Six Short Game Reviews - with Tom Vasel
Transcript
Hey everybody, I'm Tom Vassel and today we're taking a look at seven different games here uh that I've just played. These are just a variety of some weird and unusual stuff and I got to say some of these are pretty terrible, but not all. So, let's take a look at them. Here we go. All ducks is from Asmati Games. And it says here limited test print version 0.9. And you know they but they they sold it. I bought it. It's produced and it looks pretty much the same as most modded games. So, what have you. But I was interested in this one because the designer Chris Sisilic has done some interesting stuff in the past. Um, I like his card and color combination style games. And so I was kind of interested in this one when I read the description of it. A push your luck game like this. The game is made up of a deck of cards that are numbered from 1 to six in various colors along with duck cards.
On your turn, you have different options. One, you can draw the top card of the deck. If it is a number card, you will place it face up in front of you. Now, this is good because these can be worth points. If you draw a duck, however, that duck goes in the middle of the table and any cards you have that match that color go away. They're discarded. A rainbow duck is even worse because it will get rid of all non black cards in front of you. Another thing you can do on your turn is you can score the cards in front of you. You just take all these cards and score them. Now, if your scoring, let's say I had a yellow three here also, and I my scoring condition matches a duck. For example, the green duck says three of the same number. I have three of the same number. I would also take that duck, which is worth five points, and put it face down in front of me in a scoring pile. And each duck scores yellow, four numbers in a row, five different colors, three of the same color, five odds, or five evens. And the rainbow duck is always scored. So, you can take these cards and put them in scoring. Will they be worth points at the end of the game? Uh, finally, the last thing you can do is you can discard a card from the number cards that are in front of you to take a special action.
If you discard a one or two, you'll draw two cards from the deck and you're safe. Even if they're ducks, if they're numbers, they go in front of you. If you play a three or four, you draw three cards from the deck, but you're not safe. Ducks can still bite you. And if you discard a five or six, you take the top two cards from the deck and put them in your scoring area, and nobody knows what they are other than you. When a deck runs out, everyone adds up their scores. You write them down, and you keep going till someone reaches a certain determined number. So, this is an interesting style game. There's a lot that I like about this game in the sense of, hey, you flip a card and, you know, you're adding things, but you can bust at any point in time or you can take your cards and score them. There's actually some this is a lot of games that are doing this right now. the popularity of flip seven has this whole idea of pushing your luck and there's a lot of card games. This one has a little bit more thought put into it. I will say that discarding a card from your tableau to do one action which is take two cards and be safe, take three cards and not be safe or take two cards and score them.
That that feels like a tacked-on mechanism. I'm discarding a good scoring card of five or six to maybe get more than that, but it's random. taking two cards safely for a one. That's not terrible. And that one seems like the best to take three, but then you can bust. I don't know. None of them feel particularly that interesting. And the fact that people go, "Wait, the three does which one again?" But the idea of the ducks coming out and busting you over. The black cards are great because they're kind of safe in front of you no matter what. But at the end of the day, what keeps me from liking this game more is just that it really does feel ultra random. I draw a bunch of cards. Hey, this is great. And now there are several cards mill that say if I have three of a kind and you get all the ducks and I just wipe up on scoring. And yes, that kind of evens out over multiple plays with this. But this ain't no card game. This is the same thing over and over again. You decide to flip a card or not, flip a card or not, flip a card or not, or maybe spend them or score. And so I I like the concept of this, but that luck in there, the black cards being better than the rest, getting the right combination to let you score a whole bunch of ducks in the middle and watch everyone else's heart sink in a short game. So I can't really say I love it. I I think it's okay. It's a six out of 10 for me. It's something I would play just, you know, well, why not? I'll play it, but I wouldn't put a lot of stock into it and just see what happens. So that is all ducks. Flipping the bird. No
joke is at least the fourth game I played that thinks this is hilarious. This idea of flipping the bird a push your luck game and from street Smith street gift. And this game is so um [clears throat] I talked about that. It's not even on board game geek that I can find. This is a memory match game sort of where you flip cards and hope you don't flip two of the same. Wait, that sounds like flip seven. Yeah, flip seven memory match. Here we go.
