Area Control / Area Influence

Description from the publisher:

In a time long forgotten, the cruel Fomori rule over Érin, the green island. They praise their king Balor, who reigns from his fortifications in the north with an iron fist. Old paths and ruins spread over the island's face, which will be called Ireland many generations from now. But new tribes arrive at the island striving for permanent presence. Who will control Érin's fate over the next centuries to come?

Each player in The Arrival represents a tribe leader who tries to gain predominance over the mythical island of Érin while pushing back the demon-like Fomori. But the players are facing a dilemma, for spreading too quickly means becoming more and more corrupt and strengthening the Fomori in their power...

Over 4-6 rounds, the players determine their resources by means of a unique game mechanism, which will be used later on profitably. During a first phase (Earning Phase), players draw four cards, each showing three sections of different resources. Two of these sections are gradually blocked by the player, thus leaving one section. The resources shown on this section are the ones the player gets. During this phase, they have to decide which section is the best one; while the upper section of the cards offers many resources, it also results in unwanted Corruption Points. The middle and the lower sections offer fewer resources, but also less Corruption.

After that, the Action Phase takes place and the players must use their resources wisely while having the choice from different kinds of actions in order to get Fame Points.

The game ends when a certain number of rounds have been played or somebody reaches the corruption limit.

The winner is either the one with the highest amount of Fame Points or the one with the fewest Corruption Points. This depends on the scene of the board at the end: Do the tribes (players) control more locations on Érin than the Fomori do — or is it the other way around?

In Zoned Out, you take on the role of a developer trying to build a thriving metropolis from the ground up. To win, players will need to use the right combination of residential, commercial and industrial development as well as downtown construction to gain the most points.

On their turn, a player selects one of the square city cards from their hand and adds it to the city, overlapping at least one existing square. They must then move their planner to one of the four squares of the new card. If they left the zone they were previously in, they will score points for the size of that zone with additional bonuses for connected parks and mansions and penalties for connected parking lots and abandoned houses. Zoning out also helps build one of the city's four downtown towers, which award points at the end of the game based on who contributed to each of them the most.

Mastering Zoned Out takes good timing and clever card placement. In the game's advanced mode, players will also be competing to earn points from a variety of public and private objectives for the city.

—description from the publisher

Keyper is a game with high player interaction for two to four players played over four rounds. Each round represents a season: spring, summer, autumn, and finally winter.

Each player starts the game with their own village board, a mini keyp board, 12 village tiles, a keyper (waving meeple) in their player color, and a team of eight multi-colored keyples, including two white keyples. Each differently colored keyple is a specialist in one activity: the brown keyper is a woodsman, the black keyple is a miner, the orange keyple a clay worker, etc. The white keyples are generalists who can represent any other color.

Keyper is a worker placement game. (Keyper is the eighth new title in the medieval Key series of games, with Keydom, the second in the series being widely recognized as the first of the worker placement genre of games.) What makes Keyper special is that when one player places a keyple on a country board, another player can join them with a matching colored keyple on the first player's turn to the benefit of both players. In this way, some players are likely to have played all their keyples before others. All keyples have the potential to work twice. If a player has played all of their keyples, but another player still has some, then on their turn, the player with no remaining keyples can lay down one or more keyples on the country board they have claimed or in their village board to secure additional resources or actions. It can therefore be doubly beneficial to co-operate with your fellow players, although Keyper is not a co-operative game in the usual sense of the term.

The country boards are also noteworthy, in that they can be manipulated and folded at the beginning of summer, autumn, and winter to show one of four different permutations of fields for that season. A player will chose the one to suit their strategy, often hoping that another player will complement their choice. Certain fields on the country boards are available only in certain seasons, e.g., raw materials can be upgraded to finished goods only in spring and summer, after which you can only convert using tiles in your own village. Gem mining occurs only in autumn and winter.

A player's strategy is likely to be influenced by which (seeded) spring country tiles they acquire and by the particular colored keyples they have available in the later seasons. Different combinations will encourage a player to develop their farm or village, help with their shipping or mining activities, and prepare for the seasonal fairs. Players constantly need to evaluate whether or not to join other players, when to claim a country board, whether to play on their own or another player's country board, when to use their own village, and whether to create a large or small team of keyples for the following season. The winner is the player to gain the most points, usually through pursuing at least a couple of the different strategies.

In addition to the theme and mechanisms, Keyper has similar traits to the earlier Key games: Game actions are positive and constructive, not destructive; player interaction is through the game mechanisms not direct, and like Keyflower, the previous game in the series, there is a lot of player interaction.

A special English-language Kickstarter edition of Keyper with "character" keyples and keypers will also be released.

Welcome to Arzium, land of ancient civilizations, bizarre creatures, unexplained wonders, and vibrant characters.

A great sleeping sickness has spread across the land, sending every type of creature to roam for hundreds of miles in a dazed, incoherent march. It's your job to seek them out and wake them from their sleepwalk, recruiting them to help you find even more lost souls!

In Roam, you and up to three friends compete to find lost adventurers. The game includes more than fifty unique, tarot-sized adventurer cards, which feature characters from Near and Far, Above and Below, and Islebound. The opposite side of each card depicts a landscape split into six squares, and two rows of three of these cards are placed in the center of the playing area to make the board.

Each turn, you may activate one of the adventurer cards in your party by flipping the card face down. Activating an adventurer allows you to place search tokens on the board in the shape depicted on your adventurer card. When every square on a landscape card has been searched, the player who did the most claims the card, finding the lost adventurer and adding them to their party. Each adventurer you add to your party gives you points and a new search pattern that you can use.

When searching, you also claim coins, which can be spent to use special actions or purchase artifacts with useful powers. When one player has ten adventurers in their party, the game ends, and the player with the most points wins.

—description from the publisher

In Dragon Boats of the Four Seas, Zhong-Guo, the Middle Kingdom, is an island surrounded by the four Dragon Seas. After a long period of strife, Zhong-Guo has once again been unified and the noble houses rise from the ashes, hoping to cross the Dragon Seas and reach the wealthy vassal states of the former Empire. In Zhong-Guo, Dragons are believed to be good luck and sources of celestial power, so the people make offerings to Dragons at temples and cast coins with the images of Dragons on them to bring fortune at the marketplace. Farmers invoke Dragons over their fields for a bountiful harvest and boats are made in the likeness of Dragons for protection on the dangerous waters. As the leader of one of the noble houses of Zhong-Guo, you must build farms, trade, and make offerings for the safe passage of your ships to these forgotten lands. Recapture the glory of the old Empire and ride the Dragon Boats to victory!