6 Small Box Game Reviews - Questline, Las Vegas, Haunted Mouse & More!

0:00 when you don't have 20 minutes to watch a full review and you're not looking for a how to play or an hourong play through. And let's be honest, when the interest is a little lower, too. That's why we have six small box games for you. Hey, I'm Alex from Board Game Co. And today I'm doing another six smallbox game review lineup. These are going to be six more from my Gen Con smallbox games, and I'm coming home to go ahead and give you a little bit of a overview, thoughts, opinions, and all of that on these games. Before we dive into it, Allplay is a channel sponsor, and if you go to allplay.com, you can find a variety of other smallbox games, both from All Play themselves, as well as a variety of partner publishers. And you can get $4 flat rate shipping on anything and everything if you're in the US. Well, I say anything and everything, I think the games. I don't know if the tables get $4 flat rate shipping, but you can go ahead and check that out.

0:49 Anyways, with that, let's go ahead and dive into these. We have a bunch of games. Let's start off with 50. 50 over here. Let's actually zoom in a bit because we don't need to be that far away from the camera for smallbox games. 50 is a game from Yellow in which you're going to be uh counting to 50. That's the basic premise of the game. But the way the game is going to work is you're going to have these uh pads which you're going to be tracking your score and then you have these sheets. Let's go ahead and put down a sheet over here. In fact, let's put down two sheets because I think this is a game that it really helps if you can see what's going on to visualize what's happening. Before the game begins, depending on the player count, you're going to flip over a bunch of these tokens to eliminate certain things you can't put down, but you are going to be putting down numbers 1 through 50. We're doing round one. So, for example, I'm going to go ahead and put down, let's say, five. Over here, we put down five. And then we'll put down 17. And then 22. Let's go 22. Uh then let's skip to straight to uh 41. Let's say 41 seems reasonable. And then 45.

1:40 Okay, that may probably wasn't that makes most sense. Let's just do that. Meanwhile, this other player, obviously without knowing what I'm doing, is going to go ahead and put down, you know, seven and then they'll jump straight to 21. Looks legal. So, they'll the 21 and then they'll do 30 uh five 35 followed by let's go with 39 and then let's go from there to 40 41. Okay, 41. Beautiful. There we go. Now, the way the game works is once all players have jotted down their numbers only knowing that they can't use these as any last numbers. So, for example, these were crossing out that I couldn't have ended any number in 3 4 6 or 0, which I did not do. None of these end in 3 4 6 or 0. From there, you're then going to go ahead and start counting. You go 1 2 3. Where's my pad over here? You go 1 2 3 4 5. At this point, the player over here is going to say, "Hey, I got five. I got five because I wrote down a five. So, I'm going to start counting my score."

2:36 Then you go six. No one said six. Seven. Oh, wait. Someone said seven, which means this player is now going to take over the count because a seven was said. So, in other words, you're trying to figure out what numbers are going to be said so you can sequence your own numbers to get the most points out of it because then they go 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17. Oh, look. They said 17. Now we start counting. 18 19 20 21 They said 21. 22. Oh, wait. They said 22. 23 24 25 26 27 28 29 30 31 32 You get the idea. You're basically counting. Obviously at two players, you eliminate more numbers by the way and you have longer gaps. But in general, you are trying to create a longer sequence by guessing the order in which players are going to guess their numbers and ensuring that you time your numbers to have the widest gap before the next person goes. That's the basic idea of the game. There's a few other rules as far as things like what happens if players say the same number, stuff like that. How do you There's another little mechanic as far as an instant win mechanic that you can actually earn an instant win as opposed to playing out the full four rounds. But the basic idea is jot down a bunch of numbers, count to 50, and see who can uh outplay the other players better than the other players can outplay the other players. That's the basic idea. The game is an interesting one. I like the game, and this is one of those areas where I'm always torn between ranking a game based on the experience I'm having versus other factors such as like rule books, longevity, components, all those other things all lead into the gameplay experience. Because if I was ranking this purely based off the fun I had on the first few plays of the game, I'd

