Months and a lot of play-testing later and we are excited to present The Big Lockdown, a tongue-in-cheek card game inspired by people’s experiences during the global pandemic.

(15x) ENJOYMENT: Forgettable Outstanding(10x) DEPTH (IN RELATION TO COMPLEXITY): Lacking Meaty (5x) LUCK FACTOR: All Luck All Skill (3x) REPLAYABILITY: Nil Limitless(10x) MECHANICS: Boring Interesting (4x) PLAYER INTERACTION: Low High (4x) PLAYER COUNT PERFORMANCE: Not Balanced Balanced (2x) GAME LENGTH: Too Short/Long Just Right (2x) CLARITY OF RULES: Mud Crystal (5x) COMPONENT QUALITY: Cheap World ClassINITIAL RATING (sum(Criteria Rating x Criteria Weight)/Total Weight) = 7.7

STATUS: Play

Ultimately, I’m an “are there tough decisions?” kind of gamer, and on that matter I’m torn. There are some turns and some positions and some situations that will play themselves. Sometimes obviously so, and sometimes after you think it out.

Gavin McGruddy of MyAutoma has uploaded a great browser-based demo of the Cascadia Solo Mode, so that you can try it out for yourself

Each player's portfolio will no doubt have overlaps with another player and navigating these conflicting and shared interests is half the fun!

This game comes with 12 sealed packages. Whoever loses in this ONE vs. MANY game gets to open one of the sealed packages. Inside will be new components, new abilities, and new rules that will help that side in future games

The European map has the same rules as the USA map, but the differences in geography create a different feel and strategy. There are fewer connections on the European map (70 lines for 39 countries vs 89 lines for 41 states). However, it is easier to get from one side of the map to the other on the Europe side. The max distance between any two countries is 6, vs a max distance of 10 on the USA map. So on Europe, it is easier to zigzag around the whole board, but harder to wiggle around in close quarters.

In a nutshell, the King's Keys deck started as an experiment to see what card games would be like if you rebuilt playing cards from the ground up. Instead of using ranks and suits, each card has a number (from one to four), one of four items, and one of four colors. The result is what I call a 4x4x4 deck where 64 playing cards each have a unique combination of these three parts.

Since games typically have perfect information, the outcome of the game is completely driven by the actions of the players.

12 Tenets of Board Game Design for Stonemaier Games