Monster Dinner Party is another cozy little game from Alexander Shen

It had been a bit since I had tried a new (or new-to-me) game from Alexander Shen and, when I saw that Monster Dinner Party was a quick 9-card build, I decided it was a good one to try out.

In typical whimsical Shen fashion, the game has you seating a group of goofy-looking monsters at a dinner table. Of course, being monsters, they are fussy about where they sit.

The game consists of a deck of nine cards with no other bits like dice and tokens. Each card has a scoring condition, a special power and a color. The front of the card has a waiting edge and a seated edge. The back side of the card has a negative one symbol, along with the game name.

Shuffle the cards up and deal seven cards in a row with the waiting edge up. The other two cards are put on standby. A move is using one of the waiting monsters special power, which then switches the monster to seated. You can also swap out a waiting card in the line with a card in standby. They arrive seated and the other card is flipped to the negative side. If a card can’t use its power, it’s flipped over. When all seven cards in the line are seated or flipped, figure out the score.

The powers are switch the card with the same color, switch the card with a different color, move two spaces and place the card anywhere in the line (but must actually move) The scoring conditions are ends of the line, even spot, odd spot, and next to monsters of the same color.

Alexander Shen has a true knack for making coffee break games. Games that don’t take up too much time or space or brain power but are enjoyable little time outs for your mind. They aren’t headliners but there is definitely a place for games like them.

While Monster Dinner Party isn’t one of Shen’s best works, it’s still solid. It’s only seven moves and it doesn’t take long to figure out which moves are optimal. However, I’ve found it to be a fun little puzzler. It might even get a turn as a lunch game.

I have to admit that a lot of value of Shen games comes from the low opportunity cost. Many of them, like this one, are free downloads. Making nine laminated cards took me maybe fifteen minutes to make. For that, Monster Dinner Party has good value.

https://www.pnparcade.com/collections/new-games/products/monster-dinner-party

This Mars Vacation is sadly not out of this world

I printed out two of Alexander Shen’s games at the same time, Trap Construction Corp and This Mars Vacation. Of the two, I had higher expectations of This Mars Vacation.

Spoiler: I was wrong.

This Mars Vacation has you trying to create enclosed areas on a ten by ten grid while meteorites destroy squares. 

Each turn, you outline a box, representing walls. Scoreable blocks must be completely enclosed in walls. You score enclosures every turn before

rolling for meteorites.

You roll two ten-sided dice for each meteorite, determining where it will land on the grid. Meteorites will destroy walls or render enclosure spaces worthless. And if they land on a space that’s already been hit, they expand the damage to every orthogonal space. More than that, you roll for more and more meteorites each turn.

After seven turns, you score your board one last time and total up your points.

Now, while I said that I like Trap Construction Corp more, there are elements I do like about This Mars Vacation. Oddly enough, some of them are also why I don’t see playing it much.

First off, it takes at least four turns to score any points, which is half the game. And, even if meteorites don’t destroy your precious walls or enclosures, you get points very incrementally.

And the random nature of meteorites falling means it’s very hard to effectively plan ahead. All you can do is hope for the best. Particularly since there will be six meteorites on the last turn. One hit can destroy your entire game.

BUT that’s also the best part of the game. The random rain of meteorites is what gives the game any tension and makes it interesting. Take that away and all you have is a solitary variant of Dots.

There are Shen games I pull out all the time. They have a proven track record for making bite sized, coffee break games that are actually good.  I don’t think This Mars Vacation is one of those games but I do think it’s an interesting game.

I didn’t expect Trap Construction Corp to work

Well, it happened again. I went into an Alexander Shen game with low expectations and my first reaction to playing it was "Let's play that again"

While Trap Construction Corp is themed around building traps for a dungeon, it is really filling a grid with Xs and numbers. While many of Alexander Shen's games have a certain level of whimsy, if only in the artwork, this one is as abstract as Tic Tac Toe.

You have an eight by eight grid. Each turn, and there are only eight turns,  roll a six-sided die. On one to five, you get to fill in a pattern with the number in the middle anywhere on the grid. Ones just take up one space while fours and fives let you fill n lines from edge to edge. Sixes force you to block off a three-by three space whose location is determined by rolling two eight-sided dice. New patterns can cover up numbers already on the grid. And those three by three blocks cancel out any numbers or Xs within them. 

