ScottVee Gaming

I tried a few more Suika games and they were so similar I uninstalled them after a few runs.  Juicy Fruit by Yermex, Fruit Drop by Alpha Creative.  Not bad, they do what they need to do, but they stop at the basics. But this one -- "Watermelon Merge Game" by Brilliant Games -- went way beyond.  The game itself has a fun feel to it.: bouncy and an extra element where the fruits almost try to burrow down and find each other.  You earn stars that you spend on filling in a city build with many other scenes listed for later on.   You can also spend points on new art sets for the fruits,  a new skin for the dropper character (including a ghost and a flying saucer and a dog that farts rainbows), and Buy more power ups. The power ups are: break one fruit, shake the box,  remove all fruits that match the one you click on,  and a sec that falls and boasts all fruits up one level. There's also a PVP "Battle Mode" option that we tested out.  I made a ro...

I stumbled upon an odd category of games while looking for new stuff in the Google Play store ... fruit drop games.  More specifically,  games where you drop merge fruits leading up to the ultimate watermelon,  and if they reach the top of the box the game is over. Apparently these are all clones of Suika Game, where suika is the Japan's word for watermelon.    See the Wikipedia page . Now, you would think they're all the same exact boring thing,  but it turns out there is a lot of variety in the game play and physics.  The dropped items might be bouncy or squishy to varying degrees.  You might have to drag the drop line and then let go, or one touch anywhere well drop the next item.   The top of the box might trigger the end immediately or let you overflow a little, or have a few seconds of countdown before ending.   And some of the games came up with ways to extend past the original number of objects,  add levels and ski...

On the way home from work, I keep trying more obscure back roads to avoid traffic.  Driving through Furniture Row in San Marcos, I saw that these roads went for many blocks behind the big stores.  I googled the area and found a possible game shop (Knowhere Games and Comics), a possible dog boarding place for Dory, a huge consignment/antique shop Anne already knew about, and a cider/mead brewhouse that wasn't open yet. It turns out that Knowhere did have a good assortment of games.  There were shelves of D&D books and other RPGs.  There was a reasonable selection of  about 100 different board games, but mostly not our style.  Then there was a big back room setup for D&D and Magic the Gathering games and tournaments.  Along the back wall was a shelf packed with games.  See here: Players are welcome to come over if there's no big game event going on, and try out those games.  That sounds great, since buying so many games only to have abo...

Anne wanted tots.  Tater tots.  Where was that place on Grand that had those yummy tots?  Of course all of Grand was under heavy construction so we had to park blocks away and walk.   It was Burger Bench.  Anne took Dory and sat down while I stood in line to order.   A guy came in and urgently started saying hello. After about 20 seconds I realized it was Chris Legg, long time gamer friend (2nd generation in fact).  Really long time.  We first met him back in 1990 when their parents were playing D&D and other games at Doug's house. We had not seen him in about 2 years.  They were eating at the restaurant right next door when Carol had seen us walking by.  A truly random tot encounter. Nice to see them again.  We got a bit caught up they said we could come over for some games after 4.  We were planning to go home and play some board games anyway, so that was perfect. We ended up playing Modern Problems ...

Many years ago, I would meet up with Robert A. Kraus (RAKgraphics) each year when he came to town to setup his both at ComicCon.  We were always bouncing ideas around.   He had a series of mini games called Coin Creatures, where you use coins as your game pieces and his endless cute Creatures were all over the board. We put together a few full page games for that series.   Here is one called Reapers Challenge,  which guest starred Bob's famous Chakan character who was long ago featured in a Sega video game . For each of these projects we wanted to give as much play for the price as we could,  so we included another whole game board on the backside,  and some alternate rules.   As long as all the rules fit on one sheet of paper. This one is simple: move your pieces along the thick lines but capture by following the arrows.  The only other rules are: you can move any combination of pieces a total of seven spaces; you can't...

Another theme we like to try are space-based games.  Stellarion looked good and when you first open the box the presentation is excellent. There are 8 little decks of cards.   Each card has a Type and a Galaxy.  Each Type and Galaxy has its own deck.  Each Type deck has two of each Galaxy of that Type, and each Galaxy deck has two of each Type for that Galaxy.  Even though you know exactly what is in each deck,  bringing the right cards to the top to turn in matching sets is surprisingly difficult. Each round you can either trade in a matching pair of cards (same Type) to mess with the decks or trade in a set of the four different Types for a Galaxy to launch a ship.   Eight launches wins the game. I ended up having to write up a little cheat sheet about what rack pair of cards can do.  The publisher really should have printed some cards for that, since it's a drag to have to keep the rulebook open the whole time. Of course, i...

