Trying New Games (Sep 05 2025)

This week only got in 2 minigames. The first one was inspired by a minigame in Mario Party 4 actually. It's a game where there are bob-ombs walking on conveyor belts, and you have to change the conveyor belts to make the bob-ombs walk towards the enemy team. That was a 2v2 game, but this is a single player game. Right now there are 4 conveyor belts that get faster over time. It's possible it needs to be more complicated, like there are barriers in the middle of the conveyor belt, that randomly turn on or off, and if the bomb hits the barrier you also lose.

The other minigame is very simple. There are tiles on the floor, and you must move around avoiding tiles that turn red. What was sort of fun to do is that tiles that can be different sizes (e.g. one takes up an entire row). I think my initial plan was instead of avoiding tiles, you avoid different objects flying at you, but this was easier to do. I also first tried it at 45 seconds to get the best rank, but it was way too long and difficult, and I reduced it to 30 seconds.

But also, this week I played some more games irl with other people. The first was that card game with mom, Christie, and some others. I still don't know what this game is called, but it's the one with traditional playing cards. Again the flaws I have with the game are still a thing here. The rules for levelling up are confusing (and the fact that the adults kept arguing with each other about the rules only confirms this for me) and add nothing. If there was no leveling up, no "check what the best card is every round", it would be better. Also I had forgotten how slow turn-based games are. Games where you don't have to constantly wait for everyone in the table to do their turns are much faster.

Christie also bought a game called Stone Age for me and we played it. It's a resource management game with no text on any of the cards. While it was fun, there were parts that I didn't like. Again the game is turn based and not simultaneous, which I don't like as much. This also ties into another issue, which is that the game takes way too long; I think I can only sit through an irl board game that's 1 hour at most, and this was approaching 2 hours. While not having text on the cards was mostly fine, there were definitely some cards that should've just printed the instructions on the actual card instead of in the rulebook. Looking through the rulebook to figure out how one specific card works is not a good use of time.

Earlier this week, I also ordered a new board game. It's Pacific by Donald X.. It was supposed to come out in July, but due to a minor misprint it got delayed to September (which also means if you want it, you can get it soon). The order I got was the one with the minor misprint but I can live with that. I haven't really played it but I think it's a cool game. I didn't playtest this one; when I became a playtester in 2023 this game was already done (and yes it took 2 years for it to come out).