Netgames is great for, er, network games

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This site is a hidden gem. For a while I was concerned about telling everyone about it on the blog in case everyone started using it and it got too busy.

Then I got real.

It is network gaming as it should be. Zero effort to create games, no crashes, no grinding of busy icons. It just works and the game implementations are spot on. And there are versions of some of our favourite games.

We tried Avalon and Codenames and they worked really well. All players need is a phone each (although it works fine via web browser on a PC too). And it is free, although they’ll take donations for a very worth cause.

Netgames.io

Mysterium is Great Fun

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We’re playing a lot of online games at the moment. One of them is Mysterium. It’s a very good implementation of the board game, which is a bit like Cluedo, but with clues. One player, the ghost of the unfortunate murder victim. has the task of picking pictorial clues that match the suspected people, place and weapon. Each of the pictures that the ghost can pick has a set of elements that may, or may not, match the particular scenario assigned to each player. It builds up to a nice reveal at the end, and the artwork and presentation is suitably gothic. Worth spending a few hours with I reckon.

Scythe Board Game

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There are lots of things in this world that I wish I was clever enough to do. One of them might be “Play Scythe”. It is a board game all about world (or at least board) domination. You can fight battles, make pacts, build stuff and deploy fighting machines. We watched a half hour video about it which was notable for the way that the presenter failed to take a single breath during the whole presentation. And that seemed to cover board setup and the first moves.

It was fun to play, even though we spent a lot of time wondering what the various buttons did. We were playing the online version which is very well realised. The network play was quite easy to get going and worked reliably right up to the end of the game, when for some reason we were unceremoniously dumped and the AI took over for our final two turns. Perhaps the game had lost patience with us. One thing that Scythe brings home in spades is the cost of doing battle, and the even greater cost of standing up to an incoming aggressor. We won one battle, but in doing so used up all our fighting powers, leaving us as easy pickings at what turned out to be a crucial point in the game.

We’ll be having another go, and probably watching a few more breathless videos to get more of a feel for the game.

Adventures in Network Gaming

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We had lots of fun this evening playing games. We had six connections and eight people, and off we went. First up we tried to play Colt Express. This was hilarious. Not because it ever worked, but because our attempts to get everyone registered into a single game and signing up turned out to be at least as much fun as playing a proper game. So we moved on to Ticket to Ride, another game that we’ve enjoyed in real life. And another game that didn’t work. It’s a probably a bit cruel to berate Admodee Digital for their horrid network experience, what with all the extra traffic that they are probably seeing. But, having said that we saw just twelve people trying to play Colt Express (and six of them were us) and it still didn’t work, with “Network Error 17” being a particular favourite. In this day and age that kind of performance is rubbish. My advice: don’t pick up either of these games if you want to play them over the network.

So, around an hour in, with no games played, we moved onto Tabletopia. This is web based platform that just provides a sandboxed environment in which you play the game. And by play I mean you move all the pieces, pick your cards up and look at them, and try really hard not to put them back on the table with their faces visible.

We were playing Secret Hitler, which is a great game. After a while we managed to surmount the challenges of the virtual world and stop ourselves showing our secret roles. You can have a go for free, one player starts the game and sends out links to everyone else to join in via their browser.Although you might find that the site is very, very busy.

It was hilarious. It wasn’t quite the same experience as live play, but it was good enough to make we want to have another go.

Playing Smallworld 2 Online

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Smallword is a nice little board game. Players try to build empires of different races with different attributes. The skill-full part of the game is deciding when to ditch your race, send it into decline and reset your conquering ambitions.

We played it in person a while back and tonight, because we can’t get together any more, we had a go at the online version. It worked very well, there were some network hiccups but nothing that got in the way of having fun. In fact, without the need to move bits of cardboard around and count up scores the gameplay went at a fair old clip.

If you want to play it, you can find it on Steam for a modest sum. Well worth it for the fun that we had, and we are definitely going to do it again. We used Discord for in game chatting and that worked well too.

Of course I’m only posting this because I managed to win one of the games we played…..

"Secret Hitler" is an amazing game

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We spent a very happy few hours last night playing the game “Secret Hitler”. Its a role playing game where fascists (plus Hitler) take on liberals. The job of the liberals is to find out who they are and then band together and use their superior numbers to pass liberal policies. The job of the fascists is to disrupt all this and get their policies passed. If fascists get Hitler elected as chancellor they win. If the liberals get to shoot Hitler they win. The gameplay seems rather complicated when you start, but after a while the process of holding elections and passing policies gets to be second nature. Then you can get on with the lying and chicanery.

It’s not really a comment on politics. It could just as easily be Sharks vs Jets or ketchup vs mayo. However, it does set up some very interesting gameplay which kept us very engaged. If you fancy having a go you can even download and print your own copy. Well worth a look.

Playing Clank!

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We had our first board game session of the year tonight. We believe in starting early. Simon came around and brought a copy of Clank! with him. It’s a deck building game where you move around a dungeon with the aim of collecting valuable artefacts and making it out alive. But make sure that you move quietly because every “clank” that you make could wake the dragon, something which never ends well. It’s great fun with lots of tension at the very end of the game as you struggle to get above ground with your hard won treasure.

Jaws board game - we're going to need a bigger boat

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Another present that I got for Christmas (I must have been a really good boy last year) was the Jaws board game. At first glance it looks like something that was first released in the seventies when the movie was showing, but it turns out that it is a much more recent product.

It’s really good though.

It’s played in two acts. In the first act the human players try to locate the shark and tie it down with barrels while the shark tries to eat as many swimmers as possible. The second act switches to the ocean with the shark trying to destroy the boat and kill the crew.

