Latest / Pick Up and Deliver / Gate, I’m Pretty Savvy, Megaland, Adventurers: Temple of Chac (Revisited)

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Gate, I’m Pretty Savvy, Megaland, Adventurers: Temple of Chac (Revisited) · Pick Up and Deliver

• 0:04
  Welcome to pick up and delivered the podcast where I pick up my audio recorder
• 0:07
  as I step off the train and deliver an episode to you while I walk
• 0:10
  home. I'm Brendan Riley. Welcome afternoon, listeners. It's a lovely day
• 0:22
  here in suburb in Chicago. The sun is out, the clouds are up,
• 0:25
  and I am done with school. Who the semester is over. I
• 0:30
  have finished all my classes. I have a lot of grating left to do.
• 0:33
  I have a bunch of meetings in the next two weeks, and I
• 0:36
  have to get my summer work rolling. But all those things aside, I'm
• 0:40
  done teaching classes for a bit. I have a summer course too, So
• 0:43
  it's not like not like all this goes away, but it's you know,
• 0:46
  it's a different thing. So I'm walking home from the train, happy to
• 0:49
  talk to you about some games, and it occurs to me, I have
• 0:52
  some new games I've played that I haven't had a chance to talk about yet.
• 0:57
  So let's talk about some new games. That's right, it's time for
• 1:00
  a board game espresso triple shot. Boo. All right, So, if
• 1:04
  you're new to the podcast, a board game espresso a triple shot is where
• 1:07
  I do a quick discussion of three games I've played recently for the first time,
• 1:14
  and then I also usually mix in a little bit of commentary about one
• 1:18
  game that I've dusted off recently. Dusting off a game means playing it for
• 1:23
  the first time in over a year. So it's a game I've played before,
• 1:26
  but it's been more than the year since I've played it. It's like
• 1:29
  I'm dusting the dust off the game. You get it, all right.
• 1:33
  So the first game I'm going to talk about today is one I got in
• 1:37
  the Math trade in February. This is a game called Gate Now. Gate
• 1:42
  is made to be is designed to fit inside a mint tin, so all
• 1:49
  the cards are shaped so they fit in a mint tin. There are a
• 1:52
  few bigger, bigger cards that fit all the way in the mint tin,
• 1:57
  and then a couple of smaller game smaller cards that stack up in there.
• 2:01
  The game takes a number of cubes and comes with a series of small cards
• 2:07
  that are instructions. Gait is a pretty simple dungeon caller game where you are
• 2:12
  facing enemies, and with each enemy that you face, you have to decide
• 2:16
  how you want to battle it. You can take damage or you can battle
• 2:20
  it by expending resources, and then you gain resources when you kill it.
• 2:24
  If you don't kill it, then it does damage to the locations that are
• 2:29
  there, and if enough of the locations are damaged, then you lose the
• 2:32
  game. Each location gives you a buffer, so the longer you keep locations
• 2:36
  healthy, you get bonuses from them. But it's a game of complicate choices.
• 2:42
  Now, there is some luck to it, so on some level you
• 2:45
  just you can win or lose based on the cards, but it seems like
• 2:47
  mostly it's a little bit of skill, sort of like Freeman Free Friday,
• 2:52
  where a big part of it is kind of anticipating when it's a good idea
• 2:55
  to battle and when it's had a good idea to not battle. I played
• 3:00
  two rounds of this. I thought it was an interesting little game. I'm
• 3:02
  definitely going to hold onto it for a while. I think it'll be the
• 3:05
  kind of game where every so often I pull it out and play it a
• 3:08
  little bit. It'd be a good airplane game because it's, like I said,
• 3:12
  it comes in a mint tin. It's pretty small, but it also
• 3:15
  doesn't take up a huge amount of table space, so it works well in
• 3:19
  terms of what you're getting the actual play. The way that you fight the
• 3:23
  monsters is with a deck building element. So you have a small deck of
• 3:27
  cards. You can use those cards to fight the monsters, but then also
• 3:30
  buy more repair the locations and buy more cards, and of course, like
• 3:35
  most deck builders, then when you buy the cards, you draw new cards
• 3:38
  or they going to your discard pile and you draw new cards. As far
• 3:43
  as these kinds of games go, it's it's reasonably clever. The art style
• 3:46
  is an interesting kind of amateurish sketch but not unpleasant, well done, and
• 3:53
  the graphic design is consistent, if simple, So overall, I think Gate
• 3:58
  is well worth giving a try if if you have an opportunity, I'm not
• 4:01
  sure I would say to go buy it. But it's a pretty neat low
• 4:03
  game. So that's Gate. I apologize, I'm the I forgot to look
• 4:09
  up the designer. The designer is Jason Glover. That's published by Great Noime
• 4:15
  Games, which I believe is Jason Glover's publishing house. The next game I
• 4:18
  want to talk about is another self published game, and it's called I'm Pretty
• 4:24
  Savvy. I don't know the name of the designer of this one. It's
• 4:26
  not listed in the components of the game. But I played this as a
• 4:29
  party game that was introduced to me by a friend. It was brought over.
