I don’t know if it’s still true, but Otter has said that cooperative games are his favourite games to play. He loves the collaboration, and especially, the discussion that most cooperative games feature. Creating a plan together, and seeing it all come together, is very satisfying. It makes sense with his personality, he’s a very kind and inclusive fellow. Gross, right?
The Gang, designed by John Cooper and Kory Heath, art by German design studio Fiore GmbH, and published by KOSMOS in 2024, is cooperative poker. Much like how Balatro is roguelike Poker, The Game uses the familiar mechanisms of creating 5 card poker hands in a unique and interesting way. Or, it would be familiar if your experience with Poker was more than randomly clicking buttons while playing Vegas Stakes when you were 7 years old. And besides, Vegas Stakes Poker game was 7 card stud, not Texas hold ’em
Now, because I don’t live under a rock, I’ve been tangentially aware of what Texas hold ’em is, because it’s always on the many screens in pubs over the years, as well as being featured in Casino Royale. I’ve seen it around, but I’ve never really played the game. For some people, it can be hard to imagine that people out there are largely unfamiliar with how Poker plays, yet, before Balatro hit earlier this year, I was an utter novice at anything Poker.
So, here’s a rundown for the uninitiated. In Texas hold ’em, each player is dealt two cards, face down. Then everyone has a chance to bid or fold. Once bidding is complete, three cards are turned face up from the deck into the centre of the table, creating a pool of community cards. Then another chance to bid or fold is presented to all players. Then a fourth card is turned face up, and again, all players have the chance to bid or fold. Then a 5th card is added to the community pool, and all players have a final chance to big or fold. The goal of the game is, to create the best 5 card poker hand between the 5 community cards and the two cards that were dealt with you at the beginning of the round. A pair or two pair is having one or two sets of cards, a full house is when you have 3 of the same card and a pair, a straight is when you have a run of sequential cards, and a flush is when you have 5 cards of the same colour.
The Gang, uses the core mechanisms of card distribution and hand value, but strips out all the bidding. Instead, after each phase in which players are given information, each player must take one of the poker chips on the table. There’s one chip for each player, starting with a value of one, and increasing for every player at the table. The ultimate goal here is that on the final round, players will take the value of chip that corresponds to the order of strength of their hand. And of course, much like The Crew or The Mind, there is no communication allowed during game play. All you can do is take the chip that you think tells the story of your cards.
It’s worth mentioning that we played The Gang a bit wrong at first. We were getting frustrated when players would jump to grab the low chips before someone who was a bit less experienced with Poker (me) had a chance to evaluate their cards and consider what they wanted to grab. Then we realized that when you take a chip, you can take it from the supply, or, from another player. It was hilarious when two players just took the same chip back and forth from one another, and the accusations and mud that were slung when the hands were revealed and one of those players was the misstep our gang took, were something to behold.
In Poker, if you’re not first, you’re last. It doesn’t matter if you have a pair of kings if someone else is rocking a flush. But in The Gang, correctly assessing where you stand in the order of hands is paramount. sure, you might have a pair of 7’s with a queen kicker. But does anyone else also have a 7 with a king kicker? Is your hand the worst, or the second worst? Maybe you started the round with an Ace and King of the same suit, you have strong potential here, it could literally be the best hand in the game. Do you take the 5 to demonstrate the potential your cards hold, or do you take a middle of the pack chip, to hopefully communicate to your teammates that you don’t have anything solid, but not nothing.
Communication is important in all aspects of life, but the joy in The Gang lies in what you can communicate with those bidding chips. Kind of like Brandon Sanderson’s second law, which reads “Limitations are more important than abilities“. When all players get into the flow, make the correct reads, and actually succeed at the heist, oh the feeling of jubilation is something to behold. If you enjoyed The Mind, I can strongly recommend The Gang. That said, if you found The Mind a boring exercise of sorting cards, then The Gang isn’t going to change your mind.
I also need to caveat that none of the players at my table are poker players. None of us are able to tell you why an Ace Jack suited is actually a better hand than a King Queen suited. None of us knew the odds of the river holding the card we needed, or how to really value a good hand from a bad. We all played based on vibes and our guts, and we had an absolute blast. It’s also worth mentioning that, especially when playing with inexperienced Poker players, The Gang is exponentially more difficult to succeed at when you have more players at the table. The odds of two players having nearly identical is higher, and really, it’s just luck at the end of the day if those players manage to get their chips in the right order.
