Last night we took a stab at playing three new games before bed. One we own and the others we will eventually get copies of so we had to play it digitally first.
The first game was The Sherlock Holmes Files, which does sort of feel like it's something like a card game version of Sherlock Holmes Consulting Detective. Most of these deduction games rely on either an organized deck of cards that you play through in sequence or numbered cards that tie to different locks and combinations that determine when they can be drawn. This game was surprising in that it instead relied on us having a select hand of cards randomly drawn from the cards. The main mechanic is determining whether or not the cards we have are clues or not as we're trying to only play clues and discard the rest while figuring out the mystery.
The other game we finally tackled was Earth, which is something I got onboard for rather late (Read: after the Kickstarter campaign) but managed to secure a copy of as an add-on for another campaign. We're still waiting for that campaign to reach fulfillment, but Board Game Arena at least opens the door for us to try it out. It's a pretty interesting tableau-building game that feels sort of like games like Terraforming Mars but has so many more kinds of interactions layered on top. The card design is still a bit minimalist in an effort in order to avoid relying too much on wordy cards, which is sort of why I initially skipped the game when it first came out. But the actual gameplay is pretty fulfilling and I think we'll try a few more online plays until our copy arrives.
The last game is Streets, from the people who brought us Villagers. I'm getting both games as add-ons to the Kickstarter campaign for Moon, the latest from this designer. We've already been playing a fair bit of Villagers on BGC and last night was the first time we finally sat down with Streets. It's a pretty different experience that requires a bit more spatial reasoning than the earlier game, but it's still pretty fun. I can see how it can end up needing a lot of physical table space as you build out the neighborhood, but it also plays a lot faster than other city builders like Suburbia.
I appreciate having the opportunity to play these games before our copies arrive. It probably would have been smarter to try them out before backing these Kickstarter projects, but that's neither here nor there I guess. Definitely no regrets.
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