At the end of the game, your score is determined by a value determined by the number of numbers on the grid (This is not adding up the numbers but a chart. More numbers, higher value) plus the number of Xs minus the number of empty areas multiplied by the size of the larges empty area. Trap Value + number of Xs - (number of empty areas x size of largest empty area)

Did I mention Trap Construction Corp was abstract?

Yes, the grid is supposed to be a dungeon you have been contracted to fill with traps. The numbers are the traps, the Xs are the area of effect of the traps. and the 3X3 areas are your client's personal quarters. But does it remotely feel like that? No. Honestly, a theme about urban development would make more sense, although it wouldn't make the game any more thematic.

I have played a lot of abstract strategy games and a lot of Roll and Writes over the years. And you generally get a sense of when a game is going to be functional with no mechanical issues but with no engagement. The equivalent of balancing your checkbook but without the positive outcome of accomplishing something, even if its just your own entertainment. And I really assumed that Trap Construction Corp would be like that.

However, what got me is the empty spaces and trying to make them as small as possible. The actual hook of the game is cutting up the grid. Even a rolling a one and only being able to fill in one space can be crucial it its the right space. And since you have the freedom to place a trap on any open space, you have a lot of actual choices. And the sixes with their 3x3 blocks keep the tension up. 

Yeah, somehow rolling eights ones would lead to a completely broken play. However, that would clearly be an extreme outlier. And the game is eight turns long. That makes a potential unbalanced game like that more forgivable.

Alexander Shen's focus seems to be making tiny games and puzzles that take five minutes or less to play. That's not something everyone needs or wants. However, be it for coffee breaks or brain fog breaks, I have found that I am indeed in the demographic that plays those kind of games. And Shen has proven to have a real gift for creating them. it might seem like a super easy thing to make but I have seen enough bad examples that I have come to appreciate Shen.

That said, Shen has had misses, games and puzzles that didn't interest me or were even broken. I really expected Trap Construction Corp to be a game i checked off the list and forgot. Instead, it looks like it's headed for my clipboard of coffee break Roll and Writes.

Tiny Maze Things - when I’m too tired to think

Tiny Maze Things was the last Alexander Shen creation I learned in 2024. Shen’s little puzzles and games are such delightful guilty pleasures. And Tiny Maze Things may be one of the simplest of their works I’ve tried.

Simply put, it is a collection of 200 mazes with multiple starting and finishing spots. In the maze are different symbols. Coins and stars get you points. Skeletons and ghosts cost you points. Swords negate ghosts and shields negate skeletons. And you can never backtrack.

Tiny Maze Things isn’t a game. There are no random elements. You determine everything. So it’s a collection of puzzles. And fairly simple ones, really. Not that that is a detriment, unless you want it to be. 

You can clearly play the game optimally, carefully planning out the route on each maze that will get the most points. However, I have found it more enjoyable to intentionally avoid doing that. Instead, I have been exploring each maze by going through each starting flag, and figuring out the best route that way.

I think Tiny Maze Things works better as a decompression activity than as a brain teaser. I have written about brain fog activities, games for when you’re too tired to think straight. I feel Tiny Maze Things is perfect for that.

This is not my favorite Shen creation. Circuit Board Squares is a genuinely clever set of puzzles. Spooky Forest makes brilliant use of its cramped space. And Quests Over Coffee has hidden depths. However, I’m printing out some pages for those times when I’m mentally exhausted.

When a game makes me appreciate other games

 I ran across Caterpillars in my never ending search for casual Roll and Writes (NOT to be confused with Canterpillar’s Feast, which is a significantly better casual Roll and Write) And my take away from it is not that Caterpillars is a better game than it seems to be. It’s not. No, it is that it makes me appreciate the light, casual R&Ws that I do enjoy.

 

When you get down to it and stripping away the cute caterpillar pictures away, the game is twelve boxes divided into three equal columns. Each box is labeled with a number one to six, each number showing up twice.

(There are fifteen different play sheets with different layouts of the numbers. In fact, in a multi-player game, everyone uses a different sheet unless you have more than fifteen players)

You roll two dice. Pick one for a box and fill in the other number. You have three one-time special powers to double a die, halve a die or flip a die. When every box is filled in, add up the columns. Throw away the smallest and largest numbers and the middle number is your score.