There's 61 cards. So have fun trying to make a grid. Just make a grid. Put these cards down. And on your turn, you turn a bird face up. Yay. You can stop or keep going. As long as you don't turn over a bird of the same type. Oh, what's this? I can choose my turn now and take five points instead. Yeah, why not? So, I'll take all these cards and get these five points. Had I done that, I would have discarded this. Then the next player goes. So, they turn over this duck. Oh, doing pretty good so far. Everything's different. They could stop now and take six points, but they decide to keep going. This is a fantastic turn. Only two. There's only Ah, there might be only two, but now I bust it. When you bust, you turn all the cards face back down.
The next player though can only take three of the cards that you've turned over. And everyone has to somehow magically remember that. There's also cards that when you turn them over, if you do flip over a pair, they'll protect you from that pair. And uh yeah, there's a couple other cards in there. And once all the cards are gone, whoever has the most is the winner. This game is terrible. It really is. You could turn over. You saw I turned over a whole bunch and I could I I I kept going. But why would you not have stopped there? And even worse, if you draw the card that says you don't bust when you draw a match, then you just go and finally you get a match, you're like, "Okay, anyway." And then you draw another one of those cards and you're like, "This is amazing." It is. It is so lucky and so random. And then dumb rules that you can only turn over three cards that the last person did and everyone else is supposed to watch you. Are you kidding me? Um, I don't mind the push your luck aspect.
And I know I mentioned flip seven at the beginning of this because flip seven is kind of the de facto way that this works. It's lucky, but it has a point. It's quick, simple, and everyone makes sense. Everyone's behind. This just felt the same way, but I had to build this big grid and so much work. And also, haha, you're flipping birds because it's kind of like flip. Two out of 10. Hate it. Frenzy Falls is a game uh where you're playing cards. It's from Randy Flynn and Joseph Chen uh with artwork from Weberson Santiago, which I got to be honest is a humongous waste. We Santiago because the art is so background on these cards. They're just number cards. But in this card, you're playing cards in a row, trying to win the row and maybe make the row overflow and fall down to the next row. I'll show you. In this game, each player has their own deck of cards. You'll shuffle them, draw five into your hand. You have some score cards out equal to the number of players. You have a score pile, which is determined that the depth of this pile is determined by the number of players in the game. When the score pile runs out, that's going to trigger the end of the game. And on a player's turn, they're going to choose a card from their hand and place it at the end of one of these rows. So players can choose kind of wherever they want to go. Once that's done, we're going to start with the top row. And we'll reveal the cards one at a time. If you reveal a card with an action, you do that action. This is proxy. It lets me replace that card with one from my hand. So here now, we then check to see if this pool has overflowed. Yes, it has. Cuz 5 + 3+ 2 is 10. That means this pond is overflowed.
Whoever has the most influence tokens, which is this, the light blue color, wins the card, which is worth two points. They discard their cards. Every other player takes one of their cards and moves it down. It overflows into the next pool. We then flip this one over. Three. This one lets you pull a card from another row in. So maybe they'll pull this yellow one up like that. And then we will reveal that one. And now this is also over 10. So yellow has three. So, yellow wins this one, scoring six points. And then both of these cards fall down. And we continue this bumping, taking a card, and kicking it to another one. And even the bottom pool can overflow and send cards to the top one. You keep going till you've done all the pools and scored them. And then you fill your hands back up and do it again. At the end of the game, you're going to see how many points you have, and whoever has the most is the winner. Now, this game is going to bring to mind the very very very popular six nippy or you might have played it as take five or five alive or there's all kinds of names for the game that's was called six nymph where everyone's playing a card and you're trying not to play the last card in a row. Then you bust and you take the the the point cards which you don't want. In this one, you do want the point cards. But the problem with Frenzy Falls is I'm not sure why I show up. No joke.
