mini-reviews

Jekyll and Hyde: The Ressurection [Music]: Each of the various albums produced for the Jekyll and Hyde musical are subtly different. This is especially true of The Ressurection, which has a psychedelic rock backing track (which is particularly prominent for the parts sung by Hyde). It's interesting, and Alive is definitely not an earworm you want to have when you haven't had enough sleep and are feeling more than a touch insane yourself. Stone Age: [Boardgame]: Players take turns placing their meeple in various areas of the board. In some areas, which can only take one meeple (or two if they are breeding), the capabilities of your tribe are increased. In others, the number of meeples in the area indicate the number of dice that are thrown when gathering resources. The sum of the dice, divided by the rarity of the resource (food = 2 ... gold = 6; round down) indicates the number of resources your tribe gathers. These resources are then used by other meeples to build huts and earn culture and special cards that grant you victory points. And then you need to feed your tribe. Interesting and quite fun game, although rolling bad can be very discouraging. Still, thanks to the inadvertent contributions of the other players I was able to build the solid granite hut of worth 35 VP (most "normal" huts are worth about 13 VP). Rotterdam [Boardgame]: You are trying to unload your ships in the port of Rotterdam. The problem is the harbour is rather busy, and ships keep getting in each others way. Each turn each player gets to choose a colour along which all players may move their ships in an attempt to get to the appropriate berths. Provided that no ship is in front of them when they try to move. An interesting game, but made rather nasty by the harbour cards (which are vicious attacks you can make against other players, in addition to the problems in navigating the harbour). Escape From The Aliens In Outer Space [Not A Boardgame]: Half the players are nasty aliens, the other half are humans trying to reach the escape pods and get away from their damaged spaceship (and the hungry aliens it contains). Humans start from one point, aliens from another. Moving through the well-lighted parts of the ship is fine, but half the ship is in pitch darkness. And moving through that could cause you to make an unfortunate noise that gives away your location. Played on individual maps on which the players plot their course. If an alien thinks it is in a hex with a human it can reveal itself, killing whatever is there (even other aliens. since no one knows who is an alien or a human in the dark). And since the aliens can move twice as fast as the poor humans you have to hope that the aliens get distracted by other noises... Surprisingly tense and somewhat tricky. Space Alert [Boardgame]: Galactic Survey is generally months of boredom interspersed with ten minutes of absolute terror. The players are the crew of a survey ship that has jumped into a hostile sector. It's going to take 10 minutes (real time) for the jump engines to recharge and the ship to jump out of there. You have to deal with whatever is happening. Comes with audio CDs that has the ships computer detailing the events of those ten minutes for each scenario. A lot harder than it sounds. Real time. Alien Frontiers [Boardgame]: You have a fleet of spaceships represented by a set of dice. Each turn you roll the dice and assign them to various resources. Some require doubles or triples, other a straight or even just a six, or reaching a certain total. The object is to garner technology to build enough bases on the moon to win. Controlling parts of the moon, and discovering alien technology, can give you special abilities. Interesting in that it presents a set of possibilities and then encourages you to find the best possible use for them. And other players get in the way. Although the extremely irritating thing is that I'm back to wanting to buy games I will probably not get to play. The interesting stuff is old hat to the fanatical Eurogamer but too complicated for the social gamer. The fun stuff is too simple for the Eurogamer but can I justify spending several hundred dollars on a game which might get played once every few years. <sigh>