Escape: The Curse of the Temple Review

One of my biggest surprises in gaming recently has been Escape: The Curse of the Temple.

In Escape (I will probably be too lazy to add "The Curse of the Temple" throughout this post), you are a treasure seeker that is in a doomed temple.  The temple is collapsing, or exploding, or something like that, and you have to take magic gems and roll fancy combinations of dice in order to place the magic gems onto various enhanced tiles.  Or something.  I don't always pay attention to theme.  (Does it show?)  So, what this means in gameplay terms is that you and your friends win if you escape the temple.  In order to escape the temple, you have to find the exit and then roll a number of "keys" on your dice greater than the number of remaining gems.  To start the game, you have five dice and lots of gems - oh, and the exit also isn't exposed.  So, you will need to find the exit and also get rid of gems.  How do you do this?  By rolling dice.  Escape is real time (there is a soundtrack that plays while you are playing the game), and so you frantically roll dice and use them for different things.  To go to another room, you need a combination of dice; to explore, you need a combination of dice.  Certain rooms allow you to get rid of gems if you roll a certain combination of dice.  (And any time that you use a die for one of these things, it must be re-rolled before it can be used again.)  During the course of the game, there will be two times that you will have to return to your start spot within 30 seconds (indicated by a gong and a slamming door), or you will lose one of your dice.  If you successfully find the exit and every player escapes before time runs out, then you all win the game!  If time runs out and anyone is still in the temple, then you all lose.  (Cue sad music.)

So.  That sounds easy, right?  After all, I can roll the dice as many times as I want - where's the challenge?  My first pro is that one of the die faces is evil.  I don't know the term for it - but it is definitely evil.  Because, if you roll it, then your die is "locked" and cannot be rerolled.  Fortunately, there is another face of the die that allows you to unlock two "locked" dice.  And, if you are in the same room as another explorer, then you can unlock two of their dice.  So, a lot of the challenge of this game is ensuring that you roll the correct combination without locking yourself out.  (There is also an option to add a gem to the pile in order to unlock everyone's dice - this prevents you from losing because everyone just happened to roll poorly.  You can only do this twice per game, though.)

Unlocking magic gems and heading for the door!

Now you may be asking, "but Josh - you like strategy games!  Where is the strategy??"  Well, though Escape is definitely on the lighter side of strategy, there are some crucial decisions that you have to make that will affect your outcome.  You have to decide how you are going to explore - are you going to explore as many rooms as you can as quickly as you can?  This will help find the exit, but it will make it very difficult to get back to the start tile when the gong sounds.  Also, when you explore, are you going to stay with other players?  Splitting up helps you cover ground, but staying together increases the total number of dice you can use when you reach a room that can absorb a magic gem.  Also, when you roll a lot of unlock faces, should you keep any of them?  Keeping them provides a nice "safety net" where you know that you won't get too many dice locked - but it is at the cost of using one less die (which functionally is very similar to that die being locked).  Whereas none of these are hard decisions, having to make them instantaneously adds to the challenge.

Finally, for pros, I will say this about Escape - it is a lot of fun!  Between throwing the dice frantically, yelling at each other to get help unlocking dice (only to realize that you're not in the same room and they can't unlock your dice anyway), desperately trying to get back to the start tile before the door slams, and hunting down the die that inevitably rolls off the table, Escape is incredibly engaging.  (It's also exhausting.)  You may leave a game of Escape deciding that the game isn't for you, and that you don't ever need to play it again - but I'd be impressed if while playing you weren't completely engrossed in attempting to make your way out of the temple before meeting your doom.

Beware the curses from the included expansion

For my last two "final" pros, I will just say this - I also like the fact that I can teach Escape to just about anybody, and I am glad that there is an expansion that comes with the game (thus adding more replayability (also known as "difficulty")).

Though I really enjoy Escape, there is one major con that I have found with the game - it is very hard for my undiscerning ears to hear the different audio cues in the soundtrack.  The soundtrack provides a lot of ambient noise in order for you to really feel like you're trying to escape from a temple.  (Well, at least as much as you can feel that way while you have dice in your hands.)  Unfortunately, all of this ambient noise blends too well with the actual cues that you're supposed to hear.  I've had at least one time where I've just taught the game and, midway through playing, someone asked, "is that the gong?"  To which I had to reply, "I have no idea - but I think we all just lost a die."  Fortunately, there is a "quiet" soundtrack that only has the audio cues that you need to listen for.  Unfortunately, it is not included in the game itself (though you can find it here - I believe it is Soundtrack 3).  I have been told that if you use the quiet soundtrack often enough, then you will learn to pick up the cues and can switch back to the original soundtracks.  I have not bothered to try the originals again yet, but I may do so at some point.

Overall, I give Escape: The Curse of the Temple a 9.0/10.  I think that it is a really enjoyable game.  I don't know that I will play it all the time, but I think that it is a great addition to my collection that I will be able to bring out and play with a wide variety of friends.

If Escape sounds interesting, you might also check out Space Alert, Jab: Real Time Boxing, and Liar's Dice.

