The Voynich Puzzle Board Game Review

0:00 [snorts] Hello my friends. Today we are diving into the mysterious Voyage manuscript which is a historical document of of that has botany and and astrology and recipes and writing and baths and has all these different codeexes that has sort of baffled people in time and historically. Today we're taking a look at the voinage puzzle which is a board game based on that. So let's tell let's show you how it works. I'll see you on the other side.

0:35 Before I get to the moment you've been waiting for, I wanted to tell you about the sell trade program at Noble Knight Games. Now, as gamers, we all have games that are cluttering our shelves that we either don't have the right group for or might even not like it. Well, now you can turn those unappreciated games into cash or store credit. Noble Knight Games buys thousands of games and gaming products. It's easy to send them a list of the games that you'd like to sell or trade. Now, they'll send you a quote and even pay for the shipping of the games. Get treated and paid like royalty while you sit back and collect cash or store credit. To get started, click the link in the description of this video or in that upper right corner there and then click the sell trade button. The Voinage puzzle is all about the Voinage manuscript and the different parts of those like the botany pages and the astrology pages and the baths pages, but also the writing pages and the recipes pages. Each player gets a book of their color. And in this book are going to be two pages of each of those types of manuscripts. So we have the, you know, the botany, the astrology, and these are all random. So each game you're going to have different types of actions that you're going to have for each of the different sections of the manuscript. Now over the course of the game, you're also going to be upgrading these pages because they start all on the first section of the page of the sort of outline. And as you do things, you're going to be able to upgrade this to get a little further into the drawing, then get to a third level, and

2:06 then finally get to a fourth level. And you'll be doing this in your book. And upgrading is done by having research in different spots of the voinage puzzle. For example, in this case, having a research token on two adjacent botney, which is the green type of puzzle tiles. Over the course of the game, players are going to be taking actions to add puzzle pieces to this. And in this case, if this player had that upgrade, they were on two of these, they could upgrade that page. That would be taking this and flipping the page, giving yourself a better version of that action that was on the first side and giving you starting to get some endgame goals like having knowledge in the writing is going to get you more and more points even though these pages are about bath. So everything is interconnected. For example, if I upgraded this all the way to the fourth level, the highest level, I am going to get four times the points that my knowledge got by on the writing because each section of the manuscript you'll have a scoring token for. So here it has gotten past six. So if this is the way my page was, I upgraded to the fourth page of this specific one. Four times that, that's going to get me 24 general knowledge or overall knowledge at the end of the game, which is the main way to score. So you're going to be scoring at the end of the game depending on how much you've upgraded and how far you've moved down on the score track for that specific section of the manuscript.

3:18 Now, the main board is comprised of all the different sections, the puzzle pieces we saw, but we also have botney, astrology, writing, recipes, and baths. And each of these are its own little mini game that you can be taking the actions on from the pages I showed you. For example, you might be placing water or leaves by using the botney action or moving them. And you might be moving them up branches and over to get things like six knowledge and botany, which will move your botany up. And if you do end up moving it past a puzzle uh research piece, and you can select a piece off the side of the board, like L for green, and I'll place it here as a piece. So players are collectively creating the grid of the puzzle pieces. And many actions are having you move your research token on a certain spots. As you can see, you need researches on specific spots in order to upgrade your pages, which before you remove them in order to do that. Now, generally speaking, you have to place puzzle pieces next to other puzzle pieces, but this was initially set up as a two-player game, and some things were seated far out in the board. I'm not going to show you the details of all of the different sides of the manuscript, but essentially you're going to be taking actions in each of these spaces and generally getting knowledge, moving pieces around and affecting other parts of the manuscript. And I will say many of them are thematic, like water is flowing, pushing things down, people are getting upgrades. There's a lot of player interactivity in the game. And one thing I will show you is the recipes is different is where you actually take pieces that you've placed on other sections of the manuscript to move them here, opening up those spots for you to go again or for other players as well.

4:42 Again, huge interactivity. So, in addition to upgrading the right pages to get the right endgame goals, but then moving up the right different tracks in order to score those points and scoring points in other ways, like when you complete research to upgra to upgrade pages, you're going to be getting the points in the row and the column. Those are straight overall knowledge points cuz at the end, whoever has the most overall knowledge is going to be the winner. Before I get to the moment you've been waiting for, I wanted to let you know that Game Toppers is giving 15% off premium game mats and accessories, specifically to my US and Canada audience using code Game Boy Geek 15 off for a limited time only. Hear more about this at the end of my final thoughts. Now, this did make my top 10 most anticipated games of uh in Essen. If you missed that video, you can see it up there. Uh, and the game itself, first of all, it's beautiful. It looks nice. The art on the cards, the way that it's sort of handdrawn and they slowly get colored in as you upgrade things. The board just looks pretty. Everything about the game just looks really nice. Now, when it comes to the gameplay, the books is awesome for the action selection where you're you're flipping the pages and you're trying to decide which one to go to. It just works so well in that little book there. It's so cool having your own little book. takes a little bit of time for setup and tear down, but it's worth it because it just looks really cool.

