#Polyomino Games

[whovian223]

Friday Night Shots - Polyomino Games

Friday Night Shots - Polyomino Games @LookoutSpiele @AdamsAppleGames @CityofGamesHQ

It’s Friday again! Weekends are awesome, aren’t they? But I’m pleased that you spend your Friday night (or Saturday morning, maybe?) hanging out with me, having a drink or two (we do have water or pop!) and just commiserating about board games. We’ll just leave the Loverboy on the jukebox, though I will turn it down so we can actually hear. It’s not like there are any other crowd noises in…

[harpgriffin]

Birds Organized Neatly Preview

This is one of those games where you put shapes into a grid to solve it. Here, the polyominos are made of cartoon birds. The birds make noises when you click them. There's nothing new in this game compared to DUI's previous entries Cats Organized Neatly and Dogs Organized Neatly, though I think the puzzles are unique to each game. There are no hints, but you can freely skip and return to levels and there's no timer. There's also a dark mode and an option to disabled animations. It's also still mouse only.

[games-franco]

First game of Planet Unknow!🪐🛸

[theresattrpgforthat]

do you have any recommendations for crunchy games with good magic item / crafting systems? Or anything that has a between clouds or salvage union esque home base / transport design system?

Theme: Crafting/Journey Crunch

Hello friend, I did a little bit of digging and I've got a few games that hit one or the other of your requirements, and possibly a few that do both. I hope something here tickles your fancy!

SCRAPS, by Cezar Capacle.

Ayera is a hopeful world built among the ruins of a long lost ancient civilization. It is a place of harmony and symbiosis, in which unimaginable flora and fauna is to be found by anyone who leaves their settlements and travels unexplored paths. You are a Scrapper, an adventurer who devotes their life to exploring the land, finding special ingredients, bringing them back to their workshops, and crafting their wondrous personal and community projects.

Scraps is a feel-good game about sharing, about harmony with nature, about bewilderment and curiosity.

This game uses polyominoes and d6s to help design things that you’ll be crafting throughout play. The entire game loop revolves around crafting - you draft a plan, gather materials in the wilderness, and then come home and craft. The game is also non-violent: your obstacles don’t require combat to bypass. It is both solo and multi-player friendly, so if you want to play this game and don’t have a good group for it, lack of other players is not an obstacle. This was the winner of the Best Solarpunk DIY game in the Applied Hope: Solarpunk & Utopias Jam, and I can see why.

Mectors, by Chubby Crow Games.

In Mectors, players take on the role of a farmer, miner, fisher, carpenter, or some other worker in a labor intensive field. Mector Owners come from all kinds of backgrounds. Some own a Mector that’s been in their family for generations. Others came across theirs recently, through purchase or luck. And a rare few have managed to piece their own together using scraps from decommissioned Mectors, but this is even harder than it sounds. No matter how they got it, they now have a powerful tool with a long history.

This game has a few elements that might fall into what you’re looking for. First is the creation of your community. This is a fairly simple process in which you decide what kinds of guilds and political forces might affect your community, the names of specific NPCs who live there, and points of interest connected to your character playbooks. The second element is the use of Scrap, a resource that can be used to improve your community or improve your Mechs. There’s not really a lot of picklists or option sets - much of what you decide will either be determined by the pre-written setting or created wholesale by your crew.

Buried Treasures, by iotsov.

Buried Treasures takes place in a dangerous setting without modern-day tech. It contains two suggested settings: Whitewater, a town surrounded by danger, and “Let Me Out” a post-apocalypse.

At the core of this Renaissance-inspired TTRPG is its recipe system. Recipes are non-magical spells, and can be anything from combat maneuvers through invention schematics to actual cooking recipes. Players are slowly eased into creating and upgrading recipes, allowing them to design unique characters. Recipes also typically become the source of greatest power – in the unlikely event that the characters survive that far into the game.

I’m not a big fan of the Whitewater setting, and I’d recommend taking some time to write a bit of your own history and world instead, if you want something more similar to fantasy. The “Let Me Out” setting includes the idea that you have a bunker from which your characters have merged, with some questions you can answer as you create your colony. From there you will adventure into a landscape that references the SCP website for encounters.