I think one rule with highlights why I just didn’t find this game engaging is that if you have a role that you simply cannot fill in, you add a zero wherever. As the game goes on, you run out of choices. 

More than that, as someone else pointed out, you have a maximum score of 24. And the choices in order to achieve that are fairly obvious. You still need a lot of luck but the decisions are either obvious or not there.

What Caterpillars really reminds me of is 6 Steps, a very early Roll and Write from 1965. Dry, easy to have null moves, and too many choices are either damage control or meaningless.

Earlier this year, I learned Dice Fishing D6, which I feel confident saying is mechanically worse than Caterpillars. However, it does have a lot of tension combined with extreme brevity of play and some semblance of theme. Those elements keep me entertained, but Caterpillars doesn’t have elements like that.

I also found myself thinking of Reiner Knizia’s Criss Cross, which also consists of only twelve rolls. And yes, as the grid fills up, your choices become more limited. However, the game is all about trying to set up the grid and plan around the fact that choices will get tight. And that is a game that I keep coming back to.

For the last few years, I’ve been regularly learning and playing games by Alexander Shen, who specializes in quirky little fillers. Caterpillars reinforces my view that Shen is a mad genius. Even when I play an Alexander Shen game that I’m convinced is mechanically broken, I’m more engaged than I was by Caterpillars.

Dungeon Monsters and the IRS

 And My Tax is another Alexander Shen game that makes me ‘That was a nice little fluff… let’s play it four more times’

And My Tax is a game about taxing dungeon monsters. Which is mechanically the same as fighting them but funnier. The components consist of ten cards and every regular D&D die or, as the rules say, all the dice you can roll.

The cards have two to three pieces of mechanical info on them. Target number (which you need to either go over or under depending on the monster), coin/point value and maybe a special power.

The basic idea is that you deal out two cards. Pick the one you are gunning for. Pick a die and try to roll over/under the target number. You can add more dice but you will be discarding all the dice you use. I think the dice add together and, if that’s the case, won’t be a choice for low targets.

Special powers are either restriction on taxing the monster or special powers you can use by discarding the monster after you’ve collected them. The only one I’ll use every time is the Auditor Orc that’s only worth one point but can be discarded to get two dice back. You can discard any card to get a die back.

Game ends when you run out of dice, run out of cards or decide to stop. Coins on the cards you collected and didn’t discard are your score.

And My Tax doesn’t just make a virtue of minimalism and brevity, it makes an absolutely necessity of them. I originally thought ten cards was terribly small. After playing the game, I realized that the game would fall apart if it was heavier in any way.

Many years ago, one of the first micro games I ever played was Pico 2, a game I still think holds up well. At the time, I said Pico 2 couldn’t sustain a half hour of play but it does well with ten minutes. Well, And My Tax couldn’t sustain ten minutes but it works under five.

I was prepared for the game to be completely random but between the choice of cards to pursue, the choice of dice to use, and the special powers, you do get to make some choices. Don’t get me wrong, it is a very light and random game but there is some actual game.

It’s not my favorite Alexander Shen game but it is another of example of how they create a surprisingly engaging game in a tiny space. There is a time and a place for such games and I’m finding myself playing And My Tax there.

Alexander Shen’s Race Day is a pleasant little journey

 Alexander Shen has described their puzzles and games as maybe not the best sandwich but still a sandwich and one you wouldn’t give a one-star review of. I think that explains the appeal of their work very well.

Seriously, Shen is like that hole-in-the-wall diner that you go to regularly. It may not be an event to go there but you eat more burgers there than you go out for steak. It’s comfort food gaming and I feel like if PnP were more mainstream, Shen would be a go-to designer 

Race Day is a pretty good example of this. It doesn’t do anything that will surprise you. Instead, you look at it, know where you stand and you’re good to go.

Race Day is an 18-card PnP solitaire game. Each card shows Sadie Cat (reoccurring character in Shen games) along with two of her friends with a winding path leading from each of them. 

Shuffle up the deck. Lay down three cards so that each character is at the start of their path. It’s a tile-laying game and you now have three rows you can build off of.

On each round, you will draw five cards and play three of them. They go opposite end to the start cards so the paths end on the characters. You play three rounds, going through the entire deck.