• 4:33
  It is a question answering party game, and it's got a couple of
• 4:38
  things that are a little different than most games of this sort. Most trivia
• 4:42
  games include the answers for the thing that you're giving trivia for, and I'm
• 4:46
  pretty savvy. Instead, what you get is these open ended questions that generally
• 4:51
  do have reasonable answers, like the group can come to a consensus. Yes,
• 4:58
  that is a reasonable answer for this question. No, that is not
• 5:00
  a reasonable answer for this question. So the group can as a group can
• 5:05
  come to a consensus about that, but at the same time, it is
• 5:09
  not guaranteed that they will, and generally the reaction is done pretty quickly,
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  so sometimes you would feel like you're trying to come to a consensus when in
• 5:18
  fact you are saying the answer really fast, and then people don't have time
• 5:24
  to block you. It's unclear from the game rules whether someone has to argue
• 5:28
  with you in real time or whether you can address it afterward. We decided
• 5:32
  to address it afterward, where just when you said your answers, so just
• 5:36
  give you an idea, it would be like three foods you eat with your
• 5:41
  hands might be example, And of course the game doesn't list all the foods
• 5:45
  to eat with your hands, but the idea is that you would choose something.
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  Now, if you said an answer that did not fit the category of
• 5:51
  a food you eat with your hands, somebody might say objection, and then
• 5:57
  it's unclear in the game rules, like are you supposed to adjudicate that objection
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  right away or you do it after the timer is up, because you only
• 6:03
  get thirty seconds to answer questions, so you know, at most you're doing
• 6:06
  like four cards if you're really fast, and if you have to stop and
• 6:10
  adjudicate those answers as soon as someone objects, you're missing on at least one
• 6:14
  card, if not all the rest of the cards. So we did as
• 6:15
  someone would say objection, we'd set that card aside, and then after the
• 6:19
  thirty seconds are over, then we would talk about what answer we felt did
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  not fit the category. I don't know if that's how you're supposed to play
• 6:26
  the game. The rules were very simple on just a single sheet of paper,
• 6:30
  so unclear. Nonetheless, it was pretty interesting to play the game.
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  We had a good time definitely falls into the category of passable. Most party
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  games I would say are passable. They're reasonably fun to play. They are
• 6:46
  an amusing way to spend twenty minutes or half an hour. They can result
• 6:50
  in some laughs, but often they're not memorable enough to say go buy or
• 6:57
  play again. And that's where I am with I'm pretty saddy. If someone
• 7:00
  brought it to a party and said, hey, I love this game,
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  can we play it? I can't imagine I say no, I don't want
• 7:04
  to play it. But if I was at somebody's house and say, hey,
• 7:06
  there's my shelf of party games, why don't you pick a game you
• 7:10
  want to play, I would never pick I'm pretty savvy, just because I've
• 7:13
  played it once and I've started seeing what it has to do. That said,
• 7:16
  if you have a chance to play it, I wouldn't necessarily turn it
• 7:18
  down. So that's I'm pretty Savvy published recently. You can get it from
• 7:23
  I'm Pretty Savvy dot com or I'm Pretty Savvy game dot com. If you
• 7:27
  search I'm Pretty Savvy game, you'll find the website for it. And then
• 7:30
  the third game that I want to, Oh, let's do a dusted off
• 7:33
  game. You know, last time that I mentioned the dusted off game,
• 7:38
  I talked about The Adventurers The Temple of Horace, and I said that the
• 7:42
  next time we had a game day with some of our friends, we would
• 7:45
  play the other Adventurers game, which is what we did. I'm pretty savvy,
• 7:49
  and the next game I'm going to talk about and the Adventurers. We're
• 7:53
  all played at this one game day with these friends. So we got out
• 7:57
  The Adventurers The Temple of Chalk, and the adventure is that if the adventure
• 8:01
  is The Pyramid of Horace is sort of inspired by a game where you're by
• 8:05
  the Mummy, where you're sneaking into an Egyptian temple and stealing treasure and the
• 8:11
  temple's collapsing around you as you're running out. The Temple of Shock is inspired
• 8:16
  by the first part of Indiana Jones and the Raiders of the Lost Arc,
• 8:18
  or as it was originally called Raiders of the Lost Ark. In that game,
• 8:22
  the beginning of the adventure starts with Indians Indiana Jones inside a temple and
• 8:28
  he steals a treasure, which starts a cascade of dangerous traps, including a
• 8:37
  huge rolling boulder that is going to roll down and block the door to the
• 8:41
  tunnel, leaving anyone who's stuck inside to die. So that's how the Temple
