Can it be played asynchronously over the Internet?
Reviews / app store description says yes to asynchronous online multiplayer. Iām going to download the iOS version after work today.
Ok. Confirm that it works and is good. If so, letās do.
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We are changing the game. Cross platform between PC + mobile headsets.
So Iām trying to prototype a pretty basic game idea on roll20, biggest headache is that to make things work I have to have at least functional art, and thatās not my skill set. Calling it āspace takenokoā at the moment, but if the base idea works ok I want to take on some more aspects of eclipse.
Game is won by victory points and game ends at the end of the round in which any player has 15 points in a specific score category. Scores are military, research, territory, and ambition.
Players take turns choosing an action (might be 2 like takenoko at some point if that makes it better or worse, I have no play testing of even the basic game to go off of yet so itās really rough ideas). Actions are similar to eclipse: explore, build, move, research, and diplomacy. Round ends when the last player has taken a turn, then the next round starts with the one who went last keeping the same turn order direction.
Like some aspects of other eurogames randomness exists in the various decks of things but to mitigate it more than eclipse thereās a bit more public information. So for example everyone knows what research shows up on the board next, explore everyone gets to pick between a couple public tiles, players current ambition cards can be public, etc.
Exploration tiles have five potential properties, 51 total tiles, those potential properties have magnitudes of 0-2, and the total amount of benefits always adds up to 5. The properties are the 3 resources (science, materials, work), webway connections, and extra tile victory points.
Webway is a stick like the irrigation pieces in takenoko, but in this game they serve as (1) borders, and (2) connections. What I mean by that is you canāt use a move action to send a ship over a webway, however any player can build a portal to move into a webway, and webways allow players to move to other portals that have a contiguous connection. In addition, itās possible to permanently claim a tile if itās entirely surrounded and you are the player that currently controls it when that happens. Iām not sure if that works well, but in theory I think itās hard to pull off.
Resources are used in the build and research actions. Pretty self explanatory, you buy bonuses or items on the game board. Research is permanent and effects your fleet/territory/whatever globally. Buildings and ships are tangible and put on the hexes. Ships are as simple fighter/destroyer/carrier system with a little paper rock scissors for the moment, but if the other mechanics get fleshed out more I want to work on this in more detail.
Ambitions are of 3 categories like takenoko victory point cards. One category is for managing to place the webway pieces in particular patterns. One is for controlling certain patterns of hexes. One is for paying straight resources. The diplomacy action is where you are offering to play bean game and other people can offer you trades for your cards, and when itās over you draw a new ambition and decide what to score or discard. Only one of each category can be in your possession at a time, and you can choose to play it face up or face down (unless youāve already achieved it when it was newly traded to you or drawn, in which case you get the face down points). Taking it face up then achieving it on a later turn is worth one extra point for three to the usual two. So some hidden information swing factor there like takenoko if maybe youāve got 3 face down ambitions youāve achieved all of them then someone else wins the game and you pull further ahead with that and whatever else was in your score.
Move is moving all your ships 1, but a webway move from portal to portal is also 1. At the end of the round, kinda like eclipse, combat occurs. After combat phase is all over everyone gains resources based on control they had before combat, then control switches. So taking other peoples territory, kinda like eclipse, is a bit of a mutual trade.
Obviously very abstract and rough language here. If it works it works, if it doesnāt it doesnāt. If it does work I want to add some choices at the beginning of the game like races with different starting factors and ships, but first I have to even see if this clicks with people I play with.
I donāt know if this new card game is any good, but the price is right ($0)
iOS:
Android:
Steam is having a board game sale:
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So I got Space Food Truck from that Steam sale. Itās sort of a cross between Dominion and Battlestar Galactica. Even medium difficulty is fairly difficult to complete.
Each role is specialized, one role fills the market, one cooks the food (and is the only source of card disposal), one unlock more specialized cards, and the last repairs and upgrades the ship.
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Y&Y has been released on Steam. Itās also on sale. Iām going to take the bullet and pay to test it out. Wait for my report before laying down the dough.
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If itās even passable, Iāll get it too so we can review and play.
But if itās trash, I wonāt even bother and you can review it on the show for us.
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Iāve had it for awhile. Itās pretty great. Nobody is playing it with me, though.
Iāll get it if we can get two more people to commit to playing with us 
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Iām playing it. Anyone looking for a game Iām in as Tronos+4997.
Yes, come to the GeekNights Discord to arrange games.
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Root pre-order on both types of phones.
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