Hand Limit 2025 Event Announcement!

Readers will know Hand Limit is a blog about the positive impact that in-person games can have on mental health, community, and well-being. However, it's our hope that the blog will turn into something more substantial that online musings and reviews. This means we are very happy to announce that 2025 will see the first in-person Hand Limit gaming event.

The event, as it stands, will take place on 5th June 2025 at Fruitworks Coworking and Coffee Shop in Canterbury, UK. The intention is that this should fall on the same day as Canterbury Pride and exist as a fringe event for people who wish to celebrate Pride and need a break from the crowds.

We will be hosting a number of stalls selling jewelry and artwork and the primary space will be given over to table top gaming, with a generous library of games and volunteers ready to help guests find their next favourite game. 

What's more, this event will be absolutely free to attend. We are very lucky to have secured a number of sponsors, who will be announced shortly, which is helping to cover the event costs. However, we are looking at taking donations for a local charity in place of charging an entrance fee as it will be a Pride/LGBTQIA+ event and we feel it is important to show our support.

Keep a close eye on future posts for further information and please feel free to get in touch if you have any questions or wish to be involved.

Review: Wiznerds - A TTRPG for lovers of chaos

I love chaos. Specifically I love the chaos factor of any tabletop game. This is the game's ability to pull sharply at the rudder in unexpected and sometimes catastrophic ways. It is always just as entertaining to me when things go magnificently wrong, as when they are serendipitously fortuitous. My favourite games are always those that leave players constantly on edge no matter how carefully they have planned their moves and the game I am reviewing today is a master at this.

Wiz-Nerds by Michael "Wheels" Whelan from Just for Fun is a TTRPG in which players take on the roles of bright-eyed first-year students at Ibus Engleberry's School for Aspiring Wizards (IeSAW). However, before they can even get started learning simple spells, something at the whim of the GM will have gone terribly wrong and our unlucky characters must use their introductory spell books to save the day. The catch? They don't know what any of the spells actually do!

All players are equipped with three columns of bizarre words. Each word represents either an Aspect, Form, or Target relating to the spell, meaning that combinations of words work together to make surprising results. Players will need to ascertain what each word actually means through good old fashioned trial and error. Whenever the players want to do an action that can be considered challenging or dangerous they have the choice to roll for it or cast a spell, but from our experience the dice will be left almost untouched as it is far more exciting to shout out three magic words and see what happens!

Of course, the sensible thing to do would be to carefully find a quiet corner and experiment with the words methodically until you have a good grasp of the spells needed to save the day, but really who has the time for that when some bad guys are after the mystical MacGuffin!? No, the only way forward is to run in blind and figure things out as they go.

This is a beautifully simple and silly game that requires little preparation from the GM and players, in fact it is advisable not to keep too firm a grasp on any of the story as it will undoubtedly be wrenched from your hands the first time a player accidentally turns a vital NPC inside out with poorly timed spell experimentation.

The format of this game works well in person or online and can be stretched or shrunk to fit almost any time requirement. Available on itch.io on a "name your price" basis, I cannot recommend this game enough and Whelan could easily be asking for a fixed price.

If you are looking for something with a healthy dose of chaos and silliness for your next one-shot RPG session, you could do a lot worse than getting over to itch.io and grabbing a PDF of Wiz-Nerds.

Review: Tiny Epic Defenders - Tower of Terror

I am a huge fan of Scott Almes's Tiny Epic series. I think the man is a genius when it comes to condensing genres that typically span entire weekends and take up multiple tables into sweet little 1-2 hour experiences. Whilst they will never fully live up to the in-depth, crunchy nature of some of their larger cousins, I think they pay wonderful homage to the themes and make them far more friendly to the average table top or cafe. Furthermore, Almes always takes time to ensure there is a suitable single player mode built into the games wherever they will work well. 

