Board Game Review - Tokyo Highway

Tokyo Highway is a fun multiplayer game which is also incredibly aesthetically pleasing. It's simple and easy to learn, but can have different layers of difficulty each time and will always be random in the way that the roads are laid out.

Each player has a certain amount of roads, columns, cars and intersections, which are placed each turn. The game ends when one player completely runs out of cars. Of course, it's a little more complicated than just laying down a road, placing a car and moving on - each road must either be higher or lower by one column than the ones placed last round (you can ignore this rule by using an intersection piece) and you can only place a car if it's the first road to go above or below another road. Each column can only have two roads on it, and they have to be placed a certain way or it counts as an illegal move, but intersections (as the name suggests) can have more than two roads attached to them, allowing you to move your highway closer to other roads that haven't been crossed over / under. There are also buildings, which are obstacles for you to build around and are randomly placed after everyone has put their first road section down.

I really enjoy Tokyo Highway, and everyone that I've played the game with has enjoyed it too, plus it's quite a nice looking game, both whilst in progress and when finished!

Is it worth my money?

At about £30 I'd say that Tokyo Highway is a must buy - it's great for 'hardcore' boardgamers, people just getting into board games and everyone in between!

Board Game Review - Bad Bones

This was another game we played at MCM Comic Con, and it's a change from what I normally play. The closest game I own to Bad Bones would be Castle Panic and the only real similarity is that they're both tower defence games. Bad Bones, however, is not co-operative, it's a game you only win because someone else loses.

You start off Bad Bones with a tower that is four high, a Hero, four villages, six traps and a graveyard that is empty (but not for long). The aim of the game is to survive the onslaught of skeletons for as long as possible, and outlive your opponents.

Each turn has four stages - move your Hero, place / remove traps, move skeletons and spawn new skeletons (you always grab three more skeletons from the bag, and also place any from the graveyard onto the board as well). The Hero will destroy any skeletons he lands on / that bump into him, so he is arguably your best weapon against the ever-growing hoarde, but he can only move one square at a time. The traps at your disposal are: two Walls, which act like a mirror reflecting light and move the skeletons in a different direction; two Catapults, which fling skeletons over to the graveyard of an opponent of your choice; a Dragon, who scares away the skeletons in the direction you choose; and Treasure, which lures the skeletons to it, and they then continue to move in that direction. Each trap (apart from the Treasure) will break after two uses, so using the trap step to take a trap away can sometimes be more useful than using it to place a new trap.

We played the basic version, where you have normal skeletons that are constantly attacking you, but there is also an advanced version of the game if you don't find an endless onslaught of skeletons tasking enough - this includes a market, scarier skeletons, weapons and new traps.

You can, if you want, play the game solo, or cooperatively too! Plus, the game comes with six player boards, so it's a game you can crack out on a gaming night with friends without having to worry too much about someone sitting out (unless you have more than five friends, I guess!)

Is it worth my money?

With prices ranging from £33-45, Bad Bones may not be everyone's cup of tea, but if you and your friends want to play something a little different, go for it!

Board Game Review - Magic Maze

I visited MCM Expo over the weekend, and they have an ever-growing board game presence there, so it was nice to be able to sit down with my friends and play some new things!

One of the games that we played was Magic Maze, a co-operative board game in which you control a party of four adventurers who have to steal their equipment from a store (the guy demoing it said this is because they have no money, apparently the rules read that it's because they have been stripped of all their weapons etc) and then get out of the store before you run out of time!

The game would, however, be far too easy if it was as simple as moving the pawns around the shop in whatever direction you want and being able to speak to the people that you're playing with, so of course that isn't how the game is played at all! You get to control a set amount of directions (we played three player, with one of us controlling left and teleporters;one of us controlling down, escalators and the pile of cards; and the other controlling right and up) and are not able to speak to the people you're playing with, instead using the big red piece to bang on the table to get the attention of the people that control the directions the pawns need to be moved in.

The game is actually fairly simple in premise - move yellow to yellow things, green to green things, purple to purple things and orange to orange things - but the execution of the game and the randomness (as well as the variety of scenarios) mean that you're unlikely to get bored any time soon, plus the game has a bunch of expansions you can use to spice up playing!

Is it worth my money?

As the base game is around £15-20 I'd say yes, especially if you're looking for a fun, quick game to break up board gaming nights!

EGX Rezzed 2019

So yesterday I went to EGX Rezzed. I haven't been to Rezzed before, and it was a really different experience. Usually I go to MCM Expo in London, which is huge and spread out but very busy.

Above is a map of this year's Rezzed! There was a lot of stuff there, and some of the games are really new in terms of their development but others are either out or very nearly out.

Primetime Detective, one of the games on show at the UK Games Fund area.

There were groups of games such as the above Primetime Detective in an area funded by the UK Games Fund. These games were all in differing states of development, and I enjoyed all of them. Primetime Detective, Growbot and Billie Bust-Up were all great games to play, my favourite was Billy Bust-Up where I got to be a goat and a fox! Holo Fist is also a really good game which I was watching be played, it has a really cool concept and the main character is adorable!

Muse Games were there (you know, the people that made Guns of Icarus) with 2 of their new games; Hamsterdam and Embr. Hamsterdam is a cute little fighting game with an adorable art style and it'll be coming out on many platforms (including the Nintendo Switch, Steam and iOS) and Embr was advertised as "like a ride sharing service for the emergency services" where you are contracted to save people from fires!

Coatsink were also there, with PHOGS and Cake bash. PHOGS is a 2 player game where one of you controls one half of a sausage dog, and the other player controls the other half. It's very puzzle based, and possibly one of the cutest games (they had plushies set up around a dog bed and it was all very soft). Cake bash is an up to 4 player multiplayer game where you play as a choice of different cakes who have to make themselves irresistable, or throw fruit into a tart which gives you points!

I also got to play Sunless Skies, Inops, Songbird Symphony, Gato Roboto and Close To The Sun, all of which were pretty awesome. There was a board game area too, where I finally got to play Tokyo Highway which is a super cool dexterity game!