It works well as a four player game, with one player taking the role of the shark and the other three the human players. However, I think it would also work really well as a two player game too. The tension builds up nicely in both acts and the end of the game was nicely balanced. We (the humans) just lost, with the shark taking out the last part of our boat just as we were getting close to seeing him off. Strongly recommended.

Bang Dice Game

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We had a bunch of folks round this week and spent a while playing the “Bang!” dice game. It’s great fun. The sheriff and the deputies have to kill off the pesky outlaws before the sheriff gets shot, while the renegade just has to be the last man standing.

The dice action is fun and nicely unpredictable, although this can result in you being shot out of the game early on. The way that nobody knows who anybody is at the start of the game is fun, but it can result in deputies taking multiple hits from a sheriff who just wanted to begin the game by going “pew, pew, pew, pew” because he got the dice to do that. Worth getting.

Men at Work Board Game

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Men at Work is a balancing board game. Players take it in turns to place girders, supports and workers on the building site. Place the highest piece on the site and you earn an award from Rita the site boss. Get three awards and you win the game. Make things fall down and you lose one of your three safety certificates. Lose all three and you leave the game. The pieces are beautifully made and presented, and the whole thing is nerve-wracking fun.

With most games you’re waiting for your turn so that you can do something. In Men at Work you get at least as much excitement watching other people take their turns trying to place items on precarious beams without everything falling down. Very enjoyable.

Long Cow

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If it seems like I’ve been playing a few games lately I have. So there. Long Cow was an early birthday present, purchased because I liked the phrase “udderly ridiculous”, it looked like fun, and it had a “moo” voice box as one of the play pieces.

Players compete to create the longest cow and the biggest herd. Your cows can be of particular breeds, or you can use “frankencow” cards that allow you to mix them together and even add robot components. And there’s rustling and other cow related tom-foolery to be had too.

It’s actually rather fun. Nothing too taxing (although I think you can take it very seriously if you want) and some lovely artwork on the cards.

Werewords rocks

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This is a really good game. I’ve been a fan of werewolf for a while. That’s the game that pits werewolves against villagers. Werewords has a similar basis, but rather than trying to just spot the werewolves the villagers are in a race against time to deduce the “magic word” that only the seer, the werewolf and the mayor know. If the werewolf identifies the seer the wolf wins. If the villagers spot the werewolf, they win. Everyone can ask the mayor yes/know questions to try to work out what he word is.

The seer can try to steer the questions towards the answer, but not too much in case the werewolf spots them. The werewolf is doing the same thing, in the opposite direction. And sometimes the mayor is a werewolf.

Confused? You won’t be. Not after a few rounds. The whole game is run by an app that sets the scene and times each round. A complete game lasts around 6 minutes, and so over an hour or so of play everyone gets a go at the different roles. Well worth a look.

Shifty Eyed Spies

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Shifty Eyed Spies is not a serious game. At least, not the way that we played it. Our attempts ended up mired in frequent hilarity and general shiftiness.

Players have to signal to each other via surreptitious nods and winks, while all the time looking our for others doing exactly the same thing.

It’s very unlikely you’d want to spend an entire evening playing it.But as a warm up for something a bit more meaty, or just a reason to be deeply silly for a while, it is rather fun.

Deal or Duel Game

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I bought Deal or Duel on a whim. It seemed like a good price for a game with lots of moving parts and I liked the idea of setting up a pistol fight between King George III and Napoleon Bonaparte. We’ve had two goes at playing it now, and I must say it is growing on me a bit.

It is fiendishly complicated. And the rules don’t help much. There’s lots of details on some aspects, but others are left delightfully vague. There’s a knack to writing good game instructions and the people behind this game don’t have it. We had quite a few situations where it just wasn’t clear what should happen and we fixed the problem by making something up.

Having said that, it was quite fun to play, and you do get rather attached to the characters in your “roster”. The gameplay is peppered with American Independence facts that are interesting in a pub quiz kind of way and I’d like to have another go at it to try out a strategy that will involve picking fights with everyone.

If you’re prepared to put the time in, you can have fun with this game.

Dropmix Review

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I usually buy a game at Christmas. This time I’ve bought Dropmix. I saw it on sale at a very attractive price and could'n’t resist it. For the amount you pay you get a lot. There is a handsome plastic console where you pay the game and a set of 70 cards, each of which contains an RFID tag that is read when you play the game and used to trigger the playback of a sample from a music track. The game runs as an app on your phone or tablet which talks to the console over Bluetooth.

You play the game by laying cards down to build up a song. The cards have a characteristic colour and volume level. Coloured cards must be played on the matching colour of the deck and have a louder or equal volume setting than the card they are being placed on top of. Get stuck and you can press a big button which selects a bunch of cards to be removed.

There is a very wide range of music on offer, including Ed Sheeran among others. You can buy themed packs of 15 to get more sounds but they are rather expensive. The cards are nicely made and have artwork that makes them nice things to have before you even play the game. There are also black and white cards that are played to modify the sound.

I was very impressed by how well the samples knit together to make interesting sounds. There are a variety of play modes, including a single player mode, or you can just put cards down to see what you can make. You can even save arrangements that you’re particularly pleased with.

The game is from Harmonix, the people that made a bunch of guitar games. They really know how to make the music fit together, and the gameplay turns out to be a lot of fun. Well worth a look.

Board Game Expertise

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A while back I was moaning about the way that there seem to be robots out there which are looking for search terms on sites and then emailing the owners asking to place paid content or link to them.

Then I got an email last week from Kendra telling me about Game Cows, a board game site. I’ve posted about the odd board game here and there, and she seems to have picked up on that. The site has some useful reviews and whatnot, and if you’re into board games you should find it interesting.