Tabletop • Over the past year I’ve become rather fond of a certain breed of game labeled as COIN games. As you most likely already know, these games deal with counter insurgency warfare where getting the locals on your side is just as, or more, important than putting the enemy in pine boxes. Root is an upcoming tabletop game that offers some light COIN mechanisms while also fulfilling my furry quota. In other words, it’s a win-win.
iOS, Android • Onirim is a highly-regarded, fast-playing solo card game by Shadi Torbey and Z-Man Games, and is now a highly-regarded, even faster-playing ideal phone game by Asmodee Digital. Perhaps the easiest single-sentence summary for Stately Play readers is this: Card Crawl is more like Onirim than Card Thief, and this stands as a strong compliment to all three games. Card Crawl gave about as much satisfaction as a turn-based game could offer in such a brief playing time, and Onirim gives us decisions with a similar tactical feel and memory element. Card Thief has much in common with Card Crawl, but Tinytouchtales innovated with it enough that a third game could be more similar to their first outing without being redundant. In other words, Onirim fills the same niche as Card Crawl while still being sufficiently distinct to justify itself.