At the end of the game, only the rows where all three paths begin and end on the same character score points. A nice touch is that you don’t have to play a card on each row each round. In fact, the highest scoring combination is to successfully use all nine cards on one row.

Race Day is kind of solveable. Each card shows up three times in the deck. Since you get to discard two cards each turn, you get to filter through the deck. The biggest random factor is what the three starting cards will be. 

Instead of bothering me, this turns Race Day into more of a puzzle that I can noodle around with. Putting patterns together and adjusting to the random elements. To be fair, a lot of solitaire games have puzzle elements. (Shen has also created just straight puzzles as well as games) In fact, I more often play with personal victory conditions, like making one long row or having every row be scoreable.

Race Day isn’t a challenging work. Instead, it’s a relaxing one that’s using ideas that are familiar. It has become a game I’ll pull out so I can chill out. That’s the case for me with many Shen games and puzzles.

Alexander Shen makes an addictive little Spooky Forest

 Spooky Forest is a recent game/puzzle from Alexander Shen. I’m scared to say the latest game since Shen so routinely publishes quirky, charming PnP games that I can’t keep up lol

I’ll be honest. The last few games I’ve learned by Shen haven’t really engaged me. They’ve been interesting and I will play them again but none of them have been games that will make regular rotation. Spooky Forest, though, that’s looking to be a regular game for me.

It’s a flip-and write where you are filling in a four-by-four grid. There are four symbols: rocks, trees, ghosts, and skulls. Symbols can _not_ be drawn next to the last symbol drawn. Except for rocks, which must be.

The game ends when you’ve either filled in the entire grid or you can’t make a legal move. Ghost and skulls are worth two points when paired together (and each symbol can be part of multiple pairs) and negative three points if alone. Blank spaces are also worth negative three points. Trees are worth a point as long as they are in a group of at least three. Rocks aren’t worth anything.

Spooky Forest is very simple but the placement restrictions are enough to make it work. While you know the kind of patterns you need to make to optimize the score, the restrictions, particularly the rock one, keep you from mindlessly filling out the grid.

The game also has a puzzle option. Instead of using the deck of eighteen cards for the flip-and-write option, there is a fifty-four card deck, each with a pre generated draw. I didn’t expect the puzzle deck to interest me but it effectively allows me to reduce the game to two pieces plus a dry erase marker, which makes a quick game/puzzle really convenient.

Shen works with these small spaces, puzzles and games that fit into coffee break time frames. Not all of them take off but some of them just really balance simplicity and whimsy and actual decisions. And Spooky Forest is one of them.

While brevity is one of Shen’s virtues, the cramped grid actually is one of the keys to making Spooky Forest not a mindless exercise. The restriction on placing a rock is the other key. If it wasn’t for rocks, you could just make a checkerboard of skulls and ghosts with an outline of trees. Rocks not only ruin your carefully made plans, they can end a game early.

Don’t get me wrong. Spooky Forest is a very simple game that uses mechanics and paradigms that are well worn. It’s a comfortable pair of old shoes that you wear for a nice walk around the garden. It’s got just enough going on to make the couple minutes of play fun.

Spooky Forest is an example why I always look when I see Alexander Shen’s name.

Monster Healer and an Etsy design aesthetic

Monster Healer Solo IIDX (Monster Healer from here on out) is a solitaire Roll-and-Place game. You don’t have to write anything down. You just have to get dice in specific spaces.

It is another game from the fascinating mind of Alexander Shen. I am a fan of their works. Shen has a real knack for creating quirky games that fit in small spaces and short times. Not all of them work but they always demonstrate a willingness to experiment and a desire to get ideas out into the world.

Monster Healer has you trying to trap monsters so you can heal them. Monsters aren’t keen on that and will either get rid of traps or even try and kill you. One odd bit is that it takes more than one trap to catch a monster.

What the game actually comes down to is trying to lock five dice into specific pips. You get two actions per turn, which include rerolls, placing traps and a couple of special actions like healing yourself. Then the monster gets a go, rolling on a table which includes hurting you, getting rid of traps or just doing nothing.

Monster Hunter isn’t one of the Shen’s hits for me. All the game’s parts work but the odds do seem to be in your favor. The monsters can bug you but you’ll usually win.  The theme carries the game more than the mechanics. It works well enough to make for an amusing diversion but I won’t get it out often.