Architekton Review

A game that I picked up without knowing anything about it (I was trying to balance out a trade on 'the Geek'), was Architekton.

In Architekton, players take turns placing tiles (building and/or landscape) in an effort to make their cities connect to each other and to connect to the correct landscape. Players take turns placing 2 tiles from the 6 available face up tiles (3 building and 3 landscape). The tiles must be placed in a checker pattern of landscape surrounded by building and vice versa. Any time a building tile is completely surrounded, it is immediately scored - if it is surrounded on all four sides by the correct landscape, the owner scores a point. If not, the owner loses a point per incorrect side (and can lose the city that he has on top of it to mitigate one point of the loss). The game ends either when a player loses more points than he is able to lose (by scoring a tile with too many sides surrounded by the wrong kind of landscape), or when a certain number of tiles are placed. In the first condition, whoever hasn't been eliminated is the winner; in the second condition, players count the number of points they have scored and the number of cities they have in their largest connected group of cities and adds a point per city - then the person with the most points is the winner.

Before getting too deep into pros and cons, I must make a confession. I don't like tile placement games. You may be asking, then 1) why do you play them and 2) why should I read this review? Well, dear reader, I play them because I try to play everything - especially if I own it... and before you ask, I didn't know it was tile placement when I got it (like I said in the intro). Secondly, why should you read it... because you like me? I don't know that I have a better answer. I will try to be objective, but at least you know my bias going in. And, I suppose more specifically, it's not that I don't like tile placement, it's more that I haven't found any tile placement games that were good enough to make me like the genre, and so I blame the genre instead of the games.

For the first pro of Architekton, I really like the fact that the players are able to directly affect each other. Whereas this is somewhat possible in Carcassonne (especially with some of the expansions), in Architekton, through careful tile placement, you are able to put the wrong landscape around your opponent's buildings. This can cost him lots of points long term by making him lose his cities, or can cost him the game if done effectively enough. (As a point of note: you cannot play any tile anywhere; the new tile must match at least one side of the existing tiles. We missed this the first game, and it is critical - otherwise you could just place the wrong landscape around your opponent and the first person to play a city would basically lose.)

The next thing I like about Architekton is that my interest in the game seems to last about as long as the game play. This can't honestly be said about very many games - a ton of games take way longer than I care to play them, and some games are over when I just started to get engaged. In Architekton, however, the game takes about 20-30 minutes, and that seems about right for the complexity of it.

The next thing that I like about Architekton that is especially important since it is a tile placement game is that you have several tiles to choose from. Instead of drawing and placing a tile each turn (and thus far too much of the game being based on luck), you have 3 landscape and 3 building tiles to choose from each round. You still may not have the exact piece that you are looking for, but you at least have options of what and where you can place.

Now for the cons; first of all, there's not really that much to Architekton. I suppose I could look at this as a pro, and call it a filler game, but most filler games for me are very lighthearted. I'm thinking of games like Gloom, Lunch Money, and Liar's Dice; there may not be that much to those games, but there is that special something that makes you want to play it more.  Architekton seems to be a serious strategy game trapped in a filler game's rules set. Therefore, it doesn't really fit into the filler category for me, nor does it fit into the serious strategy game category for me, and I don't envision myself playing it very much.

My other con is that it is tile placement.  And I think tile placement is boring.  This one isn't as boring, but I still didn't really find it very exciting.  So, when you look at the overall score, and you say, "hey, he had 3 pros and 1 con, why did it get such a low score?" now you will know.

Overall, I give Architekton a 7.5/10. Though I don't care too much about tile placement games, Architekton seems to be my favorite one that I've played. With that said, I intend to give my copy to a friend that really enjoys tile placement, and I will play it with him occasionally when he bothers to bring it.

If you're looking for easy to teach games, you might also check out Monopoly Deal, Sorry! Sliders, and Pentago.

Alhambra Review

A game that I tried out based on a friend of mine mentioning it to me was Alhambra.

Alhambra is a tile placement game, similar to Carcassonne. In Alhambra, a player may choose one of three actions each turn: either they can take a currency card (or several as long as they add up to no more than 5), they can purchase and place a new building tile (which doesn't count against them if they spend the exact amount of money), or they can rearrange their alhambra (by removing a tile, adding a tile purchased on a previous round, or exchanging a tile). When replenishing cards after a player takes a currency card, a scoring card may appear which then will initiate scoring. Scoring occurs three times during the game - twice based off of cards, and once at the end of the game. When calculating scores, whoever has the most tiles of a certain type gets points (and in later scoring rounds, whoever has 2nd and 3rd most also get points). Finally, players also receive points for the longest exterior wall that they have built around their alhambra. At the end of the game (when no more tiles are available), the player with the most points wins.

The first thing that I like about Alhambra are the walls. The walls force a frustratingly delicate balance - they are worth points, so you want to connect a lot of walls, but they also limit your future tile placement, so you have to decide if it is worth it to seal off that part of your city. In one of the games that I played I wound up with a lot of exterior walls too quickly, and it caused me to not be able to place all of my tiles - but I was scoring 21 points for my walls. I like the delicate balance here, and it leads me to my next pro.

