Button Men: Beat People Up (Boardgame)
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Posted on March 1st, 2018 by
Button men has players rolling to capture their opponent’s dice in a sort of alternate reality competitive Yahtzee. Players choose a Button Man that dictates their dice and any special powers and then alternate rolling dice to capture their opponents’ dice. Points are scored for captured dice and half points for one’s own dice that are kept through the end of the game. High score wins and another round is played in a best of three competition. Button Men is a fast playing, fun little game that is extremely portable.
Zendo reminds me of a twist on the great game of Mastermind, where a player would guess a solution by getting minimal feedback on successive guesses. Zendo uses plastic pieces arranged according to a secret rule, and then multiple players build structures in an attempt to figure out that overarching rule. The result is a great little deduction game that I even use to teach my students inductive reasoning in class.
Nine Parchments is an excellent local co-op game of wizards, monsters, and friendly fire. Up to four players (local or online) take the role of an apprentice wizard out to make a name for themselves by collecting the lost Nine Parchments. Players fight through progressively harder levels to collect all nine parchments and finish the game. Multiple difficulty levels, skill trees, and unlockables (new characters, powerful staffs, and cosmetic hats) provide replay value for what would otherwise be a linear quest line. A great addition to the local multiplayer catalogue on the Switch (the version reviewed here), Nine Parchments is a must-buy for local co-op fans.
Mario + Rabbids Kingdom Battle comes out of nowhere to combine Nintendo’s headline characters and Ubisoft’s Rabbids franchise together into a turn-based squad combat game. Yep, turn-based squad combat. Take Mario, Luigi, Princess Peach, or your other favorites and pair them up with crazy-minded rabbit-shaped copies for some squad based combat as you journey though lands to “fix” the mess first created by the rabbids. While not the deepest strategy game, it is a great introduction to the genre and provides a fun romp through a colorful world of characters.
Crawl is a pixelated, crazy action rouge-like game (reminiscent of Vs Pac Man) where one player explores and the others control the monsters, taking a turn at being an explorer if they manage to kill him. While an explorer, players level up experience and gain gold. Gold can be spent at a shop to improve one’s items and abilities. While monsters, players gather up “rage” and can spend it to upgrade their monsters. The first person to level their explorer up to level 10 and make it back to the start will warp out of the dungeon and “win” the game. Working well with up to 4 players on the same console, Crawl is another great multiplayer title on the Switch (Switch version reviewed here.)
Happy Holidays! Boardgaming has had a serious upsurge in the past few years, and there’s no better time to get into the hobby than an extended holiday break. As we at GamerDad have done for the past 15+ years, it’s time for an annual rundown of recent boardgames well worth your time. Nothing beats the social aspect of in-person gaming with friends. 
Try to simultaneously maneuver an orange sphere and a blue sphere to their respective exits in the puzzle-like game Semispheres. Most levels are a symmetric pair of boards, color coded to the spheres. Get both spheres to their own colored exit to solve the level. The standard relaxing music and lack of any time pressure combine to make a soothing puzzler suitable for on the go gaming.
A rollicking series of dice rolls determine your fate as you fight monsters to level up and gain loot in Dungeon Dice. Despite the dice, the players have meaningful decisions such as when to push their luck, when to commit their nonrenewable resources, and when to burn resources just to punish (and/or annoy) the other players.
Golf Story is an homage to my favorite golf game of all time, Mario Golf on my Gameboy Color. It combines standard videogame golf gameplay (choose clubs and aim given wind and course conditions, then time button presses to determine power and accuracy.) Part golf game and part RPG, Golf Story favors the casual golf videogamer, but more “serious” golf gamers should find the game worth their hard earned cash.
Combining bluffing and voting, Super Mario: Level Up! has players vie to advance their secret Mario characters to the top of a spiffy 3D board and elect one of them the champion. A successful vote ends the round and players score based on the positioning of the characters shown on their secret character card. Repeat for a total of three rounds and the player with the most points is the winner. A fairly quick game, it rewards planning but players can take some risks to boost their score.