Over the last ten or so years, Print and Play as a medium has come a long way and gotten some real spit and polish. There are publishers that do nothing but. (I don’t think they’ve quit their day jobs but they can compete)

When I first looked at PnPs, that wasn’t the case. PnPs were much more hobby projects. (Yes, exceptions did exist) Really, when you look at design contests, the hobby level of PnP creation is probably stronger than ever. But back when Fred Flintstone was my neighbor, that was what you were finding.

Alexander Shen feels like a visitor from an alternate timeline where PnP developed differently. Their games have a hobby designer vibe but a modern, professional sensibility. It’s like Etsy as a game designer. (To be honest, itch.io is kind of an Etsy of game design. Which is probably why I spend so much time there)

Back to Monster Healer. I got it as part of a big game bundle on itch.io and I got more than my money’s worth.

Golem Needs Pie: whimsical theme, loads of content, critical flaw

 I’ve made it a point to look at every new (or new to me) game or puzzle from Alexander Shen. Their games just do a good job on mental coffee break niche. 

Golem Needs Pie is a puzzle that has Roll and Write elements. To be honest, the Roll and Write part really just adds a random factor that will determine if you can finish the puzzle.

The theme is particularly whimsical. You’ve mixed up your scroll of evil instructions with your shopping list when making a golem. The golem now exists to collect slices of pie and you must help it do so before it runs out of steam.

The actual game is a grid that has eight pie slices and brick walls scattered about it. Your golem has twelve steam to work with. You spend steam to roll a six-sided die for movement and to break through walls. Your goal is to get the whole pie. You get bonus points for ending a move on a slice and for any steam left over if you get all the pie.

You know, I do like solitaire games that have definite losing conditions, not just beat your own score. 

So, here’s the problem. You can figure out the optimal path but if you roll too low, you’ll lose. There’s a best solution but bad die rolls will prevent you from completing it.

Anytime a Roll and Write uses only one die, it’s a red flag for me. I very recently learned Waypoints which also only uses one die. However, that game takes many steps to assuage my fears. Unfortunately, Golem Needs Pie does not. It sadly comes down to roll high or lose.

With that said, I also have to admit that it is going to see some play from me. Part of that comes from its extremely short playing time. The other part comes from the fact that there are literally hundreds of maps so there’s a lot of optimal paths for me to consider.

I like the ideas and themes behind Golem Needs Pie. Alas, the actual game honestly falls short.

Looking back at 2023

2023 was a year of changes for us. Moving across the country, me starting a new job, our son starting in a new school. 

What it wasn’t was a big year of gaming for me. Particularly the second half of the year when all those big life changes kicked in. Time, space, supplies, concentration, those were all resources I need to use on non-gaming priorities.

Even online turn-based gaming dried up for me. That ended up feeling more like a chore than fun. That said, I do think turn-based okay takes a different kind of mental energy than live gaming. You have to get yourself back up to speed every turn.

That said, Print and Play solitaire Roll ans Writes kept me gaming the second half of the year. Minimal resources to be able to play. A clipboard, a dry erase marker and either some dice or a die roller on a device and I am good to go. Highlights included learning the rest of Dark Imp’s playmat games and the Legends of Dsyx series. 

Digital board gaming has long been part of my gaming life. BSW was a big part of playing games that weren’t Dungeons and Dragons or other RPGs. But there really is something about using physical components. And clipboards and paper check that box.

It was also the year that I really got into Alexander Shen as a designer. I’ll be honest, in a year when I would have had more recreational time, that wouldn’t have happened. But Shen’s coffee-break weight games and puzzles were amazing for this year. I learned ten different games and puzzles from him and I know I’ll learn more in 2024.

Highpoints of the games I learned include Jump Drive (but only soliatire campalign mode), Trek 12 and The Magus.

2023 also saw me rediscover One Piece and actually sit down and read some Jojo’s Bizarre Adventure. You know, along with a metric ton of other manga. I also discovered BattleTech fiction existed. Which is really the equivalent of fast food in fiction form but some interesting authors did get their start there.

I don’t think 2024 wkll be a game heavy year but I do think it will be heavier than 2023.

