On the Planet, Downforce Free For All with Palm Trees everywhere
It’s been so many weeks since I have played a decent amount of tabletop, that I am out of practice for the articles titles.
What can I say – Sorry Not Sorry :p
The Outer Worlds has pretty much dominated my console gaming this week, to the point I picked up Luigi’s Mansion 3 but have yet to put it in the Switch!
Without further delay, on to what I did actually play this week.
Narwhal Free For All
It’s summer isn’t officially here in Australia, but the heat has started. So what better game to play than a water based dexterity game?
Narwhal Free For All is a fun dexterity kids game. Essentially ring toss or quoits, all you have to do is get your coloured rings onto the narwhals or the central iceberg.
Points are simple: 1 point for any narwhal other than your own, 2 points for the iceberg or 3 points for your narwhal. One player each round spins the paddle wheel to create movement and difficulty, and the ‘fish’ ends the round when it does one lap of the pool.
It sounds too simple to be fun, but it was a quick bit of silly fun. The paddle wheel seems to be the weak point of the build, but there was still movement happening.
Maybe not for a whole games night, but for younger players or a silly quick filler game this is a great game. Watch a slightly not according to Hoyle round below 😀
Planet
Another Alpal special this week was Planet from Blue Orange games. A card drafting/set collection game at it’s core, the game goes for a set number of rounds and has you creating your own planets.
There is your primary planet type secret goal, where you need a certain number of a certain terrain to make points. Each round (after the early couple of rounds anyway) has you fighting to compete for various goals. Meet the goal, keep the card for end game scoring.
You can be aiming for the most forest that doesn’t touch deserts, or the highest number of ice areas. There are heaps to go for, and becuase they are laid out from the start you can plan accordingly.
While many games do similar things with cards, having the magnetic tiles attach to your planet make for a great tactile experience.
Alpal has said I can borrow this in the near future for a formal review, so look out for that soon!
Downforce
I have spoken about Downforce a few times, and reviewed it already here on the site.
It was only a two player game, and Alpal managed to trick me into spending SO MUCH on cars (joking, I made poor financial choices :p ), but it was still a great game.
Hadn’t played Downforce in so long. And if you check out the instagram page you can see some of my attempted distraction tactics!
I lost overall, but we had a great time as always with this Restoration Games classic.
Palm Trees
Completing the silly little games was a gem called Palm Trees. The concept is simple – give cards to other people to hold in their hands/fingers and create palm trees.
The first time someone drops fronds or refuses to play, everyone else scores. Simple, quick, and like Narwhal Free For All more fun that in deserves to be!
You need fairly nimble fingers because of the way you have to hold the cards. I think I had an advantage because of my large hands for once!
I will see if I can borrow it for a review soon as well. It’s far from a great game, but it’s a quick fun filler that I think a lot of people would enjoy.
Tetris 99 (Switch)
So as you would have seen on the Twitter page, there is another Grand Prix event for Tetris 99 next week.
In preperation, I thought I would fire up the Switch and have a couple of games – I mean, make sure all the updates are done. Yes, that was it 😀
I played a couple of rounds, then thought I would try out an Invictus match as I hadn’t in a while. The first game I dropped out really quickly (around 70th?), but the next round I was in the groove.
When we hit the top 10, you don’t see the tetromino drop anymore – it’s just sitting there on top of your stack. I need more practice!
Warriors of Waterdeep (Android)
A few more dungeon clears, a few more battles, and everything is still as up and down as before.
I did manage to level up enough to unlock a new character, which I thought would be fun. And it kind of is.
Problem is now I have an extra character to ‘earn’ cards for, so my progress is slowing down even more I think. My normal grind is showing less progress than normal, and I can’t see a way out without spending the cash.
Marketing wise Warriors of Waterdeep has the formula down. Quick battles that can be played in a couple of minutes? Check. Enough mindless fun that you want to keep playing? Yep, it’s been a couple of months now.
Just enough carrot to get you to say ‘Oh hell I will just buy some cards’? Not quite, but I am getting tempted. If their pricing wasn’t so ridiculously high I probably would have bought some packs by now.
I figure two more weeks, then when the VIP club expires and I start getting those nags I will be uninstalling Warriors for good.
The Outer Worlds (Xbox One)
Oh wow. I am loving The Outer Worlds so much right now. It’s all the best bits of Fallout, set in outer space. The number of bugs etc. is also really minimal which is nice.
I have put in just over 24 hours now, and I am up to Level 22 of 30 (apparently, according to the achievments). I have spent so much time on Monarch (one of the planets), and I don’t think I have even found all the quest starters yet.
My only complaint at the moment is a little bit of pacing, but overall it’s moving fine and I am enjoying exploring the Halcyon colonies.
If you have Game Pass, try it out. It’s already included, and well worth the look.
Bit of bonus Lego fun
Not one of my activities, but Alpal has been powering through some amazing Lego creations as always. The upgrades to Wahro0nga village are coming along really well, and you can see those in the weekly Yeti Hunting Puzzles 🙂
One thing she showed me was a Merry-Go-Round she made with an alien theme. One of the carraiges is even a cow!
I took a bit of video of us playing around with her new creation, so I thought I would share it here as well 😀