I recently got hold of a copy of first edition Tiny Epic Defenders and quite unexpectedly it rose to be one of my favourite quick games. When it comes to condensing a genre, tower defense, into a short, cafe friendly experience, Almes really hit it out of the park with this one. Whilst all Tiny Epic games are relatively low complexity, games such as Tiny Epic Dungeons can often get slowed down by a rule book so thorough that you'd be convinced it cane in a much bigger box. This is not the case with Tiny Epic Defenders. All mechanics have been boiled down into such a neat package the rule book is only a few pages long and can be digested easily right before the first game.

Defenders, is a cooperative experience for 1-4 players, who take on the role of heroes drawn from classic fantasy stock; orcs, elves, skeletons, mages, knights. Each of these heroes come with their own unique special ability, though not all are created equal, allowing for future challenges if you find yourself cracking the formula for success (if you know it, please let me know).

The turn system relies on a deck of cards that are shuffled and drawn one at a time. This deck contains both enemy and player turns meaning each round is luck of the draw when each player is able to take their alloted 3 actions. This helps to keep players feeling as though they are having to play reactively and flexibly in order to keep on top of the hordes of enemies.

Enemy cards target specific areas of the kingdom, which will cause the threat in that region to rise. Should the threat level ever rise to critical point, the region is considered lost and the location bonus action will be unavailable for the rest of the game, plus any future attacks to their region will instead be directed at the capital city. Of course, should the capital city fall it's game over. Players can position their characters in locations and defend them against the onslaught by taking damage rather than raising the threat level of the region. 

Each round of the game adds further enemies to the turn deck, meaning the waves of enemies get more ferocious as the game progresses, culminating in the arrival of a boss enemy. These large monsters require slaying for the game to be considered complete, all while constantly maintaining defense against the unceasing onslaught.

TE Defenders offers a very polished experience without an ounce of fat on it. It takes up very little table space and perfectly encapsulates the tower defense genre into a very small box and quick experience. Of course, this will probably fall short when you are after something to really get your teeth into, but for what it is, it is a very impressive little game.; 

Also in my collection but as of yet untested is the TE Defenders expansion: Defenders Dark War, which expands on the available characters and final bosses, plus the need to defend caravans of refugees fleeing the various realms of the kingdom. Dark War also introduces the Tiny Epic staple gimmick ITEMeeples, small meeple figures that are able to hold even smaller weapons. Ultimately these don't add anything to the actual game play but they are quite cute. Sadly, I have a first edition copy of Defenders, meaning I only have the regular meeples that cannot hold items. If I cared that much I could easily borrow the ITEMeeples from TE Zombies, but I just don't think I'm that bothered.

All in all, TE Defenders is a solid edition to the TE collection and stands out for how neat of an experience it is.

Arctic Anarchy and the Arctic Quest

Following our review of Arctic Anarchy, Hand Limit was lucky enough to have a chance to speak to the creators, Rick and Lydia Vadgama about their game and the exciting story of Arctic Quest 2026.

Arctic Quest 2026

Readers of the blog will know that Arctic Anarchy, the fun card game about saving polar animals, was created with the intention of raising money and awareness for a Kent Scouts expedition to the arctic circle in 2026. Rick and Lydia run a Kent-based scouting group and are part of the team of leaders across Kent who will be leading this expedition of 10 young people (aged 16-25) and 10 leaders, to retrace the footsteps of explorer Frank Worsley in 1926, 100 years prior.

Worsley set out on a voyage to the arctic with co-leader Grettir Algarsson on his ship The Island, setting sail from Liverpool in June 1925. However, the ship was damaged by an ice-floe not long into the voyage, forcing Worsley to continue on the journey by sail in what he later described as "sail's last unaided battle with the polar pack". He wrote extensively about his voyage published under the title "Under Sail in the Frozen North".

Following in Worsley's efforts, Kent Scouts will also be making this journey under power of sail and sailing to Svalbard on the schooner, the Noordlicht (pictured below) to "easily" navigate the icy arctic waters. The ship will be crewed by experienced sailors but the young people taking part will be expected to have a hands-on role in sailing the ship, there can be no passive passengers on a voyage so physically, emotionally, and mentally challenging. A key element to their trip is the focus on having a positive environmental focus and the chance to raise awareness about a part of our world that is shrinking rapidly.

