Daniel Solis designs light strategy board games with simple central mechanisms and short play times.
The forest is growing fast! As caretakers for Kodama, the tree spirits, you must keep the forest a healthy and lush home for your little friends. Over three growing seasons, you must cultivate trees with the right mix of flowers, insects, and branch arrangements to make your Kodama as happy as possible. Whoever cares for their Kodama best will be remembered for generations!
From the designer of the hit game Kigi, Kodama: The Tree Spirits branches out into a fun new way to play! Grow your tree by placing cards in clever arrangements, being careful to leave room for future growth. At the end of each season, one Kodama will award you points for how well your tree suits its needs. With beautiful art and innovative mechanics, Kodama is an inTREEguing game for the whole family.
Space — the final junkyard. Good thing one planet's trash is another planet's treasure! In Junk Orbit, you're captain of your own scavenger ship, picking up space junk and transporting it to any city that will take it. Launch your junk ... uh, *cargo* ... out of your airlock to propel your ship! Race to deliver your cargo as you navigate the orbits of nearby planets and moons! It's astrodynamics for fun and profit! On your turn, carry out these three steps:
1. Launch junk — Choose any one junk tile in your cargo hold and move it away from your ship (clockwise or counter-clockwise, your choice) a number of spaces equal to its numeric value. If it reaches its destination city this way, you have made a remote delivery. Otherwise, it simply comes to rest after moving its full distance. It is also possible to hit an enemy ship with launched junk, causing that opponent to discard one junk tile from their cargo.
2. Move ship — Your ship must now move the same distance that your launched junk did, but in the opposite direction. When your ship reaches a transfer point between location boards, you may choose to switch orbits. If you do, your ship changes direction (from clockwise to counter-clockwise, or vice versa) as it enters the new orbit. If the space your ship lands on is the destination of any junk in your cargo, you have made a direct delivery.
3. Pick up junk — After moving your ship, pick up all junk tiles present in your current city, adding them to your cargo hold. Then, refill your current city with one new junk tile from the corresponding stack (e.g., if at a Mars city, refill from the Mars stack).
Each player has their own ship with a unique ship power that breaks the rules above in some way. The end of the game is triggered when a city cannot be refilled because its stack is empty. When this happens, every player gets one final turn, then players tally the values from all of their delivered junk tiles, and whoever has the highest total wins.
Across all of space and time, the Tricksters play their game. Only a cunning few are privy to the mischief that they wreak. At long last, these champions have gathered from across the multiverse with a sole purpose: put an end to these blasted troublemakers!
Trickster is trick-taking game of multidimensional mischief like no other. Featuring a colorful cast of characters, each with unique abilities, no two games will ever be the same! Only the wiliest Trickster will elude the others and live to trick another day!
I CAN’T EVEN is a series of card games that all share one rule: The player with the highest odd score wins! For example, if the game ended with players at 9, 16, 20, and 22 points, the player with 9 points would win! Each game is standalone or can be shuffled together.
I Can't Even With These Monsters has 56 monster cards: Amalgam, Blob, Ghost, Ichthid, Invisible, Mummy, Vampire, Werewolf, each appearing seven times.
It is the eve of Carnivale on the magical Victorian isle of Ludobel, and you are all invited to the fantastical festivities!
In the card game Belle of the Ball, players take on the roles of party hosts, seeking the best mix of guests to make their gala the greatest by the end of the night. In order to ensure that they stay one step ahead of the other hosts, players will have to carefully watch the growing line of guests at the door, inviting those in that seem to share passions with partygoers already inside, all the while handing out their precious stash of Regrets to those who should seek refuge elsewhere. Of course, other hosts may find it advantageous to invite a rejected guest inside just to collect their accumulated Regrets for later use.
Hosts may also choose to ignore the competition for guests and instead try to earn the favor of the Belle of the Ball herself, whose charms can make or break any party.
The Red Queen looms large over Wonderland, with many monsters and other frightful things at her command. Alice and her friends must do their best to ward off the Red Queen's influence and restore peace.
In Wonderland, you choose to play as either Alice or the Red Queen. Place your cards carefully to control areas of Wonderland while taking advantage of your magic items. Once all the cards have been placed, the magic items modify the value of adjacent cards. Score the final board based on the arrangement of the cards. The player with the most points wins!