Digging up beetles for fun and points

Beetle Get! is a Flip-and-Write solitaire by Alexander Shen, a hidden gem of a PnP designer. You try and score points with a shifting tableau of beetle cards.

Shen describes Beetle Get! as a Flip-and-Score game, as opposed to a Flip-and-Write game. Which isn’t an unfair description but no one calls Yahtzee or Qwixx as Roll-and-Score games so I’m still holding to Flip-and-Write.

BG (because typing an exclamation mark every time annoys me) consists of a tiny deck of beetle cards, a tiny deck of shovel cards and a player sheet. 

Here’s the basic idea. You deal out the beetle cards face down in a three-by-three grid and then flip over any four of them. The shovel deck consists of card patterns (horizontal, diagonal and vertical lines) Each turn, you draw two. Pick one to score and put the other one on the bottom of the deck. The beetle cards are numbered one to five and you score the sum of the line you chose.

And here’s where the clever bit comes in. You flip over all the cards in the shape you scored. You then pick a column or row and shift in over one space. The card that gets pushed out of the grid goes back on the other side. If you’ve ever played Labyrinth, you get the idea.

Time for another round.

A couple of other tidbits. You also check off sets of beetle cards for bonus points and there’s a beetle juice card in the shovel deck that let you flip over a card.

When you’re through the shovel deck, that’s game and you count up your points.

One touch I want to note is that there’s only one five card. Finding it and scoring it is essential to a higher score. Not only does it add five points to a line, you need to check it off to complete sets for bonus points.

I haven’t played a lot of Flip-and-Writes. I think the idea ia brilliant and has a lot of potential but it’s also a lot easier and less time consuming to make Roll-and-Writes from a PnP standpoint. That said, playing with a sliding puzzle of cards does feel unusual. (Shifting Stones from Gamewright does have a similar idea)

On the downside, BG has a fairly obvious core strategy. Find the five card and maximize it as much as possible.

On the upside, BG offers a lot of control and decisions, with room for planning ahead. Which might lead to games being too easy but that isn’t the worst flaw in a game that takes five or so minutes.

Alexander Shen has a knack for really nailing coffee break games and Beetle Get! is one of the better ones.

My October Gaming

As has just become standard operating procedure, October was a crazy month and learning new games was not even remotely a priority. Still, I did learn a couple.

I learned:

Quests Over Coffee: Danger Room

Take What You Mine

Both are Alexander Shen designs. Shen’s designs tend to be good for giving me something I can handle when I’m dealing with a lot of other stuff while still being good.

I’ve already written about both games. Danger Room works mechanically but just isn’t interesting. (I suspect I’ll have the opposite opinion of Shen’s A Day On The Lake) Take What You Mine, on the other hand, did just enough with very little to make me add it into my regular game rotation. And served as my token Roll and Write game learned in October.

One again, Alexander Shen’s designs have worked for me when I needed them to.

I have a feeling I’ll be learning more of them in November. 

A simple game of fantasy mining that still works

As I’ve mentioned before, Alexander Shen has a gift for making neat coffee break-sized games and puzzles. Making five-minute games might not be as impressive as making six hour epics that break dining room tables but damn if it still isn’t a cool gift.

Take What You Mine is a game where you fill a pack with gems and treasure chests and slime that you dig out of the ground. It has just enough theme to have some quirky charm.

Mechanically, it’s one of those Roll and Writes where you’re filling a grid with symbols. You have a five-by-five grid where you out the stuff you want to get points for. You also have a five square grid (a square with one extra space sticking out) for putting stuff you don’t want in your backpack but those will be worth negative points.

The basic idea is simple. Roll one die, consult the chart and draw the item in. Each item has a different sent of scoring rules (gems have to be in a set, stone has to be an even number) but it’s the slime and the treasure chests that make the game tick.

Slime, excuse me, _pure_ slime is worth a respectable four points. BUT it can’t be placed next to another slime and it renders anything it’s next to worthless. 

Treasure chests take up four squares and their value is determined at the end of the game with a die roll for each chest.  And treasure chests are the worst. They take up a lot of space and the best return you can get is 1.5 points per square. 

The game ends either when you choose to end it after a placement or when you make a roll you either can’t or refuse to make. If the game ends the second way, you lose as many points as that final die roll.