The Gang was one of the most engaging games we’ve played in a long time. During each round, we were silent and tense, weighing the potential our hands held with the scant information that we could glean from the chips others took. Each revealed card swaying the balance, one person dropping their bid from a 4 star to a 1 star. After the 5th card is revealed, and we slowly reveal our hands from the weakest to strongest, we’d usually groan in defeat, but then launch into a frenetic conversation about what we all meant when we took the chips that we did. Yelling at our friends for taking the chip we wanted, or commiserating that we had a really unlucky deal. Inevitably, we’d shuffle up, deal again, and another tense hush would fall over the table. There’s no greater endorsement than when a player says, “I know I need to go, but let’s just do one more round”. And The Gang demands several more rounds.
I wonder how including the diaeresis in the title of the review is going to affect the SEO of the review. It doesn’t really matter, if there’s one thing I’ve gleaned from the stats, it’s that unless I’m reviewing a brand-new game, or one that is a proven evergreen classic, SEO doesn’t pull too many eyes onto my reviews. Which means if you’re reading this post, you’re probably one of the few people who come back week after week to read my reviews, because you like the way I write, instead of seeking out the review because you have an interest in the product. So, thank you! If I described you, thank you for being here!
Yamataï, designed by Bruno Cathala and Marc Paquien and released by Days of Wonder in 2017, is a game in which players are placing ships between a dense archipelago, and either scooping up the coloured resources that are littered across most of the islands, or, if the island is empty, building one of the buildings to earn victory points and money.
The action selection mechanism is really the star of the show in Yamataï. Along the bottom of the board sit 5 action tiles face up, and 5 more face down. On your turn, you take one of the action tiles, which will provide you with a number of ships as well as a special ability for your turn. The action tile will also dictate where on the turn order track you’ll end up next round.
Your turn follows the same 5 steps each round. Pick your tile, optionally buy or sell one of your ships, then place your ships and either take the resources on the islands next to your placements, or build on an island next to your placements, then store any unused ships, and finally, trade in the resources for some special character powers. There is a lot of nuance I’m skipping over, but you get the general idea of how the game plays.
As always, publisher Days of Wonder makes some really good-looking games. Yamataï is bright and colourful, with wonderful artwork. The wooden buildings that get built are all big and chunky and satisfying to hold and look at. Just from looking at it, I don’t feel like the insert is particularly good, but the copy I played with had everything in baggies, so, I suspect it’s not. If I’m wrong, someone please correct me.
The gameplay is something that I should love. I always talk about positive player interactions in games, where my actions benefit others and vice versa, and Yamataï has some of those feelings. The ships you place out next to the islands can be used by anyone during your turns, and in fact, you’ll need to utilize the ships that others have laid out to really extend into the centre of the archipelago. This creates lots of interesting decisions on your turn. You’ll want to try and place your ships in a way that benefits you, but doesn’t create amazing opportunities for your opponents. Furthermore, several of the buildings are these special red prestiege buildings that when you choose to build them, you don’t put one of your houses on that spot, you place the big red torii or castle on that tile instead. Then, anyone who builds one of their houses on an island adjacent to one of those prestige buildings earns one extra bonus point.
Yamataï doesn’t feature luck in its design. Instead, I feel like a skilled player will dominate a table of novices. Each turn, I felt like I had a tonne of decisions to weigh and consider. At the same time, the score feels a bit flat. And by that, I mean that if I simply execute my first gut instinct move without too much thought, I’d earn, like, 3 points per round. But if I sat, and gave it a lot of thought and really squeezed my brain to make the most optimal move, I’d earn 4 points per round. Yamataï is not kind to players who get paralyzed with too many options. Even at two players, the game could drag on as players take whole minutes to consider their moves.
Although it’s important to note that the 2 player game is similar to Five Tribes, in that you get two actions per round instead of just one. It creates a lot more depth and gives players a lot more control over how they’ll shape the round. You’re able to set up a juicy scoring spot and if the tiles you took last round afford you two turns in a row, you can capitalize on that spot immediately. It’s really satisfying.
