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Smooth Jazz
Another year, another Bitewing Games crowdfunding campaign. This time around, there are three titles on offer, unified by a jazzy setting that may or may not come through in print. Rather than drag this out into an entire festival, today we’re hosting a three-part set that will emphasize the highs and lows of all three pieces.
Spoiler: One of them is amazing.
Knizidito
Cascadito is a tiny version of Cascadero. That’s the easiest way to sum up the similarities between these twinned titles by Reiner Knizia. They’re both about placing grouped envoys next to cities in order to move up tracks. In some cases, they even award the same spills of bonus points.
But the differences between them are more interesting than their similarities — and more telling. Cascadito is a roll-and-write game. It also sheds much of what makes Cascadero so good.
Knizidero
Zoo Vadis, Bitewing Games’ reprint and update of Reiner Knizia’s long out-of-print classic Quo Vadis?, has only been available to the public for a few weeks. But the good Doctor has never excelled at resting on his laurels. Already he has two more games on the way: Cascadero and Cascadito.
If those titles strike your ear as sounding somewhat similar, you aren’t experiencing auditory hallucinations. Knizia is well known for riffing on his own designs, sometimes producing games redolent of previous productions. Now, apparently, he’s expediting that process. Cascadero and Cascadito are deeply similar, and not in name alone. Today we’re looking at the “original” of the two.
In the Pale Blood Moon Light
Ryan Courtney is mostly known for games about pipes, but it seems I will forever prefer his less squiggly work. Bear Raid leaps to mind.
From now on, I expect it will be Spectral that leaves the strongest impression. Once every million years, give or take a thousand, the blood moon bathes a haunted house in its crimson light. On that night alone, spectral treasures can be found within. Also curses. Maybe look out for those.
Gussy Galore
Gussy Gorillas calls itself a negotiation game. That might be a function of marketing. Please note, that isn’t the same as calling it false advertising. True to its word, it features both trading and negotiating. Further, it’s double-billed with Zoo Vadis, the Reiner Knizia negotiation game we examined last week. They’ll appear together on Kickstarter later this month, less an Abbott and Costello pairing than, I dunno, Abbott and Franz Liszt.
Maybe you can see what I’m getting at. Side by side, there’s very little connective tissue between Zoo Vadis and Gussy Gorillas. Unlike its sister title, this is a negotiation game the way chimps with typewriters are Shakespeare. Not nearly as elegant or timeless, but much louder and messier, and, depending on the day (and the theater troupe), more interesting to watch. That’s because Gussy Gorillas isn’t really about negotiation. It belongs to that most cacophonic genre, the “hollering game.”
Quo Vadis, Zoo Vadis?
I’ve never played Quo Vadis?, Reiner Knizia’s long out-of-print cult title that, to my great surprise, is not actually about Jesus appearing to Peter on the Appian Way to egg him into martyrdom. Instead, it’s a catty perspective on the Roman cursus honorum. Way to commingle your Latin references, Doc.
Here’s the thing. I might have teased Quo Vadis? back in the ’90s. I might have even chuckled at the game’s new setting. But this remake is so pristinely crafted, so sharp in its social undertaking, that I really can’t do anything other than bask in its warmth. I love it when a good game gets a second chance. Even better when its second go-round is superior to the first. To commingle some references of my own: It is risen.
Happy Trails to You
Ryan Courtney tends to design games that I want to like more than I actually do. Pipeline was good for a few sessions before it began to feel solved. Curious Cargo was curiously burdened by confounding scoring. In both cases, these were games about arranging curlicue routes from a pile of mismatched tiles, except the routes themselves played second fiddle to underwhelming bookends.
But then there’s Trailblazers, Courtney’s upcoming title that should hit Kickstarter next month. I have a bit of a thing for Trailblazers. Probably because the routes are finally front and center where they belong.
Criminal Capers: Hot Lead
Another day, another entry in Reiner Knizia’s Criminal Capers trilogy. After enjoying Soda Smugglers and Pumafiosi — both with caveats — it’s time to ask the big questions about Hot Lead.
Question one: Why is this the best title in the whole trilogy?
Question two: Is it “hot lead” like bullets? Or “hot lead” like a tangent you pursue? Or both?
Criminal Capers: Pumafiosi
Today, Criminal Capers takes on the mafia. The puma mafia. The pumafia.
Dr. Knizia, you’re a master game designer. Surely you know the value of expertise. So maybe leave the puns to the punfessionals?
Okay, okay. The bones of Pumafiosi are based on Knizia’s own Rooster Booster, which wasn’t exactly the best-received of the good doctor’s catalog. Good thing, then, that Pumafiosi is only partly a remake. This one has layers.
Criminal Capers: Soda Smugglers
Sometimes, a little Reiner Knizia is exactly what we need. Emphasis on the “little.” That’s the goal of Criminal Capers, a trilogy of digestible titles designed by the good doctor, illustrated by Paul Halkyon, and published by Bitewing Games via Kickstarter sometime next month.
First up, Soda Smugglers.
SPACE-BIFF! 