Take What You Mine has some definite limitations. Any Roll and Write that uses only one die limits both what the dice can do and your ability to play with the odds. And Take What You Mine doesn’t have any dice manipulation so you have to cope with what you get.

That said, between the fairly generous placement rules and the discard pack, you do have more control than I was honestly expecting. The game is an interesting balance of being just big enough to offer actual choices while being small enough that the limitations don’t get annoying.

Take What You Mine does a very good job of making an interesting five minutes. If it was even just twice as long, it would need more. However, it’s excellent with a cup of coffee.

Experiments in Roll and Move

I try and learn at least one or two games a month but October has been a month where finding the time and focus to do that just hasn’t been there. Then I realized that a good place to look would be Alexander Shen’s catalog.

Now, that might sound like a slam on Shen’s design skills but it’s the opposite. Their short and deceptively simple games and puzzles serve a very real purpose and need. And the way Shen keeps on creating games that fit so neatly the coffee break niche means it’s not an accident.

Quests Over Coffee: Danger Room is a game I have periodically looked at, in no small part because I feel that Quests Over Coffee is Shen’s strongest game. 

Spoiler: Danger Room has nothing to do with Quests Over Coffee.

The board, score/time track and rules for Danger Room take up just one page. You just print off that page, add some tokens and dice and you’re done.

The board is a seven by seven grid. There are four three-square L-shapes that divide the board into bottlenecks and paths. There are also eighteen scoring spaces on the board, each with a dice pip on if.

You put a token in the middle of the board to serve as your pawn. The scoring token goes at the start of the track and the time goes on the end. Each turn, you roll three dice and assign one to movement, own to scoring and one to time.

Move is obvious. Move your pawn that many spaces with no backtracking. The time die moves that many spaces down the track. Scoring is a little weirder because the pip symbol doesn’t mean that that actual pip. You actually check a chart to see if the die you assigned earns one to three points. 

The game ends when the score token and the fine token either meet or pass each other. At that point, your score is your score.

Wow. A lot of Shen’s games and puzzles are minimal but Danger Room really pushes it. Both in flavor and in content, it just felt like there wasn’t anything there. As a contrast, Shen’s Blankout is just as minimal but has some pattern recognition and development that I enjoy. 

There are some nice touches. Lower numbers tend to score better so you have a choice to slow the time token down or try to get points. If I was told that Danger Room had been created as mental exercise, I wouldn’t be surprised. It’s a solitaire Roll and Move with very few moving parts.

I found the idea interesting enough to play Danger Room a few times but it feels more like an experiment than a game. That said, I also tried another Shen solitaire at the same time, Take What You Mine, and I enjoyed that one a lot more.

Honeycomb Cavern does its job as a pleasant diversion

 Honeycomb Cavern is the latest game I’ve tried by Alexander Shen.

The theme is that Shen’s reoccurring character Sadie Cat, an adventuring dog with a cat’s tail, has fallen into a collapsing cavern. Fire breathing statues keep her from just walking straight out so she must zig zag her way to freedom.

In practice, it’s a Roll and Write where you are drawing a line on a hexagonal grid. You know, one that looks like a honeycomb.

Three dice get rolled. One die is the direction and you move the difference of the other two. You can’t cross the line but you get three jumps which let you move three hexes in any direction without drawing a line.

Roll two of a kind so you only have two numbers to work with? Pick one for direction and the other for movement. Three of a kind? You get a free jump.

Now, reaching the edge and ending the game is extremely easy. But your real goal is to earn points. Each hex is worth zero to four points. Now you have a reason to stay on the board for as many moves as possible.

I’ve found that Alexander Shen has a real knack for making casual, coffee-break length games and puzzles. Honeycomb Cavern is from 2017 and proves that Shen has been good at this for a while. The game looks like it’s about escaping but it’s about pushing your luck. How greedy can you be without trapping yourself? It’s a nice solitaire but it’s real strength is as a multi-player, trying to beat everyone else at the table/

I have found Shen’s games and puzzles to be a very good way to decompress and Honeycomb Cavern fits right in. 

Quests Over Coffee is worth a second cup of coffee

Alexander Shen really got on my radar with Quests Over Coffee. Certainly, it’s the game that has gotten the most exposure at PnP Arcade, thanks to all the expansions. I’d made a copy earlier this year and I’ve finally tried it out.

