Simultaneous Action Selection

Horizons of Spirit Island

Horizons of Spirit Island features the core mechanisms of Spirit Island, but features a new double-sided game board with a streamlined set-up, punchboard components, and five new Spirits designed to be ideal for those playing a Spirit Island game for the first time. These new Spirits are compatible with all existing Spirit Island components, but to play with expansions like Jagged Earth, you would need a copy of Spirit Island itself.

Terraforming Mars: Ares Expedition

Terraforming Mars: Ares Expedition is an engine-building game in which players control interplanetary corporations with the goal of making Mars habitable (and profitable). You will do this by investing mega credits (MC) into project cards that will directly or indirectly contribute to the terraforming process. In order to win, you will want to accumulate a high terraform rating (TR) and as many victory points (VP) as you can. Players raise their TR by increasing global parameters: oceans, oxygen, and temperature. TR also determines each corporation's basic income, and, at the end of the game TR counts as VP. Additional VP and production capabilities are awarded for building project cards and other actions taken during the game.

The game is played in rounds, and each round the players will choose one of five phases, which determines which activities will take place during that round. This means every round is different, but can consist of building new project cards, taking general and project-specific actions, producing income and resources (plants and heat), or researching to draw more project cards. Every player will take all the phases selected for the round, and will receive a special bonus during the phase that they selected. To speed up the game, within each phase, players can act simultaneously without waiting for each other!

The game board has tracks for oxygen, temperature, and terraform rating, as well as a place for all of the ocean tiles that will be flipped over the course of the game. The game ends when there is enough oxygen to breath (14%), oceans enough to allow Earth-like weather (9), and the temperature is well above freezing (+8°C). It will then be possible, if not comfortable, to live on the surface of Mars!

The winner is the player with the most VP at the end of the game.

Illiterati

The Illiterati are an evil secret organization that has taken over the world. Your job as a member of the League of Librarians is to save the world's books — one word at a time.

Illiterati is a real-time, co-operative word game in which players work together to form words and bind books. Each player starts the game with five letter tiles and a red torched book that shows a condition that player must achieve to restore that book, e.g. using 8+ tiles with at least 3 green symbols, create words that are all animals. A library of three random tiles is placed in the center of the table. The game takes place in three-minute rounds, and before the round begins each player draw seven letter tiles from the draw bag.

Once the countdown begins, players can talk and trade letters as much as they want with one another and the library to try to achieve their goal. Once time ends, if the library contains too many letters — and this threshold is based on your difficulty level — then you trigger a burn event. Flip all of these letters face down, then remove one of them from the game, then discard excess letters to the discard bag. If you burn too many letters, you lose the game. If you didn't burn any letters and you've completed your goal, flip your red book face down and draw a blue waterlogged book to give yourself a new goal.

At the end of the round, draw an illiterati villain card and resolve its effect. If you've drawn this villain previously — and the deck contains five copies of five villains — then all of the previous effects from this villain also resolve in a chain attack from newest to oldest. Villain attacks often strip letters from words, which means you'll need to create new words with what's left during the next round to avoid burning another letter.

Once all players have completed two books — or three or four depending on your difficulty level — draw one more book, the Final Chapter, with all players needing to complete this challenge in the same round, e.g., using 12+ tiles, create words in which all of your vowels are the same color. If all players meet this goal during the same round, you win; if even one person fails, another villain attacks, then you draw new tiles to start another round. You can discard and redraw up to seven tiles at the start of a round, but you must draw a second illiterati villain card that round — and if the villain deck runs out, you lose.

Birds of a Feather: Western North America

Grab your binoculars and your birding journal because it's time to hit the trails and see some birds. Choose a habitat each round to visit along the western coast of North America, and see what rare birds you can find. Don't forget to keep an eye on what your fellow birders are tracking down — they might just lead you to the bird that finishes your watch list and earns you extra points! Who will outsmart their opponents, spot the most birds, and be the best birder?

In Birds of a Feather: Western North America, you and the other players explore different habitats to spot birds. In the first round, each player chooses and reveals a card from hand, then marks off on their score sheet or the app the bird they played as well as all other birds played in the same habitat. The deck contains cards from five habitats, with some birds being more common than others. In the second round, you each play a card again, then you mark all birds in your current habitat as well as all cards played the previous round in that habitat. Apparently word spread about all the great finds! Remove all cards from the first round, then keep playing additional rounds in the same manner.

When each player has only one card left in hand, the game ends. For each ace bird you've seen in a habitat, you score 2 points; for each other non-common bird you've seen, score 1 point; and if you've seen all seven types of birds in a habitat, score 3 bonus points for a total of 10 points in that habitat. Whoever has the most total points wins.

Birds of a Feather: Western North America differs from Birds of Feather thanks to new graphic design and improved rules for two- and three-player games to make them more strategic.