Geekway 2022: Day 2

Life got in the way, so here it is November and I’m writing up Day 2 of Geekway. Temper my game reviews with the fact it’s been six months since I played these.

Azul: Queen’s Garden

This was a nice followup in the Azul series. I enjoyed the multiple scoring strategies — sometimes I’m a fan of that and other times it seems overwhelming, but this seems more compact, for lack of a better word.

Murano Light Masters

This one seems a little less polished than some of the bigger games, but it has some interesting bones. I liked the board and glass-piece “drafting” mechanics. I was pleasantly surprised by this one.

Long Shot: The Dice Game (4 players)

One of the stars of the convention for me. I really enjoyed this dice-rolling, roll-and-write horse racing game. There’s a lot going on, but it all mostly makes sense, and you get to make a lot of choices that usually feel important. There are a few situations, particularly toward the end, where it seems like you almost run out of useful things to do. Swapping out different horses adds to the already pretty-high replayability (given the dice rolls). One of the things I like most about this one is how social it is. We bought a copy for us and a copy for someone else immediately.

Creature Comforts

Great art, an interesting twist on worker placement, some ways to mitigate bad rolling luck, tons of cards for replayability. What’s not to like? This one is meant to be “cozy”, and it hits the mark.

Switch & Signal

A real puzzler. It’s a good co-op game that seems pretty replayable. It’s simple to understand, but there are some hard and risky choices to make along the way. Quarterbacking potential is pretty high here (as with many co-ops), but sometimes it seems like there isn’t a definite correct choice, so there’s room for discussion.

Café

I really liked this one as well. A small package with a lot going on. The art is nice, the overlapping cards mechanic is interesting and occasionally infuriating. I guess it’s an engine-builder that doesn’t really seem like an engine-builder. My only quibble might be the tiny cubes can be hard to manipulate. But overall, great. Will probably buy this one.

Berried Treasure

A reimplementation of an older game, this is a nice, quick, casual game. It’s extremely interactive and some “take that”. Sometimes it feels a little like one of those “there are X pieces of candy in a row, on your turn you can choose one or two pieces, how can you ensure you take the last piece” puzzles, but there’s a bit more going on. A fun filler game.

Geekway 2022: Overview • Day 1 • Day 2 • Day 3 • Day 4