Here are my thoughts on some new games I have played recently.
12 RIVERS (2025): Rank 6164, Rating 7.2
In this game, there are 12 marbles with different values. They drop down 12 chutes. These chutes slowly come together until only one channel is left. You need specific marbles to finish your contracts. Each round, you face a gamble. You can spend a lot to place your dam high up. You hope to get the exact high-value marble you need. Or you can spend less and place your dam low. You will get whatever is left. The risk is that if you do not spend the maximum, someone else might. They could steal the marble you want. Then you pay a lot for a dam that is now worth almost nothing. You do this for 5 rounds. There are special effects to change things up and add more risk. The game is playable and looks nice, but it did not make me care much about it.
Rating: 6
1 A.M. JAILBREAK (2024): Rank 8136, Rating 6.5 – Saashi
This is a hand shedder game. You may add a card to the set or run that was just played. But you must play a set or run of the same number of cards plus or minus one. Or you can draw cards instead. Going out depends on your hand and the cards on the table. You aim to get lucky. Things happen fast and hands end quickly. It is a bit of a wild ride.
Rating: 6
BUS & STOP (2024): Rank 4685, Rating 7.0 – Saashi
This is a cute filler game. You must pick up all cards of one color from the draft. You add them to your collection. But they have different icons. You score by discarding many cards of one icon. So you only want to keep one or two types of icons if you can. Your hand size is fixed and you must score soon. Those cards do not always fit your plans. Watch what others collect. Try to go for different icons. Hope you get lucky with the draft. It is nice and breezy. It moves along fast and finishes in a pleasant 15 minutes.
Rating: 7
FORK (2024): Rank 19155, Rating 5.9
This is a trick-taking game. Low cards are played face up. Everything else is played face down. High cards score if a card they eat in the food chain is in the trick. If a middle card survives that, it may score if a card is left that it eats. Any low cards that are not eaten may score low points. You hope to draw a high hand. You hope you get lucky that each card scores when played. It feels pretty random and not a lot of fun.
Rating: 4
MOVIE TRICKS (2025): Rank 9332, Rating 6.9
You play cards in order from best to worst. Then you take one of the cards played to the previous trick. You add it to your tableau. You want to collect low valued cards because they have many icons. These score in different ways at the end of the game. But you also want high cards to score for rows and columns. Or you can take middle cards. It does not seem to matter much. It is random what will be led and what you can play. Take what seems reasonable for your tableau. It is one hand and done. It finishes in a reasonable time. Then you see how it all turned out.
Rating: 6
PROJECT L (2020): Rank 377, Rating 7.5
This is like an action-based Ubongo. It removes the real-time part, which makes me enjoy it more. You spend actions to buy cards with shapes. Or you place shapes on cards to fill them. This earns points and bigger shapes. The key action is putting a shape on every card you have. This makes you strive for efficiency. Whoever plans best will win. It has just the right amount of thinking for me. It fits a nice timeframe, especially with two players.
Rating: 7
RECALL (2025): Rank 2752, Rating 8.1
This is more of a race game than Revive. You spread out from one corner to claim stones, cubes, and building spots. Your action spots give you new meeples, let you move them, and let you spend them to claim items. These items help you advance on tracks, get points, get effects, and get new techs. But you only have 13 actions. Choose your strategy carefully based on what is left. You will only recall your action cards twice. This means you enable techs only 1, 2, or 3 times. They are important but not as defining as in Revive. It is less daunting and easier to get into. It still has many hard decisions. I really like it enough to keep both games in my collection.
Rating: 8
THEBAI (2025): Rank 7630, Rating 7.3 – Turczi
There is no theme, so do not worry about that. There are new mechanics to get points and I enjoyed exploring them. You aim to get resources to finish contracts. You put out dice to meet end-of-round requirements. You increase dice value for effects or end-game points. By mid-game, you have many options. You can place your die for actions or move your meeple. You get more actions by fulfilling contracts. You earn chained effects and eternal effects. The downtime is bad. Our three-player game took 150 minutes. With only 10 turns, that is 5 minutes a turn. You wait 10 minutes between turns. Even then, I did not feel I had enough time to optimize. I settled for something reasonable and felt unsatisfied. It is an interesting game, but I will only play it again by mail.
Rating: 6
Thoughts of other Opinionated Gamers:
Larry: I have only played Recall once and I enjoyed it. I think I like Revive better, but I would like to play Recall some more to form my opinion. Both games are worth playing. There is enough difference to justify having both in your collection.
The main idea in FORK is using food chains in a trick-taker. That is clever. But since most cards are played face down, it is mostly a guessing and bluffing game. That is not my thing. It is for families and casual players. Its interesting mechanics and cute theme should work for those groups. Hardcore trick-taking players should probably avoid it.
Fraser: We played Bus & Stop a few times after Melissa brought it home from Essen. It is a nice enough game.