"This is more than just voluntourism."

The expedition has 4 proposed objectives:

• Voyage - An adventurous expedition 'Under sail in the Frozen North'
• Projects - Undertake group and personal projects and present the results
• Worsley - Celebrate the achievements of Frank Worsley
• Outreach - Share the experience with thousands of young people

This trip is really about pushing boundaries for those lucky enough to be participating. However, it does not come easily. Regardless of how grueling the journey will be, the journey to the journey will be no walk in the park either. Before anything else, these young people and leaders need to raise the required funds and with a group target of just over £133,000 this will be no mean feat. Many of the scouts who will be going on the expedition will be working to raise this money while also fighting their way through academic milestones such as GCSEs and A-Levels.

Arctic Anarchy

This is where one of our favourite card games of the year comes in. Rick and Lydia are both keen board gamers, so it stands to reason that when presented with a problem, like so many other fans of the hobby, the answer seems to be through playing games.

As it happens, Rick and Lydia were already sitting on an idea for a board game that came about a year or so before. Of course it had quite a different theme that I won't go into here (all I'll say is it was set in a pub rather than the frozen north!), but the mechanics of the game translated perfectly to what they wanted to achieve. Work began on refining the concept and a few sample cards were printed off on a home printer and presented to players at the board game club they run. 

Following the success of this home-made version, Rick and Lydia set out to attend UK Games Expo where they received valuable insight into games production and yet more positive feedback on the game. Pretty soon, Rick was the recipient of 7,500 professionally printed cards that all required counting, checking, and sorting into decks.

"I would always say yes to a game of Catan" - Lydia

"Simplicity was the key to the game," Rick says. "The biggest inspiration was Bounty Hunters." This drive for simplicity in the artwork, game mechanics, and rules can really be seen in the current iteration of the game with its smooth game play and rules that have been condensed to fit on a couple of playing cards within the box. Lydia added that in certain respects the game can be played more like Ticket to Ride. However, they wanted to make the game feel like a unique experience. In this respect they were successful.

Arctic Legacy

When asked what their future hopes for the game would be, Rick and Lydia were both keen for it to remain a source of funding for future Scout expeditions and to continue to raise awareness for young people, providing a link to what is happening environmentally elsewhere in the world.

"An expansion [to the game] would be good but we need feedback on what people would like to see," says Lydia. For an expansion they are keen to know what they are expanding and what this would hope to achieve with the game and its wider environmental message.

Furthermore, they want to take the lessons they've learned in bringing their game to life and share this with other scouting groups, with the hope to create more games to help promote further messages and raise money for future trips. 

"[We're] not looking for profit" - Rick

During our conversation, Lydia brought up a potential future version of the game that could be used to raise awareness and tackle poaching in Kenya. As soon as this was brought up, I admit my head was filled with Kenyan wildlife and the bright colour palette in Rick's geometric designs. Specifically, Lydia was keen for a future game to support the charity Harambee for Kenya, which focusses on "putting poor people on their feet again to rekindle burnt out lives with fresh hope, restoring dignity and respect to their lives." 

So where can people find out more and grab a copy of the game? Currently there are no official outlets, so it's best to get yourself over to the Arctic Anarchy Facebook page and message Lydia and Rick. Alternatively, head on over to their weekly board game club in Hollingbourne, Kent where they will be happy to sell you a copy.

Also, keep an eye out for future editions of Games On Location to see how well Arctic Anarchy fairs being played in the Arctic Circle!

Review: Stay At Home - A little shared trauma as a treat

The other day I found myself looking at the release date of a game on my shelf and came to the shock realisation that 2020 wasn't just a year or two ago. It's been four years since the world was plunged into a pandemic and the chaotic response as various governments tried desperately to ignore deal with the socio/political/economic ramifications of entire countries trying to isolate themselves nationally and internationally. It feels as though many of us have struggled to move on from this global event and the way this has manifested is the shared delusion that this all somehow happened more recently than it actually did. 

