Tikal is a game of exploration within the Central American jungles in search of lost temples and the treasures within. Players send their team of explorers into the jungle, exposing more and more of the terrain. Along the way, you find temples that require further uncovering and treasures. Players attempt to score points for occupying temples and holding onto treasure.
Tikal is the first game of the Mask Trilogy.
Sequel:
Tikal II: The Lost Temple
A civilization building game has finally been created that clocks in under two hours. Tempus plays on a modular board with an array of landscapes on each land tile to ensure a different game every session. Each turn pushes players' technological advancements forward, starting from fire and ending in the modern age.
Players are constantly faced with tough choices to vie for technological superiority or better positioning on the game board. This game features a rubber-banding mechanic in technological upgrading, where players catch up to the leader's advances at the end of every turn and shoot forward to take advantage of any new technologies that are discovered. This keeps players constantly in check, while rewarding planning for the next turn by giving an edge-up.
Tempus showcases a simple diceless battle mechanic featuring a subtle fog of war with Idea cards. Each card is dual-purposed. Using a card for war means giving up extra abilities that the Idea cards can grant. Or you might just want to hold on to them to advance in technology.
In Taluva, players place tiles consisting of volcanoes and other terrain. Tiles can be placed adjacent to other tiles or on top of other tiles. Thus, the island expands outward and upward during the course of the game. At the same time, the players are trying to settle their peoples on the island by building huts, temples and towers. Each building type has a different restriction regarding placement. The game ends when all the land tiles have been played or when a player builds all of his buildings in two of the three types.
As former lab monkeys, players cooperate and compete to free imprisoned monkeys from a well-guarded testing facility. Of course, since the monkeys don’t have keys, they must use their creativity and the items found around the lab to pick, pry, and smash the cages open. The more monkeys you rescue, the more reward you receive.
In Kingdom Builder, the players create their own kingdoms by skillfully building their settlements, aiming to earn the most gold at the end of the game.
Nine different kinds of terrain are on the variable game board, including locations and castles. During his turn, a player plays his terrain card and builds three settlements on three hexes of this kind. If possible, a new settlement must be built next to one of that player’s existing settlements. When building next to a location, the player may seize an extra action tile that he may use from his next turn on. These extra actions allow extraordinary actions such as moving your settlements.
By building next to a castle, the player will earn gold at the end of the game, but the most gold will be earned by meeting the conditions of the three Kingdom Builder cards; these three cards (from a total of ten in the game) specify the conditions that must be met in order to earn the much-desired gold, such as earning gold for your settlements built next to water hexes or having the majority of settlements in a sector of the board.
Each game, players will use a random set of Kingdom Builder cards (3 of 10), special actions (4 of 8), and terrain sectors to build the map (4 of 8), ensuring you won't play the same game twice!