S is for Steam Park

By IELLO

Picked this one up at a Phoenix Fire swap meet. It's been on my try list for quite some time, so I had high hopes for it.

Players: 2-4
Time: 60 minutes
Ages: 10+
Theme: Fantasy Theme Park Creation
Mechanics: Dice Rolling Race, "City" Building

In Steam Park, you play owners of theme parks competing for visitors (which bring in $$) and keeping the park clean and free of the dirt created by said attractions (which you are fined for at the end). The park owner with the most money at the end is the winner. Attract visitors by building cool 3D attractions!

A quick note on the quality: While I love the 3D aspect of the attractions, many of the punch board pieces were not cut properly (some not at all) and I had to go at them with a paring knife to get them out (which in retrospect probably wasn't the best idea, but got the job done). Before I got the knife out, I tried to force some of them, which resulted in some torn artwork and also I had to glue one attraction together.

At the start of the game, players begin rolling their dice (being careful not to knock down their theme parks) and saving the dice rolls they want and re-rolling the rejects until  happy with the whole roll. Can't be too picky though because whoever finishes first gets some free dirt cleanup, while the last player gets stuck with extra dirt to deal with.

The rules for placing attractions and booths on the park grids are a bit frustrating. Rides can not touch other rides (including diagonally), unless they are the same color. In this case, they must touch at ONLY one square. Booths cannot touch rides, not even diagonally. Booths can only touch (including diagonally) booths of the same type. Extra grid pieces can be added to the park for the cost of any die roll.

Overall, we give this game a 5/10. We decided to keep it for now, because we think it might be a good game for our kiddos when they're older, due to its simplicity and quick play, but we definitely have city builders that we like better than this one.

R is for Roll Player

By Thunderworks Games

I saw the expansion for this game on Kickstarter with two days left and thought the game looked neat, but didn’t want to go all-in on for something we had never played yet (if it was available). So we tracked down a copy of the base game at Abu Games and brought it home that very afternoon to try out. We liked it. So we backed the expansions. They arrived just in time for this challenge.

Players: 1-4

Time: 60-90 minutes

Ages: 10+

Theme: Fantasy Character Creation (+Combat with expansion)

Mechanics: Dice Drafting, Card Drafting

In the base game of Roll Player, the goal is to create a great adventuring hero. You’re given a race, a class, a backstory, and an alignment to attempt to satisfy. You can also equip your hero with gear and useful skills. Satisfying your character goals give you reputation points, and the hero with the most points at the end wins. You don’t actually embark on any adventures with these characters… Unless you have the 2^nd expansion, Monsters and Minions.

In Monsters and Minions, you can chose to go on hunts and fight minions in place of buying skills/equipment. At the end of the game, all heroes must fight a big bad (think kraken or demon or chimera). Your chances of defeating the end boss increase as you defeat minions throughout the game, as the first three minions defeated grant clues as to the boss’ weaknesses.

In the third expansion, Fiends and Familiars, there are fiends that mess with the dice and give you disadvantages (which may cause you to think twice before taking the most powerful dice when it’s your turn to choose). There are also, you guessed it, familiars for your characters with an extra set of needs to satisfy for reputation points.

We enjoy fitting all of the pieces together to make our characters. There are LOTS of races, classes, backgrounds and alignments, which make for lots of replayability. We saw that they had another game on Kickstarter recently (which we did not back because we are trying to save some money *cough*) that you can bring roll player-built characters into and play actual dungeon-crawling adventures). Expansions make the setup longer and the game longer, but also make it more varied and are pretty well-balanced (scores with and without the expansions are fairly similar).

We give the base game alone a 9/10. It’s excellent and we enjoy it. My dad played and he liked it , too. The expansions give the game a bit of bloat, dropping our rating to an 8/10. Not saying they aren’t worth picking up—just that they make an already complex game and add more complexity—with so many different things to manage and consider, it is no longer a quickie to pull out for a lazy afternoon.