versus wooden blocks that are a joy to touch and click together are obviously the superior component. IOTA was more frustrating, as so frequently the cards in my hand just didn’t fit anywhere because one of the three elements were wrong. The scoring was much more mathy, which slowed the game down when players are trying to puzzle out which placement will earn them the absolute most points. These points of frustration all prevent me from really ever recommending IOTA. It should be said that I would like IOTA quite a bit more if Qwirkle didn’t exist. IOTA tries to build on the foundation that Qwirkle built, but misses the simple joy and charm that made Qwirkle such a hit to begin with.
I’ve often said that my biggest gap in my gaming experience is that I’ve still never played a single TTRPG. I’ve never played Dungeons & Dragons, or any of the many other role playing games that keep coming across my attention (mostly thanks to Mark over at the Omnigamers Club Podcast). I’ve even barely touched games based on the D&D system like Neverwinter Nights or Baulders Gate, it’s just a complete blindspot in my gaming history. So when Roll Player, designed by Keith Matejka and published by Thunderworks Games in 2016 is pitched as a whole board game based around the experience of creating a character for a TTRPG, it doesn’t exactly excite me. What does excite me is that in the (nearly) decade since Roll Player came out, it’s spawned its own universe that many of Thunderworks Games have been set in ever since (Cartographers and Stonespire Architects are the ones that come to mind).
In Roll Player, players are crafting a character. The whole experience starts with each player taking a character board, dictating their race, giving them a +2 bonuses in one stat, and a -2 in another. Then, you’re dealt a class, which includes some attribute goals to work towards, a background which gives you a loose blueprint on where certain colours of dice should go in your attribute rows, and an alignment goal. None of these you really get to choose, you just get to play with the cards that life dealt you. A quick seed round in which all players pull handfuls of dice to roll and place, then the game can properly begin.
Each round, the start player rolls dice, one more than the number of players at the table, and arranges them on initiative cards, from lowest to highest. Then, the first player drafts a die, taking the initiate card into their control. They place the die into one of their attribute rows, and takes the corresponding attribute action, which generally will let you modify a die. Either flipping it, swapping it with another one, or bumping the pip value up or down once.
The rest of the table follows suit, drafting a die and an initiative card, then, in initiative card order, each player can buy one card from the market. The market cards include traits, skills, weapons, and armour that will give you special abilities, end game scoring objectives, or even just straight points. Once the market phase is over, you clean up, pass the dice bag to the left, and do it again, until all the empty slots on your player board are full. Highest score is the winner.
I strangely remember Roll Player being quite popular when it came out. Some people proclaiming that creating a character is the best part of a D&D campaign, and how awesome it is that a dice game captures that feeling. I always thought that was more of a scathing indictment of D&D as a game than a compliment for Roll Player, but then again, I am an RPG luddite, so what do I know?
Roll Player feels fairly devoid of agency. You’ll roll the dice, pick the best option, and hope for the best. There’s about 5 different places to earn points from, each one pulling you in a different direction. Sometimes you’ll be holding out for a blue 4 to put into a specific spot, but if it never comes up, there are ways to manipulate your tableau of dice to make things work. As the game comes to a close, your options close up as well. Placing a 3rd die into any attribute row locks it up, shutting you out from that attribute action for the rest of the game. In the last few rounds, it’s not uncommon to only have one or two rows that have empty spaces, making the choices available to you dramatically smaller than what you were presented with at the start of the game.
You’ll buy cards almost every round, provided you have the coins to do so. They’ll give you a small action or ability, but nothing so earth-shattering that it’ll really affect your round. There also isn’t really a great sense of progression or growth, the first round largely feels the same as the last round, except often worse, because in the last round you’re totally hemmed in, stuck with the consequences of all your decisions up to that point.
The only interaction in Roll Player is hate drafting. Each armour sets offers a single bonus point to two different class colours, so if an opponent is playing one of those colours, you’ll compete for the armour set and that’s about it. If you happen to need the same colour or number as another player and take it before they do, it’s just happenstance. There’s no thrill to Roll Player, no excitement. Sometimes you’ll feel a spark of delight when you manage to get one of your attribute rows to the perfect number, but that’s about the extent of it.