The starship is going down. You (and everyone else!) need to find the last working escape pod before it’s too late. You know the ship like the back of your hand, but you also know that most of the pods are either gone or broken. You have to act now or you’ll be going down with the ship.
In Pod-X, you try to deduce the secret win condition card, while also trying to meet it. You will do this by playing your cards publicly (to the table) or keeping them private (in your hand). The dealer role passes to a new player each round. Only the dealer knows the secret, so players can also examine her actions for clues. Use your best deduction and wile to maximize your score!
The sun is setting on one of the most devastating battles the Pocket Universe has ever seen. After years of fighting, it is becoming clear that this war will not be won on the strength of military victories alone. The leaders of the Dynasty and the Liberation turn their attention to some of the most influential figures in the galaxy to strengthen their cause. Who will be able to consolidate their power, gain new allies, and turn old foes to their side? Who can form a Conclave powerful enough to gain control of the Universe?
Anthelion is a game for 2 players who choose two unique special character abilities on their turn to manipulate the locations of the characters in play. Players seek to pull characters from all factions, good, evil and neutral to their side of the table (their Conclave), or push unwanted characters to their opponent. The player that can amass ten points of influence by getting enough characters to cross all the way to their side of the table will be declared the winner.
A peaceful 2-3 player game of tile laying, with a secret twist.
Kintsugi is the Japanese art form of repairing broken pottery with gold lacquer, to show the imperfect history of the object, and to affirm that it is better for having been broken. You are repairing a piece of pottery, then playing the role of an art critic for your opponent. You can win by being a better artist, being a better critic, or both! In true minimalist tradition, the lowest score wins!
On your turn, play a card depicting fragments of pottery onto the previously played card to connect fragments together. Try to make your color of pottery connect to make the fewest pieces. But be subtle about it; if your critic (the player to your right) can guess your color, they subtract your score from theirs at the end of the round. Play 1 round per player, adding up scores from each round, and the lowest score wins.
Kodama Duo is a two-player standalone version of Kodama: The Tree Spirits and a 6th player expansion. You will grow a tree by placing branch cards in clever arrangements, making a happy home for your Kodama!
Kodama Duo is a card placement game for 2 players that plays in 30 minutes. Players will turn over one Decree card per season to set the unique conditions. During the Growing Phase, players take turns revealing branch cards and splitting them into two piles until each player has added four branch cards to their tree. In the Kodama phase, players will each choose one of their Kodama to score and live in their tree. The game last 3 seasons (12 turns) and whoever cares for their Kodama best will be remembered for generations!
There are a couple of cool twists on the original Kodama rules for Duo.
First, instead of a display of branch cards to choose, each turn one player (the splitter) will reveal three branch cards from the deck. They will then split those cards into two piles. The other player (the chooser) will select one of the branch piles. The other pile will go to the splitter. Then, both players will add one of the branch cards they received to their tree. The player who received two branch cards will discard the extra card.
Second, Duo introduces spirit tokens, which are tokens with the six features from Kodama. After the player that received two branch cards discards one, the other player receives a spirit token from the discarded branch card. They pick one of the features from that card and take the corresponding spirit token. That player then places that token over one of the icons on their tree. This allows interesting scoring interactions as feature chains can be shortened or lengthened to increase the scoring potential for future branch placements.
Additionally, most of the new Kodama cards and Decree cards interact with the spirit tokens and splitter/chooser mechanic. All of these changes provide an interesting twist on the core mechanics you already love about Kodama.
Duo also introduces the ability to play Kodama: the Tree Spirits with six players. With this update, we've included new rules for branch selection. Each player will secretly choose from four branch cards simultaneously in a draft format. Players will also be allowed to place and score their branch cards simultaneously. This will shorten the downtime that could have been added by including more players.
As You Wish was originally published as Princess Bride: As You Wish from GameSalute.
Each player makes wishes of a fairy godmother, but the fairy can only grant one wish at a time and you have to take a number! Bid to collect sets of icons. The more you have, the more points you'll score at the end of the game. Beware - some of the cards come with a curse!
As You Wish is a surprisingly tricky game that will keep you on your toes!