Every game of this I played, people play the cards out there where I think maybe this one. I might win it because what cards did everyone else play? Who knows? Then we flip cards over and I'm pulling and pushing and flipping cards. Oh, someone won. Yay. They take that point card. Then the other cards fall down, which then makes that one bust. After a while, every round it's like, and this one falls down. And this one falls down. And then who won? Oh, you won. H how did you win? I just happen to have the right card in the right place. This is like random random random random random random random random. It is so crazy chaotic and I don't see the fun in it. You're just playing cards and you're like, "Oh, I won that card. I don't even know how. It's just that the stuff moved down. It sounds strategic when you're talking about like, oh, you can push a card." But as cards just all fall down into the bottom pools, nah. I I just Man, I just think I think the opposite of the world of this game. It's not good at all. Two out of 10. Frenzy Falls.
Some interesting ideas maybe, but just chaotic random mess. Poppyccock, which has a really ugly picture on the front, but maybe the game is better. Are you a brilliant bluffer? Poppycock. You know that word that everyone uses these days. So, 30 minutes to play, but only 2 minutes to learn. It should be like 10 seconds to learn a party game. Anti-genius. 750 questions. Let's take a look. In this game, when you're the active player, you're going to roll a dieice to see what category you get. Uh you can get to pick any category you want if you roll one side of the die. Then, let's say I rolled W here. Uh in what nursery rhyme did little Jack in the nursery rhyme, what did little Jack her pull from the pie? Was it A, a bird, B, a plum, or C an apple? Now, I have to tell the other players if I know the answer or not. I go, I I might know it, I might not. and then I will pick a card for my hand to match the one that I think that it is. Everyone else will then discuss, do I know the answer or not? And then at the same time, they will either play a persuaded card or a poppycot card. We then reveal the answer. Was it a bird?
No, it was a plum. Little Jack Horner, he stuck in his thumb, pulled out a plum. Anyway, um, so then if everyone said if everyone said persuade it, then the person whose turn it is, I'm sorry, I forgot to mention you bid one, two, or three teeth when you say if you know it or not. So let's say I said three, then I would move forward three and anyone everyone else if it was correct, everyone else moves forward that many teeth. If it's incorrect, then they don't move at all. If one or more players says poppycock though and the answer is correct, then I move forward. Everyone else who said it goes with me. If I'm incorrect, then the poppycock people move forward that many teeth. That's it. Also, if you start a on a gold tooth, you get to move an extra tooth forward. I'm done talking about this. This is trash. Wow.
You know, sometimes a game just takes your breath away. This one was so bad. Just reading the rules, my mind was blown. So, there's a lot that goes into these party games, right? And the idea here of bluffing if you know an answer or not is not particularly a bad one, but so many bad things. First of all, the questions in this game are so it's important when you make a party game that you have good questions. Uh the question is in which language does curse fist mean merry Christmas, Dutch, Swedish, or German? Or what company advertises its product with the slogan fingerlicking good? KFC, B, Pizza Hut, or Burger King? What animals Indiana Jones terrified of? Spiders, snakes, rats? What planet in the solar system has a great red spot? Jupiter, Venus, Saturn? The Vasa dynasty ruled which country for almost three centuries? Sweden, Russia, or Bulgaria?
Now, one of those questions the average three-year-old does not know, but it may be the top one, the Merry Christmas one. But who doesn't know that KFC is finger-licking good or Indiana Jones is afraid of snakes? I mean, don't get me wrong, there's some people who aren't going to know these. So, you say, "But Tom, the point of this game is the bluffing part. Ignore these really bad questions. What does the bluffing mean?" I say, "I know the answer." Everyone's like, "I guess you do." But here's the thing. The rules never say I have to put down the answer I think is right. I just have to put down an answer. I could say I know the answer, you all believe me, and I pick the wrong answer. So, am I bluffing as to what answer I put down? And if I don't know the answer and I bluff but picked the right answer, then I wasn't bluffing.
But at least the art's good, right? At least the there's only three answers. It would be much more interesting if they were just fill in the blank. I know the answer or I don't. Then I have to And then you're betting teeth. Why are you betting teeth? Why are you betting at all? Why am I going to go one? I don't know the answer. Everyone's like, "Oh, he only bet one. Maybe he doesn't know the answer." I might know the answer. You got a one-third chance. I can't bet on you accidentally getting it right. The only one is if little Jack her and I'm like, "Well, he's was very confident he knew the answer, but I think he's lying. I think he knows the answer, but he's going to pick bird even though everyone who has ever read the nursery rhyme knows he's stuck in his thumb and pulled out a plum.