Speaking of the attribute goals, they’re pretty mundane goals to strive towards, but they slant the value of dice to needing higher numbers fairly dramatically. The lowest attribute goal is 14, and with only 3 dice to hit that, you’ll need to be placing a lot of 6’s to reach all your goals. Of course, you’re not going to achieve every goal, you’ll need to have a dump stat. But beyond hitting those attribute goals, a few other cards will reward you for having under 8 in a stat, or having all the same number in a row. If you don’t grab those cards though, any number less than a 4 is pretty pointless.
The entire time I was playing Roll Player, I was wishing I was playing Sagrada. At first glance, Sagrada should have a lot of the same complaints as Roll Player. Featuring a shrinking decision space and the only interaction being hate drafting, but Sagrada is a joy to play. The number and colour restrictions are fun to work around, and Sagrada finishes much faster than Roll Player does. Not to mention the beautiful translucent dice and stained glass artwork is so much prettier than the muddy, generic fantasy artwork featured in Roll Player.
Honestly, it’s weird for a game to fall so flatly for me. I’m usually a pretty good judge of what I’ll like, and if a game doesn’t appeal to me, it doesn’t get played (and therefore, doesn’t get reviewed). I’ve played Roll Player a few times now, and I’m not seeing the spark that makes anyone love it. Perhaps an expansion really improves the experience, but Roll Player won’t be sticking around my collection for me to find out. From now on, any game in the “Roll Player universe” is going to be from the “Cartographers Universe” instead.
A copy of Wingspan: Oceania was provided by Stonemaier Games for review purposes.
Wingspan has become a titan in the board game world. It’s by far Stonemaier Games’ most well-known and widely played title, earning recognition even from people outside the hobby, though many still refer to just as “that bird game.”
The base game of Wingspan focused on birds from North America, but the expansions have gradually introduced avian species from other corners of the globe. Wingspan: Oceania brings us the birds of Australia and New Zealand, with nearly 100 new bird cards, fresh player boards, new dice, and most impactfully, introducing a brand-new resource: nectar.
Nectar is the biggest change in Oceania, and it fundamentally changes how you play. Acting as a wild resource, nectar gives players far more flexibility in paying for bird cards and activating abilities. It’s incredibly useful. So useful, in fact, that it comes with a small catch: nectar spoils between rounds if unused. That said, it’s rarely a hindrance. Most players quickly learn to burn nectar before any other resource. Its wild versatility more than makes up for the spoilage.
What’s more, many of the bird powers in Oceania are designed to share the love. Many abilities now provide resources or cards or some other benefit to all players, with the acting player getting slightly more of the reward. This small shift encourages more positive player interaction, a rising tide lifts all ships kind of situation, perfectly in keeping with Wingspan’s gentle and inclusive tone.
The new player boards offer subtle but impactful improvements. In the forest row, you can now spend a resource to reroll the birdfeeder. In the wetlands, you can spend a resource to refresh the bird tray. These changes directly address my long-standing complaints about stagnation in the base game, especially when unhelpful cards or dice sit unused for entire rounds. These tweaks breathe new life into familiar systems.
I reviewed Wingspan over three years ago. While I admired its beauty and accessibility, I also noted some personal gripes: a very slow opening round, a hefty dose of luck, and minimal player interaction that sometimes made it hard to stay engaged when it wasn’t my turn. But here’s the thing: even with those reservations, Wingspan kept returning to our table. It’s one of my partner’s all-time favorite games, and whenever we have friends over, especially people new to the hobby, it’s the game that gets suggested. Again and again. And the fact that it continues to hit the table, speaks volumes to its quality.
As a reviewer, I rarely revisit games after I’ve covered them. The constant influx of new titles pulls my attention elsewhere. But Wingspan: Oceania brought me back. And more than that, it made Wingspan feel fresh again.
Wingspan: Oceania is an expansion that doesn’t just add more, it adds better. The new bird cards are lively and fun, their powers promote inclusive interaction, the nectar system smooths out some early-game struggles, and the updated player boards address longstanding pain points. It enhances the base game in every meaningful way.
In fact, I doubt I’ll ever play Wingspan without it again.
An essential expansion that transforms a good game into a great one. If you own Wingspan, Oceania is a must.