• 8:46
  of Shock starts. At the beginning of the game, all the characters are
• 8:50
  in the Temple and you're trying to get out, and the first thing that
• 8:52
  happens is that you run through this room that's got these runs on the floor,
• 8:58
  and it's and it's got walls that are closing in. The walls are
• 9:01
  represented by these plastic walls, and each round you're gonna draw a couple of
• 9:03
  cards in the walls will move in. I think there's a total of four
• 9:07
  rounds before the walls will close entirely. And basically you can use one of
• 9:13
  two things or one of three actions moving through that first room. You can
• 9:16
  move, you can search for treasure, or you can look at the ruins
• 9:20
  and the runs will tell you what tiles are dangerous in other rooms. So
• 9:24
  that's kind of fun. Once you get through that room, assuming you get
• 9:28
  through before the walls close. If you don't get through before the walls closed,
• 9:31
  you're smushed and you're dead. If you do get through before the walls
• 9:33
  closed, then the next thing is that there's this boulder that starts rolling,
• 9:37
  and actually the boulder starts rolling as soon as the game starts. But kind
• 9:41
  of the way the game works. In the first round, you roll I
• 9:45
  think you roll one die, and if that die is four, five or
• 9:48
  six, then the boulder moves one space. Then you're roll two dice,
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  and if it's four, five or six, either of the dice, they'll
• 9:56
  move one space for each die that is the right number. Then three,
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  then four, then maybe you start with three dice. I don't recall exactly,
• 10:01
  but the boulder is moving a number of spaces. And this is a
• 10:05
  big, plastic, chunky boulder, and of course your characters are little plastic
• 10:07
  pieces that you're running around on the board. Once you get out of the
• 10:11
  room where the walls are closing, then you run down the hall and you
• 10:13
  have a choice to either go through a room with collapsing floor tiles, or
• 10:18
  you can go through a room go around the side and try to get treasures
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  out of these alcoves. Now the collapsing floor tiles. The trick there is
• 10:24
  that when you move on to a floor tile, you check and see does
• 10:28
  it collapse or not. If it does not, then you can search it
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  for a treasure. If it does, you die, And of course you
• 10:33
  can tell if the floor is gonna fall or not based on did you see
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  that ruin in one of the four secret runs in the room with the walls
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  closing, So if you stopped and look at the ruins, then you can
• 10:45
  easily run across that floor. If you didn't stop and look at the ruins,
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  then it's much more dangerous. You have to follow someone else, basically,
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  and of course you can't get the treasury if they've revealed it and stolen
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  the treasure. The other thing you could do is run down this hallway and
• 10:56
  try to get these treasures out of the alcoves. That's a dice rolling channel
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  lee, and the boulder rolls through that hallway, so if you are on
• 11:03
  the path when the boulder gets to you, you're smushed in you die.
• 11:07
  Now, it doesn't sound fun to have all these ways to die, except
• 11:09
  the way the game works, you actually get two characters, and if you
• 11:13
  die, then you drop in through one of the ceiling holes and you get
• 11:16
  a second chance. You lose all your treasure that you had at first.
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  But it's easy to die in this game, so it's possible that if anybody
• 11:22
  if you're pushing your luck that you'll die. After the room with the falling
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  tiles in the room and the hallway with the alcoves, then there's a river
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  and another couple of alcoves. So you can either run along the path.
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  You can go over this bridge, which you could fall in if you roll
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  badly. You can go past these alcoves try to get more treasure. If
• 11:39
  you go down the river. Then when you get to the end of the
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  river, you can find treasure in the river. The end of the river,
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  you roll a die. You roll, you roll some dice and if
• 11:50
  you think if you roll any ones and then you die, it's pretty pretty
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  harsh, but that's the way the game goes. And then everybody get Everybody
• 11:56
  who gets out has a chance of winning based on how much treasure they had.