What this game does have, however, is an interesting advancement system. All of your skills are based on “recipes”, which require research and various ingredients if you are to level up your skill. These skills can be magical or non-magical, and while they affect your character’s abilities, the in-game conceit is that these abilities are granted through crafted items. Some of the details of those items are left to the character’s imagination, but if you want a game with meticulous inventory and record-keeping required, you might want to check out Buried Treasures.

Cast Away, by Afterthought Committee.

Cast Away is the definitive tabletop survival RPG. Its Diminishing Dice mechanics reflect the ever-worsening condition of survivors in the aftermath of a disaster—without tracking Hit Points or burdensome injury tables. Death is permanent, therefore, we've created a Haunting system that keeps players engaged long after their characters pass away. Cast Away contains a modular set of guidelines and is easily adapted to any setting, environment, or circumstance. 

Survival games will either necessitate travel or a home base to keep yourself safe. Cast Away contains recommendations on how to facilitate role-play in hostile environments, and also makes passing reference to building shelters. If your characters are stranded, I can imagine much of the game will revolve around how they use their resources around them to stay alive. There’s very little to no mechanics for combat here - instead you have skills related to crafting, cooking, hiking, navigation and more.

The rules themselves are very simple, but I think including a pre-generated setting may help with the sensation of discovery and danger. One such setting might be Backwoods Cartography, by Backwoods Cartographer, which includes plenty of dangerous flora and fauna - although the NPC encounters might be best left for a different style of game.

Cosmos, by Neoth Games.

As a resident of the Belt you’ve seen exploitation, you’ve seen struggle, you’ve watched those around you be slowly ground into shells of their former selves. Now you’ve had enough. Its time for someone to do something.

Your crew has set out to make a difference, to be the fly striking back at the giant corporation that has seemingly set out to single-handedly ruin life in this sector of space. Struggle will not be easy, but any difference you can make counts for something.

But just remember, Oracle is watching.

Cosmos features all you need to play a game of resistance within the corporate controlled asteroid belt. Inside are all the rules, advancements, example journeys, locations, and adversaries.

In Cosmos, you’ll have a spaceship that carries you from place to place, and if you like the idea of improving a home base, this game has options for you. You can increase available space, as well as add medicine and weapons. You’ll have to maintain the hull if it sustains damage, and running out of fuel sounds like a possible problem as well. There’s also different size ships, which don’t just play into what’s available to your crew - it also shows you what kinds of craft you could end up fighting as well.

Cosmos also has Journey rules. Each Journey has an origin, a destination, linked encounters, difficulty levels, how stressful it may be, and example obstacles or events that may occur as you travel. As rebels and renegades, travel is fraught and dangerous, and it looks like the journey rules are meant to reflect that.

Games I've Recommended in the Past

Reclaim the Wild

The Wildsea, by Felix Isaacs.

Numenera, by Monte Cook Games (Especially the Destiny book and the Building Tomorrow supplement.)

[anonsally]

Days 0-1 of family vacation

So far things are going reasonably well, despite a lack of sleep.

Day 0

Yesterday, I took dance class in the morning, then rushed home to finish packing and getting organised for the trip. We were aiming to leave by 1:30, which didn't happen, but we loaded up the car and left around 2pm. I drove the whole way to the vacation rental (south of Santa Cruz), without stopping for a break until we had nearly arrived. I was proud of myself for driving on the freeway (which I usually avoid), including a winding mountain highway and, in some areas, heavy traffic.

We were the first to arrive, around 4:30 or so, but my brother's family arrived a few minutes after we opened the door. They had the right priorities: they immediately walked across the street and up the stairs to the top of the dune to look at the sun setting over Monterey Bay! We joined them, of course. My parents and uncle arrived just after sunset.

We chose bedrooms, had Thai food delivered for dinner, and then played Isle of Cats, a very complex (at least for a beginner!) game involving polyomino cats. Fun! But that meant I was up until 2am. oops.

Wildlife: a coyote just before sunset as we were arriving.

