A new week, and a new journal entry. It was another interesting week thanks to some Azure issues, but it was a good week for games! I still didn’t get to try any new board game titles, unfortunately. Can’t have everything! At least what I did get to play was a great time.
I also got a couple of emails this week, so with luck, a couple of new Kickstarter games are coming soon!
After playing My Shelfie, I was getting tired but we still wanted to play. What better quick game to fall back on than 7 Wonders Architects?
I have talked about 7 Wonders Architects often. It’s a common fallback game for us. If you would like to know more about the game, check out all the journal entries here.
Now I just mention that Alpal, Rabbit and I came back to it again. A game that you keep coming back to no matter what else is on offer definitely has something going for it!
This week I had the chance to try out a new game called My Shelfie. Alpal bought it up as a game option, and it immediately caught my attention. It sounded like a game I would enjoy. Pattern placement and variable goals? It’s like Cartographers on the shelf!
In My Shelfie, the objective is to arrange different items on a shelf to form patterns and earn points. The highest points win!
The rules are simple – pick up an item with at least one free edge, then pick up to three tiles that are next to each other, and place them on your shelf. The goal is to make everything fit together, just like putting items on a shelf at home.
Even the scoring is simple. There are two public goals in My Shelfie, where you score more finishing the goal first. Then there is a personal goal where you place specific colours in a specific spot. Finally, a grouping of items with three or more connecting is the last goal.
I played My Shelfie on Board Game Arena, and it was a lot of fun. However, I must admit that I am tempted to get the physical version of the game. The physical shelf is an upright structure which you can slide tiles into. This gives My Shelfie a tactile appeal, similar to playing Potion Explosion on a table instead of digitally.
Overall, I had a lot of fun playing My Shelfie and I can easily see myself playing it again in the near future!
Paperback Adventures has been sitting on my coffee table taunting me. I love the idea of the game system, and the quality of the Kickstarter is amazing! But my first couple of games were very fiddley and I have been waiting on rules clarifications. Combine long setup, fiddley bookkeeping and tired, and I haven’t gotten back to Paperback Adventures as I hoped.
That changed last week with a surprise email from Fowers Games. I mentioned trying the digital demo of Paperback Adventures, but once you got out of the tutorial you couldn’t play a ‘proper’ round.
Well at the end of January, the digital version has been released to Early Access! To celebrate, Fowers Games has given Kickstarter backers an access key to Paperback Adventures on Steam. So I get to try the digital version properly!
I hoped to have a good session, but Paperback Adventures is a long game. I didn’t feel like playing on the PC recently, as I have put in enough hours.
But do you know what Paperback Adventures worked well on? The Steam Deck!
I have only two small gripes playing on the Steam Deck. Firstly, when the deck emulates a most, the Right Trigger is Left Click, and Left Trigger is Right Click. This still confuses me. I can remap this easily enough, and I might for some games, but if I want to left-click I still pull the left trigger!
The other quibble is Paperback Adventures text is a little hard to read on the Steam Deck. Not impossible, but I am an old man with progressively more old-man eyes. The Steam key + L1 keys magnify the screen nicely to get around this though!
So my plan is to play some more Paperback Adventures in a week or two and give a better comparison between the physical and digital versions. In the meantime, if you are curious about the game, try out the free demo to get a feel for the rules. You can also see more on my physical playthrough here!
What about you? I hope you got some great games in. Or are you looking forward to a new one? Let me know!
Shout out on Facebook or @JohnHQLD me on Twitter, Hive and Instagram! And don't forget you can get random gaming and pet pics on Instagram as well. 🙂
Until next time,
JohnHQLD