What are TOGPicks?
TOGPicks are suggestions and recommendations for new or upcoming games that we at The Offline Gamer think you might like to check out. We will pick a game each to recommend you all and then one extra outlier (“The Other Pick”) that is gaming-related or something we think is geeky and cool that you might appreciate.
Rai’s Pick: “YOKOHAMA Deluxe!”
Campaign Ends: Sat, Jul 16 2016 5:32 AM BST
Cost: $60 + $20 Shipping to UK (USD)
URL: https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/michaelmindes/yokohama-deluxe-by-hisashi-hayashi-and-tmg
This Kickstarter aims to make the (currently available in Japan only) game Yokohama available internationally and to give it a Deluxe upgrade with wooden and metal pieces. It is already a popular title and comes from designer Hisashi Hiyashi, whose previous offerings include Trains & Sail to India, so Tasty Minstrel Games in the U.S. have decided to bring it to the rest of the world.
The Deluxe edition will include wooden tokens and pieces as well as metal coins to replace the standard copy’s cardboard ones. If you don’t want the Deluxe edition you can still use this Kickstarter to get a standard copy but interestingly, while the pledge is lower at $45 the shipping is much more ($55 shipping!) so you’d actually spend less to get the Deluxe edition ($80 Deluxe vs. $100 Standard).
Either way this looks like a great game; it’s a Euro-style board game that will need a fair bit of table space to play and although it looks intimidating at first there are already some good, quick playthroughs on YouTube for English speakers that clear things up.
Matt’s Pick: “Game of Blame”
Campaign Ends:
Cost: From £8
URL: https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/1386779695/game-of-blame
We had a chance to play Game of Blame during UKGE, and talked about it briefly in our last show. It’s an interesting game that I really enjoyed, despite being so utterly rubbish at it!
The plot of the game is that the Queen (who else?) is in a bad mood because the realm is in a complete mess! Someone has to take the blame, so you need to try to get to the end of the game with the smallest amount of points as possible. If you amass a lot of points, you might be chastised, exiled or even beheaded!
Mechanically the game is quite simple, in that it involves you placing cards down that have a matching colour emblem that matches the card on top of the “blame pile”. The tactics come in deciding whether to play 1, 2 or 3 cards (the number will decide which effects need resolving), deciding when and who to blame, and discarding cards that will get you lots of points at the right moment! As the kickstarter page says: “Cold-blooded betrayal has never been so much fun!”
The Other Pick: “Blank Marry Kill”
Campaign Ends:
Cost: it’s complicated
URL: https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/darinross/blank-marry-kill
Yep, this is a game but it’s going in the “Other” section because if you’re not in the U.S. you can’t get it… yet. If you’re in the USA then you can back it from $25 but if you’re not then you can get in there with a $1 placeholder pledge for the ‘International Waitlist’ while they try to figure out shipping costs. Might be that we’re better off with this Waitlist as there’s still plenty of Early Bird waitlist places left whereas the standard Early Bird pledge is long gone.
Blank, Marry, Kill is a card based party game derived from the popular, Devil’s Advocate style, super-awkward social question: “Screw*, Marry, Kill?” *(or, y’know, that other word)
In this version you can replace the on of the decision options with a myriad other choices part way through the game, just to mess with the Judge. Then, you get to add qualifiers to the ‘people’ the Judge is choosing from. If you head to the KS page there’s a great, quick, video from Geek & Sundry where the designer is explaining how to play the game and they have a quick round of play (heavily editing for make SFW). As you’ll see, you may start with a simple decision of Screw, Marry, Kill out of Marilyn Munroe, Darth Vader and a Cat but that quickly becomes something much more complicated – and hilarious!
