Muse

Designed by: Jordan Sorenson

Published By: Quick Simple Fun Games (2017)

Players: 2-12

Ages: 10+

Time: 30 minutes

Unearthed by: Mike

In muse, players are divided into two teams that will take turns as artists or antagonists. At the start of each round, a muse is chosen from the artists team. Then the Antagonists draw 6 art cards and 2 inspiration cards, and secretly choose one of each with the goal of making it difficult for the artists to guess which of the masterpieces they chose. Then they secretly show their choices to the muse. To make it more challenging, they also chose one of the 2  inspiration cards which guides the muse to the type of clue they must use to help their team. As a muse, you need to be creative to give the right clue within the constraints of the inspiration card to help guide your team to the masterpiece. If the artists guess the correct masterpiece, they take it. If they guess wrong, the antagonists take it. The first team to seize 5 masterpieces wins!

Terraforming Mars

Designed by: Jacob Fryxelius

Published By: Stronghold Games (2016)

Players: 1 – 5

Ages: 12+

Time: 120 min

Unearthed by: Ed

In Terraforming Mars, you control a corporation competing to transform Mars into a habitable planet by spending vast resources, and using innovative technology to raise temperature, create a breathable atmosphere, and make oceans of water.  You’ll play project cards, build up production, place your cities and green areas on the map, and race for milestones and awards in order to have the best Terraforming Rating among the companies.

You acquire unique project cards by buying them to their hand. The projects (cards) can represent anything from introducing plant life or animals, hurling asteroids at the surface, building cities, to mining the moons of Jupiter and establishing greenhouse gas industries to heat up the atmosphere. There are also Standard Projects that are always available.

Each player keeps track of their production and resources on their player boards of six types of resources: MegaCredits, Steel, Titanium, Plants, Energy, and Heat.

On the game board, you compete for the best places to place city tiles, ocean tiles, and greenery tiles. You also compete for different Milestones and Awards worth many VPs.

When the three global parameters (temperature, oxygen, ocean) have all reached their goal, the terraforming is complete. The highest Terraform Rating and VPs wins!

Fluxx

Designed by: Andrew Looney & Kristin Looney

Published By: Looney Labs (1997)

Players: 2-6

Ages: 8+

Time: 5 – 30 min

Unearthed by: Evan

Start by shuffling the deck of cards and dealing three to each player. Choose a person to start, and then: Draw One, Play One. That is until you play new rules cards that start to tell you to do other things, such as draw 2 cards, or play 3 cards, or discard your entire hand. The goal of the game?  Well that’s whatever the goal cards tell you. A goal might be to have some keeper cards in front of you. Or a goal might be to have 10 cards in your hand. Every player is shooting for the same goal. Just like the rules, the goals also change. If you don’t like the current goal card, go ahead and play a new goal card and supercede the last goal. The rules are ever changing, the goals are ever changing, the game moves fast, and it can be over in a heartbeat, or an hour later. It is impossible to predict, and that’s the fun.