Hopefully you’ve had a chance to get Kingdomino to your table. If not, check out our Kingdomino review. Veteran game designer, Bruno Cathala, has taken his tile laying hit and made it accessible for a younger audience.

How to Play

Dragomino plays very similarly to its predecessors but much simpler.

As a new Dragon Rider you’ve been tasked with exploring the land to discover the most dragons!

Each player starts with the same base tile. On a player’s turn they take two actions: visit places, then show their discoveries. Visiting places is merely taking a tile from the 4 laid out. Showing discoveries entails placing the newly gathered tile and connecting it to the player’s tiles in front of them.

Doing this creates connections. After a player has placed their tile they check their connections. For each new connection where the landscapes are different, nothing happens. For each connection where they match, take a corresponding dragon egg! There are several landscapes and dragon eggs that match: desert, snow, prairies, forests, mountains, and volcanoes. Flip the dragon egg over to see if you hatched a baby dragon and place the dragon/shell token between the two matched tiles.…

The post Dragomino Game Review appeared first on Meeple Mountain.

Out in the wild west it’s every person for themselves. You take what you need and build what you can. The people need a new mayor so they’ve started a competition to see who can make the best town. The trick is to control the flow of resources, build the best town, and put your buildings in locations that will make your citizens happiest. If you enjoy engine building, city planning, resource management, and controlling chaotic dice rolls, you should check out Tumble Town by Weird Giraffe Games.

Them’s the Rules, Pardner

In Tumble Town you are one of the competitors in the running to be named mayor. You must roll dice and construct buildings. You receive points based on building placement, building cards, and a secret goal card unique to you.

There are four colors of dice used as resources: black, gray, red, and gold. Whenever at least two of the dice colors get down to two or fewer dice this triggers the end of the game and you finish the round.

During your turn you will go through four phases: Claim, Take Dice and Roll, Construct and Use Powers, Place and Discard Extra Dice. During your Claim phase you choose any Building Plan card and place it to the…

The post Tumble Town Game Review appeared first on Meeple Mountain.

There’s a tale of the lost Pyramid of Pengqueen that is full of treasures. This has piqued the interest of some talented penguin adventurers. After months of searching they finally found the secret entrance hidden in the kitchen of their old school! After following the path down into a massive underground cave they found standing in the middle of the Pyramid of Pengqueen.

The penguins gathered their courage and entered the pyramid but were trapped when the gate slammed shut behind them. They looked around in fear and heard a frightening sound, something was shuffling and moaning off in the distant shadows, then they heard a voice whisper to them…

“Foolish penguins, I may be old, but I still have the power to drag you down into my tomb for all eternity.”

They awakened the Pengqueen and now their only chance of escape is to move fast and collect a specific set of magical treasures which will break the mummy’s curse and allow the adventurers to escape with their lives...and the treasure!

How does it play?

This is a hidden movement press your luck game. It’s set up so that one player is the Pengqueen, the mummy penguin queen, and the other players are the treasure hunting penguins. There are two sides,…

The post Pyramid of Pengqueen Game Review appeared first on Meeple Mountain.

What Is It?

On Saturday, June 15, game stores around the world celebrate a special day: Free RPG Day. In honor of this genre of games and this unique style of storytelling, all of our articles this week will be Roleplaying Game related. If you haven’t had an opportunity to dive into this particular hobby this is a great week to learn about it and get a taste of what’s out there. To kick off this week of RPG let me tell you a little about what’s going on Saturday.

Free RPG Day is a day where you can pick up free roleplaying quick start rules and adventure modules. If you are familiar with Free Comic Book Day it’s a lot like that, but better.

The post The Beginner’s Guide to Free RPG Day appeared first on Meeple Mountain.

To put it simply; I love Eleminis.

I’ll go into detail later but let me just gush a moment. It is easy to play, simple to teach, and so very magical, especially for kids. This card game has made itself so incredibly accessible that every age I played with had an extremely positive response. Often they wanted to play again and again. Is this game for everyone right out of the box? No, but it could be, if you’re inventive enough.

So, let’s find out what makes this game so great.