4:07 say, hey, it's a 3.5 out of five. It's a fun system in which you're trying to count out and it's very easy to teach, very easy to play, all those fun things. But also, there's not really any longevity to the game. This is very much a one-trick pony with a very specific one trick that gets boring relatively quickly once you've played this a few times. You've seen everything the game has to offer. And to that end, I'm going to give it a three out of five. I think it's worth playing. It's fun. I enjoy it, but it's very much like a very specific like I mean honestly I don't even know if you need components to this. You can probably do it on your own with a sheet of paper and a few random number generators. Uh but that's basically 50. It's a cute little miniame to experience a 3.5 out of five. Let's go from there into mind the let's do small boxes. Work our way up to the larger boxes. We'll do quest line over here. Quest line is a game in which you're trying to build out the perfect quest line, so to speak. And I won't be opening all the boxes. I just think sometimes it's helpful to be able to showcase what a game is doing and how it works. The idea of quest line is you're building a quest line. You're going to be trying to collect cards in order to sequence those cards, trying to figure out how to create sequences uh based on working your way up from one up to higher numbers. The specific trade-off is that you do need to have where are my ones? My ones might be on this other deck over here because there are different decks. So, you're going to go ahead and get some cards and build up a sequence of cards in the game. That's all you're really doing. You're going to have this ability to draw cards from the deck, to draw cards from your opponent's discards, because you're going to have your own discard, your opponent's discards in the deck, and you can draw in order to try to build out this line.

5:30 All you're really doing is collecting cards into your hand, discarding other cards. As you discard cards, other players can grab those cards. So, everyone's looking to find cards that most complement what they're trying to do. As far as what they're trying to do, you're usually trying to have a character, the ones that are characters. You're a warlord, a crusader, a fighter, all of those things. And then from there, the rest of the stuff is going to be the experiences you're having. Although you could be a rogue fighter or a warlord thief. You could have those things. It just means you have different kind of stats on your one than you do have on the other cards. Then from there, you're trying to build a sequence. Now, you are trying to work your way up into a continuous sequence. So, for example, that 2, three is actually going to give me a two and a three on the same card. Now, I could go ahead and play a two after it. The only rule is for a card to score, you have to have the numbers that precede the card earlier in the sequence. Outside of that, doesn't matter. So I could go 1 2 3 2 4 because the two still has a one before it even though it's out of order.

6:21 The four would still have a three or two earlier. So you don't need to build an exact 1 2 3 4 5 6 7. You just need to have any number that scores needs to have the preceding numbers earlier in the sequence. And then from there you're basically just trying to figure out all the abilities as to how they're going to synergize. This person is going to give two points per symbol over here. This armor you have on subsequent cards. So if I can play this five and six, that's going to be great cuz they both have that armor on them. Meanwhile, cards are rewarding themselves as well. This one go gets two points for every card in your quest line that looks to the left for agility. That works well with this card, which is looking to the left for agility. All I need to do is actually get some cards with agility on the left. That's the downside. You actually have to get all the things. You're basically trying to figure out the sequences of these cards, how they all score together in order to maximize your score as you build out your quest line. It's fun. It's charming. It's a fairly straightforward game which you're trying to build out a perfect hand. think games like Fantasy Realms. Although I think this is Fantasy Realms meets Far Away because there's a sequence to the cards.

7:15 It's a perfect hand you're combining. I think this really is the uh the the the the the child of those two games. Fantasy Realms meets Farway gives you Quest Line by Thunderworks Games. I think it's enjoyable. I think it's fun. I've enjoyed the combos. I I I liked playing it solo. Like my first game, if it was solo before diving into playing a multiplayer, I think solo is fun. It's a cute little puzzle, but I think multiplayer is where ultimately I would play it. This is a solid game. It's a 3.5 out of five. From there, let's go into Haunted Mouse. Haunted Mouse and Bezier Games is a game of well, it's it's kind of um you're trying to it's a hand shadow. You're trying to get rid of your your hands through playing sets, runs, and all that as you play out these cards. The hook of Haunted Mouse relative to other games in the same genre is that you have this idea of bait. You can go ahead and set your bait before you race for the cheese, defeat the spirits, and all that. the bait. All that really means is you can place cards in front of you that other players can use in their own runs, which is a great way of getting rid of cards because players will want those cards to help complement their runs, which might help them beat your runs. So, when you place a card down in front of you, you're kind of giving the tool to your opponent, but you're doing so while getting rid of a card. So, it's usually in your best interest to do so because if enough players are using your cards, they might get slightly better hands, but you're using their cards. And also, you can use your own cards as well. So, all it really is is a handshotting game with the additional mechanic of bait thrown in. I think it's fine. Ultimately, Haunted Mouse is very cute. It's got great components, got a great little insert. I think it's a a 3.5 out of five. It's a cute little game. The biggest issue I have with it is I just don't think it's doing anything significantly new. It's got a nice little theme and it's got a cute

