Two Games and a Book
We went over to Croydon to The Ludoquist games cafe yesterday to see our friends who live nearby - and played two games that were new to me.
Ark Nova:
This seems to be one of the current 'OMG - it's amazing' games around at the moment and we were very lucky to have our friend Kate to set it all up, introduce us to it and explain the rules. That took two hours - and the game itself took another five...
However, it's one of those games that is very much designed to appeal to me. I felt like I got to grips with it fairly well (it's apparently quite common to get a negative score and I won with 19 - but it was extremely close, with Dave on 15 and Kate on 13) and it's also the sort of game I'm very happy to play all day.
Basically, the idea is that you're setting up a zoo. Action involve building habitats, purchasing animals to put in them, courting sponsors, developing partnerships and contributing to conservation programs.
There are two things that make the mechanics particularly interesting.
One is that you have five basic actions that move up and down a track numbered 1-5 and, the higher they are, the more powerful the action. But, once you used one, it moves down to 1 and all the ones below it slide up. There are ways to add levels to a particular action, but a lot of the game revolves around managing your action track so you can do all the things you want to do (which you can't - but hey, a girl can dream, right?).
The other is that there are two different scoring tracks - appeal and conservation, which travel in different directions, and the end of the game is triggered when one players scoring markers meet somewhere in the middle. Scoring is then determined by the gap between them (which is why you can easily get a negative score, if your markers haven't crossed over by the end of the game).
So, as with a lot of the big, complex games I love - it's all about planning, resource/action management and finding balance.
I really enjoyed this game and would very much like to play it again.
Sea Salt & Paper:
This is a set collection card game, where you draw and discard each turn and try to collect cards that match the others in your hand. There are also options for revealing pairs from your hand, in order to take specific actions (taking additional cards from the discard or draw pile, stealing cards from other players, having another turn, etc).
It's a simple mechanic, enhances by interesting strategies, beautiful origami art, and choices about when or if to end the round to maximise your score.
Very different from Ark Nova, but I also really enjoyed it, even though I did really badly.
The Burial Plot:
I was keen to read this book by Elizabeth Macneal because I loved The Doll Factory when I read it last year.
And this has the same keenly observed characters, heavy sense of foreboding and inevitability, grim relentlessness and immersive setting.
What it lacked was the complexity of and almost sympathy towards the villain - here, we get a very standard petty and self-serving man, who feels he's been marginalised and wants everyone to suffer for it.
I also wasn't that keen on the protagonist, Bonnie, who was very well aware of the wrong she was doing but kept doing it anyway - and not only because she felt she had no choice.
Some of the twists and reveals were a surprise to me, while others seems fairly obvious from quite early on. I'm not sure I was wholly satisfied by the ending - but I did like the fact that it wasn't tied up too neatly. The couple of hints at potential future problems made it all more believable.
Better than any of the other books I've read so far this year, but that isn't saying all that much...