Since I started this website last year, I’ve been lucky enough to connect with some awesome people at various gaming publishers. They’ve been kind enough to send me review copies of their games. Generally I’ll receive copies of board games and TTRPGs and I try to do a full review for each of them. However, all of this – is not something I do for pay. I hae a full time job that’s not in the gaming industry; I have family and friends, as well as playing in and running TTRPG games. But I do want to at least share my thoughts about these games so here is a quick snippet of four games I’ve played recently that are worthy to check out.

Video Version

Rather watch a video than read? Check out the video version of this article below:

Gnome Hollow (The Op Games)

Gnome Hollow is a tile and worker placement game, meaning that how you play and win the game is based on where you’ve placed tiles on the board as well as workers that are assigned to you. You play as gnomes against other players in an attempt to score as many points as possible by completing rings of mushrooms, collecting various types of flowers, and selling the mushrooms you’ve collected to gain valuable treasures. Not only are there different ways to score, but each type also has different score amount. So needless to say, this game involves a lot of strategizing, which is fun!

There are a lot of things to love about this game. The trackers and boards are magnetic to make it easier for you to keep your tracker in place; the premium pieces (which is a separate purchase) are very nice, upgrading your game from the cardboard pieces to the wooden pieces; the art is magnificent and beautiful. But my favorite thing about this game is how the instructions are made to give a sense of immersion (which I am a sucker for things like that). As you read the instructions, you’ll see it’s written from the point of view of someone who spotted a gnome and now knows that they are real and exist. A great yet simple way to bring your game to life.

One thing about this game that my players and I did struggle with is that we realized there were a lot of times that we thought our rings were connected but in actuality we placed the tile in a spot where one of the vines were not connected to another tile, so it’s really easy to overlook that. So something to keep in mind when you start playing the game is to make sure you’re connecting each pathway to a tile with another connecting path.

Heroes Of Barcadia (Rollacrit)

If you love fantasy, Dungeons & Dragons, dungeon crawling, and drinking, then this game should be on your shelf. Using a “liquid health system” (e.g. alcohol for adults, juices and sodas for nondrinkers), you explore a dungeon by moving onto a tile then flipping it to reveal what’s in the room. If there’s a boss or monster, you must attack it by rolling a d20 and adding any modifiers you gained along the way. Meet or exceed the attack number and you successfully killed it! Rolled under it and you drink your cup down that many hit points listed on the creature. Some rooms are filled with treasures; you can place traps on rooms as well. The winner is declared when a player with three Power Ups finds and defeats the Grand Drink Guardian to claim the Drink Hoard.

Not only is this game a lot of fun to play, but it was very quick to learn. The rules are very straight forward, even if you’re not familiar with Dungeons & Dragons or other fantasy combat d20 games. Although the game was made to be an alcoholic drinking game, you can definitely substitute the drink for juice or soda and make it a family friendly game if you wish.

One of the great features about this game are the tiles. They are all waterproof, which was brilliant on Rollacrit’s part to make sure they provided a game that wasn’t going to be damaged by its own making. The caveat though is that because the material is waterproof, it’s a bit difficult to pick up the tile and flip it over, so you need a rubber dart or some sort of item that will stick to it to help with this.

Queen By Midnight: Quarter Past (Darrington Press)

Last year, Darrington Press released Queen By Midnight, a deck building and hand management game where you play a princess trying to become the Queen by eliminating your competition through your resources and abilities. The last princess standing or has the most hit points and clout (the currency used in the game) by the time the clock tower strikes midnight wins.

The newly released stand alone/expansion game, Queen By Midnight: Quarter Past, continues to deliver that top notch game experience by providing four new princesses with unique playstyles, new Bazaar cards, a new rules set for a 2 player game, all provided in a smaller, travel friendly box (the base game is twice the size to accommodate the dice tower). And just like the base game, the artwork here is absolutely stunning and gorgeous.

There’s a lot to love about this game. It uses a turn-based, countdown system, meaning that after everyone takes their turn, that hour (i.e., round) is completed and you move on to the next hour, which may have new triggers and capabilities. So you’re spending the first few rounds building up a hand and strategy, then when you get closer to midnight, attacks, betrayl, and chaos ensues!

Each princess also has their own unique playstyle which makes it very interesting and avoids becoming stale overtime. My friend played Kahurere Skyfisher whose focus is setting traps on other princesses and getting benefits from it. I played Azil (With a “Z”), who has access to all 3 power types (other characters only have access to two), but has to switch between Brawler and Schemer, never able to play both at the same time. I also loved that they provided a flat clocktower for this game, but the base game’s dice tower and artwork is just so iconic for this game that we went ahead and pulled it out for our game to use (seriously – check out the tower!)

This has easily become one of my favorite games. But be prepared – the rules are a bit complexed, which means you’ll need to play a couple of times and read through the rules carefully to get a good understnading of it. The rule book does lack some clarity in regards to certain situations (e.g. how to remove cards from armory, if possible, how to handle an ability that doesn’t apply in a 2 or 3 person game, and missing “bane cards” in the glossry). That said, it was pretty easy to adapt to it and still end up being one of the most fun games I’ve played in a while.

Avatar The Last Airbender: Aang’s Destiny (The Op Games)

If you enjoy playing Harry Potter: Hogwarts Battle, then you’ll enjoy the latest cooperative deck building game from The Op Games, Avatar The Last Airbender: Aang’s Destiny. There’s a lot of similarities with this game, and you do not need to have a working knowledge of the popular anime series to enjoy it (case in point – I know very little other than what my 10 year old has told me about the characters and the Legend of Korra show).

In this game, you work with other players to defeat all of your adversaries and complete your objectives before the Fire Nation arrives and captures you. There are seven boxes for increasingly more difficult levels of play that makes it fun and challenging. You select a character to play as, and each character has their own ability that allows you to unlock and use certain features of a bending card that you can purchase from the market. As you attempt to complete objectives, your team also gain certain character cards that they can use as part of their hand as well. This is a game that my kid loved playing for days, so it’s definitely something to consider if you have any children who enjoys this kind of game or the Avatar IP.

That said, this game also has a few things to be aware of. The organization of the decks does make sense but you will spend more time than normal to sort and organize the decks back into their original boxes (some cards play for a number of boxes, so you may have a card that says for boxes 3-7). The game we received also had the cards and player boards warped, which we’re not sure if this was common for this shipping or if ours was a unique instance. Finally, the instructions needs a little work since it is missing some critical information, such as what to do with an objective rewards card if you don’t have a player who is playing the character associated with it, and there’s a refence in the instructions that says rewards cards are explained in more detail on page 12, but the page doesn’t mention anything about rewards cards (or another page close to it). We also didn’t realize the section that says “Additional Rules” were actually still the core rules, so it took us a while to realize that the main rules were explained and listed there.