8:45 mechanic of bait. But even bait, like I feel, what's that game? Was it sandbox? No, sand something. I think Bezier themselves had a game that had that kind of um it was like the concept was balloons and you put your sandbag sandbag. Was it called sandbag? I don't know. Whatever it was, that concept was kind of similar and in play. So, I don't know if I felt that Haunted Mouse was doing anything particularly new. It's still a fun time. I just think there's a lot of handshedding games out there, including from Bessie themselves, that just give me better experiences. Then we have Flock. Flock over here is from Rose Gauntlet Entertainment. It's a game of well actually now that I think about it, it's a very similar structure as far as using your opponent's cards to help yourself. In this game, what you're going to be doing is you're getting points for collecting cards. Now, you can place cards in front of you. Will they be worth points if you can keep them? But you can also try to store cards behind your board, which is great.

9:32 No one can take those, but you have to take time to actually go ahead and do that. But you're trying to play these cards by drawing cards in the game. You take two actions every turn. You can draw cards, you can play cards, you can merge from the center, you can steal other players cards. If I play a bunch of threes in front of me, someone else can go ahead and steal a three from me, but I'll get a token which will help me. It's a compensation factor, and all these things help me go ahead and use those tokens to go ahead and contribute to creating other sets. So, all you're really doing is slowly cluttering the table with more and more cards. As all the players play things down to get points, other players steal those cards from other players. You get tokens from that that can then help you cycle back or are worth points at the end of the game as well. And you collect cards behind your behind your grid. Just do that over multiple rounds. see who has the highest score and that's who wins wins in flock. This is a decent game. Now, if you watched our haul video, you'll know my first play of this was not not the best because I played it for like two hours in a a party event for a game that the box size says the box length says it should be a 20-minute game. Having played it since then, it is a better experience than that because it's a pretty straightforward game that plays relatively quickly. The actual game time is in the range of 20 25 minutes. Depends on the player count, I'm sure, cuz this actually has a wide player count, two to five players. I don't think it's nearly as good at two players. I think you're really looking for those higher player counts to enjoy the synergies of well stealing everything. Ultimately, my biggest problem with it is after playing this multiple times, I don't think that there it didn't feel like there's a meaningful difference in scoring going on as you play. It mostly felt like the game is almost designed that points just trade off between the players. Don't get me wrong, someone definitely wins, but it felt like there's a lot of like, okay, great. We all have very similar scores.

11:01 We all have very similar scores. We all have very similar scores. It didn't really feel like there's a breakout element when you play the game. It's almost too balanced in a way that makes some things less meaningful or less satisfying to have clever, fun, optimal plays. So much as I'm going to play stuff, steal cars, you'll get compensation, you'll use that to your own board. And look at that, we all ended up with 14 points this round. And the amount of times the scores are very, very close is a lot. That's going to be like my bigger problem with it. So, I think the gameplay, cute cards, cute art, very simple to dive into. I'm going to give it a three out of five. From there, let's go to Mind the Lines. Mind the Lines from Rabbinsburg. this another one. I guess I'll go ahead and show you over here because what you're going to be doing in this game is you're going to be drawing based on having a certain card. So, you get a card in front of you. Go ahead. Let's say we're trying to draw I don't want to draw any of those. We're going to draw a jacket. Okay, we're going to draw a jacket over here. And we're going to be using the lines on my particular playerboard in order to draw the jacket. So, how do we draw a jacket? We're going to try to go ahead and we're going to uh draw that and then that. And I don't know, we can color.