Day 1

Unfortunately, I woke up around 7:20 and it took a while to doze off again, so I'm not super well-rested. But I got up around 9:15; my dad was the only one up. Around 11:30, when a few other people had gotten up, he and I went across the street and over the dune to the beach to look at birds. My dad got hungry after a bit and went home for lunch, but I took a longer bird walk along the beach and a river mouth (about an hour and a half) and saw a lot of birds, including what I believe were my first ever snowy plovers! (I'm pretty sure. Is that possible, @lies? There were about 45 of them. Many were sitting in little indentations in the sand. They're so cute!) I also saw an osprey, a black phoebe, a great blue heron, lots of sanderlings and willets, several long-billed curlews, a couple semi-palmated plovers, a western grebe, a couple of marbled godwits, buffleheads, surf scoters, some unidentified cormorants and gulls, and at least 500 brown pelicans (mostly at the mouth of the river or a little upstream)! There were also four turkey vultures eating a dead marine mammal, and I saw the (at least partially) decomposed carcass of what might have once been a dolphin.

On my way back, I ran into my brother and his family, followed by Wife, so I told them where to find the pelicans! In the later afternoon, after some discussion about food planning, Wife, my mother and I drove into town to the health food store. (Such a trip is part of every vacation for Wife and me.) In the evening, we had pizza delivered and then played So Clover, a cooperative word game in which each person has to clue 4 pairs of random words (the clue for each pair is a single word) on cards arranged in a square, and then they shuffle the cards and add another, and everyone else has to use the clues to reconstruct the correct arrangement of words. There was much hilarity!

So far, everyone is getting along pretty well!

[ablegaming]

Accessibility in Board Gaming

Board gaming can be a fantastic alternative to video gaming, allowing you the freedom to take your turn in your own time and the ability to stop and check the directions or ask someone for help/clarification at any time. More and more board games are being released with a solo mode these days as well, which I appreciate!

Colorblindness can be a real concern when board gaming, so it’s best to play in a well-lit room and choose player/meeple colors that can be easily identified and differentiated, and substitute if needed. Photosensitivity and motion-sickness thankfully aren’t much of a concern in board gaming, aside from the occasional dizzying pattern design. Physical impact and pain can be an issue with board gaming, due to card shuffling, fast tile playing, and setup/teardown for gameplay. Having someone to help you set up and put away games, playing slower-paced games, and using an auto-shuffler may help reduce these concerns.

I’ve chosen my top 20 favorite board games, which I’m sure will change over time haha. I gravitate towards fun easy-medium complexity games that are fairly simple to set up and aren’t too much of a time-sink. My hope is that you discover a new game or two to play and enjoy!

1) Everdell* 1–4 players (6 with expansion), 40–80 minutes Everdell is a card collection, resource management, and worker placement game where you play as a group of animal meeples trying to collect the most victory points by adding buildings and settlers to your village.

2) Dominion* 2–4 players (6 with expansion), 30–60 minutes Dominion is a deck collection card game in which you compete against other players to collect money and purchase the most land for your dominion.

3) Fjords Original release: 2 players, 30 minutes Re-release: 2–4 players, 30–45 minutes Fjords is a tile-laying strategy game where players create the landscape in the first phase, and compete for the most connected settlements in the second phase.

4) Cottage Garden 1–4 players, 40–60 minutes Cottage Garden is a relaxing polyomino puzzle game where players compete to plant flowers in order to complete the most garden plots.

5) Bohnanza 2–7 players, 45 minutes Bohnanza (or Beans as it’s often called) is a card collection game where players compete to plant different types of beans in their fields by drawing and trading cards, harvested crops are then worth victory points. There is a 2 player only version also available called Bohnanza: The Duel.

6) Cascadia 1–4 players, 30–45 minutes Cascadia is a tile-laying strategy game where players expand their landscape and try to create patterns in their wildlife populations in order to score points.

7) Scrabble* 2-4 players, 40 minutes Scrabble is the classic two player word puzzle game, where players draw letter tiles and attempt to make words on a shared crossword-style board.

8) Wingspan* 1–5 players, 40–70 minutes Wingspan is a card collection game about attracting many species of birds to your region, collecting and storing food, and laying eggs. Wingspan: Asia is also available and plays up to 7 players.

