In their March digital newsletter, Asmodee Digital revealed three exciting upcoming digital board gaming releases: Onirim, Jaipur and Ticket to Ride First Journey (their first kids’ game).
One we already knew was coming, while the other two are an awesome surprise.
Onirim, which I’ve been lucky enough to beta test, is a solo/cooperative 2 player game in which players are cast as Dreamawalkers, lost in a creepy labyrinth in which they must find the eight (in the base game) oneiric doors before dreamtime (aka the deck) runs out or you will be stuck in the labyrinth forever. There is some great risk/reward gameplay here as you try to minimize damage and avoid accidentally triggering the evil nightmares. I’ve only played it solo version thus far and it can be a rather challenging little game.
Jaipur, a title I am super excited to see on this list, is a stellar 2-player card game in which players are competing traders in the Indian city of Jaipur. There is a central market of cards which includes various goods and camels. On their turn the player has a choice of either taking or selling cards. If they choose to take a camel, they must take all camels in the market, otherwise they can take a single card from the market or swap a number of cards (this is where camels come into play) in the market. The other option is to sell cards, however the player may only sell one type of good per turn. Selling goods earns you good-specific chips, which have diminishing values as the game progresses, so selling goods earlier than your opponent will help you win the game. At the end of each round, the richer trader receives a Seal of
Excellence and the first player to collect 2 of these win. Jaipur is a quick-playing game that is easy to pick up and learn and I have no doubt Asmodee will do a great job on the digital release.
Finally, Ticket to Ride First Journey is the special kid-friendly version of the Alan R. Moon classic train route game. The cardboard release was briefly a Target Store exclusive here in the US, before becoming available world-wide. The basic gameplay is very similar, but everything’s been scaled down and streamlined for a younger audience and it is a race to complete 6 tickets or whomever has completed the most tickets once a single player has placed all twenty of his or her trains on the board (whichever comes first). Each player starts with two route tickets and they must connect the two cities listed on each ticket by building a contiguous path of trains between those cities. On their turns, players may either draw two train cards from the deck or discard train cards to claim a route between two cities. It is a quicker and more simplified version of the game that is even easier to introduce to kids.
Be sure to look for more details on all of these titles as we get closer to their releases.