At Toy Fair, Iello was talking about expanding its line of children’s games this year.
The Legend of the Wendigo, available now at $20, centers around a native-American monster fable. In this version of the fable, the monster takes over the bodies of kids at summer camp. One player replaces a new camper tile each round with a special version that shows the wendigo on the back-side. If the other players can’t guess which camper has been replaced, the monster player gets to posses another, keeping past victims as they go.
Also available now is The Mysterious Forest ($30). This one has memory and resource-collection elements and is based on The Wormworld Saga comic series. It’s also a cooperative game. At the beginning, players get a quick look at a set of cards with the resources they need to collect. Then the cards are turned face down and the players roll dice and pick tokens representing the resources they need. Finally, the cards, which represent an unfolding story, are turned back over one-at-a-time. If they have the right tokens, they complete the saga and win. Fortunately, they also start out with a few special Loki helper tokens to fill in the gaps.
For adults and older children, Iello had on display Pyramids (March, $20), a game of constructing monuments in ancient Egypt. Each round, players choose from among a pool of god tiles that give them the ability to add stone cards to their pyramids and obelisks. At the end, pyramids score points for stones strung together and in various colors. Obelisks score points for height, glyphs, and a range of colors.
11 Aug
Posted by David Miller as Card Games, Modern Board Games
Iello’s latest is Sea of Clouds ($30, now), a set collecting card game in which the players are sky pirates gathering treasures, artifacts, and rum. They can also pick up pirate cards, which help them in combat against their neighbors. To collect the cards, players go through a type of draft, each on their turn looking at a stack and then deciding whether to keep it or add another card at random from the draw pile and move on to the next.
Shipping to retail later this month are Schotten Totten ($15) and Oceanos ($40). The former is a reprint of a well-known Reiner Knizia title (also published as Battle Line) but is new to Iello. The latter was designed by Antoine Bauza and has players collecting animals and treasures from the ocean in submarines that they can upgrade with better propellers, periscopes, fish tanks, and other features.
Looking further out, Iello has planned for September Aladdin & the Magic Lamp ($25), the next in its Tales & Games series. Game-play for this 20 minute, 2-5 player title incorporates set collection and secret action selection.
October will see release of Around the World in 80 Days in a beautiful gilt slip-case. I didn’t catch much about game-play, other than it’s for 2-6 players and takes about 45 minutes.
Then in November, Iello delivers The Mysterious Forest, a cooperative memory game based on the Wormworld Saga web comic.
And sometime later comes Farm Friends, an expansion for Happy Pigs with blocky cows, sheep, and chickens; Bunny Kingdom, a card drafting, area control game by Richard Garfield; and a Cthulhu Monster Pack for King of Tokyo.