9) Agricola: All Creatures Big and Small or Family Edition Agricola: All Creatures Big and Small 2 players, 30 minutes Agricola: All Creatures Big and Small is a two-player worker placement game in which players expand their farms and raise animals to collect victory points. Agricola: Family Edition 1–4 players, 45 minutes Agricola: Family Edition plays similarly to All Creatures Big and Small but accommodates up to four players, and in addition to raising animals players must also grow crops to feed their families.

10) Mountain Goats 2–4 players (5 with expansion), 20 minutes Mountain Goats is a simple dice-rolling and strategy game where players roll dice to race to the top of each mountain and collect the most points.

11) Qwirkle 2–4 players, 30 minutes Qwirkle is a tile-laying strategy game where players make patterns with matching colors and shapes, building off of the previous moves to create score combos. Colorblindness can make this game a little bit confusing, I recommend playing in a well-lit room and keeping colors that you have a hard time differentiating a ways apart from each other. For example, one of the sets of colors I struggle with is blue and purple, so I’ll keep the blue and purple tiles in my “hand” separated upright on the table so I won’t mix them up.

12) Bananagrams 2–7 players, 10–20 minutes Bananagrams is a fast-paced letter tile crossword-style game, similar to Scrabble but there is no game board, it’s a race to the finish, and up to seven players can play.

13) Village Green 1–5 players, 30 minutes Village Green is a card collection strategy game where players attempt to collect the most points by creating patterns of flowers, statues, and water features in their village green.

14) Settlers of Catan* 3–4 players (6 with expansion), 60 minutes Settlers of Catan is a cut-throat strategic resource management and building game, in which players compete to build roads and settlements.

15) Shifting Stones 1–5 players, 20 minutes Shifting Stones is a strategy game where players attempt to line up tiles in specific patterns in order to gain points.

16) Pokemon: The Card Game* 2 players, 20–30 minutes Pokemon TCG is a card deck building and battling game, where two players face off off battling Pokémon until all six of their opponent’s Pokémon are knocked out.

17) Dawn of Peacemakers 1–5 players, 60–120 minutes Dawn of Peacemakers is a unique strategy game in which players work together to cleverly attempt to stop two warring armies from fighting at the same moment. There is an over-arching story that is gradually revealed across many playthroughs. There is also an alternate skirmish mode where battles can be fought against each other.

18) Forbidden Island 2–4 players, 30 minutes Forbidden Island is a cooperative game in which each player has a different kind of character and movement ability, and all players must work together to collect the four island treasures and escape the island before it’s fully submerged underwater. There are two other games in this cooperative series: Forbidden Desert and Forbidden Sky, so if you like the concept but prefer either a desert or a steampunk theme check ‘em out!

19) Kingdom Builder 2–4 players (5 with expansion), 45 minutes Kingdom Builder is a strategy game where players compete to build the most settlements in specific patterns across several terrain types in order to score the most points.

20) Hive* 2 players, 20 minutes Hive is a two player strategy game that is similar to chess, in which players use their insect tiles (different insect types move differently) to try to surround and capture their opponent’s queen bee.

Several of these games are available in digital editions as well, on Android, iOS, Steam, Nintendo Switch, Xbox One, Xbox X/S, PlayStation 4, and PlayStation 5. Games with digital versions available are marked with *

Keep an eye out for my future accessibility reviews of digital board games, and please feel free to comment with your favorite board game recommendations!

This post can also be read and listened to (text-to-speech) on my Medium page at: https://medium.com/@AbleGaming/accessibility-in-board-gaming-1cd028944221

[ghostpalmtechnique]

Board games for 2+ players, simple to medium complexity, under $50, preferably related to dogs

Thank you!

There are surprisingly few well-rated board games that feature dogs compared to other animals, and I haven't played any of them. Maybe Dog Park? (This is too expensive on Amazon, but there appear to be new copies available on boardgamegeek.com for much less.)

Alternatives featuring other animals:

I really like Wild Space, which is a set-collection/action-chaining card game featuring anthropomorphic rhino, bear, octopus, lizard, owl, and monkey astronauts. (You can see the art here: https://boardgamegeek.com/boardgame/298371/wild-space)

The Isle of Cats is a good polyomino tile-laying game about... cats. (https://boardgamegeek.com/boardgame/281259/isle-cats)

If you prefer your animals wild, you could try Cascadia (https://boardgamegeek.com/boardgame/295947/cascadia). This is also the easiest to learn of all three, although I wouldn't regard any of them as super-complex.