The specialists that offer players special powers can be very powerful, and it was quite fun to see new ones get revealed every round, and figuring out how they can work together is, I’m sure, the key to getting good at Yamataï. In one of my games, I was holding 40 coins when the specialist that changes the money to victory point conversion from 5 to 1 to 3 to 1. I snapped that specialist up, and the extra points it awarded me was the entire gap between first and last place.
In my opinion, there is nothing wrong with Yamataï. It’s a good game with a fine theme, great production, and fun mechanics. I would never turn down a game of Yamataï. But I also don’t think there’s anything special in this box that would encourage me to pull it off my shelf, especially sitting next to other Days of Wonders games, or Bruno Cathala games. Five Tribes is the game it most reminds me of (but let me be clear, Yamataï and Five Tribes are very different games), and I think I’d reach for Five Tribes 7 days of the week. At the highest player count, your ability to plan is just thrown out the window. There’s no catch up mechanics, there’s no randomness, there’s no real engine building or sense of acceleration. The specialists give you new actions or augment your existing ones, but each one is fairly minor, and you’ll likely see every specialist in each game, although the order in which they come out is random. The buildings are functionally the same, requiring 3 to 5 different colours of boats arbitrarily, and your ability to make clever and interesting plays feels limited to the 2 player experience.
It feels weird to be so down on Yamataï, because again, there’s absolutely nothing wrong with it. I like so much about it, from the action tile mechanism, to the shared building spaces, to the specialists that do combo together nicely. I had a fun time playing Yamataï, but I also doubt that I’ll ever play it again. I don’t feel like there’s anything in the game that’s really drawing me back to it. There are too many games and too little time to play games that don’t spark joy, and even though Yamataï didn’t do anything to snuff my enjoyment, there simply was no spark.
There’s something inherently satisfying about watching spheres cascade down a gentle decline. Potion Explosion taps into that feeling with its five rows of marbles colliding and chaining together. Gizmos by Phil Walker-Harding seems to promise a similar experience at first glance, with its eye-catching marble dispenser, but the games themselves are very different experiences.
In Gizmos, players take on the role of inventors creating wild machines powered by energy marbles. The dispenser drops six marbles into the offer row, and on your turn, you’ll do one of four things:
File – Reserve a gizmo for later.
Pick – Take a single marble from the dispenser row into your supply
Build – Spend marbles to construct a gizmo from the offer pyramid or from your archive.
Research – Draw cards from the deck equal to your research level, and choose one to build or archive, then discard the rest.
It’s simple, but the real enjoyment comes from building a wild and exciting engine. Every gizmo you add gives you a bonus, like extra picks, or extra builds, marble storage increases, or even colour conversions. The best turns have you cascading those powers into satisfying chains, where one action triggers another, then another, leading to a flurry of bonus actions.
For example, late in our game, I had a moment where I built a red gizmo. Because I built a red gizmo, I got two bonus marble picks. Because I picked a red marble, I got to blindly draw two extra marbles from the dispenser. And because I did all that, I scored two bonus victory points. Those moments feel incredible.
That one turn was great, but building up to that point is slow and painful. The game starts with every player having the same basic gizmo, offering a single blind draw from the dispenser when you archive a gizmo, which is about as exciting as a cold bowl of oatmeal. Gizmos absolutely shines when the engine building comes alive and starts firing on all cylinders, but it takes a while for things to get rolling.
And sometimes, they don’t roll at all. The dispenser can stagnate if it’s full of colours no one needs. There’s no built-in way to reset it, so if five black and one blue marbles are clogging the offer, and no one has black synergies, tough luck. Likewise, the game can be punishing if you don’t plan ahead. One player in our game archived a gizmo requiring six marbles, while his storage limit was only five. Without a way to discard that gizmo, he was kind of stuck for the rest of the game, desperately researching for an upgrade he could afford. It was brutal watching his game grind to a halt while the rest of us flourished.
The marbles, the dispenser, the satisfying domino effect of well-chained turns, it all works so wonderfully well for this light engine building game. But on the other hand, it also feels like it could have been pushed further. More variety in gizmos, variable player powers, a way to refresh the dispenser, any of these tweaks could have taken it to the next level. Gizmos was released in 2018, I feel like any hope for an expansion to add more to the game has long since perished.
