The Game Shelf Previews:- Three Sisters

Game: Three Sisters

Publisher: Motor City Gameworks

Designer: Matt Riddle & Ben Pinchback

Year: 2021

Designers Matt Riddle and Ben Pinchback are behind a couple of my (very different) favourite games, like Wasteland Express Delivery Service and Piepmatz. They are now collaborating under a new self-published label - Motor City Gameworks and there first game, Three Sisters will be coming to Kickstarter on 9th March 2021.

If you're a fan of the roll and write genre, like we are, then perhaps you've heard of Fleet Dice - a game all about fishing that really ups the ante on roll and write games. Three Sisters feels like a spiritual successor to Fleet Dice, with a very different theme and different dice drafting mechanism, but some of the same mechanisms and feel in the combos you can trigger throughout the game. If you like Fleet Dice, or other very combo-centric roll and write games, like the Ganz Schon Clever series, then it's worth learning more about Three Sisters.

The Game Shelf Reviews:- Cloud City

 Game: Cloud City

Publisher: Blue Orange Games

Designer: Phil Walker-Harding

Year: 2020

 

 

Phil-Walker Harding is well known for family weight games, like Sushi Go and Barenpark. Cloud City is another puzzly tile that immediately reminded us on the monorails in the Bad News Bears expansion for Barenpark. Mechanically there's nothing in common, but visually the two have a similarity that makes both very eye-catching on the table.

 

Cloud City manages to look like something I'm desperate to play - it's super tactile and you can pretty much look at the photo of a finished game and figure out how to play!

The Game Shelf Previews:- Buru

Game: Buru

Publisher: Crafty Games

Designer: Stephen Selego, Alex Flagg, Taran Lewis Kratz

Year: 2021

Buru is the next game coming to Kickstarter from Crafty Games, who recently funded with Dollars to Donuts - a tile laying game we enjoyed quite a bit. Buru is a game for 1-4 players that combines a clever bidding mechanism with engine building and resource management in a wonderfully colourful setting. That setting is 14th Century Indonesia, where you will play as nobles exploring a new island, trading and paying respects to the gods. 

Buru is coming to Kickstarter in early 2021.

The Game Shelf Reviews:- Heart of Crown: Fairy Garden

Game: Heart of Crown: Fairy Garden

Publisher: Japanime Games

Designer:  ginkgo

Year: 2013

Japanime Games certainly have a niche - deck-building card games with an art style that is certainly not to everyone's taste. While there are a couple of games that fall outside of this mould, there aren't many and Heart of Crown certainly fits it perfectly. Fairy Garden is a standalone expansion and a lot of the art is rather cute, fitting nicely into the fairy theme with some anime charm. In other areas, especially the princesses and maids, you will certainly recognise the over emphasis of certain features, that was common in Japanime Games' other titles like Tanto Cuore.

Heart of Crown: Fairy Garden is a standalone expansion to Heart of Crown. In terms of gameplay, we were pleased to find that this isn't just a Dominion or Tanto Cuore clone and it actually has quite a few new and fresh ideas that really change up the formula.