5:58 The action selection is cool. Open it up to a different page from your last action and maybe upgrade and then take one of the two actions, then possibly add a puzzle piece, then possibly upgrade, you know, things like that. But it's it's really really cool. I can say that, you know, it's not often that I'm playing games these days where I'm like, "Wow, this game is like nothing I've ever played before." It's hard to say that these days cuz there's so many games released every year and we play so many of them. This one feels fresh. It feels unique. I kept using the word fascinating as I've been playing this game cuz it's it's it's just so different. I like that there's sort of six mini games and the mechanisms of each of them are different, but they're not like crazy side games that all require their own rulebook, you know?

6:45 Like it's, oh, this does this and then this. You go here, you go there. Okay, I get this one and this one. This one's slightly different. You do this, this, this, and this. Okay. And so they all sort of connect together. And I think that's cool that they all sort of work differently. Um, the interconnected sections, the way that things are interconnected is just so interesting because it's like the points of astrology, you get points on astrology by upgrading your botany, right? And so it's like, okay, well, if I'm scoring a lot of knowledge of of astrology and I'm moving that mark away up, well, I'm going to want to upgrade my botney cards in order to maximize those points at the end and they're sort of linked in that way. Okay, so if I'm moving up astrology, how do I now make sure I upgrade? Okay, to upgrade the astrology, the botney, I got to do this, this, this, and this. And now that that drives your strategy is like where am I get how am I getting these puzzle pieces out there? Where am I placing them? How am I getting my research on the board to the puzzles? How am I moving them around?

7:37 That brings me to the puzzle pieces, which is basically an abstract game for upgrading your cards, which is really cool and thematic and such, too. Uh, it's just really interesting. You're like, "Okay, so I want to get this piece." So, there's so many places on the board that allow you to sort of every time you, you know, you move your you move your your your knowledge of certain thing up, if it passes a little marker, you know, you get to place a puzzle piece of that type. And it's it's very interesting because it's like, okay, where am I going to place it? Oh, I need the O of red. Okay, I'll grab that. I'll put that here. that's gonna allow me to do that. Like it's it's it's very clever. It's it's again fascinating. The whole game is just different and fascinating. The game has huge high player interaction. Everything everyone else does affects everyone else. And I love that about this game. Someone does one thing and now completely differently. They've added a puzzle piece. Like, oh wow, now there's three green over here in this cluster. So if I move my thing over here adjacent to those three, now I'm going to be able to I don't have to worry about getting that third piece anymore.

8:33 So now I don't have to take that botney action. Now I can take something else, use that action, move that thing there, and now I can upgrade the, you know, so it's like everything everybody else does does different does something else for something else. It's it's awesome. Overall, the game is fantastic. If you like Euro games, crunchy, heavier Euro games that has lots of player interaction and has lots of replay-ability, this is definitely one that has that. Uh, anything that I didn't like about the game? You know, the game you you it should have a player aid with the actions and the progress progress condition icons. Uh, granted it would have to be probably a half sheet, you know. Uh, but basically, everyone has to take a picture of the rule book unless they want to pass it around all game long because the upgrade ones are very specific. Some of them the icon the iconography is pretty good but you need to know exactly what that is because that drives two or three turns of your strategy of planning right and so I wish there would have been a player rate for all those actions uh there isn't there should have been one u the player colors they shouldn't have been the same colors as the pages there shouldn't have been a green a yellow a red because that's writing and botany and you know the astrology they should have made different colors. I should have made orange, purple, things like that. Now, maybe for color blindness, they didn't do that. Whatever. But [sighs] I'm not sure. But it's They shouldn't have made the player colors the same color as the pages. Because as you're moving knowledge up, sometimes like, "Oh, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait. No, no, you're green. I'm red. I got to move my botney, which is not green, even

10:04 though botney is green. It's it gets a little confusing." Um, and so that should have done it. The the crunchiness of this game is part of the positives of this. But it also can induce some analysis paralysis. Some turns are very quick. Some turns like, hey, I did this. I put a leaf. I moved it. I got four botany. That's it. Next turn. Some turns are like, hey, I did this, which gets me this, which gets me this, which gets me this, which let me do this, and I got a puzzle piece from you because you move me on the bath and I get the Some of them are like really crunchy turns. Um, and that can lead to analysis paralysis. So, if you play with someone that has NAS process, just know this game can induce that. The and because of that, the game can outstay its welcome a little bit. It's a longer game. The box says 90 minutes, two hours. I think if everybody knows what they're doing and has played it multiple times, that's doable. 30 minutes per player, but in your first few plays, it's it's not going to be that fast. So, but overall, it's a great game. Very unique. One of the most unique games I've played in a long time. The Voyage Puzzle. It's the Game Boy Geek, breaking down barriers, growing relationship support, helping you next one you love. Game Toppers upgrades every game you play, being the one table to rule them all with Game Toppers, leg kits, dining covers, premium game mats, and more. And for a limited time only, my US and Canadian audience can get 15% off their premium game mats and accessories using the promo code gameboygeek 15 off. Also, go to gamettopperslc.com to check out all the options or for worldwide late pledges of their recent 5.0 Kickstarter.