Gameplay

The goal of the game is to collect one of each of the five elements and place it in front of you: Fire, Rock, Water, Air, and Plant. Eleminis keeps it simple. Draw a card and play it. The card itself will tell you all the things you can do with it. Each player has five spaces in front of them where cards can be placed. It’s a strategic game of Rock, Paper, Scissors, where Fire burns Plant and Air, Plant swallows Air and Water, Air blows away Water and Rock, Water washes Rock and Fire, and Rock crushes Fire and Plant. The cards are cute miniature elements…

The post Eleminis Game Review appeared first on Meeple Mountain.

Role Playing Games have grown exponentially in the past several years. They’ve become very accessible and inviting for people to play. One of the biggest reasons is because it is easier than ever to learn to play, watch people play, and find people to play with. Thank you Internet. So, here’s a walk through of some of my favorite actual play RPG podcasts and videos that are out there. Keep in mind the ratings are my own personal opinion and may not actually reflect your personal rating preferences.

Critical Role

[caption id="attachment_10161" align="aligncenter" width="730"] Image take from Critical Role[/caption]

(PG-13)

Live on Thursdays on Geek & Sundry Twitch, YouTube, or Project Alpha
Also available through Video On Demand and podcast

If you’ve never heard of Matt Mercer and his crew on Critical Role then you are missing out. Critical Role has become well known for bringing in a massive amount of people to the RPG fandom. Matt Mercer, the Dungeon Master, and his players, Travis Wilingham, Laura Bailey, Sam Reigel, Liam O’Brian, Marisha Ray, Ashley Johnson, and Taliesin Jaffe, are all professional voice actors. If you recognize any of those names it’s probably because of the vast amount of animes and video…

The post Top 6 Actual Play RPG Shows appeared first on Meeple Mountain.

Back in the 1960’s the undead crawled their way into pop culture thanks to George A. Romero’s Night of the Living Dead. Ever since they gnawed their way into our hearts we just can’t let them go. There are books exploring creation myths and offering survival tips, movies about how zombies have destroyed civilization or how we finally conquered the disease. You can even find shows exploring what it would be like to be a sentient zombie with feelings and relationships. We find zombies as the theme in films, books, videogames, and board games; just check out our review of Zombie Kids! Our obsession with zombies is here to stay and I’m not complaining. But that does mean that a new zombie themed game faces tough competition as it tries to stand out in a crowded market of undead.

In today’s review we find ourselves preparing weapons, gathering supplies, and trying to complete our missions before the zombie horde takes over the mall. Let’s chow down on this review of Tiny Epic Zombies.

Overview

Tiny Epic Zombies (TEZ) is a fast paced survival game. It’s a game of board management and turn efficiency. You play either a human or a…

The post Tiny Epic Zombies Game Review appeared first on Meeple Mountain.

Wilderness In A Box

What In The Wild is a card game designed by Karen Cleveland and published by the Michigan Department of Natural Resources. It contains 120 cards that are a mixture of Species, Food (sunlight), Water, Space, and Shelter. It comes with instructions for 5 different games using the cards but they all have the same theme of matching Species Cards with different resource types. The instructions for each game begin with special directions as to why you are playing the game: you may be assisting a biologists, or be a member of a nature club, or you’ve been placed in charge of your very own wildlife area. Whatever the case, it is very important that you succeed at your task.

What In The Wild is filled with colorful, real life photos that draw the eye. The symbols are easy to understand and match, which is the heart of this game. Each unique ruleset is based on these Species and Resources matching to create all sorts of combos. The instructions start with a simple game where you match 2 cards and build up to a game where you’re building habitats that require matching 4…

The post What In The Wild Game Review appeared first on Meeple Mountain.

(Note: The version this review is based upon is a prototype, and may not reflect the final components and rules for the game.)

“You open the door and before you stands an Elite Goblin who looks very angry. What do you do?” I look at Clara, my six year old daughter, expectantly.
“I want to take my sword and bonk him on the head until it falls off!” she tells me, swinging her arms over her head.
“That's a little excessive, but I love it! Roll your dice," I encourage.
She rolls her small grey dice hoping for a hit. Two pips show. Success! She, her sister, and cousins shout in exaltation.
“He’s not dead yet. You only did two damage. Olivia, you’re up next!” I say as her eyes grow big with excitement.

And so combat went. The kids were invested, interested, and fully engaged.

[caption id="attachment_8138" align="alignnone" width="730"] Adventuring we will go![/caption]

A group of adventurers meet at a tavern. They overhear the whisperings of a goblin infestation and decide they are just the group to take care of this menace for the kingdom. So begins the story of Heroes & Treasure, created by Jason Davis…

The post Heroes & Treasures Game Review appeared first on Meeple Mountain.