Late edit: If we stretch the definition of "dog", you could look at The Wolves (https://boardgamegeek.com/boardgame/368058/wolves).

[thescienceofdeductionandmore]

Anna Turns 20!

Anna woke up on her 20th birthday. “Wee,” she exclaimed. “I’m 20. Yesterday I was 19 but today I’m 20.” 

“Wait! How did I gain an entire year in one day? That doesn’t make sense.” she thought to herself. Then she drank some coffee, got the cobwebs out of her brain, and remembered that that isn’t how birthdays work.

She looked around her room, wondering what 20-year-olds are supposed to do. After all, she had never been one before. She ran over to the full-length mirror on her wall and looked at herself. “Nope. I didn’t get taller since yesterday,” she thought to herself. “Oh well.”

So she sat down on her bed and decided to come up with as many fun facts as she could about the number 20.

This is what she came up with:

20 is a pronic number. [Who knows what that means?]

20 is a tetrahedral number as 1, 4, 10, 20. [Who knows what that means?]

20 is the basis for vigesimal number system.[Who knows what that means?]

20 is the third composite number to be the product of a squared prime and a prime, and also the second member of the (22)q family in this form.

20 is the smallest primitive abundant number.

An icosahedron has 20 faces.

 A dodecahedron has 20 vertices.

20 can be written as the sum of three Fibonacci numbers uniquely, i.e. 20 = 13 + 5 + 2.

20 is the most number of moves required to optimally solve a Rubik's Cube in the worst case.

20 is the number of parallelogram polyominoes with 5 cells.

20 is the atomic number of calcium.

20 is the third magic number in physics.

20 is the number of legal opening moves in chess.

20 is the age - following the Babylonian captivity - of the Levites who were assigned "to oversee the work of the house of the Lord"

20 is the length of the period of a hockey game

20 is the telephone country code to dial Egypt

20 is the number of questions in 20 questions

When she finished coming up with her list, Anna was exhausted from all that thinking and fell back asleep. Then she had cake.

[bgeurotrash]

Board game review - Remember our Trip

As both American style and European Style games a becoming every larger, longer and more complex, there has opened up room for a new style of game to take foothold in the hobby. Japanese Style games distinguishing themselves by returning to basics and focusing on simple yet unique system that, when done correct, allow players the same depth that you would find in an European style game, with only a fraction of the rules overhead.

Japanese style games have been on the rise for quite a while, with the smash 2012 hits Love Letter (by designer Seiji Kanai) and Trains (by designer Hisashy Hayashi) marking the start of a slow and steady growth ultimatley ending up where we are today, with Japanese games being such a huge and defined genre that I would dare to say it should be one of the "styles" up there with American and European. With great designers like Shinzawa and Sasaki (of Oink fame) there is no wonder why. Among these great designers sit Saashi, originally becoming popular of their push-your-luck game Coffee Roaster (2015). Today ill be reviewing on of their games; Remeber our Trip; a game about collectivelt trying to remember a trip.

CORE GAMEPLAY

Remeber Our Trip is a sort of odd polyomino game where you are allowed a large amount of flexibility, as the tokens you draft cover only a single square. Though it is not until you've put enough matching tokens next to eachother you may claim them as a "polyomino". When you do so you get a base amount of points (larger polyominoes giving more points) and then you check the shared map. If there is already a polyomino in the location matching where you just constructed a polyomino on your map, you score points if your tokens match that polyomino; one point per token that matches. If there is no polyomino though, you're in luck! You get to place a new polyomino and then score points for all your tokens, as they will match the newly placed polyomino.

So far so good! You draft tiles, race to construct polyominoes or try to match the ones already made. Here's the twist that's going to throw a spanner into your works: every turn you're only allowed to place your tiles within a very specific area, greatly restricting how you can place. Often, come late-game, you'll find yourself throwing away quite a few of your precious drafted tiles. They do not fit into this turns pattern on your already overcrowded tiny board.

