Category: reviews

Gaming, reviews

The Giant Hula Monster: The Most Monsterous Games – King of Tokyo

King of Tokyo

Designed by Richard Garfield

Published by Iello

King of Tokyo is a kaiju themed press your luck game. In KOT players are giant monsters attacking Tokyo and each other in an attempt to be the last monster standing. This game is very quick to learn and has gorgeous art and great components. A player’s turn consists of rolling the custom KOT dice to either attack the current monster in Tokyo (claws), restoring health (hearts), collecting energy (lightning), or scoring points (numbers). I say attacking the current King of Tokyo because this is a semi-”all against one” game. All other players attack the player currently occupying Tokyo while that player attacks their choice of the other players. If this is the case, why in the world would you want to be in Tokyo, getting attacked by everybody? Because you score points the longer you stay in Tokyo. And you do have an option to swap places with any attacker when they start attacking on their turn. And you will score a point when you do this. I want to talk about what happens on your turn. Players have the option of three rolls of the dice each turn. They can keep any dice they want and reroll the rest, for a total of three rolls. What are the actions or results of the dice? Claws allows the player to attack once for each collected claw. For each heart symbol, the player regains one health. Collecting a set of three of a number awards the number of points of that number. For collecting three two’s, the player gains two points. Finally, lightning bolts. Lightning bolts are used to purchase cards that allow a player special actions, special attacks, or other beneficial events. Players battle back and forth with players leaving the game should their health run out. Finally there will be one last player standing – the King of Tokyo. For more information, go to https://boardgamegeek.com/boardgame/70323/king-tokyo

Gaming, reviews

Tumble Town review

Tumble Town

Designed by Kevin Russ

Art by Katy Grierson, Katie Khau, Kevin Russ

Published by Weird Giraffee Games

Kickstarter link

Summary: Tumble Town is a town building, dice stacking game where players draft dice and use them to construct the buildings of their town.

Components: 100 dice in four different colors; 71 cards including building cards, horse cards, main street cards, reference; some tokens; a score pad; funded stretch goals

Gameplay: One their turn a player drafts a building card from an available grid of cards. Based on the row the card is chosen from, the player obtains a number of dice. They roll these dice and place them with the pips unchanged onto their storehouse card. Using the dice in their store house, the player physically builds the building on the chosen building card or one previously chosen. Each building has certain dice criteria to be built. The dice used must match these criteria. Each player goes through these steps on their turn. The game continues until two of the four dice pools are depleted. Scores are calculated from building points, special card features points, building height, and icons. Tumble Town plays in about an hour.

Gameschool-ability: The old west theme of Tumble Town makes it a good game to be used as part of a United States western expansion history study. Pattern recognition is a strong aspect of the game. Dice choice requires planning and forethought. Scoring requires addition of course.

Final Thoughts: We enjoyed Tumble Town. The physical aspect of the game stands out. Rolling dice then stacking them to build the town is a really cool idea. This also makes the game visually interesting. The components are top notch, even in the prototype we played. It requires some planning to score optimally and this requires a good memory. For me the best aspect of Tumble Town is its similarity to Homesteaders. Both games are town building games. Both require resource management. Both are engine builders. Tumble Town has an added aspect of the physicality and is a bit more visually interesting. All this together makes Tumble Town a winner for us.

Tumble Town has funded on Kickstarter and blown through most of the stretch goals. It is on KS for a few more days. Grab a copy while you can.

We want to thank Weird Giraffe Games for providing a review prototype for an honest review.

As always you can leave comments at goforthandgame@gmail.com or @tomgurg or @inquiry_meeple or @gameschooling

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