This l looked like a cute biome building game, and that's about right.  But it was remarkably cryptic.   The objective for each of the five rounds came from a uniquely weird set of objective tiles. The goal is to build a nature reserve that fits in a 6x6 grid using tiles that each have for squares on them.  On each round you take the new tiles.  Keep one and pass the others. Then all plays play their chosen tile.  Then choose one more and pass the other.   Play that tile then play the last tile.  Figure out the score from the objective grid and move on to the next round.  There are five rounds total. Your tiles can overlap but must stay within the 6x6 area.  Translating the symbols on the objective cards, our game had points for separate green biomes, solo pandas, minimal giraffes and length of river.  The page in  the rulebook that describes all the objective es is so dense with little icons it just hurt our ...

We never get tired of trying out new games.  When we opened Deep Dive yesterday and saw all the sheets of pieces, I was worried that it might turn out to be too complicated for our quick, casual play sessions.  It turns out that there ARE a lot of pieces, but the gameplay is simple and just a bit different from anything we had seen before. All those pieces represent five different layers (depths) of the ocean, with the lower layers in darker shades of blue, and with one to five pips showing which layer each chip belongs to.  For less than three players you start by taking out all the tiles with a (+) sign on them, since those are for 4+ players only.  Then you remove some number of tiles from each depth to balance the number of players, then group up the tiles for each depth face down, and that's it for setup. Each player gets three penguins.  On your turn, one of your penguins dives in to the tiles at Layer 1.  At each level you have to option of flipping ...

"Space Puppies": They sold us on the cute box and title.  Our collection is heavily geared toward games with cats and dogs.  And space.  So yeah, Space Puppies.  The game comes with a nice mat to put the draw pile, discard pile and planet cards on.  You start with 5 cards, and then the rules tell you ... pretty much nothing.  One spot says you "play one or two cards" in your turn, the other spot says you "take one or two of the moves listed here."  The tiny rule sheet says nothing about whether you play cards face up in front of you for any reason.  It actually says to study the cards to learn what they do.  Really? Here are the rules cards, which are not that helpful.  We figured there would be a website on the box with a helpful video -- that is almost the standard these days.  But the site was non-existent. What does "add dogs to your collection mean?" You can "play action cards on an opponent" but some cards must obviously be pl...

We won a gift card to Pair a Dice at the EsCon event last weekend, so we hopped in the car and went over to check it out.  It's a few blocks from the Boomers entertainment center, easy to find behind the In-n-Out Burger just off the Emerald Drive off-ramp. Wow, what a selection they have.  From classics like Illuminati (Steve Jackson Games) to rows and rows of huge heavy boxes of modern games.  Lots of smaller card games, just what we were looking for.  They had a full line of Fluxx games, other games from the same designers (Looney Labs), a full line of Munchkin games, loads of fun to choose from. They also had a community section where you can list your own games for sale, which is a great idea.  But we will still probably be donating a bunch of mid-range games anyway.  Every attempt to get cash for them these days is just a drag on time.  At least selling at the store means no shipping charges, but it is about a 20 minute drive. There was a big back...

I was not looking for another product tie-in game so soon.  (See last post about a maze on a Cheerios box.) We regularly each Veggie Straws, thinking they're "more healthy" than potato chips.  I can't not read words that are right in front of me, so I found myself looking at the ingredients.  Mostly potato powder and potato starch, flavored/colored with some other vegetable powders.  That's fine.  That's about what we expect from snacks these days. The unexpected came when I scanned the barcode and it said sensibleportions.com.  I figured that would be some general website about what the sensible portions of foods should be.  That's where we keep overdoing it.  It would be great to find a site that lists the right portions of the foods we eat.  But it turns out "Sensible Portions" is the freaking brand name.  I assumed it would be Frito-Lay or one of the endless companies owned by them -- I never cared or thought to look at the brand....

