Oceanos

In Oceanos you are a daring, deep sea explorer, searching in the unseen depths of the ocean to find marvellous creatures and treasure. Will you be the best submarine Captain in the sea, or will your opponents grab that top spot?

Oceanos is a card drafting game with a twist. In the game, your goal is to collect as many points as possible by building your reef and your submarine. At the start of a round, the Captain deals two or more cards (depending on what level the turret of your submarine is, see below about upgrading). You all then choose one of those cards to add to your reef and then pass the unused ones back to the Captain (a position which moves around each turn). The Captain then chooses one of the cards they were presented with and adds that to their reef. Once you have repeated this process five times you score, getting points for animals in your reef and from the propeller of your submarine. After you have scored you move onto the next lower level of the sea and continue your exploration in the same manner.

Throughout the game, you have the possibility of upgrading your submarine's various parts, which allows you to do all manner of things from: being able to have more cards to choose from, to being able to take more than one card for your reef and getting extra points when you score. Another interesting element of the game is divers. On some cards there are treasure chests, when you play a card with a treasure chest you can choose to put one of you limited number of divers onto the card (you can get more divers by upgrading your submarine). However, as you play through three different levels of the reef you can choose to not place a diver and see if you can place it deeper down and collect more treasure. At the end of the game all divers surface and you collect all the treasure from the divers card and the cards above it. This means that there is the potential to get a lot of points if you hang on to your divers until the end of the game, but you can only place them on a treasure card, so do you risk it and keep your divers in your hand or do you play it safe and get the guaranteed points?

We received this game just a few days ago as a review copy and we were delighted to see when we opened it the amazing artwork on the submarines and cards in this game. We were even more delighted to see that inside were all the bits you need to make 5 submarines! My sister and I immediately got into popping out all the cardboard pieces and we soon had in front of us an array of submarine parts. After reading the rules we jumped into playing it. It took a good ten minutes explaining the rules to my Mum and Dad (this game is slightly complicated due to all of the rules about upgrading you ship and all the bonuses you got from that). It was really cool how you could upgrade the different parts of your submarine, and I took great pleasure in maxing out my propeller. Another of the things that I really enjoyed was how you built up your reef, and how you drew cards from a different deck for each different level. The one thing that did come up as we were playing was how some of the submarine parts didn't fit together very well, meaning that sometimes it was a bit of a struggle to get the bits to sit flat on the table. Apart from that, the experience was really enjoyable and my family and I had a fabulous time.  Overall I would rate this game 8/10 and recommend it for anyone who is slightly older.

Cube Quest

Once upon a time, in a land far, far away, there was a gigantic fight. Two kings had fallen out and had decided to wage war on each other, determined to rid the planet of the other king. The battle has now been going on for years and both of the kings have suffered heavy losses. Now, in a last gasp attempt, they have rallied their supporters one last time to go and win this war once and for all! You are one of those kings…

Cube quest is a two player flicking game, where the aim of the game is to knock your opponent's king cube off the playing mat. You do this by taking it in turns to flick your cubes, trying to hit your opponent's pieces and eventually hit them off the board. If you flick one of your cubes into the other player's half and it has a shadow face showing on the top of the cube then it is captured. Once a cube is captured, you have to roll the cube like a die. If it lands with a coloured face up, the cube escapes and is immediately returned to your castle, if not, the cube is taken out of the game. Some cubes have more colour faces which makes them more likely to return to your hand if captured, meaning that some cubes are better than others at attacking. There is also an option as you get better at the game to customise which cubes you have, and hopefully make the perfect army.

Personally, I really enjoy cube quest because A, it is a really fun dexterity game, where you can choose how complex you want it to be and B, I'm really rather good at it. You could start with a pre-generated army and get straight into the flicking, or you could carefully build you own. The choice is really yours. Unfortunately, I don't get to play this game very often as, when my family has time to play games, we normally want to play a four player game. As well as that, my sister complains that it hurts her fingers when she flicks (seriously). So if you are a family looking for a game to play together then this may may not be the one for you, but if you are an child that has lots of people available to play games with, then I would definitely check this game out.  Overall I would give this game a 7 out of 10.

Timeline

In Timeline you are a daring time traveller trying to fix timeline of the after the Dastardly Dr Nefarious blew it up with his destroy-o-matic. You now need to piece back together history, making sure that every event is in exactly the correct order.

In Timeline, you have to try and be the first person with no cards by trying to place cards which represented events in history before and after each other on a timeline. At the start of the game you four

cards and you take it in turns placing trying to place them down in the correct time order, but beware if you place the card in the wrong position, you will have to draw a new one, making the turn useless.

Personally, I think that Timeline is a pretty fun filler game to play in-between other, larger games. Due to it's focus on dates, small children would probably find it frustrating, as they get every card constantly wrong. However one way to make sure the adults don't win every time is to, give them more cards to get rid of while children get less. In terms of the gameplay, it does get quite tense at the end as you try and race to place your last card down before your opponent and claim victory. But the lack of player interaction means that it does get dull after several games. Overall I would give it a 6 out of 10.

Celestia

In Celestia you are a daring explorer, flying on a airship through the treacherous islands of Celestia. You'll need your wits about you if you are to stand any chance against the dreaded Lockhar pirates, Damock-birds, vicious lighting and muddling fogs.

Celestia is a family game where you are trying to collect the most impressive souvenirs by travelling to the different islands of Celestia. At the start of the game everyone is dealt some cards: cards can be an equipment item (a lighting rod, horn, compass or cannon), or a special card (which I will talk about later). Next everyone places their character counter in the 3D cardboard airship and the game can begin. Players take turns at being the Captain of the ship, as Captain it will be their responsibility to navigate the airship safely to the next island. The Captain starts their turn by rolling the two dice provided, which will have either a blank space or a symbol which relates to a situation the airship has encountered (a lighting bolt, clouds, birds or pirates). Without showing the other players, the Captain will then look at their cards to see if they have the appropriate equipment to deal with the situation at hand - like the horn card to clear the birds or cannons to fend off the pirates. If the Captain has the right equipment, then they will be able to move the airship along to the next island.  But if they can't cope with the problems encountered then the airship, and everyone in it, will crash and go all the way back to the start. However, before the Captain reveals whether they will be able to overcome the situation, everyone else has to decide whether to stay in or jump out of the ship. If they jump out, they take a souvenir card from the island where they disembarked which will give them victory points. The further the island is from the start, the better the card will be. So you'll want to stay in for as long as possible before jumping out. But, if you are on the airship and the Captain doesn't have the right equipment, you go back to the start and get no points at all. Only after all the other players have decided whether to trust the Captain to see them through or abandoned ship, does the Captain finally reveal whether they can take navigate the ship to the next island. So what would will you do? Do you push your luck and hope the Captain has the right cards or do you play it safe and get some points, even though bigger prizes lie further on...

I mentioned that there are also some special cards, which can change the course of the game by letting people do extra things they wouldn't normally be able to do. An example is one card that allows you to force another player to jump out of the ship, regardless of whether they wanted to or not. This means they might end up with a rather lacklustre souvenir compared to their other shipmates who go on (unless the airship crashes). The another fun card allows you to jump to the next island even if the airship crashes, guaranteeing you the most impressive souvenir that flight.

Celestia, in my opinion, is a really great game. The artwork is amazing and I love how you have to try and figure out whether someone has the right cards by just looking at how many cards they have and their face. I also love the exploration aspect of this game, and it always gives me a really good sense of satisfaction as I make it to a place I have never been to before. Overall I really enjoy this game and it is definitely one of my favourite games.