11:57 And as long as you can figure out how to make it fit within the lines, you are good. I guess this is going to be a terrible jacket. It has to has to be exactly on the lines. This is absolutely terrible. This is my my jacket over here. Okay, that's my jacket. We're going to go ahead and cross that off. Uh we go ahead. I don't even actually think you can erase in the game. I have to double check. But here we go. That's my jacket. Honestly, I'm kind of impressed with that. Meanwhile, someone else has their own board and they have the word. Let's go ahead and do uh we're going to They say they're doing sleeping. Okay, they have sleeping. So, they're going to turn it sideways. That seems like a better way to do sleeping. Uh we're going to go ahead and draw this. Am I trying What am I trying to do? Now, you don't have to. You could pick up and go. You just You are limited to like whatever lines are in play. I feel this is a terrible mistake. We're trying to What are we doing? What What do I think? I'm trying to draw a bed and a person sleeping, but I don't know if that's working. I don't think it is working.

12:47 There we go. That's That's going to be sleeping. We'll draw the head over here. And you do have a limited amount of time to do this, but you know, whatever. We're going to put that I can't I can't make that go around. We're going to I don't know. I don't know. I give up. I give up. That's sleeping over here. Now, basically, you have these words over here, but then you also when you're done when everyone's done doing that, you're going to add more words to the mix. So, for example, we're going to add helicopter and pilot and bubble bath and swimming. And then players are slowly eliminating saying, "Oh, well, looking at this these cards over here, I don't this could be swimming. This could be a bubble bath. Honestly, I don't think anything's a helicopter." So, we eliminate this word. Next player goes and they say pilot. I mean, it could be. Who knows? We're going to eliminate pilot. It's not that. Okay. The next player goes ahead and they say, "We're going to eliminate ah, this looks like it could be a bubble bath, maybe, or swimming. We're going to eliminate sleeping." Keeping in mind, we know that sleeping was the word. You do that until the number of wards left matches the number of actual pictures. The jacket, I think, is actually pretty good. And I'll go ahead and say that swimming, so we'll limit that. And then you score points based off of how well you did as far as the elimination round and whether your things left are actually accurate to the things you're trying to draw. So basically, it's draw poorly based on the limitations and then eliminate stuff until you eventually end up with uh either the right total or alternatively the wrong score and score accordingly.

14:01 It's a cute little cooperative game of trying to draw with a restriction. I think I just don't find the restriction charming. I actually like the scoring system. Like this actually reminds me a lot of uh what's the game? Caution signs. Caution signs from Wise Wizard Games. Very similar style of gameplay where you're drawing poorly and then making guesses. I think that I like the elimination system that this game has. Although cost signs works differently, whatever, it's not getting too much. I like the elimination system this game has. Uh what I don't like is the limitation on the drawing itself. I find that it doesn't make me feel like clever so much as just restricted. It's not like, oh, how terribly can I draw something in 20 seconds with like chaotic uh you know, guides. It's really just restricted to these lines. And I don't think I found that interesting enough. It's still fun enough. It's a fun party game. It just didn't wow me. I would say it's another three out of five. And that brings us to lastly is Las Vegas. Las Vegas is a classic game.

14:51 This is the redone version from Ravensburgger in which you're basically trying to you're going to be dealing out casinos each round. So, again, I'm going to do a partial setup, not the full thing, but you basically have a bunch of casinos that you're going to be placing out on the board. Let's go ahead and set them all out. Uh, you know, one, two, three, four. We going to have a bunch of bills next to these casinos. I'll kind of show you how it works, but it's going to be a little crammed on space. You know what? We will zoom out a bit so you can see more. Uh, and then you're going to take the money in the game. So, we're going to take the money. You're going to put a bunch of bills by each casino. So, you have two bills by each casino. Again, this is kind of not the most optimal as far as table space, but I just want you to go ahead and see how this plays out. Uh, and then from there, players are competing to try to go ahead and get those bills. So, at that point, at that point, players are rolling these dice. They have these dice over here. You're going to be rolling them in order to try to figure out where you want your uh your your numbers to go. So, for example, let's take these over here. Let's take all these. We're going to roll these. Let's grab some of these over here. And we're going to roll our dice. So, let's say I go ahead and roll my dice. And I roll these. And I try to figure out, ooh, that's a whole lot of ones. The ones does have a 90. It's a decent place to put it, but maybe I want to try to be a little bit more safe right now. So, I'm going to go ahead and take I realize you can't see my dice.