Stay At Home - Three ominous words

Despite that odd symptom, I have come to realise quite how much my brain had chosen to forget through the game we played last night, Stay At Home.

"A card game that's nostalgic for all the wrong reasons"

First of all, I would like to send my thanks to the creator of this game who kindly gifted me a copy for review!

Stay At Home is a simple card game by Fizzgig Games in which 2-4 players strategically take and play cards to try and end the game with the largest proportion of their household "Out", meaning not stuck in isolation. This is done through humorous cards that allow one or more of your household of 4 to leave the house on errands such as "drug run", "toilet paper quest", and a very disgruntled looking "key worker" (round of applause anyone?). However, working against you are regular government announcements and stop cards which work to complicate play or send members of your household home again. There are also stockpile cards which work against you during play by clogging up your hand, but are valuable in the event of a tie-break at the end of the game.

The winning player is the one who has the most "out" cards in front of them at the end and a decent supply of stockpile cards in the event of a draw. 

While the game was quick to play and learn, I felt there was decent replay value through the luck of the draw. Sadly on our first play through we seemed to draw almost all the government announcement cards at the start of the game so there was little effect (we hadn't had a chance to get many people out of our houses yet!), but despite this there was fun to be had in fighting each other and sending people home.

During the game we found ourselves reminiscing about the weird and confusing times, which was fun in a gallows-humour way and it was an easy game to play while also holding conversation. I also really enjoyed the mechanic of the four house cards in front of each player that flipped over as members of the household are allowed out. I'm not sure I've come across something similar in other card games of the like.

I think it would be a fair comparison to liken this to games such as Fluxx and Exploding Kittens; an easy and accessible game to play with family (depending on how raw feelings still are about that turbulent period). 

It would be interesting to see how the game changed with a greater number of green cards that enabled house holds to go out, would this also increase the underhanded actions of players as they vie for top place? Furthermore, I feel the game would re-skin well to cover a different theme, something along the lines of medieval plagues would be a fun redesign.

Overall, this is an enjoyable game to bring out at family gatherings and the humour sticks the landing, without feeling contrived. 

Preview: Adventures in Ankh-Morpork - A Discworld TTRPG

Fans of the Disc rejoice! A Discworld RPG, Adventures in Ankh-Morpork, by Mordiphius Entertainment, will be launching soon on Kickstarter, and there is already a Quick Start Guide available to give players a little taste of what to expect from the final game! A number of Actual Plays are also starting to appear on YouTube, showcasing entertaining and immersive gameplay.

With an impressive list of credits, this game is already showing an fantastic level of detail and a deep love and respect of the Discworld as penned by the late Sir Terry Pratchett.

"A city like Ankh-Morpork was only two meals away from chaos at the best of times."

The Kickstarter page promises the game will catapult players into "the streets of The Big Wahoonie... Using a brand new, original rules system, Discworld: Adventures in Ankh-Morpork will have you playing pun-filled sessions of misadventure on the streets of its titular city."

With a meaty 45 page Quick Start session, art by none other than Discworld veteren artist Paul Kidby, pre-generated characters, and a unique scenario "Up In Smoke" complete with an impressive number of locations and NPCs, already there feels like more than enough to excite the interests of Pratchett fans.

The core mechanics of the game are interesting and feel like a fresh take on what is often a D20-heavy marketplace. The creators have focused the system on two core premises:

1. The Disc has a story it wants to tell, and left alone will spin on much as it has always done.
2. The players want to change this story to one more to their liking.

In this vein, the players will compete for a mysterious element known only as Narritivium through dice roles in direct competition with the DM (Discword Master). The DM will roll a D8 against the players whenever a skill check is made and the highest roll wins. However, what dice the player is allowed to use will be dictated by the DM based on the player's given reasons as to why they are particularly skilled at doing that action. 