• 12:01
  I thought this game is pretty fun. It's a little more fiddly than
• 12:05
  the Pyramid of Horace. We think the Pyramid of Horace is more fun because
• 12:09
  it's not quite so complicated this one because each room works a little differently.
• 12:13
  It's a lot more complication. This game is also older. I think I
• 12:16
  don't know if either of these is easier or harder to find, but this
• 12:20
  is the one that I think people remember most because the boulder. I will
• 12:22
  say also, this game has a more extreme problem with the French art.
• 12:26
  Both of these games were made by French companies and then I think republished in
• 12:31
  America. I'm not sure who published the Temple of Chalk. The Pyramid of
• 12:37
  Horror of Horace was I believe published by Fantasy Flight, but the art is
• 12:41
  done by these French artists, and this is the style I've seen. The
• 12:45
  thing it most reminds me of is City of Horror has this problem too,
• 12:50
  which is that particularly female characters are drawn in a hyper sexualized way, and
• 12:54
  in the Adventurer's Temple of Chalk, it's particularly bad that all the characters are
• 13:00
  drawn super hypersexualized, with lots of cleavage showing and tiny waists, and it's
• 13:07
  just not in keeping with the kind of imagery we want to see in games
• 13:13
  these days. So that is a major downside for this game and something that
• 13:16
  every puddy who was playing commented on when the game appeared. Nonetheless, we
• 13:22
  had a good time with it, and I'm happy to have the game to
• 13:26
  get to play it every now and again. It's not a thing I want
• 13:28
  to break out all the time, but I certainly like to play it occasionally.
• 13:31
  So that's the Adventurers the Temple of Chalk game dusted off. So the
• 13:35
  last game I want to talk about today is a game I tried recently.
• 13:37
  This is not a new one. This was a target game for a while
• 13:39
  and then became more widely available. This is megaland megaland is a pushy luck
• 13:45
  game from Ryan Lockett, roughly premised on the idea of playing a running as
• 13:50
  a running a platformer type of adventure. The ideas you're running through a video
• 13:56
  game. You're jumping from thing to thing try to score points. You get
• 14:01
  points by defeating different kinds of enemies, are getting a certain distance. As
• 14:07
  you take damage, you have to decide do I keep going or not.
• 14:11
  It's sort of like Ink and Gold in that way, except that each player
• 14:13
  has a different level of damage. And then, like in Machi Koro or
• 14:18
  something, you're buying buildings, and the buildings then help you accumulate more treasure.
• 14:22
  The goal is to get I think it was twenty treasure by the end
• 14:26
  of the game, and when we got to the end, we had multiple
• 14:28
  people who had over twenty treasure, so it was an interesting thing where nobody
• 14:33
  had it, and then in the last round several people had it. This
• 14:37
  is a huge game. Definitely a good family friendly style of game, easy
• 14:41
  to play, about fifteen or twenty minutes. Definitely a game I would enjoy.
• 14:45
  I think as far as push you Luck games go, I like it
• 14:48
  better than dead Man's Draw because you are all playing at the same time,
• 14:54
  as opposed to like dead Man's Right, you're taking turns one at a time.
• 14:58
  I don't like it as much as inc and Gold. Then again,
• 15:00
  I think of Inco and Gold is very nearly a perfect push your luck game,
• 15:05
  so I don't It's hard for me to say, like, oh yeah,
• 15:07
  it stands up to Ink and Gold. Well, there are a few
• 15:09
  games that do, but overall megal end is pretty fun. It's designed and
• 15:13
  published by Ryan Lockett at Red Raven Games, and you can find it at
• 15:18
  your local game store or at Target. I would recommend checking it out if
• 15:22
  you like push your luck games. It is very light though, so family
• 15:24
  friendly, fair not the full meal for a game night probably well. That
• 15:30
  brings me to the end of the Board Game Espresso episode. If you'd like
• 15:33
  to comment, on any of these games, or let us know what you've
• 15:35
  been playing. Head over to board game gi Gil three two six nine and
• 15:37
  share your experiences there. We'd love to hear them. Until next time,
• 15:41
  I'm Brendan Riley, and thanks for joining me. I hope that your next
• 15:45
  box this is Plus Into His Mind One but Bye. Brought to you by Rattlebox Game