Dice

20 Strong is a new deck-based game system from Chip Theory Games, capable of being played in about 30 minutes or less. We say “game system” because the idea behind 20 Strong is a small nucleus of simple, adaptable rules that can then be applied to a variety of unique decks, each with their own set of mechanics. We are launching 20 Strong with three such decks – one set in the world of Too Many Bones, one set in Hoplomachus: Victorum, and one in the new universe of the space-faring Solar Sentinels. We have more decks in development and plan to release them regularly if our customers are excited by them. For now, 20 Strong is a solo-only game, but even that could differ in future decks using the ruleset.

The object of a game of 20 Strong is to progress through a shuffled deck of cards, each card bearing a unique challenge. This challenge could be in the form of an enemy, a unique scenario, or some other requirement (for example, players of the Too Many Bones deck might expect to see a Lockpicking challenge or two). Challenges usually require a certain number of successes to complete, which you earn by rolling a set of 17 dice with different odds for a hit (these dice, along with three adjustable stat dice, make up the “20” in 20 Strong).

If you roll enough successes, you complete a card’s challenge and gain its rewards. If you don’t, you take damage and move on to the next card – unless, of course, your HP stat is reduced to 0, costing you the game. If you manage to make it through an entire deck, you take on one of the deck’s final bosses, attempting to score enough hits against this powerful enemy to claim ultimate victory.

Of course, it’s never so easy that you’d want to spend all of your dice on a single card. In addition to your HP Stat, you’re also keeping track of your Strategy (which controls how many rerolls and items you have) and your Recovery, which controls how many dice return to your pool after taking on a challenge. If you roll more dice than your Recovery, those dice are exhausted, lowering your pool for your subsequent challenges. It’s a game of pressing your luck, strategic decision-making, and resource management. We think you’re going to love it!

—description from the publisher

It's our time, down here.

Embark on a perilous adventure full of dangerous booby traps and treacherous treasure-filled caverns! In The Goonies: Never Say Die, one player is the Goondocks Master, controlling fearsome foes from the outlaw family, the Fratellis, to the legendary pirate, One-Eyed Willie. The other players take on the role of the Goonies — Mikey, Mouth, Chunk, Data, and Sloth — and attempt to overcome cryptic puzzles and deadly challenges with teamwork, strategy, and Data's clever contraptions! Will the Goonies discover the legendary riches that will save their homes, or will they follow the fate of Chester Copperpot...and never see the light of day?

The game features nine adventures so that players can immerse themselves in the 1980s movie as well as brand new stories, and it includes eight sculpted miniatures of Mikey, Mouth, Chunk, Data, Sloth, the Giant Octopus, the Fratellis, and even One-Eyed Willie himself.

In The Gig, players are members of a jazz group improvising their way through a song, vying for the spotlight, and trying to please the audience while working up mind-blowing solos!

The game takes place over six rounds, a.k.a. "songs". Each song, players count down, then roll and place dice in real time to gain symbols and create patterns. When one player has placed all four of their dice, they shout "Take it to the bridge!" and other players must stop re-rolling and place the remainder of their dice. After placing all of their dice, each player can add the shape that their dice formed to their instrument's unique solo board, each of which offers a different challenge and way of scoring. Players can use symbols gained via the song and their solo boards to quickly change their dice, keep them for endgame scoring, or spend them to buy audience cards, each of which represents a newly-gained fan who will give you another way of scoring points at game's end.

After the set list of six songs has been played, the player with the most points gained from their solo, audience cards, harmonies, and symbol sets and majorities wins.

The Gig includes a solo mode by Dávid Turczi.

In 1958, Demitri Belyaev and Lyudmila Trut started an experiment on domestication. From a large group of foxes, they selected the ones that reacted to humans with more curiosity and less aggression. In each generation, they selected only the friendliest pups to become parents — hoping to recreate the process that originally led to domestication thousands of years ago. The experiment made stunning progress. Even though the foxes were chosen only for their friendliness, they soon started to get many of the physical traits that we associate with domesticated animals — like spots, floppy ears, and curly tails. As communication opened up, the foxes made major contributions to our understanding of how these traits are expressed. The experiment continues to this day.

In The Fox Experiment, you’ll breed your own domesticated foxes. In each round you'll select a pair of fox parents who have certain traits. You'll gain those specific trait dice, roll them, then try to move them around to make complete trait symbols which you'll then mark off on your pup card. You'll then gain trait tokens depending on how many traits you marked off which you'll use to upgrade tracks on your personal player board.

At the end of the round, the previous generation of foxes will be cleared and all of the new pups will be moved to the kennel — thus becoming candidates to be chosen as parents in the next round. The game ends after 5 rounds and you'll gain points for pleasing patrons (end of game scoring bonuses), studies completed (personal player objectives), if you ever won the friendliest fox award, upgrades on your personal player board, and extra tokens. The player with the most points wins!

—description from the publisher

Far to the north, in a remote winter land, rivers are frozen most of the year. When the villages along the riverside eventually are accessible, a small river cruise company offers exotic tours like polar bear safaris, reindeer trips, ice fishing, and more. Lucky tourists may even get a chance to see the northern lights.

You work as a tour guide trying to attract tourists to your guide boats for spectacular excursions.

Riverside is a different kind of roll-and-write game: The game comes with a modular game board, which composes the route for the game. On a river cruise boat, everyone follows the same route, but you can take your tourists on different tours. You may plan ahead, but beware, the dice may force you to change your plans.

You start each round by rolling dice into a common pool. Simultaneously, each player chooses one die of one specific color (without physically taking it) and fill seats on the matching guiding boat on their own player sheet. Whenever they have completed a row of seats, they have sold a group ticket of the corresponding color (excursion). The longer the row, the more points they get. Additionally, this ticket is valid for the remainder of the game: Every time they go on an excursion in a village of this color, they take this group with them to earn even more points. The player with the most points wins the game.

Each dice color represents tourists with a preference for one specific type of excursion. The transparent green die is "wild" and represents the northern lights, something everyone wants to see.

Riverside offers tough decision-making within a short playing time: Some rows are short with low points and bonuses, while other rows are long with higher points and bonuses. Which one do you start to fill? Within each guide boat, you need to score higher and higher, so taking too many tourists on your first excursions could be fateful. Players are rewarded if they manage to please all five kinds of tourists, so maybe you need to score a new color instead of scoring really high in another color? Higher dice represent tourists who are freezing and cost fire symbols to get. Note that the "wild" green die always costs fire symbols to get! You have a limited number of fire symbols to use, so when will be the right time to use them?

—description from the designer