That said, not every game needs to be a complex affair. Gizmos is a great family-weight game, but one I’d hesitate to bring out with younger kids due to its slow start and somewhat punishing nature when a player doesn’t plan appropriately. As for my core gaming group, it lacks the depth to be a go to engine-builder. Ultimately, Gizmos sits in that weird middle space, too light for one group, too slow for another.
But when the engine finally clicks? Yeah, that’s a great game.
At the end of the day, I just like playing with toys. It’s that core concept that keeps pulling my attention back to dexterity games, and no company in hobby board gaming does dexterity games quite like Itten games. I’ve previously talked about Tokyo Highway, and today’s review I’m covering designer Naotaka Shimamoto’s follow-up, Crash Octopus
First thing I want to speak of, is the cost. It’s not something I generally talk about when I review a game, but in times where the cost is exceptional, it’s worth commenting on. Crash Octopus launched on Kickstarter for about $30 (CDN), plus $15 shipping. Since the Kickstarter, I’ve only seen it for sale on Board Game Bliss for an eye watering $70+ shipping. So when it popped up on Marketplace for $25, I jumped on the opportunity. And talking with the fellow who I bought it from, there was significant interest in the game.
I didn’t expect just how small the box was going to be. At $70, I expected so much more. While the box was packed well (unlike Tokyo Highway‘s large, mostly empty box), there was still some dissonance between the product I held in my hands, and the perceived value. If I had paid $70 for this box, I would have felt ripped off. There is a discussion to be had about how to value a game, how the cost of the game is more than the physical production. The time and effort of everyone involved with a project deserve to be fairly compensated, but I can’t shake the feeling of holding a small box and mentally figuring out how many hours I have to work to pay for the game.
Enough about economics. Let’s talk Crash Octopus. Aesthetically, Crash Octopus manages to evoke an incredible about of theme from a vibrant pink half dome and 8 wiggly tentacles. The boats are simple and effective, and the treasures you’re trying to collect are suitably eclectic. Itten knows how to utilize simplicity and minimalism to great effect to create a great looking game. Crash Octopus is vibrant and exudes charm and fun.
The game is contained within a blue string, with a line of white and black beads. The gameplay is simple, on your turn you either flick a treasure at your boat, or flick your anchor to reposition your boat. If you flick treasure and touch your boat, you get to load that treasure onto your boat. The first to collect all 5 different types of treasure is the winner. Every time someone loads treasure, a pink crab moves one bead forward. When it passes a black bead, an octopus attack occurs. Each player drops the dice on top of the octopus head, then, moving either a tentacle or the octopus head itself, depending on the die roll. Should that die manage to crash into any boat and send treasure skittering back onto the table, the octopus attack ends. The game continues until either the crab has stepped over all the beads, or, one player has collected all 5 treasure types.
My biggest criticism with Tokyo Highway, and most dexterity games in general, is that if players are sufficiently skilled, the game can last forever. Tokyo Highway in particular comes to a grinding halt as soon as one player makes a mistake, and is tasked with meticulously rebuilding the city before play can continue. Crash Octopus‘s game timer (the crab and the beads) keeps the game short. I can’t tell you how often I had 4 treasures on my boat, only to get bumped by the dice and my hard-earned treasures knocked off the boat, effectively undoing several turns of effort. The visual representation of how many treasures are left to be loaded makes Crash Octopus feel quick and breezy, for which I’m thankful.
The dexterity itself is fickle. You flick the treasures with a little flag, and some of the treasures are awful shapes for flicking. Like the goblet, which is a cone shape and has a tendency to roll in the exact wrong direction. Or the stick, which somehow always seems to be pointing at the wrong angle towards your ship, making a direct flick nigh impossible. The pieces are all delightfully challenging in their own way, and it’s hilarious when someone mis-judges their flick strength and sends their treasure crashing into their hull, scattering everything else.
Speaking of flicking, it’s kind of satisfying that you have to use a little flag to do all your flicking instead of your finger. Using a foreign tool flattens the play field right off the bat, rather than having your Crokinole expert friend having an advantage right off the bat. The flags are stiff and are fun to use, and like everything else that Itten makes, is well crafted.
