exploration

German Stategy meets American Fantasy!

Hunting Party has simple, yet elegant, mechanics that come together to create deep, interactive gameplay. In Hunting Party, players race to kill the Dark Agents and solve the prophecy by building the destined party from 36 unique Hunters. Players will hire hunters by bidding with shares of the King's Bounty. These hunters will give players the skills they need to hunt, and the abilities to make a difference. With your share of the bounty, you can buy items that will increase your party's skills, abilities, or even level up your hunters into champions.

Hunting Party is psychologically intense in the bidding of hunters, misleading of the prophecy, and in making deals of both cooperation and aggression. Players must balance the utilization of their shares and gold while planning carefully how they will use their hunters' abilities and their items to create opportunities and combos. However, the main challenge of Hunting Party is the use of Multiple Build Paths. Players are repeatedly asked,

How do you want to play?

Do you want to build a large party, a cheap party, a party of champions, a diversified party, or a specific one?

Do you want to focus on ability combinations, killing Dark Agents, or attacking other players?

Do you want to hoard gold, hoard items, or solve the Prophecy?

It's all in how you want to play!

Each game, you'll start off with a different Hero, a variable game board, and a different prophecy to solve, ensuring that you'll never play the same game twice.

Online Play

VASSAL (real-time or PBEM)

It is a time when the maps of the world are still being filled in. Seagoing empires expand their frontiers by sending ships to the farthest reaches of the globe in search of new lands, new alliances, and new conquests. The wealth of the newly-discovered worlds abroad is a tempting prize for those with the strength and the cunning to seize it... and to hold it!
You represent a growing empire engaged in a glorious endeavor to expand your
influence and status at home and across the great oceans of the world. Through exploration and shipping, colonization and war, you will struggle with the other great powers to control the resources and the regions that unfold before you.

The goal in Endeavor is to earn the most glory for your empire. Players earn glory by increasing their scores in Industry, Culture, Finance, and Politics, as well as by occupying cities, controlling connections between cities, and by holding certain Asset Cards and Building Tiles. Short-term goals of constructing useful buildings, gathering Trade Tokens, and obtaining Asset Cards must be balanced with the overall goal of attaining glory as you compete for control over the various regions of the world. The game only lasts seven rounds, and when it is over you want to be the one who has earned the most Glory points!

Each round every player gets to build a new building, based on their Industry track. They then obtain new population markers based on their Culture track and retrieve used markers from building based on their Finance track. During the action phase, players take turns to either activate a building using a population marker or spend trade tokens to take an action: Ship, Occupy, Attack, Payment or Draw. Some buildings and tokens allow a player to take one or both of two actions. Shipping is used to open new regions for Occupation and Drawing, and gains you Trade Tokens. Once a shipping track is full, the player with the most influence in that region gains the powerful Governor card for that region. Occupation of a city results in glory and Trade Tokens, while Attacking steals a city from an opponent! Either Occupation or Attacking can result in claiming the connection between two cities, if both connected cities are controlled by the same player. Drawing gains a card from a region up to the maximum hand limit based on the player's Politics track. A player's influence in a region determines which cards they can draw. Once all players have passed, a new round begins.

Here's a description of the game from AllGames4you:

With the new Catan-game "The First Settlement", Klaus Teuber distances himself the most from the well-known game mechanics of the Settlers series.

Players take on the role of newcomers to Catan and learn how the adventurous life in the first settlement played itself out. They explore, using a new movement mechanic, for the raw materials they need to build the settlement. Along the way, they discover useful natural products - but also encounter wild animals and are confronted with adventurous situations. Those who survive these encounters obtain the raw materials they sought as well as experience points that improve the abilities of the player's character. Over time, then, the player becomes stronger, smarter or more charismatic and is better and better suited for the dangers of the wild.

Back in the village, the natural products can be used to brew beverages while the raw materials are used for building. Through this building, the settlement grows and players obtain victory points.

The main attraction of the game lies in the exploration of the island and the development of the individual player characters. But trading and interaction between the players is also important.

Belongs to the Catan Series.

From the press release:

Betrayal at House on the Hill quickly builds suspense and excitement as players explore a haunted mansion of their own design, encountering spirits and frightening omens that foretell their fate. With an estimated one hour playing time, Betrayal at House on the Hill is ideal for parties, family gatherings or casual fun with friends.

Betrayal at House on the Hill is a tile game that allows players to build their own haunted house room by room, tile by tile, creating a new thrilling game board every time. The game is designed for three to six people, each of whom plays one of six possible characters.

Secretly, one of the characters betrays the rest of the party, and the innocent members of the party must defeat the traitor in their midst before it’s too late! Betrayal at House on the Hill will appeal to any game player who enjoys a fun, suspenseful, and strategic game.

Betrayal at House on the Hill includes detailed game pieces, including character cards, pre-painted plastic figures, and special tokens, all of which help create a spooky atmosphere and streamline game play.

An updated reprint of Betrayal at House on the Hill was released on October 5, 2010.

The four Anasazi tribes lived in the middle-west of America and mainly built their settlements into the walls of canyons. It is still not known why they suddenly left them in the 13th century.
Only later on were the settlements and treasuries discovered by expeditions because most of them were hidden and difficult to find.
The players take part in various expeditions and try to discover the treasuries and settlements of the Anasazi.