Of course, there are plenty of such board games – especially if they are licenses of big gaming giants. All the more surprising are the board games that have emerged from a fairly unknown template. So we put our heads together, and made a short list of games, both known and unknown, that have caught our attention recently or over the last few years.
SUPER MOTHERLOAD (2015)
In 2004, the flash game Motherload saw the light of day. A game in which, as a miner, you drill into the depths of inhospitable Mars, mine ores and rare minerals, for which you upgrade your mining rover, and finally, at a depth of 66,666 feet (just over 20 kilometres), you meet your employer, Mr. Natas, which, as it turns out, is a “handy” pseudonym for Satan himself, with whom you must measure your strength.
The game was quite original for its time and not very demanding in terms of hardware. There was even an upgraded Goldium edition, which added artifacts, and other improvements to your trusty drill. But as time went on, it slowly but surely disappeared from our radar.
So it came as quite a shock to many when, a full nine years later, the game got a reworking under the name Super Motherload. Compared to its predecessor, it had much improved graphics, allowed for up to four players, and revealed the story slowly, with visits to underground bases that served as checkpoints.
However, Super Motherload has received a mixed reception. User ratings ranged from an upbeat 60% to a very respectable 90%. In 2015, the guys from Roxley Games took up the theme, and the eponymous board game was released. Super Motherload (2015) was a brisk deckbuilder that combined the best of both previous games. Gone are the annoying trips to the surface to refuel, and upgrades here take the form of buying pilot cards for your deck. Each of these has special abilities that are activated either when played or when the card is purchased.
You have two actions on your turn – either getting two cards into your hand or drilling counts as an action. This is done by drawing any number of cards of the same suit from your hand (there are 4 suits in total), and drilling in one direction each time from the tunnels already dug. At the same time, you apply the abilities mentioned above.
The main source of victory points comes from completing primary and secondary objectives, and you are allowed one of each in each round. And the deeper you drill, the rarer the minerals you find. Even the buying system has a catch – you don’t keep the minerals you’ve mined in your inventory, but instead place them directly on your selected pilot cards. There they lie until you have placed enough minerals on that pilot to hire him. And overpaid money is simply forfeited.
Super Motherload is more than simple at first glance. But within the first few moves, you’ll find that there are plenty of ways to build your beautiful combo and grab two targets in one turn. With the way you can combine the different abilities of the cards when buying or drilling, and how you can take advantage of the special effects of found artifacts, it all makes the game a wild race to see who can complete the laid out objective cards the fastest. And we haven’t even mentioned everything – add in the use of bombs that blast a tunnel in a predetermined shape, extra-rigid deposits that can only be drilled with cards of a certain colour, and so on. More than once during the game, the previous player will blow your intended target, and replace it with some crap that doesn’t suit your fancy. Another recurring moment is when there’s a handful of profitable deposits somewhere at the bottom of the map that no one can reach in one turn, so everyone holds back and builds their combo. All this to make it no easier for the opposing team.
You won’t see an epic final battle with Satan, but the board version has become a more than honorable continuation of the drill saga.
Adobe Flash Player has fallen, but paper and cardboard lives on.
BGG rating: 7,4
THE BINDING OF ISAAC: FOUR SOULS (2018)
The Binding of Isaac is a 2011 game whose story revolves around little Isaac and his mother. They both lived in a small house on a hill. Isaac played all day long and his mom watched Christian shows on TV. Life was simple, but they were happy anyway… until a voice from above spoke to Isaac’s mother. And as proof of love and loyalty, it demanded one thing. The life of her son…
But Isaac’s story does not end there. Faced with certain death, the boy plunges into the black abyss he discovers beneath the carpet and finds himself in a terrifying labyrinth of evil, monsters and biblical parables. There he must face his fears, hidden traumas and a final boss in the form of Satan in the midst of his mad mother’s womb (the second play to feature Satan – coincidence?).
The computer-based Binding of Isaac is a simple, depressing, and morbidly-cute top-down shooter where you weave through randomly generated rooms, shoot nasty critters, and at the end of every Xth level a boss awaits.
Isaac’s card game incarnation, subtitled Four Souls, is coming in 2018 as a party game with a high level of player interaction – in other words, lots of banter. At the start of the game, you’re given a character who has an ability and a custom equipment card. In your turn, you can buy new equipment, play treasure cards, activate your ability, or attack a monster. It is from the monsters you kill that souls drop out, four of which you need to win. A duel looks like you roll a six-sided die, and if you roll over a monster’s defenses, you hurt it. If you don’t, you take damage equal to its strength. You roll like this until one of you falls.
Even in combat, of course, you are allowed to use items and abilities to help you. Just like your opponents. You can also use special abilities outside of your turn. Thus, a glorious victory can turn into an ignominious defeat, and with it the associated death, thanks to your gloating opponent. Dying is unavoidable here. But the game doesn’t end there. Those who are killed must pay a fine in the form of coins and items, and move on.
The Binding of Isaac: Four Souls unexpectedly avoids the depressing note of its predecessor and hides an extremely damaging party game underneath the cutely macabre visuals. Unlike the famed Explosive Kittens or Lilac Unicorns, there’s a disproportionately higher level of interaction and strategy here.