I hate this game. It is a waste of space. I despise it. One out of 10. Poppycock. [sighs] Jolt is a game about magnets. The magnet game of push and pull from McMiller games. And now this is kind of funny because when you look at McMiller's catalog which came in here I was kind of like they have all these dumb adult party games really really like just games that you wouldn't want your kids to play for the most part or any sane adult frankly. And then they got Jolt which is clearly for families but hey that's the one I'm taking a look at. This is a two-player game where I guess you could play teams uh against each other where you're flicking magnets on a board. Well that sounds interesting. I'm always interested in magnets. Let's take a look. In this game, you're gonna decide which side of the board to use.
This is if the players are facing each other, and this is if both are sitting on the same side of the table. You'll draw one of these cards. What will show you where some magnets initially go on the board, and then players are going to be take turns flicking these triangles with your fingers, and you're trying to get them to land in scoring positions. Now, you have to be cautious. You saw I might do this one over here because I know that's going to push that magnet. But maybe if I hit this one, right? Well, once magnets touch each other, they're going to score nothing. I was trying to push that one so that it would hit the the blue one over there. And that did work that time. And then the this player is gonna try to shoot up.
Not too good. Well, this time I'll shoot. Ah, now I've lost some points there. Come on. See, you can use the magnetic fields to propel yourself to maybe where you want to go since everything is positive. Go through there. Still positive. Well, now I'm not scoring any points at all, which gives yellow a nice chance. Oh, no points were scored that round. But you can see anything that stays where it is and doesn't touch anything else will get the points underneath. You tally them up and then you play another round. I was very pleasantly surprised by this game. The idea that you can turn the magnets over to positive or negative and try to do curve shots using the magnetic fields of the other pieces out there is fantastic. I also like that the mat is you can play facing each other or next to each other.
Now, the only negative thing about that mat is because it is a roll up mat that you it's going to naturally curl one of the directions. So, you have to like roll it the other way. So, that's it's kind of a little bit of a pain. I think a board might have done better than a mat in this for sure. The pieces are big and chunky. I like how the the starting thing shows where those little blocker pieces out in the beginning of the game, but then just flicking a piece and trying to curve it around stuff. I find it a fascinating little game. Seven out of 10. Magnetic games in general tend to attract me. Haha. Um, but I think in particular, this one has good components and a clever idea that you let you decide how the magnets can attract or repel one of those. That's pretty cool. Jolt points for everything. this from Taco Cat Games, uh, who is known for their taco, beef, goat, cheese, pizza game, whatever it's called. Um, in this game, you're going to draw a card and get points.
That's kind of the rules, but I'll show you a little bit more. In this game, you're trying to get the most points to be the first person to win. The way you play, you draw the top card of the deck, and you do whatever it says. It might give you points. This says, "I keep the card until I make a duck face, and if I stay that way until my next turn, no one else will know what it says until it happens, then I play it." There are all different sorts of cards that you can get. Some affect you. For each player playing the game right now, you get a point. You get five points just for being you. You get five points. You can see someone with blue eyes from where you're sitting. Some affect everyone. This gives eight points to the oldest player. It doesn't matter who drew it. Or all players wearing a necklace, ring, bracelet, or earrings get five points. or the player sitting farthest north. Have fun trying to figure that out. You might get minus 7 if you're the closest to the wind space. Some everyone's going to vote on here. How do you pronounce this word? Is it pajamas or pajamas? Um, it's pajamas, by the way. But everyone will hold up one or two fingers and a majority will get the points. Or who would win a foot race, me or the player to my left? The player to my left. Or how many holes does a straw have? One or two? I like that question. Some use the timer. You just have this. You have to sing happy birthday twice before the timer runs out of sand. Or for every type of cereal name, you get one point.
And some you get to keep. If you see someone touch your chin, I play this and get eight points. Or if someone points at me, I get seven points. Or if someone hands me something, I steal five points from them. Anyway, that's the game. Now, you're watching this thinking, Tom is going to hate this game. And don't get me wrong, I'm not a huge fan of it. But I was mildly entertained by it. It's so random. And my kids liked it. Um, ah, this is a a tricky one to rate for me. Be I'm going to give it a 5.5 because it's bad, but it's not as bad as it could be. The keeper cards are a little amusing. It's funny to to draw the card and see what it's a terrible game. It really is.