Flicking bits of wood is a simple pleasure, and Crash Octopus is a quintessential example of a good dexterity game. A little push your luck, some space for the hail-mary clear across the table shot that gets everyone shouting and standing in their chair when you manage to land it, and some delightful spite when you use octopus to attack to knock your opponents hard earned treasures back into the ocean. Also, the instant karma when you accidentally smash your own ship with the die. It’s so simple, so pure, and so much fun.
Disclaimer: A copy of Doomlings was provided by the publisher for the review purposes
Evolution is a fascinating concept. The idea that over generations, the traits that help a species survive are what get passed down, and offspring that lack those traits, don’t reproduce and therefore, those traits are lost to time. Of course, no amount of heat spreading frills will let you compete against the end of the world, but this is where we find ourselves in card game Doomlings, designed by Justus Meyer and Andrew Meyer, with art by Justus Meyer, and published by Doomlings LLC in 2022.
In Doomlings, players play trait cards from their hand to try and amass the most points before the 3rd catastrophe card is revealed, and the world comes to an end. Each trait card offers points and/or actions, and many cards will play off each other, like giving you bonus points for other traits of the same name, or letting you swap cards with one of your opponents. Each player has a gene pool card that can grow and shrink over time, dictating how many cards they’re allowed to hold at the end of their turn.
Each round, an age card is revealed, and may affect what and how players are allowed to play during their turn. For instance, the Northern Winds age lets you draw one and discard one card from your hand before you take your turn, while Tectonic Shifts prevent you from playing any green traits. Once the third catastrophe card is revealed, the game comes to an end. End game effects trigger, scores are tallied up, and the player with the highest score is the winner. Although one has to ask themselves, does winning really matter if all species are equally wiped out at the end of the world?
The base box of Doomlings comes with hundreds of traits and dozens of ages, creating a unique mix of events every time you play. If you’re into this kind of game, there are also expansion packs to dive into, which the base game box has left plenty of room for expansions to sit right next to the base game.
As I alluded to at the beginning, I like this theme quite a lot. The traits you play can range from functional, like Mindfulness, to silly, like Flatchulance. The names of the traits don’t always seem to correspond to their effects (if they even have one) very well. The age cards also do quite a bit to inject a bit of theme into the round by displaying things like a super volcano spewing ash into the sky, or a mega tsunami bearing down on the land. You know, light-hearted game night fun stuff. (side note, literally as I was writing this, a small earthquake shook my house. More fun stuff)
The art is cartoony and simple, but enjoyable. It’s very reminiscent of Matthew Inman’s work on The Oatmeal, as well as the art he’s contributed towards 30 of the games published by Exploding Kittens. From reading history of Doomlings, Justus Meyer taught himself how to create digital art so he could create this game, which is an achievement in itself. Perhaps the best compliment for the artwork came from my wife. I had left the game on the kitchen table, and the box caught her eye, she picked it up, and said “Looks fun, I’d play this”. There’s nothing better than a game that makes people want to play it just by the look of it.
Like the artwork, the gameplay is cartoony and simple, but enjoyable. It’s a game to play with your family, or non-gamer friends, as there’s plenty of luck and chaos, but also the potential for combos tickles the gamer brain in just the right way. If you’re looking to play this with kids, you will need to make sure the kids know how to read, as there is plenty of text that is quite important to understand.
The base game suggests creating 3 piles of 3 age cards, and putting one catastrophe in each pile, making the game last a maximum of 12 rounds. You also shuffle each pile individually, then stack them on top of each other a la Pandemic, so the game end trigger isn’t easily known. You can make the game longer or shorter just by adding or removing age cards, and I really appreciate the flexibility, especially when playing with groups that can have low attention spans.
Because there are so many cards with so many effects, it’s difficult to remember everything that your opponents can do, or what effects their cards may have, and trying to read small text upside down and across the table is a fools errand. There’s a lot of randomness in this chaos too, in that some cards do want to have other cards of the same name, but if you don’t draw cards that let you discard or draw more cards, your ability to seek those cards out is quite limited. They’re more of a bonus to luck into, rather than a viable strategy on their own. Some games you’ll draw the perfect cards that compliment each other in your tableau. Other times you’ll be wishing for the heat death of the universe.
