-
Ian Noble
United States
El Dorado Hills
California
-
In today's Quick Chits I will be describing two promising new games that have moved up to the top of my wishlist.
Adlungland
Adlungland is a fairly light and simple game about building an amusement park. Each player takes on the role of vice president, hoping to build the most successful amusement destination. The game is made up just a deck of cards, with each card being used to assemble rides, following only a few rules such as placement next to existing attractions and price to build. Silvano Sorrentino designed this game using a very streamlined icon system allowing the players to track how scary rides are, the amount of money you receive after completing the attraction and the amount of time the ride takes to build.
Looks like it could be a nice little filler with a different enough theme to break into the usual pack of warm-up games. I was lucky enough to pick up the last copy from Time Well Spent, so I'll be able to give my impressions after it gets to the table.
Rallyman
Rallyman is a game for 1 to 4 players that simulates a rally event. Players move (drive) their cars around the track using a set of 7 specially designed dice. 5 black dice each have a gear number (1-5) indicating the gear the car is in or the gear you want to put your car in. 2 white dice are used to accelerate the car while staying the the current gear.
Each player is trying to navigate around the track finishing with the quickest time. Being a rally event, only the time matters so most of the time other cars won't be a factor. It's just the car against the track. And what interesting tracks there are! The stages are filled with many twisty sections where the cars must watch their speed (by down shifting into higher gears) or risk spinning out and crashing. Like any auto race, there is also a chance that something unexpected will go wrong (indicated by rolling an exclamation mark on the dice) sending the car into off the track and having to take damage, thus adding valuable seconds to the players lap time.
When the driver decides to end his turn (for not having more available dice or to avoid losing control of the car), he takes the Gear Card that corresponds to the last rolled die and puts it on the top of his stack of cards (the chrono pile) which is formed in front of the driver. After finishing the stage, each driver adds the times of their Gear Cards accumulated in his chrono pile. The total time is recorded and the driver who has achieved the fastest time wins that stage.
The tracks are made up from beautifully illustrated boards that can be arranged to make a large number of different stages. The boards are even double sided, increasing the difficulty by introducing unfavorable weather conditions. Players will be forced to navigate across a snowy track, obviously making their traction less than ideal.
Right now the game is available at CoolStuffInc for $50, but once the stock runs out there is no telling when it will be available again. I have yet to pick up a copy, but it ranks very high on my wishlist.
To find out more about the designer Jean-Christoph Bouvier, check out a great interview by Little Metal Dog.
|
|