It's like objectively a bad game. But I played it with another kids and I had such a good time that everyone was entertained and uh it kept getting played over and over again. So these games show up occasionally. I don't get it. Um but yeah, I'm assuming most people watching this review are going to hate the game. U but that's points for everything. Not particularly great, but a little amusing. Draw that card and see what happens. Catch 33. The dexterity dice game. This was clearly designed when people were at a bar flicking dice and said, "What if we could flick them up a ramp into a cup and thus catch 33 was born." Here's how it plays. In this game, on a player turn, they're going to take these dice and they're going to be shooting these dice up here, trying to make them land in that center square, which is trickier than it sounds. Um, so let me try and see if I can pull it off here. I've done it. If you don't, so you always want your first one to make it in that bucket. If you don't, then you want both dice to be in the same quadrant. If you do that, which I have not done yet, let's try this again.
Okay, go in the same quadrant. Yes, that's two points. If they both show threes in the same quadrant, they'll be worth three points. Otherwise, if they land in here, you get whatever it shows on them. The total, that's four points. You can also play whenever you score. You'll put posts up in different quadrants and you want your opponent to knock them over, which I didn't do, and they'll you'll score points or if you knock your own over, then they go out of the game. There's a bunch of other little extra rules, but basically that's what it is. You're taking these ramps, shooting everything up, and trying to hit in the middle there. Everything does fit fairly easily into the box like this. Catch 33 definitely has more rules than it needs to have. You know, these games sometimes when you take a look at horseshoes and ping pong and all these different games and they have these little edge case rules and all kinds of weird rules that have been accumulated over the years, but when the game came out, it was put this into this. It's done. This game has the Okay, well, you're flicking a die, try to get in the cup and and then if you flick it the second time, it goes in the cup, you get those points.
Otherwise, try to get them both in the same quadrant. But also, if you roll There's these edge cases. Hang on. This is just so amusing to me that there is you get double ones in a center bucket, you can get an extra free shot. If you the first shot goes in bucket, the second does not. If the result of the die in a bucket matches the result of the die in a quadrant, you can stop and take points or you can shoot it in a quadrant once more. If they do, the shot must go in the bucket or they get no points for their turn. If it does go in the bucket, they total both. If the quad player scores in a quadrant and the dice rolls are two and two or three and three, you can score as usual or pick up one of the dice for one more shot. That one must go in the bucket. Would you at? And it's like, are you kidding me? Why are all these rules? And then the rules with the posts, which you don't have to play with those posts, but and when you do, it's kind of like, okay, I'm trying not to knock your post over, but uh but I also don't want to knock my own post over. And but at a certain point, then you do challenge your opponent to knock your post over.
Other than that, it's fine. You flick the dice up the ramp, get them in a cup. That part's fine. I'm all for throwing things at a thing, but it's okay. It's a six out of 10. It I I like the the components. I think the ramp is neat. The cup fits in a little mat in the middle of the board. The dice are good quality. The posts are cool. It's an interesting little game, but not good enough. And all those little rules just push it over the edge. I can't really recommend this game. So, 6 out of 10. Catch 33. Um, which what does that even mean? Have you ever seen a dice ramp? Yes, I have. Anyway, check it out. All right. Well, a pile of games that I'm sure pretty much all these games you're going to see on discount shelves at some point in time. Some of them I hated, but at least there was one good one, and they're Jolt, right? Well, maybe you have different thoughts on some of these games than me. Let me know in the comments. Until next time, though. I'm Tom Vassel, and you've been watching the Dice Tower.
Hey everybody, thanks for watching another video from the Dice Tower. Hey, you want to learn more about us, communicate with us? We have a Facebook group. We have a Discord channel. Lots of different ways to get involved with the Dice Tower. You can find that in our linkree link below. So, just click that. It will take you and you can communicate with us on Facebook. Join our Facebook groups. There's lots of cool things that you can find and become part of the Dice Tower. Thanks so much for watching. I'm Tom Bassel.