exploration

Dungeonology: The Expedition

Welcome to Rocca Civetta, a charming town in the Italian hinterland, which hosts one of the most bizarre universities that the human mind has ever conceived.
In fact, this university hosts the chair of Dungeonology, which deals with the study of the environments and organization of different cultures, especially the most atypical and strange... almost Mythical!
Recently, the faculty lost its professor, and the Dean is looking for a skilled replacement. You are the ideal candidates for this job.

Set in the renaissance world of Nova Aetas, Dungeonology will lead you to the discovery of different Civilizations in order to learn their histories and customs. But be careful: the locals will not always be happy with your intrusion.

The aim of the game is to explore a Dungeon as a Scholar, gathering as much information as possible about the people who live there. Information yields Points, and the Scholar collecting the highest number of Points will present the best Thesis on the studied race.

—description from the publisher

Solenia

Several millennia ago, the tiny planet Solenia lost its day-and-night cycle: Its northern hemisphere is forever plunged into darkness, and its southern hemisphere is eternally bathed in sunlight. Your mission is to carry on your ancestors' honorable task of traveling the world to deliver essential goods to the inhabitants of both hemispheres. While the Day people want you to deliver the rarest gems and stones, the Night people sorely need wood and wheat to survive. Be efficient and outpace your opponents to collect the most gold stars by the end of the game!

A game of Solenia plays out over 16 rounds, and in each round, each player plays one card from their hand onto an empty space of the 5x5 game board. You can play the card on either:

A floating production island, to gain as many resources as the value of the card you played of the type corresponding to this space
A floating city, to fulfill a delivery tile by delivering the resources depicted on it.

You must play your card adjacent to the airship in the center of the playing area or adjacent to another card of yours already played. When someone plays a 0 card, the airship advances one space, then at the end of your turn, you remove the back edge of the board, give players resources based on the cards they have on this strip of the playing area, flip the strip over (turning night to day or dawn to dusk or vice versa), and place it on the other side of the game board.

The game ends when each player has played all 16 of their cards. The player with the most gold stars wins!

—description from designer

Formidable Foes

From the publisher's website:

Once again, our unfortunate friends find themselves foreigners trapped within the frightful Fortress Furor of the fanged Prince Fieso who would, with felicity, see them flounder and faint. These fine fighters could feasibly face their finish in this forbidding fortification, whose fearsome floors even now flow frighteningly from beneath their feet as the famished Furunkulus forages the fringes, fixing to feast on the foreigners’ flesh. Forthwith, must our fighters fashion their flight from this foulest of fates! But what’s this? By the light of their fallow and flickering flares, our friends find the depths fraught with the most furious of fiends and the fiercest of freaks! With fleet feet, the fearless foreigners follow these ferocious fellows through the fortress, with its multifarious footpaths and their frustrating forks, forging fervently forward toward freedom and fame. Our fighters must not falter from whatever feud or fracas would foil their function: to finally furnish the forlorn Faerie Fabula her freedom from feckless Fieso’s fists!

Theme
Formidable Foes is a light-hearted dungeon crawl. The players all take the role of heroes competing with each other to amass the greatest hoard of treasure. They do this by exploring the dungeon and fighting monsters.

Goal
The goal is to collect as much gold as possible. The winner is the richest player.

Gameplay
On each turn, a player either moves twice; moves once and fights a monster; or collects 'power tokens' which allow a player to improve their dice rolls in subsequent turns. In the early part of the game, the monsters are fairly weak and easily defeated. Defeating a monster increases a character's 'wisdom' which allows them to fight and defeat ever-harder monsters. Fighting monsters involves rolling a dice and then adding power tokens to improve the roll if required.

Wayfinders

Engines purring, goggles down — the seaplane is set for take-off! Welcome to the whimsical world of Wayfinders in which intrepid explorers race to chart new paths through the skies.

You will need to think on your feet and outfit your planes with the right gear to arrive safely — but building hangars on islands and stocking them with parts can help you zip around with ease! Be sure to be keen in your planning and you will unlock the charms of the islands. Wheels up — adventure awaits!

—description from the publisher

Humboldt's Great Voyage

In the 19th century, Alexander von Humboldt was considered the second Columbus. His first great discovery journey to and across America led him from the Amazon jungle all the way to the White House. The knowledge he gained not only opened up a new way of viewing nature and its relationships, but also made Humboldt the most famous man of his time besides Napoleon.

But the measuring of the world goes on: As venturous young scientists, players in Humboldt's Great Voyage follow Humboldt's legendary expedition route all across the American continent. Using the "mancala" principle, they travel in stages from one location to the next, collect the objects they find, and ship them to selected personalities all over the world in order to make the findings they obtained available as quickly as possible to a public hungry for knowledge. Who will succeed in making a name for themself among the renowned scientists of the 19th century and be admitted as an associate member of the Academy of Sciences?

—description from the publisher