The Voynich Puzzle - Unboxing

[Music] Good afternoon everybody. Thank you very much for joining me. Let me know if you can hear me and see me. Okay. And welcome to a live unboxing video of the Voyage Puzzle, which is a board game with an extremely interesting theme behind it designed by Danny Garcia, published by Salt and Pepper Games, who've kindly sent me this copy of the game.

Now, if you are excited about seeing a playthrough of this on the channel, as I am, it's not going to happen for a few weeks. I'm off to wet in a few days time, and there is just no way that I'm going to be able to get a playthrough video of this done. Hopefully, you can hear me and you can see me. Okay.

And as you can see, this is going to be a very raw unboxing because this arrived yesterday. The camera is autofocusing. Thank you. I'll sort that out. Stupid camera. Um, yes, this arrived yesterday and I've not even dived into it yet. So, we will see. So, the Voyage manuscript, for those of you that don't know, I would recommend having a look at it because I'd never heard of it until I'd heard about this game.

And it's basically a it's a it's been carbon dated to the 15th century, the early 15th century, but the origins of it are unknown. It's kind of been associated with the Italian Renaissance, the start of the 15th century, but it's basically this manuscript of like almost 300 pages of indecipherable code that nobody seems to know what it is.

Is it a code? Is it a language? Is it some kind of hoax? Nobody really knows. And Danny Garcia has taken that theme and decided to to do a board game about it. So, I don't know very much about this game other than it's supposed to be very, very good. And I, in fact, I've had a few people that I know in the board game hobby that have reached out to me and said, "Paul, you need to get this game." So, I did.

I I contacted Salt and Pepper Games and I said, "Apparently, I need to get this game." And they were very kind and generous and they said, "Look, you can pick it up at Essen or we can send it to you now." out and I said, "Well, if you send it to me now, I'll do an unboxing video, but that's all I'm going to get done." So, this could potentially be one of the hottest games that's coming out this year's Essen.

I don't know. I'm trying desperately to get in the box. Okay, I'm just going to have to do it on this side. I didn't want to do it on this side, but I'll do it on this side. Oh gosh. And this is why you prepare for these by already taking it out of the box, but I decided not to. decided that I would just do it raw.

And there we go. Right, we're in. Thank you very much for watching. I'll see you in Essen. No. So, I have seen pictures of this game on other people's channels and Board Game Geek. And it does look nice. They've gone with a really interesting art style for the game, which I guess is going to suit what it is.

And if people in the chat can remind me, I believe that this was a Kickstarter. I believe that this was a Kickstarter game, but there's going to be retail version. I can't quite remember about it. For centuries, the Voyage manuscript has baffled scholars and dreamers alike. A book written in an unbroken code, filled with impossible illustrations and secrets that seem to come from another world.

Now, the mystery lies in your hands. Explore its pages, interpret symbols, connect theories, and dive into a labyrinth of enigmas. Each game is a new attempt to unlock the deciphered. All right. Well, there we go. So, let's have a look what we've got. We have one to four players, 90 to 120 minutes. Okay.

We will see. Who knows? Who knows? So, here today, we're just going to have a look at components and see what we get. So, okay, it is look it looks like a new copy of the game unpunched. We have rule book in the two languages. Okay, going to zoom in a bit. So, 36 pages. However, obviously back page doesn't count, front page doesn't count.

Looks like we have an index. Yeah, we have an appendix at the back, which is always really nice. I don't know if anybody else does this read from back to front. I just feel it's more natural. The solo mode starts on page 25. So the actual core rules of the game are here. And actually this is quite big text with quite big text with lots of pictures.

So it doesn't look too complicated. It looks like it's maybe a medium weight game just from the look at that. Right. So we have jigsaw pieces cuz it's a puzzle and these are already popping out. So there we go. Yep. There you go. That's the yellow piece done. So Vicki is going to like this game because she likes jigsaw pieces.

But yeah, they're they're punching out absolutely fine as you can see. So that's those. Get those out the way. We have another board with some other things that are also punching out. So these are punching out really nicely. Paul's punch test with no uh no bits sticking on the edges. So that's good.

Right, we have a game board. Get that out in a minute. We have some wooden components. Ah, now I remember seeing this. Okay, that's going to be interesting. And we got some cards. And thank you very much publishers for doing this. It's not necessary. It costs more and I like it. Nice inserts with actual artwork on just look look really nice.

It's a 3.0 weight on BG. Okay. Right. So the game board, let's have a look at this. I mean, straight away, there isn't a million components in this game, and that's a good thing for me because a million components means it takes a long time to set up. Okay, so we have a double-sided game board, which I'm going to guess is based on player count.

He's trying to spot the iconography for the number of players in the game. It's not spotting it. No, it's on here somewhere. But anyway, that is that is the game board and it's divided into six areas. Now, I don't know if this is six different mini games going on. And I don't know if each player it looks like each player doesn't have a playerboard.

So, that's interesting. Most games these days come with playerboards for the players, but they don't. Right. Okay. So, we've got we've got the main game board and the wooden pieces. So, we have presumably player colors. Yeah. In fact, I can zoom in a little bit more, can't I? Yeah, let's zoom in a little bit more.

Let's get these out and have a look. So, teardrops, blood drops, drops of sweat. I don't I don't know what these are. Um, we got some stars. We've got some books with suns on. Got some magnifying glasses. We got some leaves. And we got four time clock. Right. Let's get the rule book and see what we've got.

