Q is for Quadropolis

By Days of Wonder

I love city-building video games so my hubs bought this one for me a few years back after playing it at a gaming convention and thinking I'd like it. And, well, I like building stuff.

Players: 2-4

Time: 30-60 minutes

Ages: 8+

Theme: City Building

Mechanics: Tile Placement, Pattern Building, Set Collection

In Quadropolis, you get a 4x4 (classic mode) or 5x5 (expert mode) grid and are tasked with building a city. There are rules for selecting tiles and placing tiles that I won't go into, except to say that what you choose will affect what the next player can choose and so on. Each type of tile (Apartments, Parks, Docks, Factories, Shops, Monuments, and Office Towers) is scored differently. For instance, docks like to be in a row while parks like to be next to apartment buildings and office towers. Apartments and Office towers like to grow upwards. Meanwhile, in order to score a building, it needs to be activated with energy or people, which are resources gained during tile selection.

This is a good game-- another one that is easy to learn and not too time-consuming. Tile selection can be challenging and sometimes you get stuck with tiles you can't legally place. Big reference cards help keep you on track.

We played 3 games and scored as follows:

Classic: Bonnie 48 - Dustin 46

Expert: Dustin 94 - Bonnie 79

Expert: Bonnie 107 - Dustin 73

 

We're rating this one 7.5/10. We like playing and would suggest it for the right crowd.

P is for Professor Evil and the Citadel of Time

 By FunForge

I picked this one up at a past Phoenix Fire swap meet. It was brand new at a great price, so I had to do it. It reminded me of Clue. It's not like Clue (except for the similar board), but that nostalgia is what drew my attention in the first place.

Players: 2-4

Time: 30-45 minutes

Ages: 8+

Theme: Time Travel Heist

Mechanics: Co-Op, Action Points

Professor Evil has a time machine, which he uses for evil, duh. He steals priceless artifacts from the past and future and stows them around his fancy mansion. The players need to sneak in and rescue the treasures before he locks them away in his vault. Each artifact has a variable time frame in which it can be rescued and each is protected from the players by locked doors and various traps (saws, lasers, etc). Players have different specialties for helping them move around the castle without getting caught and booted out by the roaming Professor Evil. Some characters are adept at deactivating traps while others are adept at movement or time manipulation.

This was really very simple to learn and quick to play. We played FOUR games before we were able to beat it. Its difficulty is really due to RNG rather than lack of strategy or understanding. I blame my husband for most of our defeats because he rolled a three (the highest amount of possible villain movement, 1/6 chance) almost every turn, causing Professor Evil to undo all our work and boot us out of the castle frequently.

The expansion, Professor Evil and the Architects of Magic, adds new characters to play, new treasures to rescue (which give positive effects when rescued and negative effects when lost), and a new mechanic for the Professor's movement (giving him the ability to occasionally have extra movement if not managed well). The new characters in the expansion are interesting and when we played a 5th game with them, we beat it on the first try (OP characters? Luck? Skill? Who knows?)

 

We give it a 7/10. It's good and quick and it will be a good one for the kiddos when they're old enough.

O is for (The) Oregon Trail: Journey to Willamette Valley

By Pressman Toy Corp

So when I was a kid in 3rd grade, my teacher had this crappy little cube of a computer with some 2 or 3 educational games on it that we got to play once a week for an hour or so. I always chose Oregon Trail. I have really fond and happy memories of it. I have been chasing that high for years. I've tried the newer editions of Oregon Trail (and sadly, they just don't make me feel the same way). We've tried the Oregon Trail card game. Didn't scratch the itch. Then I saw this game and I thought it would finally give me that feeling I had at age 8, amassing supplies, hunting bears, fording rivers, and hoping my family members wouldn't die of dysentery.

Players: 2-4

Time: 30-60 minutes

Ages: 13+

Theme: 1848 Journey to Find Fortune in the West

Mechanics: Tile Laying, Route Building, Supply Management, Racing

This game is okay. It's not a bad game. It just didn't make me feel like I was 8 again. So I have some criticism: The route tiles are awkward, especially with respect to rivers. Most of the winter tiles just got tossed off to the side where no one was going and we ended up with many cities and forts in a row, rather than spread out. This sort of thing could perhaps be fixed by additional players, but sadly, right now we've just got the two of us. The art on the tiles is nothing to write home about. Components aren't very exciting-- All supplies are just colored cubes. Hunting is kind of weird. The more guns you amass, the better you are at hunting. There were some other things that bothered me, but I think I'm just cranky and nit-picking.

We both think it would benefit from more players. Perhaps it's just not balanced properly for two. We hardly took any damage and no one in either of our families even got remotely close to dying.

We played one game in which Dustin won. Dustin scored 2900 and I scored 2400.

We give this one a 5/10 for its mediocrity.