15:53 I'm going to zoom back out even more. So, you can see my dice over here. We have our ones over here. So, right now we have our ones. I'm going to put a three down. We're going to put a four because it's 100k bill over there. We're going to put a four. These are not going to be spent. The next player goes, they go ahead and roll their dice. And we can go see we got a one. One. Honestly, that's not a bad number of ones to go ahead and place out on the uh one over here. We can disincentivize other players. We'll have another player go ahead and go. And I'll just do this a few times before showing you how it plays. The next player is going to go ahead and roll their dice. And we have a bunch. We have a six. A single six is not bad. There's a 90k over there. Let's put the six down over there. Back to the blue player. The blue player rolls their dice. Keeping in mind, every time you assign dice, you have to sign all of that number. This is a 10 and a 20. No one wants to go to the twos. I'll take my six. This is my double six over here. I'll place it over there and and be in that spot. Then we have the the orange player. Orange player rolls. And they're going to put, you know, we have a two over here. That's terrible. We don't want that. We could put the three out.

16:46 We have a five. Five over here. Three is not bad. We'll place a three out there. Then the green player goes, and you're basically trying to roll dice, always assigning all of one value. They'll actually place their ones over here because that can beat out the orange player because they have the larger one over there, which can be worth two. And then we're going to go back to the blue player. And you go round and around until eventually at a certain point once all your dice are in various spots. We're going to put the dice on various zones over here just to pretend that they've all been assigned. Eventually, you're gonna get to a spot where you have to roll your dice, and you might roll away all your numbers. Like, if this was blue players's turn right now, they could roll a two and a four and still have agency. But if they rolled two fours, they would have to place them both out onto the four casino. Basically, every time you roll, you have to assign something. When all is said and done, you're going to go ahead and try to figure out who wins each casino.

17:32 Basically, the player who has the most dice is going to take uh that dice. Let's go ahead and pretend that this is the uh ending situation, which is not the right number of dice. Over here in this casino, blue would take the 100 and orange would take the 60, which is not bad for one dye. In this casino though, because blue and green have the same number of dice, they both get eliminated, which means orange is going to get the 80 even though they had one die there. Part of the fun and charm of this game is that you're constantly going to be rolling numbers in ways that end up with these chaotic end situations and pay players are going to be able to take uh, you know, a whole bunch of bills that they didn't necessarily earn mathematically as far as the dice go because other players got eliminated. or you'll have players vying for that 100 and someone can sneak in with a single die and get a relatively high die that was totally worth it for the cost of only one die. You do that across three rounds, see who has the most money and that's who wins the game. This is a classic. I love the original Las Vegas.

18:19 I I still have it to this day. This is the um Whoops. This is the new version from Ravensburgger. Uh component wise seems similar. It's kind of just a reprint. The the build the build quality is nicer. I think that's nicer overall, but for the most part, this is the same game. There might be rules differences. if there are, I didn't significantly notice, but it's a fun re-implementation of an existing system that is a charming push your luck. Is it push your luck? It's a little push your luck. Push your luck, push your players, ultimately roll a lot of dice, and see who ends up uh winning the most money with a lot of chaotic party goodness and strategy mixed in. Ultimately, I'm going to give that one a four out of five. I really enjoy Las Vegas. I think it perfectly nails that aspect of chaotic rolling dice, uh, locked into bad situations, enjoying the strategy of where to place things, and just everyone having a good time as it plays or most people having a good time depending on how things play out. Anyways, that is your small box review roundup. We have 50 over here, a three out of five. Flock, a three out of five. Uh, Mind the Lines, a three out of five. Then we have Haunted Mouse, a 3.5 out of five. It's It's pretty fun. It's just not doing anything new. Quest Line, a 3.5 out of five. It's a good combination of Farway and um Fantasy Realms. And then Las Vegas, a great party game, a four well party/st strategy experience, a four out of five.

19:32 In any case, until next time, I'm Alex Radical from Board Gameco. Hope you found this review helpful. And as always, I hope you have a good one.