I have always been amused by the games and activities attempted on the backs of cereal boxes.  I stumbled across one last week when putting a box of Honey Nut Cheerios back in the cupboard. It's nothing special, but it's not nothing.  There have been thousands of simple mazes on these boxes over the decades.  This one uses numbers to navigate the maze, which is still pretty easy for a grownup to do, but it gives the young eaters more credit than these products normally do.  I actually had a few pauses, as I eyeballed it and found the route.  Backtracking when you hit a dead-end is a step more difficult.  It's almost easier to just start over again and make note of the area to avoid. So, kudos to Cheerios for a less-trivial-than-usual breakfast distraction. I thought about cutting out the back of the box and actually placing pieces on it, and rolling a die to make more of a game out of it, but the box had already been recycled.  And just rolling dice wo...

Just a few days after seeing Wyrmspan in Barnes & Noble and trying to explain all the offshoots and clones and add-ons of Wingspan ... and then trying to explain Wingspan itself ... I found myself at a table with three strangers actually playing the game. We were at EsCon, our local board gaming con that I had never heard about even though it has been around for 10 years.  Anne did her own thing while I sat down with Adam and Kristen and {unknown woman} and got a good introduction to the game. There are resources, cave cards, dragon cards, a player mat, a guild mat, and some other bits and bobs.  Basically, you are trying to extend the caves on your game mat from left to right, and invite dragons to each cave, then run through the cave with your little explorer meeple.  As you place a dragon card, it covers up the little stop sign that would end your exploration. You spend a coin (and sometimes eggs) to either EXCAVATE (play a cave card) or ENTICE (play a dragon card ...

Sunday was busy.  We started off at the local Kitten Adoption event at PetSmart, where we semi-volunteer semi-regularly, and we got to meet Toast, the rescue of the season.  She was found seriously burned in a homeless camp up north somewhere but after a few months of rehab and some surgeries, she's a bouncy little cat who doesn't seem to mind the remaining handicaps. After that, we went over to EsCon, which is a board gaming convention right here in Escondido, run by a guy named Steve who has a collection rumored to be 4000-5000 board games and bring a few shelves of games to the Escondido Charter School auditorium so everyone can get together and play.  Basically, pick a few games, pick a table and grab a sign saying "Players Wanted", and there's a fair chance that people will sit down and start gaming with you. I was planning to just try some new games with Anne, since the setup was just perfect for grabbing any game off the shelf and seeing how it works ... bu...

I went to visit my brother Jon this weekend, and since he and his son were starting to play D&D together, there was a lot of D&D discussion, and for gifts I brought two new D&D books.  That was pleasant.  I'm glad the gifts fit in with their current levels and campaigns.  I went with the Humblewood campaign setting and the amazing Goodman Games big book of the Isle of Dread (history of the module, talks with the creators, conversion to 5e, and bonus items).  So: D&D is back. A bit later, he mentioned that he had something cool to show me.  Completely unexpected: he pulled my original D&D books from the early 80s out of his box of old gaming books.  Sure enough, those were them.  The bindings were wrecked from those years of use (almost weekly sessions from 1980 to 1985).  He showed where I had added two little stickers to the covers, and I had to agree, those were hilarious, and exactly the kind of thing Young Me would have don...

We tried Farm-Opoly on New Years Eve, while all kinds of explosions and noise and mayhem were going on outside.  It's really just Monopoly with different cards and renamed elements. The property cards all have funny stories or blurbs or info dumps on the backside, and some of the other cards are pretty funny, too. We went around until the first player was unable to pay a rent, then we declared the winner and got back to other things. We don't need to keep this one.  It's a perfect donation item, fun for younger players.

Triqueta looked like it would be fun and different, production was solid and the tiles were big and sturdy.  The setup was a pain (especially when one of our gaming group has shaky hands): getting all those pointy pieces into the perfect stacks.  Meh.  I guess they could have just been piles.  They looked nice in the clean stacks with the big tile for a lid.  My own hands were shaking by the time I got them all lined up and pushed together. It turn out that gameplay was odd.  When I read the rules, it sounded so simple: just pick a tile and either keep it face down or add it to a line of tiles, OR take a line of tiles and end your turn.  There are a total of four turns, and the face down tiles were limited to two PER GAME, not two per turn.  So we got it wrong first, then we tried a round with no face-down tiles, then we added the face-down tiles rule after we got a feel for the rest of the game. The scoring is easy: you try to make a triqueta (3-...