Here at LudiCreations we do more than just create fun games – we also get to *play* some games once in a while! Let’s have a look at what some of the LudiCrew members have been playing lately:

Kai has been playing quite a few games recently. His team just won their late November Pandemic Legacy game, so there’s only one more month to go in the game. Kai thinks that the narrative Pandemic Legacy creates and the development of the board is indeed pretty cool, although he feels that unclear rules can bring the game to a screeching halt. Scythe didn’t live up to all the hype for Kai – he especially has problems with some (or even most!) of the game mechanisms, he felt that they were disconnected from the theme. After recently discovering a platform for playing Wir sind das Volk! online, Kai has been playing it quite a lot. He would best describe as “Twilight Struggle – The Eurogame”. On his gaming list has also been Paths of Glory that he has been teaching to another member of the LudiCrew and finds that the learning curve is quite steep.

David T. has spent almost all of his gaming time working on prototypes: two games with NSKN, two with Mindclash Games, a sequel to Days of Ire, and a few brand new ideas… What little gaming time has had left he has spent either exploring the wonder that is Gloomhaven, or showing the beauties of light card driven wargames to Wai-yee via 13 Days (or more specifically a homemade retheme of it he made for her birthday called 13 Meows) and the wonderful Cousins’ War (by a good friend of theirs David Mortimer).

Harry-Pekka took a trip with the family around the world in 37 days and went through aplenty of travel games. What hit the table the most, even on an airline tray, was RUM from the Packogames 2 by Chris handy, a push your luck and best of the pack so far. The ultimate around the world family travel game he feels was and is Qwirkle travel, wind and impact proof + family friendly. The best gamers game for long Agatha Christie-like stateroom evenings on the endless pacific Harry-Pekka thinks is The Ravens of Thri Ashasri, a truly unique beautifully melancholic asymmetric legacy puzzle for two people in the size of a pack of cards. In Harry-Pekka’s words “it’s soo hard but I cannot recommend it enough”.

Matthew has been playtesting quite a few of the Good Little Games (microgames that he is designing with Brett Gilbert, one a month, at goodlittlegames.co.uk), such as Good Little Tricks, Good Little Detective, and Good Little Traders. Matthew was also fortunate enough to attend Paris est Ludique game fair over the weekend, and he actually got to play some published (or soon to be published) games, such as Queendomino, Conan, and Kingdomino. He was particularly impressed with the latter being such a good game packed into 15 minutes!

Oliver received Gloomhaven a month ago and finally found the time to play it three days in a row. He thinks that it is a very nice dungeon crawler with a unique mechanism for taking your actions each turn. It’s also nice that you play cards instead of throwing dice. During the past two days he has played Great Western Trail, which is a game where you can be a gamer and do not need to count victory points. Oliver feels that very turn you take has a valuable return, and you can try out different strategies with an ever changing game board. He also got to play a short filler game called Tempel des Schreckens. It’s a very fast played game with hidden roles, where one team has to get all treasure cards while the other team has to do the opposite. The trap cards and a lot of lying and bluffing is a lot of fun.