I like the tile placement rules. They are pretty intuitive once you are playing, but they can still be very limiting. One of the specific rules that can affect you if you wind up building a ton of walls is this: you cannot leave an empty square that you have built completely around. This caused me some frustrations during the end of our games because I ran out of places that I could put new tiles - I wouldn't be allowed to place them to complete my exterior wall until I had finished building all of the interior. And most of the interior pieces that were valid for me to play had already been purchased.

A point of note that's neither a pro nor a con is how currency works in the game.  There are 4 different kinds of currency (represented by different colors and a small symbol) and 6 different kinds of tiles (represented by color and number of diamonds).  When purchasing buildings, you base the purchase price on the number on the building tile and the purchase square that the tile is in (which shows the currency needed).  I thought that how the different currencies worked was really neat, but I thought that the conflicting color coding was pretty confusing.  I'm sure that if I keep playing the game, I will get used to it, but it takes an adjustment at first to know that I need to pay 4 blue for the green tile (and not 4 green) when it is on the blue space.  Make sense, or did I throw too many colors around?  If you're confused, then at least I'm not the only one.

With those pros, my biggest complaint with Alhambra is that it just didn't really excite me to play it. I'm realizing that I may be biased against tile placement games (I wasn't in love with Carcassonne either), but this game didn't really "strike my fancy." I could play the game again, but I could also not play it and be about equally happy. As a disclaimer, I will point out that we played the game two player, and we both agreed that it would probably be ideal to play with 4-6 players instead, and so you should factor that in with my previous comments.

After "much" internal debate (maybe 2 minutes worth), I give Alhambra a 7.5/10. I did not dislike playing the game (thus it does not get lower), but I'm also not itching to play it again. If you like tile placement games, you should check it out, because it seemed to be a good variant of the genre, but I think I will move on to other genres.  I also gave it a bonus 0.5 because I think that it would work well as a game to be played with non-gamers.

If you like tile laying (unlike me) you might also want to read about Tsuro (this one is good enough I forget it's tile laying), and my favorite "traditional" tile laying game - Architekton.  Or, if you're looking for games that you can play with non-gamers, you might read my review of Monopoly Deal or Sorry! Sliders.

Chicago Express Review

The newest board game that is slated for review is Chicago Express (Wabash Cannonball).

In Chicago Express, each of the players takes on the role of a new entrepreneur that is investing in different railroad companies. The players each start with a certain amount of money, and are not able to perform any actions until they are owner (or co-owner) of one of the starting railroads. This initial ownership is determined by auctioning off the first share of each of the starting 4 companies. After this, the players will take turns auctioning more stock from companies to raise funding (or to gain partial ownership), construct railroad tracks with one of their companies' funds, or develop land around where they have tracks laid. At the end of each round (which ends once a certain number of 2 of the 3 actions have been taken), then each of the railroad companies will pay dividends to be split among their respective owners. Once one of several end conditions occurs, then whichever player has the most money will be declared the victor.

There are several incredibly neat aspects of Chicago Express. The first thing is that each player must carefully weigh how much they are willing to pay for each share of stock. There is a lot of strategy with this because the player must factor in: how much it is worth to start collecting dividends in that company, how much it is worth to prevent another player from collecting as much in dividends, and how much operating capital they want their new company to now have to spend.

The next interesting thing about Chicago Express is what happens with the money used to purchase stock. The money that is spent from the auction goes to the company, and they must purchase their tracks using only this money. This is a game mechanic that I have not seen previously, though it more accurately represents real life than most stock based games. After the player purchases the stock, they have a say in what that company does by being able to use that company's funding to purchase track. Therefore, if a player buys stock in a company that doesn't do well, it is their own fault (or the fault of one of the other owners - potentially a minor shareholder that is wasting the company's money) for not handling the company's finances well - after all, there is no element of chance in Chicago Express.

Another awesome thing about the game is how well it plays with different numbers of players. Since the number of stock and companies available in the game stay consistent from 2-6 players, the strategy completely changes. In 2-player, each of the players will probably start with 1-2 companies that they are the sole owner in and have a lot of operating capital with, whereas with more than 4 players, there will be at least one company that will be split from the beginning. Because of this, the strategies that can be implemented successfully in 2-player may fail miserably in 6-player and vice versa.

A final thing that I cannot stress enough about Chicago Express is how well balanced the game is. Between the number of actions that occur per round, to how the money is divided to start the game, to how the interactions between players works because of the way dividends are paid, the game shows amazing balance in every aspect.

Overall, I give Chicago Express a 9.5/10. Going into this review, I was planning on giving it a 9, but the more I think about it, the more I fall in love with this game. It is easily the best stock-based game that I have ever played, and it may also be the best train game I have ever played (I need to replay Steam: Rails to Riches before saying that definitively, but it is far and away better than Ticket to Ride). I would recommend that everyone try this game at some point.

Chicago Express on Noble Knight Games (about $50)
Chicago Express on Funagain Games (about $48)
Chicago Express on Amazon (about $43)