Gamelyn Games is known for their ‘Tiny Epic’ series designed by Scott Almes (read our review of Tiny Epic Quest). These games are easy to carry, quick to pick up and play, but feel big and robust in terms of strategy and theme. They have a good thing going with this idea and have recently had two very successful Kickstarters for other ‘Tiny Epic’ games; Defenders and Zombies. So, in all honesty, I don’t know what led to the madness that is Heroes of Land, Air and Sea.

Don’t worry about the missing Oxford comma in the title, I’m going to review the game not their writing style. We'll be looking at the contents of the base game and the first expansion, Chaos and Order (not the mini expansions: Nomads, Mercenaries, or Siege Weapons) in preparation for their newest Kickstarter starting tomorrow for another expansion called Pestilence. This is a big 4X game and looks tremendously attractive but is it for you? Read on to find out.

How To Play

You win HoLAS by having the most victory points at the end of the game. You earn these victory points through constructed buildings and towers, upgraded city, occupied Land Regions (small areas that make up a continent), scribed or…

The post Heroes of Land, Air, and Sea Game Review appeared first on Meeple Mountain.

If you’ve ever spent time in game stores you’ve seen a group or two rolling dice, reading books, and using strange voices. You’ve probably even read a couple of our own RPG (role-playing game) articles here, here or, (my favorite) here , and wondered what it was like to play in these worlds. As an avid RPGer I can tell you I love it. While there are rules to follow, both mechanically and in the setting, playing an RPG is more about telling a story. You create a character that can be nothing like you or exactly like you. You explore their story and relationships in a fantastical world. You can sling spells, swing a mighty axe, throw deadly daggers, release dangerous arrows, and so much more. In RPGs the only thing that limits what you can do are not a game board and pieces but your imagination. Explore vast tombs, fight an ancient dragon, seduce the king, or steal from a bar patron. Whatever it is your character enjoys you can try it in an RPG.

[caption id="attachment_7566" align="aligncenter" width="1536"] Sitting in the GMs seat ready to lead the players on an adventure.[/caption]

One of the best places to be introduced to tabletop roleplaying games is a place we’re…

The post You Should Play an RPG appeared first on Meeple Mountain.

This is a review of Lotus Digital on the Google Play Store played on a Verizon Pixel XL. I received a free copy of the game to review.

It is hard to capture my attention for very long when it comes to mobile gaming. I generally try lots of games for a short time. Perhaps it’s my playstyle that doesn’t fit or the amount of time and effort I’m willing to give to tapping the screen. Either way, there are only a few games that get played repeatedly on my phone. Most of them are for my children but Lotus Digital by Dire Wolf Digital is one specifically for me. If you haven’t read our review on Lotus the card game be sure to check that out. As Elijah Longwell put it so wonderfully: “[Lotus] has a simple beauty that really makes it shine [...] [it’s a] unique game that balances both its beauty and gameplay along with its depth and ease of entry.”. The digital version of the game does very much the same thing.

The Game

The great thing about mobile games is that there are no pieces to set up or put away and Lotus is no exception. When you start your first game you are given a tutorial that walks you through a…

The post Lotus Digital App Review appeared first on Meeple Mountain.

The lore is rich in the card game of Arkon. The development team has created a lot of lore and background for the game. There are four Clans which have been fractured out in the Wildlands; Orcs, Dwarves, Elves, and Humans. You are a ‘mysterious outsider,’ an Arkon, who has come to fight for control of these Clans. You do this by using your cards in multiple ways. Every card has Influence that can be used to Bid on Clans. There are also Action cards that are played during your turn and Response and Counter cards that are played outside of your normal turn.

Each player begins the game with a starting hand of 5 cards. On your turn you can play as many action cards as you want; things like stealing, drawing, trading, or making opponents discard. Then you may place a Clan card from your hand up for Bidding. Each player secretly chooses how many Influence points, the number is found at the top of each card, they want to bid, and the winner receives the Clan and discards any cards they Bid with. Afterwards, you may continue playing any action cards you want. At the end of your turn, if you put a Clan card up for Bid, you draw a…

The post Arkon Game Review appeared first on Meeple Mountain.