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Game Info
Year
2025
Collection
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Description
Thalamus is an intense abstract strategy game where players are aiming to eliminate their opponents by navigating and manipulating an ever-changing board that is filled with dangerous Deflector Disks.
Players take turns utilising one of the six available actions: MOVE, PUSH, PULL, SHOOT, ROTATE, or REMOVE to trap opponents and avoid being eliminated themselves.
Thalamus has simple yet strategically rich and exciting gameplay designed to invoke feelings of traditional abstract strategy games.
—description from the designer
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All mentions
Browse transcript mentions, sentiments, pros/cons, mechanics, topics, quotes, and references.
Total mentions: 3
This page: 3
Sentiment:
pos 2 ·
mix 0 ·
neu 0 ·
neg 0
Showing 1–3 of 3
Video 9eQ9sVz9Ys8
Chairman of the Board Discussion at 16:30 sentiment: positive
video_pk 87232 · mention_pk 288118
Click to watch at 16:30 · YouTube ↗
Overall sentiment (raw)
positive
Pros
- Does not have any luck involved.
Cons
none
Thematic elements
Comparison games
none
Mechanics (from transcript analysis)
- no luck — The host explicitly states that Thalamus has no luck involved.
Video topics + discussion points
No key topics recorded for this video.
Quotes (from this video)
- Um I'd have slight concerns about the replayability of the game, but please do correct me uh on that.
- Maybe a little bit maybe a bit oversaturated in terms of how many there are out there.
- Unfortunately, I'm not familiar with either of those.
- Um I also thought that there wasn't enough mitigation in terms of activating the spots that you wanted.
- Um and pretty much the uh the cards not doing anything terribly interesting either.
- Um but I just like it in every way. But I'm a big sucker for really good Dawn games. I think he's a brilliant designer.
- Um hopefully I'll get copies of those for for sale relatively soon.
References (from this video)
No references stored for this video.
Video 9eQ9sVz9Ys8
Chairman of the Board Discussion at 28:53 sentiment: other
video_pk 87232 · mention_pk 288133
Click to watch at 28:53 · YouTube ↗
Overall sentiment (raw)
Anticipatory
Pros
- New game the host is developing.
Cons
none
Thematic elements
Comparison games
none
Mechanics (from transcript analysis)
Mechanics unknown.
Video topics + discussion points
No key topics recorded for this video.
Quotes (from this video)
- Um I'd have slight concerns about the replayability of the game, but please do correct me uh on that.
- Maybe a little bit maybe a bit oversaturated in terms of how many there are out there.
- Unfortunately, I'm not familiar with either of those.
- Um I also thought that there wasn't enough mitigation in terms of activating the spots that you wanted.
- Um and pretty much the uh the cards not doing anything terribly interesting either.
- Um but I just like it in every way. But I'm a big sucker for really good Dawn games. I think he's a brilliant designer.
- Um hopefully I'll get copies of those for for sale relatively soon.
References (from this video)
No references stored for this video.
Video QwftMw5sk64
Chairman of the Board Rules Teach at 0:01 sentiment: positive
video_pk 86420 · mention_pk 291200
Click to watch at 0:01 · YouTube ↗
Overall sentiment (raw)
positive
Pros
- Ideal for travel because it's very portable and has a small footprint.
- Offers fast decisions, strategic decisions, as well as tactical decisions.
- Versatile system with lots of different modes to play.
Cons
none
Thematic elements
Comparison games
none
Mechanics (from transcript analysis)
- abstract strategy — Thalamus is an abstract strategy board game.
- Area Control — The objective of Thalamus is to eliminate all of your opponents pawns from the board and to be the last player standing.
- Bouncing/Deflection — The shoot action involves imagining a laser from the pawn. This laser can hit deflector discs or corner panels which act as deflector discs, continuing the path of the laser. The player can choose which edge of the disc to continue from. Corner panels deflect along the edges of the board.
- Line of Sight — The telekinetic push and pull actions require direct line of sight to the disc in the same row or column, and cannot be blocked by another disc.
- Movement — Players can move their pawn orthogonally or diagonally into an empty space, or push a deflector disc along a row or column as long as the space behind the disc was free.
- Player Elimination — The objective is to eliminate all opponent pawns. This can happen through the shoot action, or by pushing/pulling a disc into an opponent's pawn.
- Push/Pull — Players can push or pull deflector discs along rows or columns. The telekinetic push action allows moving a disc without being adjacent, as long as there is direct line of sight. The telekinetic pull action works similarly but pulls the disc towards the player.
- removal — Players can remove deflector discs from the board if their pawn is orthogonally or diagonally adjacent to the disc. Removed discs remain off the board until the end of the game.
- rotation — Players can choose any disc on the board and rotate it, as long as it ends in a perfectly diagonal, horizontal, or vertical direction. The next player in line cannot rotate the same disc on their immediate turn.
Video topics + discussion points
No key topics recorded for this video.
Quotes (from this video)
- Thalamus is a 2 to four player abstract strategy board game that takes 5 to 10 minutes to play.
- Thalamus is ideal for travel because it's very portable and has a small footprint to set up.
- The objective of Thalamus is to eliminate all of your opponents pawns from the board and to be the last player standing.
- The best way to frame the shoot action is to imagine a laser coming from your Pawn in the horizontal, vertical and diagonal directions from where your Pawn is standing.
- This is an ideal game if you want a game with a small footprint, something think for travel that's not going to take up much space in your bag has fast decisions strategic decisions as well as tactical decisions and of course is a versatile system where you can play in lots of different modes.
References (from this video)
No references stored for this video.
Transcript Navigation
Showing 1–3 of 3