Archive for the 'Singapore' Category

Singapore is an interesting mix of tile-laying and economic/resource management.  Players are aiming to score the most victory points (VPs) which are earned through moving your worker(s) and using buildings.  The board consists of several sections which can be combined in many ways which gives some variety in replay.  Most squares on each board section show the cost of building on that square (£1-£4) .  At the start of the game, there are 4 neutral buildings – every round players build one building and connect them to neighbouring buildings.

Players start with some money, 5 VPs and one worker.  At the start of each round, a number of buildings are revealed (equal to the number of players plus one).  Then, the player in last place takes one coloured marker from each player and places them on vacant lots that neighbour any existing buildings.  These markers show where each player will build a building that round and the cost on the square dictates how much it will cost them.

Starting with the player in last place (and then going clockwise), players select one of the available buildings and pay the cost to build it on their marked square (leaving their coloured marker on it to show they own it).  If a player can not afford the building cost, they must exchange 1 VP for £2 until they can (or they get the building for free if they have no cash and no VPs).

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I just saw the new games that White Goblin Games will be releasing at Essen in Germany in October.  These are looking really good.  They’ve also just started taking pre-orders too.

	Lost Temple A game based on the excellent Citadels but this time it’s a race game to be the first one to the temple to plunder its treasures. In Citadels, players select a role/character from a fixed set and pass the rest to the next player to make their choice. Figuring out which role each player has probably selected is a big part of the game as some characters foil others and no-one knows who picked which character until everyone has chosen for that round. Not sure how much of this is in Lost Temple but it sounds very interesting as Citadels is a classic. Plays 2-8 players too.
	Panic Station This game really interests me as it’s like the movie The Thing with a single player who has been taken over by an alien amongst lots of uninfected players; however, the infection can spread so the infected players start to increase.  Each player controls an android and a human trying to stop the evil aliens – well, unless they;re already evil aliens. The reason this interests me so much is that I actually have game design notes going back some years with the exact same premise, so I’m very interested to see how this game compares. Plays 4-6
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