COMPONENTS

I love Saashi's visual style. It's stylish in an incredibly charming way and it's simplicity leads to a board that is beautifull, yet incredibly easy to parse; making sure that you never lose because you missed a detail.

The cardboard is good quality, and while the strips of paper you use to cover up the board in the hard mode can be a bit flimsy, the thinness of them almost makes the component seem to dissapear as you play the game (a good thing). The box is also about as big as it needs to be, so it won't take too much shelf space and is easy to transport.

FLOW

The structure of this game is a work of art itself, starting hopefull. You'll place tokens willy nilley all over the place, making a mental note that you'll come back and finish that polyomino eventually. But as the short (12 rounds) game inches ever closer to the end you slowly but surely start to panic. Plans get ruined as you are forced to place suboptimally, always doing ever larger tradeoffs to try and at least squeeze some out of this terrible system before the game abruptly ends. It flows so well, both round to round and game to game.

TURN-OFFS

Spoiler alert: I adore this game. These are things that aren't necessarily bad, but if some of these turn you off it could be an indication this game isn't for you:

The game is hard and punishing. Small mistakes may cascade into huge problems later in the game, if not fixed carefully early.

The game can be somewhat counter-intuitive. It's by no means a rules heavy game, but it can still be somewhat difficult to teach; especially to non-gamers.

CONCLUSION

As already stated, I adore this game. I think it's pretty damn perfect in just about every way. Witty and innovative gameplay, a charming and unique theme (complimented wonderfully by amazing artwork). This is absolutely one to get if you like short, relatively abstract, difficult games.

Music pairing:

For this game I would reccomend the album "Good Morning" by No. 9.

[boardgoats]

3rd September 2024

By the time Blue, Purple and Pine arrived, Cobalt was already half-way through a solo game of Isle of Cats: Explore & Draw, a “roll and write” version of the card-drafting, polyomino cat-tile-placing game, Isle of Cats.  In Explore & Draw, instead of drafting cards before choosing tiles, players choose a set of cards each turn and then draw their “discoveries” on their boats.  In this version of…

[tksstgiftguide]

Complete mini polyomino (think Tetris piece) puzzle boards to earn points and pieces. As the puzzles get bigger, it's harder completely them, but you can upgrade pieces or play master actions to complete them over multiple turns. And all the while, your opponents are trying to complete their puzzles, too.

Project L is an engine building strategy game that's great for families. On our list! Get it online or at your local gaming store.

Get this game

[afactaday]

#aFactADay2022

#461: the tetromino comes from the word domino - in the 60s or so, some people decided that the do in domino sounds a bit like it could mean two, so they made polyominoes a thing. the same guy, Alexei Pejitnov, also designed a game using pentominoes, of which there are 18. (there is only one domino, two triominoes and seven tetrominoes.) the word domino actually means the hood of monks but the etymology of the tile is rather uncertain, apparently coming from PIE-root Dom meaning home (from which dominate and dominion also derive).

[harpgriffin]

Cat Box Preview

This game is basically Cats Arranged Neatly with a different art style. There's no hint function and you can only play one level at a time, making it inferior to that tile arranging game from an accessibility perspective. Given the developer's other games, I don't think this is meant as a clone, and the puzzles seem to be different at least, but I can't really get behind it for just the looks.

[cardboardedison]

Making a game with polyominoes? Here are a bunch of different methods for prototyping the pieces:

https://bsky.app/profile/perpetualploy.bsky.social/post/3k5inx3nnuf2r

[dragonblogger]

Pick up Monolyth Board Game on Amazon https://amzn.to/3PxdgfO Every player builds their own block of stones in Monolyth, using 3D polyominoes to create patches of particular colors, complete levels, and a structure that matches a pattern. Follow our Amazon Influencer Store for more photos, vids and product recommends https://ift.tt/xlYAHmE Disclosure: By clicking on links and purchasing any products from the video description or comments we may earn affiliate commissions from Amazon or other affiliate programs we are part of. #commissionearned by ShoppingDragons

[refreshdaemon]

Despite its relative lightness, there's a lot going on in this somewhat long and unwieldy, but also satisfying drafting and polyomino laying game with a weird theme.