Short version, Quests Over Coffee is the best game that I’ve played by Alexander Shen.

Longer version: Quests Over Coffee consists of a deck of quest and a deck of item cards. You have to add dice and some way of tracing health, money and luck. The game structure is resolve five quest cards, get a chance to buy items and then resolve another five quest cards.

Quest cards are obviously where all the real game play happens. Each one has a cartoon that gives you some narrative, a failure condition, a success condition and a special condition. Essentially, how high you have to roll to succeed and a combination of dice you need to roll to get a bonus. 

I went in expecting a total luck fest. But you actually have a number of choices. You can buy more dice for a quest with money. You can use luck for rerolls. Items, which you can buy at the shop or earn through quests, give you special abilities (almost always one-shot) And, perhaps most importantly, you deal out five quests at a time and you decide what order to tackle them.

I was expecting roll the dice and hope for the best and found instead a surprising number of options. Quests Over Coffee has proven amusing, fun and interesting. That’s a good combination.

When I made a copy, I also made the first expansion. I was very glad that I did that because that meant I wasn’t playing with the exact same cards over and over again. When I have the time (which might not be until next year), I’d like to make all the expansions. Because Quest Over Coffee is clearly at its best when you have a stack of cards at add more of variety.

I have tried at least seven or eight of Alexander Shen’a puzzles and games. I found them enjoyable but unpolished. Quests Over Coffee, with its charming art and interesting decision tree, I can see succeeding with wider publication. 

Puzzles and Alexander Shen

When looking for a demo of Alexander Shen’s Crumbling Dungeon, I found out that there was a Memorial Day sale on their games and puzzles. Which was a way of getting Crumbling Dungeon and a bunch of other stuff for a darn fine price. I had a couple items already but it was still a real bargain.

While I initially tried out Crumbling Dungeon, I decided that I wanted to next try out three different puzzle collections: Circuit Board Square, Galactic Diplomacy Corps, and  ‘I Have to Retrieve 5 Gems from a Dungeon That is Falling Apart and I Have Leas Than 30 Seconds to Do It’ The last makes me want to reread Chip Delany’s science fiction (We In Some Strange Power’s Enploy Move On a Rigorous Line and Time Considered As A Helix of Seni-Precious Stones arw great works as well as insane tities) and I will call it 5Gems from here on out.

Circuit Board Square is a flat-out puzzle with no random elements or theme. You have to fill out a three by three grid with the numbers one to nine. The edges and the corners have sums and you have to fill out the grid to make all the sums work. (And, yea, that means the center square isn’t part of any of the sums)

I described it as Sudoko for people with very short attention spans to my wife. She said ‘So, children?’ I said ‘No, me’ There are some simple strategies to filling out a grid and I find, once I do one, I end up doing a couple. And, if I end up in a classroom again, I’d think of using Circuit Board Square.

Galactic Diplomacy Corps is a grid where each square has a number and symbol. You draw a line that connects like number or symbol to like symbol or number. The twists are you can’t land on a square that the line has passed through or stopped at and you start to lose points if you get too many of the same symbol.

Honestly, GDC is the least engaging Shen puzzle/game I’ve tried. It doesn’t have the quirky charm that permeates a lot of their games. Nor does it razor-sharp simplicity of Circuit Board Square. Honestly, if it was broken or bad, I’d honestly find it more memorable.

Speaking of quirky charm, 5Gems has got it. You navigate a maze to collect five gems in a limited number of turns. Traps randomly block spaces, switches let you knock down walls and you have three one-time special powers.

Honestly, it makes me think of a game you’d have programmed in basic on an Apple ][e in the early 80s. And I mean that in a compliment. I can’t say 5Gems is a good puzzle but it’s got character. I have had fun with it.

Since I started exploring PnP and indie games, I’ve found a world that’s both unpolished and flavorful. You aren’t going to find designers who are undiscovered Reiner Knizias or Richard Garfields. But you will find neat little things you’d never find anywhere else.

And while a lot of Shen’s work feels like it could use some more workshopping (I’ll cover Quests Over Coffee at some point and it’s an exceptions. It rocks) but they definitely show persistence. And, when I think about other indie designers I’ve looked through, their charming and solid body of work stands out. It’s not perfect but it’s good stuff.