For example, a Troll trying to force open a door would likely be granted a D12 (the highest permitted) as they have the beneficial trait of being, well, a Troll. The DM will only ever use a D8, meaning the player is granted more or less chance of winning depending on what die they are permitted to use. Of course other players can also step in to help with an action and also make a roll, giving the first player the option of choosing which roll to use, much like advantage works in DnD. 

What is particularly interesting is that Adventures in Ankh-Morpork has been designed as a "palette cleanser" for players between epic campaigns. As such, the game is recommended to be run as a single 3-4 hour adventure. Of course the full release will include some advice on how to extend this to a longer run, but the core mechanics of the game will have been designed for short-run, or one-off adventures. 

Furthermore, combat has been omitted entirely from the rules system, encouraging players to engage more with the tone, characters, world, and story. The pre-generated characters for the Quick Start scenario do not have health points but the rules state that DMs should feel free to give players a Brush With Death, provided THEY TALK LIKE THIS. 

We are very excited to follow the progress of this game through its development and Kickstarter campaign. There is clearly so much love given to the source material and with this level of care and reverence it is bound to please both new and experienced Discworld fans. 

Preview: Arctic Anarchy - Far from a frosty reception

Courtesy of Ricky Vadgama©

Last night I was lucky enough to attend a play test event for Arctic Anarchy, a new indie card game. The game is the brain child of two Scout Leaders and avid board gamers, Ricky and Lydia Vadgama. In 2026 they will be joining a team of fellow leaders and young people from Scouts on an expedition to the Arctic Circle. Their objective is to undertake polar research and conservation projects. The game has been designed with the purpose of raising money to fund this expedition and you can keep up to date on their progress here.

Arctic Anarchy sees 2-4 players take turns collecting or discarding cards showing different arctic animals in an attempt to make a hand that will score points, before banking this for tallying up at the end of the game. However, Ricky and Lydia Vadgama have injected a little bit of chaos into this simple premise with the "event" cards that are pulled whenever a player banks a good hand for scoring. These events range from all players discarding a certain type of animal, to handing over the game-winning hand you thought you had just safely stowed away, to the player on your right. While this might sound like the goal-post changing mechanics of games like Fluxx, it plays very well with the careful and balanced style of the rest of the game. Players will carefully draw animals onto their rafts (as the play areas are called), planning several moves ahead, only to have an event force them to discard all their polar bears. Arctic Anarchy tests how well its players can adapt and react to the changing whims of the arctic.

Further rules for games of 3-4 players also introduce the opportunity to swap cards with others around the table (all players' hands are kept in the open), which can introduce an extra social element to the game as allies and enemies are made. Another player and I took delight in using this mechanic to mutual benefit, and what is an action that I am sure could cause more than one table-flip, turned out to be charming and full of goodwill. Though, I suppose that will come down to who you choose to play with!

Courtesy of Ricky Vadgama©

Overall, the game played incredibly well. It was taught in a matter of minutes and was easily played within a half hour. The game-play was smooth and felt well polished, with next to no rules-checking needed for the entire time. The player who I joined had already played 2 games before my arrival, and then when I brought a copy back to Hand Limit Tower, we played 2 games back to back. I can foresee this small deck taking a similar spot to Love Letter in the "let's just play a quick round" genre. Sporting pleasing geometric animal designs in a cool colour palette, the game shows product quality that matches some of the bigger names in the industry. Although still technically in its play-testing stage, the game plays and looks like a finished product. 

With the expected retail price of £18 (approx.) this game is comparable to the series of games being released by the well established Oink Games, but considering this has been put together by a team of two independent developers at their own cost, and that it is being sold to fund such a wholesome cause, I feel it is well worth that price.

My only worry is that since we launched our Games On Location series, we might need to ship out with them to get this one on the list. Perhaps we will be able to persuade them to take a deck for us?

Games on Location: Episode 1 - Fungi in the Woods

@abitha_elizaart

There is a lot to be said for increasing the immersion when playing table top games, whether it be mood lighting or a themed play list, but have you ever wondered how far you could take the immersion? This was the thought behind this new series of posts where we will be playing Games On Location to answer the question: "Will it GOL?"

