variable player powers

A gentle breeze. The soothing sounds of a gently flowing river. The glow of the moon. A bountiful harvest. Basic human emotions such as fear and rage. Even death. They all have an unseen force guiding them. And while these forces work together to make the world what it is, they each aspire for influence over those who believe in them.

Kami-sama is a beautiful and intuitive strategy game set in rural Japan during the Edo period. Two to four players will assume the roles of Kami, the spirits of the land. Using a combination of asymmetrical player powers, area control, set collection, pattern building, and light card drafting, players will work to balance their Favor with the people and their connection to Nature in order to be crowned Kami-sama, the chief deity of the land.

Travel back in time to the greatest city in Mesoamerica. Witness the glory and the twilight of the powerful pre-Columbian civilization. Strategize, accrue wealth, gain the favour of the gods, and become the builder of the magnificent Pyramid of the Sun.

In Teotihuacan: City of Gods, each player commands a force of worker dice, which grow in strength with every move. On your turn, you move a worker around a modular board, always choosing one of two areas of the location tile you land on: one offering you an action (and a worker upgrade), the other providing you with a powerful bonus (but without an upgrade).

While managing their workforce and resources, players develop new technologies, climb the steps of the three great temples, build houses for the inhabitants of the city, and raise the legendary and breath-taking Pyramid of the Sun in the centre of the city.

Each game is played in three eras. As the dawn of the Aztecs comes closer, player efforts (and their ability to feed their workforce) are evaluated a total of three times. The player with the most fame is the winner.

In Pandemic, several virulent diseases have broken out simultaneously all over the world! The players are disease-fighting specialists whose mission is to treat disease hotspots while researching cures for each of four plagues before they get out of hand.

The game board depicts several major population centers on Earth. On each turn, a player can use up to four actions to travel between cities, treat infected populaces, discover a cure, or build a research station. A deck of cards provides the players with these abilities, but sprinkled throughout this deck are Epidemic! cards that accelerate and intensify the diseases' activity. A second, separate deck of cards controls the "normal" spread of the infections.

Taking a unique role within the team, players must plan their strategy to mesh with their specialists' strengths in order to conquer the diseases. For example, the Operations Expert can build research stations which are needed to find cures for the diseases and which allow for greater mobility between cities; the Scientist needs only four cards of a particular disease to cure it instead of the normal five—but the diseases are spreading quickly and time is running out. If one or more diseases spreads beyond recovery or if too much time elapses, the players all lose. If they cure the four diseases, they all win!

The 2013 edition of Pandemic includes two new characters—the Contingency Planner and the Quarantine Specialist—not available in earlier editions of the game.

Pandemic is the first game in the Pandemic series.

Shadows in Kyoto is a two-player abstract game based with the background of Hanamikoji in which players take control of the Oniwaban, a group of undercover spies, secretly protecting the Shogun, or an intelligence agency of the Meiji Government, funding with the advanced technology of the Western Industrial Revolution.

As the commanders, the players must secretly gather key intelligence from the opponent while protecting their own interests. Through movements, conflicts, and tactics, players have three different paths to victory:
1). Capture 2 enemy agents who possess real intelligence.
2). Let your opponent captures 3 agents of your own who possess fake intelligence.
3). Succeed in the escape of 1 agent of your own who possesses real intelligence.

In Dungeon Hustle, 2-4 players are archetypal fantasy characters running through a dungeon picking up swords, keys, shields, scrolls and potions. Each item comes in different colors, and to pick them up, you must hustle through a path of dungeon tiles of matching color; once you step on a new color (or a corner space), you pick up the tiles that you had stepped on. If, for example, you start on a red key and move on a path that consists of a red sword, another red key, a red shield, and finally a white sword, you stop on the white sword, then pick up all of the red items, including the one where you started movement. You use these items to fight monsters, fulfill quests, and purchase other items.

Dungeon Hustle includes a few semi-cooperative elements. A character can help give a power to another character, for example, and is then rewarded for doing so. More importantly, you must all work together to stop monsters from escaping the dungeon. After a certain number of monsters escapes, the game ends, and whoever has the most victory points at that time wins.