We have water drops. So the these are uh what have we got? These these are the water drops. We have leaf tokens. We have star tokens. We have text tokens. Ah the text tokens are actually these these are the text tokens. We have bot knowledge, we have baths knowledge, we have astrology knowledge, and we have writing knowledge.

Now, these are all very similar. It's the only difference is the icon at the top, but hopefully these are going to go in different parts of the board, so you don't actually need to look at the icons. Okay, so that's that for the components. We also have some cards. And what I'm going to do is I'm actually gonna zoom in on the other camera, which is here, just to show you some of the cards.

If I can get in. Where's the little tab? Is there a little tab? No, I'm not seeing a little tab. Okay. Right. Let's get in. Yeah, the artwork is really nice. Let's have a look at who the artist The artist is. Artist is Horge Tabanera Redondo. Right. Okay. Hey, and the graphic designer is, and I I will probably pronounce this wrong, uh, Howard Dwarte Silva.

Apologies for butchering your pronunciations of your names, but I am just a simple Englishman, and we can't speak any languages other than our own. Right, come on, you can get in. There we go. Right. Look at that. Yeah. So, card artwork. That's really nice. And I'm assuming thematic. I'm assuming that this is kind of what the manuscript is is is in.

But what's nice about these is that the artwork that I'm seeing brings forward the theme of the game. But the iconography looks to be fairly clear on these. So yeah, got lots of these cards. Lots and lots and lots of these cards. Other types of cards. Yeah, other types of cards. Uh and then Half Naked Women.

Uh yeah, lots of half naked women. Uh men pointing at the stars saying important things. We got lizards. We got fishes. Okay. And then we have these. And these are something to do, I believe, with the pages of the book. This is probably the solo mode. Yeah, there is a solo mode included in this game.

Right. Okay. So, let's get this because this is a plastic book. And I believe each player has one of these. If I've understood this correctly, each player has one of these. And we'll put maybe this at the start. I'm kind of just guessing here, but maybe that will go at the start. And what you do over the course of the game is you make your own little book.

Let's see if that's true. Take a book and all of the components of one color. Place all of the cards dealt from the Voinich decks in the book, one of them on each sleeve, so that they all show their starting step at the top, the one with the least complete illustration. Ah, right. Okay. Yeah. So, these cards, they go in this book, and you make your own little book, and then you upgrade your book over the course of the game, right?

Cool. Okay. Well, that's that's good to know. Um, I mean there isn't really many other components. We do have some other smaller cards. Let me just show you these. So, we got smaller cards here. If I can get in. Yep, I'm getting in. Oh. Oh, this is why I much prefer or one of the reasons why I much prefer paper wrappings on cards rather than plastic.

So, uh, yeah, we got some other cards here. Again, I don't know what these are, but I'm just going to show you some of them on screen so you get an idea of of the artwork and the components and and things like that. So, it's been a fairly short unboxing video because there isn't that much in the way of components.

But what I do want to do is I just want to look at this board and see what goes where cuz we've got jigsaw pieces. So, I'm going to guess that the jigsaw pieces are going to be going on here and you're going to be attaching these together and possibly other people are going to be helping build the puzzle maybe as the game goes along.

I don't know. That probably doesn't go there. Um, that probably goes there. Yep. Uh, there's also this area of the board which is where the leaf tokens go. This is the astrology part of the game. Uh, that's the bot part of the game. This is the place for the half naked women. Don't know where to start.

Oh, star tokens look like they go here. So, yeah, different parts of the game for different components. And yeah, I think that's it without actually reading through the rules, which I'm very keen to do. But I will be doing this after Essen. So, this unfortunately this is going to go on the shelf because, as I mentioned earlier, I don't have any time between now and Essen.

I will be leaving next Tuesday morning. Uh, and I will be in Essen for about a week. Now, what are my plans for this game? Well, this is one of many new games which are coming out at Essen this year. Lots of them I've already done playthrough videos for. This one I'm not going to get a playthrough video done before Essen, but as soon as I come back from Essen, I will be putting a poll up on my Patreon page, and my patron supporters will be voting on the order in which they want to see these new games.

So, Voyage Puzzle is one of them. Covenant is another um what's the other one with the Kingdom Crossing? Kingdom Crossing is another one or lodge astronomical clock and there will be many others as well. So, as soon as I get back from Essen, I will be putting a post up on my patre page and if you're one of my patron supporters, you will be voting and then I will try to get them done in the order in which they get voted on.

Now, I was having a look at my calendar last night and the Friday that I get back from Messen, which is the What day is that? Uh, right. It's currently the 16th. Uh, so we are currently, so Friday, tomorrow is the 17th. Next Friday, I'll be ins 31st. So, the 31st of October. Friday the 31st of October, I actually have a free evening.

So, my plan is that on that evening I will do a playthrough video of the one that gets the most votes, which might be this. I don't know. We will see. We will see. It all depends on what my patron supporters vote for. But that's it for now. Thank you very much for watching. This has not been a paid video and my playthrough video that I do for this game is not going to be paid for either.

So, a big thank you to all of my patron supporters for funding the channel. And if you want to support me directly, patreon.com/gaming rules and you get exclusive access to lots of behindthe-scenes videos, potentially me learning how to play this game. But that won't be for another couple of weeks. But for now, thank you very much for watching.

Take care. I'll see you next time. Bye-bye. [Music] [Music] [Music]