The Game

To kick off this series we set off into the woods to find some mushrooms and then play a game Fungi by Brent Povis, published by Pegasus Spiele.

Fungi is an enjoyable trick-taking card game in which players compete to harvest mushrooms and cook them in order to deliver the tastiest dishes by the end of the game. Mushrooms can be fried with extra ingredients such as butter or cider to increase the flavour points. (Though in real life we did draw the line at cooking anything with cider and butter that we found in the forest). The game is a favourite with us at Hand Limit and offers a perfect balance of luck and skill, while showcasing some very pretty artwork by Jarek Nocon, along with an information booklet on all the different mushrooms that can be harvested.

The Location

We decided that it would only be right to set up a game after finding some mushrooms and sure enough, 20 minutes into our walk we came across some stunning examples of Fly Agaric (Amanita Muscaria - according to the glossary), though I don't want to know what happened to whatever creature seemed to have taken a bite out of one of them!

Walking a bit further on we happened upon a clearing to lay out a picnic blanket and have a game. As luck would have it we situated ourselves just a few yards from a very cute example of Birch Bolete (Leccinum Scabrum).

The Play

We decided to lay the game out on the flattest part of the clearing with the help of a well worn picnic blanket and got down to setting it up. As mentioned above, Fungi is a card game, so we instantly ran into problems when the slightest breeze picked up and we had to spend the rest of the game diving for cards as the wind threatened to carry them away across the clearing. Plus there can be no denying the fact that playing a card game on a truly flat table top was far more convenient that the lumpy bumpy rug.

Despite this, we enjoyed an entire game without too much issue and there was something wonderful about experiencing the beautiful artwork surrounded by nature, with the sun and a flask of mocha warming us up.

The Verdict

@abitha_elizaart

Overall playing Fungi outside was a lovely experience. There were difficulties that made it less comfortable than sitting around a table, and the lack of a truly flat surface did make more of a chore when it came to moving the cards around, but these were countered easily by the peaceful location. It must also be noted that we were very lucky with the weather as only minutes before the rain had been coming down hard.

Overall, I would say that Fungi does play well on location and I would recommend giving it a try!

Have you ever played a game in a thematically appropriate location? Perhaps you've played Taverns of Tiefenthal in a tavern, or Carcasonne in, well, Carcasonne. Do you have any recommendations for further Games On Location? If so, please leave a comment below, and perhaps we'll take your suggestion and run with it!

@abitha_elizaart

Review: Altered TCG - The new TCG on the block

The Trading Card Game market place has never been more crowded. Every year more and more try to make a name for themselves in the table top world, but is there still room for improvement? Are there still mechanics and gimmicks left to tap?

Altered TCG from Equinox released its first wave of cards and starter decks last month and is already making small waves in the table top community with some unique play aspects and digital synergy. But does it have what it takes to shoulder its way into the room full of big names like Magic: The Gathering, Pokemon, and the One Piece Card Game?

Fantasy with Fathoms

Altered takes place in a brand new, colourful fantasy world that blends modernity with historical myths and legends. The lore set out on the official website is already showing impressive depth with plenty of room for growth in future releases. The central premise is around a cataclysmic event known in game as the Confluence, a magical storm that merged the imaginary world and ours. A few communities managed to weather this storm and have laid the foundations of a new civilisation in a land known as Asgartha. Once peace and prosperity was secured, humanity has stepped up to venture beyond the frontiers. The six leading factions, one of whom you will choose to play as, each chose a hero and their companion to lead an expedition into the Tumult, a remnant of the Confluence that mutates everything in its wake.

I could go on, but I do recommend taking time to read into this origin story as it makes the game feel very much alive and relevant.

With talk of peace and prosperity, heroes and adventure, you would think that there isn't much call for players to be facing each other in combat, and you would be correct. Altered has chosen to move away from the traditional dueling nature of TCGs and instead centers its game play around the concept of a race to explore the Tumult and the weird happenings within. Of course, there's always some space for some underhanded tactics and sportsmanlike competition (fans of screwing over your competition would do well to start with the Yzmir deck). 