Okay, that was a bit dramatic. But it is worth pointing out that the randomness in Doomlings will turn some people off, as will the take-that element of the game. It’s disappointing when you pull a card that would work for your tableau very well, but then the opponent to your right forces you to discard two cards at random. And considering you only draw at the end of your turn, it is possible to have your turn come around, and you simply don’t have any cards left to play, which is a disappointing feeling.
Doomlings at the end of the day is inoffensive. The tableau building aspect gives faint hints of satisfaction that engine building games so wonderfully evoke, but Doomlings doesn’t hit the same highs as other tableau building games, such as Wingspan or Race for the Galaxy. Nor does it really lean into the evolution theme, like Evolution does so well.
So who is Doomlings for? If you like games like Exploding Kittens or Munchkin, I’d certainly play Doomlings before either of those two games. It has the randomness of Fluxxwithout the need for appreciating or understanding a theme, which may be a boon if you’re playing with kids who haven’t consumed the entirety of the Doctor Who cannon. A copy of Doomlings would gladly live its life at a cabin, or at grandmas house. It’s easy to play, light-hearted fun. While it wouldn’t be my first choice for a game night, if Doomlings was the game being played, I’d certainly engage with it instead of sitting on the couch trying to learn how to knit a scarf before the impending ice age.
If you’ve made it this far, and thought to yourself that Doomlings sounds like your cup of tea, you can pick up a copy for yourself from their website
What if I told you that Go-Fish could be fun? What if I added a memory element? Wait! Come Back! Hear me out. In Trio, designed by Kaya Miyano and published by Happy Camper (in Canada) takes the core conceit of Go-Fish, but manages to create some actually engaging and fun moments.
The set-up is simple. Deal everyone an equal number of cards, plus 8 or so, out to the centre of the table, face down. On your turn, you can ask any player to show their highest or lowest card, or, flip over a card from the centre. Then, you do it again. If the two revealed cards match, you get a third action. If no match, the cards go back to their owner’s hand. If all three revealed cards are a match, you claim them and keep them face up in front of you as a trio.
In the simple game, a trio of trios wins the game, or, claiming the trio of 7’s always spells victory. In the spicy variant, each trio has a spiritual partner, such as the 2’s and the 5’s. Claiming both of those trios is how you claim victory. Or, again, the trio of 7’s on its own wins the game.
That’s very much it. Trio plays from 3 to 6 players, and takes less than 5 minutes per round. The memory aspect scared me at first, as I am a dummy. But the memory aspect almost turned out to almost be a moot point. The information is sort of ever-changing and flowing. Because you can only ask someone’s highest or lowest card, as soon as that trio gets claimed, you can reset that information in your brain. You don’t need to remember where all 36 cards are, you only really need to remember 4 or 6 or 8, depending on the number of players.
I’m awful at counting cards, it’s the reason we lose so many games of The Crew. Once a hand or trick has been played, I void the information from my brain immediately. Trio was gentle with my head, which I very much appreciated. The 8 cards on the table are easy enough to track, and the excitement when someone else reveals the key information you need is exhilarating. Similarly, that moment of doubt when you reach for the centre cards, and suddenly doubt yourself which card was the right one. And when someone fails that test, you’re free to swoop in and claim the trio for yourself.
The golden 7 cards are wildly appealing. Getting dealt one or when someone is forced to reveal one, it’s enough to give your heart butterflies. And when you get the enough information to collect that trio, every second that passes until your next turn is tense. And the elation that comes when it’s finally your turn again, and you reveal all three 7’s, it’s utterly magical.
On one hand, I find super light or simple games difficult to review, because there’s not usually much to pull apart and discuss. On the other hand, these are the kinds of games that leave a positive impression because they’re just fast, fun, and accessible, so I want to highlight them here on my blog. Trio is the kind of game that you’ll bring to a family gathering, and by the end of the night, half the table will be looking to buy their own copy. Similar to SCOUT, there’s a ‘theme’, or rather, a motif, but it doesn’t really matter, not does it influence or inform any of the rules. It’s just window dressing on a really fun game.
If you had told me that one of the first games I recommend in 2025 would be a mixture of Go-Fish and Memory, I would have called you crazy. I can’t think of a single other game that has a memory component that I would even be willing to play again. Yet here stands Trio with a wholehearted recommendation from me because it really is just that much fun to play.
