Sequential Planet

Wingspan has become a household name in board games, but it isn’t necessarily something most would immediately pull off the shelf to play with a six-year-old. Wingspan Pocket, on the other hand, is much more promising. This smaller version distills Wingspan down to a single row of six birds and a handful of straightforward actions. It is quicker, easier to teach, and designed as a much lighter entry point. So I wanted to see what would happen when I put it in front of my six-year-old.

The end of the world does not have to be all fire, screaming, and people fighting over toilet paper. Sometimes the apocalypse is colorful, round, and adorable. In Doomlings, each player develops a species by playing Trait cards into a personal tableau. On your turn, you play one card, resolve any ability it provides, and then draw back up to your current Gene Pool. Your Gene Pool determines your hand size and may increase or decrease as cards and global events affect your developing species.

What suit is that card? Is it all of the suits or a specific suit? We won’t know until you open the box. Every numbered card exists in a strange state of uncertainty until someone plays it and declares its color. That sounds like a gimmick, but this is one of the thinkiest trick-taking games around. Your cards are open-ended, yet the research board and your previous declarations slowly tighten the possibilities until the experiment goes wrong.

I love a slow-burn RPG that delivers in excellent writing before anything else. Before you ever raise a skeleton or cast a forbidden ritual in The Necromancer’s Tale, you’re just a minor noble. For some, this kind of thing requires patience, but it’s so satisfying once you are no longer just a dude. The Necromancer’s Tale is set in 18th-century Europe, and focuses on conversations, investigations, and exploration.

Developer: MINTROCKET Publisher: MINTROCKET Genre: Adventure / Management / DLC Reviewed On: Nintendo Switch 2 Also Available On: Nintendo Switch, PlayStation, Xbox, PC Dave the Diver: In the Jungle could have been a simple side trip. It could have been a light DLC for an already great game packed with content. That clearly was not enough for MINTROCKET. The expansion leaves the Blue Hole behind, gives players a new village and grill, and adds enough new ideas that it almost feels like a sequel.

It feels like there are dozens of games like this now, but after looking it up, I guess there really aren’t. We’ve had two Tavern Talk games, a couple of Coffee Talk titles, and the excellent VA-11 Hall-A. That’s a surprisingly small list for a genre with such wide appeal to cozy gamers. If future games are this enjoyable, I wouldn’t mind seeing twice as many. Tavern Talk Stories: Dreamwalker returns to its D&D-inspired world, this time as a prequel to the original game.

VISCO Collection brings seven Neo Geo games from a company that most of us haven’t heard of to the Switch. It’s just a publisher that never became Capcom or Konami. This is not a package filled with arcade staples. It’s a neat look at a niche developer’s arcade catalog, covering shooters, sports, racing, and action games from the 1990s. The lineup is a bit rough, but there are a few games worth spending time with.

I don’t want to be a cliche and instantly compare a game to Hades, but Realm of Ink wears its inspirations proudly. It has a lot in common, with its fast-paced roguelite combat, but like others in the genre (Like Dandy Ace), it has enough to separate it and stand on its own. I kept coming back because the combat is just fun. It’s the kind of game where one run turns into three before you realize how much time has passed.

There are some shady neighbors on Agent Avenue. You might be a retired animal spy, but apparently your work is never done. Agent Avenue turns an ordinary suburb into a fast game of bluffing, manipulation, and mutually assured suspicion. Agent Avenue is a game of tag where both players are simultaneously chasing and being chased. Each player controls a meeple moving clockwise around the same neighborhood track.

I love it when a classic game gets a new, compact version – especially when it works! “What if we made it smaller, faster, and somehow even more chaotic?” Yeah, that’s Robo Rally Dice. Robo Rally Dice is still a race against your opponents, but instead of programming your robot with cards, every player simultaneously rolls a pool of dice to build their movement sequence. As you roll, you’ll lock dice into four programming registers or assign star results to activate upgrade cards.