Fantasy with Feeling

There is already an emerging plethora of how-to-play videos up on YouTube so I won't go into full details of how the game works in this review (as a quick aside I will say that some of these videos make the game sound far more complicated that it is. I recommend the learn-by-playing approach with this one), so I will instead skip to my thoughts on the game itself. But in short, players use cards to support two different expeditions, with the aim of having them meet somewhere along the shared adventure track before their opponents'. Cards are played, discarded, reserved, played again, until eventually the surviving cards are compared in what could unfavourably be described as a Top Trumps stat-off.

Firstly, I would like to praise the artwork by Max Fiévé and Ting-Yun Yu. Whoever first described soccer as "the beautiful game" had never seen Altered and it shows. Each of the starter decks showcases a beautiful colour palette and pitch perfect theme. I guarantee that there will be a fair few beginners picking up the game just for the aesthetic alone of the Star Wars-esque Axiom, or the vibrant, punky Lyra decks.  Sadly the one major flaw to the artwork covering these cards is also the start of the next interesting point to make. Each card carries a fairly prominent QR code ("Kids love QR codes" - ed.) which does draw the eye away from the stunning craft put into their design.

These QR codes are the primary way that Altered is trying to slide into the marketplace. Each card printed contains a unique code that, when scanned using the app, creates a digital copy of the card, which only you own, thus creating a digital collection accessible at any time. This app-based collection allows players to build new decks, buy new cards, sell and trade with only a few clicks. Plus for a relatively small fee physical copies of all your scanned cards can be ordered directly from the factory in a language of your choice.

Fantasy with Farsight

Needless to say, this is huge. This is a massive step away from the traditional economy of TCGs which tend to rely on manufactured scarcity to inflate prices to sometimes ridiculous proportions. By creating a system that allows a player to order an infinite number of even the rarest cards, Equinox have stuck two fingers up at the "pay to win" mechanic too often seen on our table tops. By creating a system of openness in this way, players can take their minds away from the value of cards, or protecting them in bullet proof coating, and focus on the strategy of the game itself. Dropped your super-rare Robin Hood Ordis card into a bowl of soup? Not to worry. Provided you scanned it into your digital collection, you can order another with the click of a button.

Of course, this will no doubt enrage people who take pride in owning thair black lotuses and one rings, but to be honest, they have their space. Altered is here for those of us who want an ultra-inclusive experience.

Now on to the game play itself and a small disclaimer. I am relatively new to the TCG world. Though I have played table top games for many years, I've traditionally given TCGs a wide birth because of the economy of constant consumption and growth they seem to engender. However, recently I was persuaded to try Disney's Lorcana by Ravensburger and I haven't looked back. I am in possession of far too many cards and am thoroughly engrossed in how different colour combinations create wildly different play styles. Therefore, as I am relatively new to this aspect of table top, I cannot make many comparisons to existing game mechanics.

As a newbie, I have fallen quickly in love with the game play loop of Altered. I enjoy how quickly it encourages players to cycle through cards much like a deck-building game. The tactile element of drawing, playing, discarding, drawing, satisfies some deep part of my psyche that gets bored very quickly. On the face of it, reading of how the game takes place over numerous phases, named for times of day and night, and how within these phases each player takes an amount of turns based on what they are able to afford, it all makes the game sound needlessly complicated. However, after two rounds we found ourselves settling comfortably into the cycle and respecting the game's natural rhythm. 

Fantasy with Future

We have tried three different starter decks: Axiom, Lyra, and Yzmir. While in comparison to Lorcana it might feel like there is less option to create unique decks, as factions cannot be blended together, in actuality the factions behave so wildly different from each other I found myself feeling the character of each deck much faster that Lorcana, which I found took a few games to really understand how they wanted to be played.

