Grid Movement

Description from the publisher:

After being stripped of all their possessions, a mage, a warrior, an elf, and a dwarf are forced to go rob the local Magic Maze shopping mall for all the equipment necessary for their next adventure. They agree to map out the labyrinth in its entirety first, then find each individual’s favorite store, and then locate the exit. In order to evade the surveillance of the guards who eyed their arrival suspiciously, all four will pull off their heists simultaneously, then dash to the exit. That's the plan anyway…but can they pull it off?

Magic Maze is a real-time, cooperative game. Each player can control any hero in order to make that hero perform a very specific action, to which the other players do not have access: Move north, explore a new area, ride an escalator… All this requires rigorous cooperation between the players in order to succeed at moving the heroes prudently. However, you are allowed to communicate only for short periods during the game; the rest of the time, you must play without giving any visual or audio cues to each other. If all of the heroes succeed in leaving the shopping mall in the limited time allotted for the game, each having stolen a very specific item, then everyone wins together.

At the start of the game, you have only three minutes in which to take actions. Hourglass spaces you encounter along the way give you more time. If the sand timer ever completely runs out, all players lose the game: Your loitering has aroused suspicion, and the mall security guards nab you!

In El Dorado, players slip into the roles of expedition leaders who have embarked on a search for the legendary land of gold in the dense jungles of South America. Each player assembles and equips their own team, hiring various helpers from the scout to the scientist to the aborigine. All of them have but one goal in mind: Reaching the golden border first and winning all of the riches for themselves. Whoever chooses the best tactics will be rewarded!

Fire, water, earth, wind — these four elements have driven mankind's mythology, philosophy and science for eons. Now, master the power of these primal forces in this abstract game of capture and area control.

In Element, players take turns drawing and placing four element stones to encircle opposing sages. Each element has unique properties that players can use to block an opponent's movement. Feed walls of flame, move raging rivers, raise impenetrable mountain ranges, and even bend wind to your command. Transform one element into another with the rule of replacement or sacrifice element stones to help your sage avoid capture.

Understanding the subtle, diverse, yet powerful nature of the four elements is key to surrounding your opponent and claiming victory!

The first player with a palace to amass 12 victory points (VP) in constructed buildings and captive Emperors in Ekö wins the game.

To set up, fill the board with all the pawns, placed at random. Before starting the game, each player can exchange their Emperor pawn with another of their pawns elsewhere on the board. On your turn, you must do both phases in this order: the action phase, then the reinforcements phase. During the action phase, you must perform one single action:

Move: Move to an empty space, regroup or attack; you can attack only a stack of enemy pieces that contains strictly fewer pieces than the attacking stack — except that a stack of four pieces can be attacked and destroyed by a stack of one piece.

Construct: You can construct only one building per space; subsequent construction on the same space replaces the existing building. Each terrain type allows specific types of construction. In order to construct a building on an empty space or on a space already containing one of your buildings, you must sacrifice pieces from a single stack adjacent to this construction space.

Once per turn, you can take an extra action by sacrificing three stackable pieces. A stack that contains the Emperor can attack an enemy stack even if it contains an equal number of pieces, and even if it contains another Emperor. Each enemy Emperor you have captive is worth 3 VP.

During the reinforcements phase, if you have pieces in your reserve, you must return at least one piece to play if you can.
You can place up to three pieces onto a single stack of your color on the board (never on an empty space), respecting the following rule: You cannot place reinforcements on a stack if it is adjacent to another player's building.

The game ends immediately when a player has amassed 12 VP by adding up the values of his buildings on the board and any Emperors they have captured — each village is worth 1VP, each tower 2VP, and each castle and captured Emperor 3VP — and they have at least one palace. Alternatively, if a player is the only one with pieces remaining on the board (making reinforcement impossible for the other players), they win.

Matter swirls around a new born star, coalescing on the planetoids that orbit it. Planets evolve, grow and migrate in their orbits, forming a unique solar system by the end of every game. Planetarium is a game of creation, chaos and terraforming on the grandest scale.

Players are competing to crash combinations of elements onto planets that then allow them to play cards to evolve the planets in a variety of ways, with each player looking to evolve planets in the system to suit their own secret endgame goals.

On a turn a player will firstly move a matter or planet token in a clockwise direction around the star. The board is mapped with a series of lines, tracing orbits around the star, and it is along these lines that the tokens are moved. If a matter token moves onto a space occupied by planet token then the matter token is placed on the player's mat (on the respective planet). In the same way, planets can also be moved onto matter tokens, placing the matter tokens on the player's mat.

In the second part of a turn a player can play Evolution cards from their hand at the cost of the matter tokens they have collected on their player mat (some cards have other special requirements to play). If a player plays a card, they score the cards points and check to see if their card has changed the state of the planet from hostile to habitable by checking the total habitable and hostile points played to the planet (some end game goals require planets to be hostile or habitable). The player may then draw a card from one of three decks, Low Evolution (cards that score less points but require less matter to play), High Evolution (cards that score more and are harder to play), and Final Evolution (cards that can only be played on a player's final turn).

The thematics of the game have been developed with an eye on the science, led by a scientist working on NASA's search for life on Mars. Evolution cards thematically include all kinds of planetary phenomenon, from asteroid impacts, atmospheric effects, to geological events. Final Evolution cards mark the relatively stable state a planet is in at the end of the solar system's development and include classifications for the final planets such as Hot Jupiter or an uninhabitable frozen dwarf planet.

The game consists of a beautiful game board with handfuls of matter tokens, approximately 36 Evolution cards and 16 Final Evolution cards (all with unique space art and flavor), player mats, and player and score markers.