Rolling in the Reef

[b][i]BrainGoodGames[/i] has quite the cult following, and for good reason - they carved out an interesting niche of making video game/Euro-board game hybrids that play well.[/b] With that being said, I've bought nearly every one of their titles and refunded most of them for various reasons. As an avid board gamer, I just don't see anything really new. I don't really get the 'wow factor' that many others do, and I think it's because of spending a good bit of time studying board game mechanics. [b]Like all of [i]BrainGoodGames[/i] titles, this game surely is fun enough to merit the asking price.[/b] No question about it. It has an easy to learn tutorial and you can pick it all up fairly quickly. The 'just one more round' addiction is high. Plus the devs are very helpful on the forums to field any questions you may have. The artwork is par for the course with the [i]BrainGoodGames[/i] library in that it is one notch above programmer art. There is a weekly challenge and a good bit of un...

Another winner from BrainGoodGames. This developer just knows how to make VERY GOOD euro-style boardgames as PC games. Each one of his games are very unique to each other, and all of them are easy to learn, but definitely hard to master. There is a lot to unlock, artifacts, different map layouts, and as you level up, the requirements for victory become much tighter and harder to achieve. These games really get you thinking. So, another wonderful boardgame on the PC by my favorite indie strategy game developer. Highly recommended again!

Another very nice strategy game, by B.G.G. I am loving this guy's work, of taking modern boardgame mechanics and applying them to a video game interface, without making the experience overburdened with animations. There are also legacy-unlocks and daily challenges that keep the game fresh and interesting. I play these games for hours at a time, and they do not get old for me. I enjoyed this game on ubuntu linux 18.10, with radeon mesa drivers. This is an entirely mouse-driven game, running the Unity Game Engine, with a 200MB install size. I had no technical problems at all. I highly recommend these games to all boardgame fans.

It reminds me of the best elements of Solar Settlers, Axes and Acres, and Solitaire Golf all in 1!

Starting to sound like a broken record - another great game from BrainGoodGames. All the great features from Solar Settlers are here, weekly challenge and lot of variety through multiple schools of fish (more of which will be added later). At first the game seemed a bit simple to me but as I went up in levels the challenge and enjoyment ramped up. BrainGoodGames are the only games I buy when they are first released and I've never been disappointed yet.

This is yet another amazing game by BrainGoodGames. I have loved almost every game they've made, and this one does not disappoint. It is a simple concept. Basically, it is a dice game, where the dice represent different kinds of fish. Each type of fish is a different kind of die (such as three-sided dice, or six-sided dice, and so on). You will start each board with one fish in the center. This fish has an asterix on it, which can count as any number. You will have a pool of rolled fish that you are going to try to put onto the board. The trick is that each fish placed must be placed next to a fish that is either one higher or one lower in number than itself. (So a three can only be placed next to either a two or a four.) As you place the fish you are either gaining points (by placing them onto blank squares) or collecting power ups that you can use to help you (by placing a fish onto a square with the power up in it). The power ups can be used whenever you feel like it. The ga...

You roll several different kinds of dice and place them on the board next to dice that show one more or less pip than the one you are currently placing. If you place on arrows you get more fish (dice) to place. You're limited in how my moves you can make in a turn (I think 8), and carnivores will come and attack your dice which you want to have happen because defeating them with pairs or straights or the current "team up" ability gets you the most points. You have a limited number of rounds to make quite a predetermined number of points based on your rank. There are four or five different sets of dice you can play with, which start out easy (3 sided or 6 sided with all the numbers) and get more complicated (one set has odd numbers on one kind of dice and even on another. I hope you're keeping balanced between the two types). The complicated sets are compensated by have more special faces on the dice (usually the 1 or the 6) which do useful things when placed. Every new game you...

Another great and brilliant game from BrainGoodGames. If you like puzzle games (kinda chess-like in style but based on placement and with random elements) and you don't have the full BrainGoodGames corpus in your library, you are missing out. This is a good one to start with, but be sure to also check out Solar Settlers (similar) and Axes and Acres (kinda similar). One downside of this one compared to the others is the shape of the learning curve (for me, anyway -- I am sure it is different for others). I went from cruising to appx level 20 in each of the four versions without a single loss, to struggling to get appx 4 more levels up, to stuck (unable to advance except when I lost games and thus dropped back a level to where it was easier before advancing again). I see it is possible to advance because there are a half dozen people on the global leaderboards with up to ten more levels than I have, but I am baffled about how they are doing it. So, having reached the "one step forward a...

I am a huge Solar Settlers fan, so that was an easy day one buy for me, and I have not been disappointed. The dice placement is reminiscent of the board game Sagrada, but as with Solar Settlers there are a large number of twists, with different dice having special faces or rules for placement or modifying them. There are also a large number of different "artifacts" that you can discover and use to your advantage. Overall, a very fun solitaire experience that feels like playing a board game!

Don't be fooled. I own every Braingood Games title, and my first reaction was "too casual". Once I got about half a dozen levels in, I realized how wrong I was. Another deviously clever strategy game from Brett. If I have any complints, it's the re-use of assets from previous titles. Other than that, it's the epitome of the old cliche, "easy to learn, hard to master". Well worth the $.