We played a total of 4 games using the 3 different decks (I lost every time, but still enjoyed it... honest - ed.) and have already come to love how the Axiom deck thrives by swarming the field with robotic creatures, how the Yzimir deck is just plain cool and focuses on forcing its opponents to discard their hard-earned cards, how the Lyra deck throws caution to the wind and uses chance via dice rolling to encourage players to just "do it and be a legend". Each play style is entertaining and once the player gains a feel for how they should handle each deck, the experience becomes smooth and silk and ten times more enjoyable (more enjoyable than silk? - ed.).

The primary criticism I heave heard of Altered so far is that it doesn't do enough to make itself stand out in a very competitive field, and although I can see the game never quite meeting the lofty heights of MTG or Yu-Gi-Oh!, I believe it will create a strong and faithful fan base of people looking to move away from the some of the more impenetrable TCG characteristics.

I believe Altered is here to stay, and I look forward to seeing the game grow.

Review: Paper App Dungeon - A Pencil Mightier Than The Sword

Regular readers will know that I'm a fan of any board game that can provide a solo experience. These are perfect for when your social battery is low or if you've got some time on a lunch break and need something with just the right amount of crunch to keep your mind off work. As such, games that are designed as a solo experience entirely and also fit neatly into a pocket, tend to get me excited. So you can imagine the thrill I felt when I slipped and fell into my Friendly Local Gaming Store (FLGS) and discovered Paper App Dungeon by Tom Brinton, published by Lucky Duck Games.

Paper App Dungeons, or PAD if you will (because it's like a note pad...), is a solo experience that puts one in mind of classic PC desktop, time-filler games. It has a charming retro style, simple colour palette, and comes with a pencil designed to act in place of a D6 (P6), which truly makes this one of the most portable and space-friendly games I own, beaten only by Regicide.

The aim of the game is ingeniously simple. Roll the P6 (one of my few criticisms of the game is that P6 is unpleasant to say out loud) and move through the dungeon that number of spaces. Diagonal on odd numbers and orthogonally on even numbers. The only catch is that you cannot change direction until you have moved the full number of spaces or you collide with an obstacle. Retracing steps is discouraged but not technically against the rules. In this fashion you work your way through each layer of the dungeon, looting chests, fighting monsters, and regaining health. Every so often there are "shops" where you can trade hard-earned coin for boosts, extra health, and other useful items to use in the coming levels.

This is where I get to my first major criticism of the format. The pages in each note pad are unique due to random generation so no two dungeons will look the same. This is fantastic in one sense as it allows for a high replay value if you choose to purchase multiple pads (though it is a shame they are essentially single use unless you want to go through and erase all your pencil markings, which is entirely possible). However, I found on my first playthrough that there is no clear difficulty curve. Hard levels were just as common as easy ones.

When playing, you carry health and coins over to the next level, unless you are killed, in which case you tally a death on the tombstone at the end of the book, and start the next level with full health and no coin. Sadly, what this inevitably translated to was my character dying right before I found my way to every shop location so I never had any money to spend on fancy upgrades. This left me feeling like I didn't really get to experience everything the game had to offer.

This frustration was compounded by what I would consider my second criticism, the lack of player autonomy. Although the player can choose the direction of travel, the limitation of travelling diagonally or orthogonally based on the result, coupled with the often tight spaces and the encouragement not to retrace steps, in practice doesn't leave much choice for the player. To be favourable, this does help in what I would call the game's "smooth brain" appeal, but there is a lingering feeling at points of the game playing itself, which the player gets to watch.

These points aside, I would still recommend this game to anyone who has ever used minesweeper or pinball desktop games to pass a scant amount of time. Each level takes no more than 5 minutes to complete, unless you are very unlucky and get trapped in a small corner, constantly rolling the wrong numbers of pinging off walls, which is quite funny to watch really. Plus the premise is so straightforward, it's a very age-accessible game.

The game comes in at under £10 in most retailers and I would say it certainly gives that back in entertainment value.

As a final note I would like to admit that I don't really understand why it's called Paper App Dungeon (OK I understand the first and third words, just not the second), so if anyone can enlighten me, I would appreciate it.

Have you played the game? Am I being too harsh in my criticism? Let me know in the comments down below.