BGG rating: 7.2
DEAD BY DAYLIGHT: THE BOARDGAME (2022)
The Dead by Daylight computer game first appeared in June 2016, and soon enough it gained the attention of a large number of youtubers and streamers. The game falls into the asymmetrical survival genre, with one player playing as an unstoppable horror killer, while the rest play as survivors whose goal is to fix the generators that are scattered across the map, open the exit, and escape the killer within the time limit.
The board version of the game of the same name first appeared on Kickstarter in April 2022, and plans are currently underway to localize it into Czech. Its genre is hidden motion planning, of which there are several types. These are distinguished by different colours, and each type of movement moves you to different locations. The actions in each location are represented by different tokens, but you must first reveal them. The red ones are the hooks and totems that recharge the assassin’s demonic power and allow you to paralyze the player, the yellow ones are the targets and generators you need to repair, the green ones include the various hiding places and obstacles you put in the assassin’s way, and the blue tokens represent new equipment. Everyone will plan one move card – except the assassin. He will plan two cards. Then all cards are revealed and evaluated. First the players take their actions, then the killer.
The survivor must fill the repair gauge and activate the exit, while the assassin fills the dismemberment and dishevelment meter of the other players. He does this by catching one of the survivors in one of the locations, wounding them, and then catching them and hanging them from a hook on the next opportunity. The assassin gets two tokens for each player caught the first time, one for each subsequent time he hangs, and an extra one for any poor souls he hasn’t managed to rescue by the end of the round.
All players also have a different set of abilities, including the assassin. Some survivors can give allies extra actions, others can overcome obstacles with ease, and some are specialists at escaping the killer’s eager clutches. Assassins, on the other hand, can receive blood points when no one is “hanging”, smash generators, or destroy items for others. Totems award players the aforementioned blood points, which they use to pay for using their abilities – the killer receives them when entering a location, while the survivor receives them when clearing the totem of evil.
The basic version of the game was supposed to contain a total of 2 maps, 7 survivors and 6 assassins, namely the Doctor, Wraith, or Trapper. The deluxe edition will give you a total of 4 maps, more characters and assassins, plus miniature hooks and generators.
Despite the rather weak visuals, the game sticks very well to the thematic template, and from the very first look it brings with it the thrill of hunting the most dangerous prey in the world – man!
BGG rating: N/A.
STARDEW VALLEY (2021)
The computer RPG adventure game Stardew Valley appeared in February 2016. And from the very first glance, all experienced Japanophiles recognized the inspiration of the Japanese series Harvest Moon. The story revolves around the unexpected legacy left behind by your late grandfather – an old run-down farm, in a place poetically named Stardew Valley. Suddenly you find yourself in an idyllic region of rural America where you can fish, raise cattle, grow and sell vegetables, make friends with the townspeople, and even get married (or married) and have children. Unlike Harvest Moon, which ends after two game years, Stardew Valley is an open-ended sandbox where you can develop the story of your life and your small farm for as long as you like.
Stardew Valley was more than well received, and a board version appeared in 2021. This time, it’s a cooperative game in which you try to work as a team to accomplish the goals your grandfather left you in his will. And you have one single game year to do it.
Each game round consists of three phases – in phase 1 you draw a card that applies effects to all players (rain, moving the first player’s token…), in phase 2 everyone agrees what they want to do and places their pieces on the locations, and in the last phase you decide whether to take two actions on the same location or just one action, move to a new location, and take your second action there. Why is it like this? Because you can pick up additional resources as you move between locations. Collect mushrooms, cut down trees, find flowers, and occasionally stumble over a rock.
Each location usually has multiple places you can visit. In town you can sell your nurtured products, buy new seeds and make friends. You can then gift them with your dream turnip or toadstool, and they will reward you with hearts, and give you various other perks throughout the rest of the game. If you just hit the time of year when it’s the person’s birthday, you get an extra heart. The hearts are then used to reveal the objectives needed to complete the game. If only in real life you could just get a piece of dirty turnip and remember the time of year when your relatives’ birthdays are…
In addition, you can buy new buildings (chicken house or cowshed), animals or work on the renovation of the community centre. Roll the dice in the mine and use the table to determine if you have managed to mine something, or if a monster has graced you with its presence.
You can break the geodes you’ve acquired and roll the dice to get the appropriate reward, or donate them to the museum if they have the correct designation (A-H). Once you fill column A-D or E-H, you’ll be rewarded with an epic item with epic abilities.
I think I’ve described the mechanics of the game clearly enough to make it obvious at a glance that a lot of things in Stardew Valley are in the hands of chance. Dice play a major role in determining your rewards for breaking minerals, the production of your pets, whether and what fish you catch, and where dice don’t figure, random event cards appear – from weather to friends cards. Even community goals are randomly determined. If you get it right, one goal will lead to another, but it can also quite easily feel like your grandfather decided to take revenge on you from beyond the grave.
Stardew Valley can be easily classified as a light, undemanding family game. You’ll find relaxing pastimes, dice rolling, beautiful graphics, pets, and friendship… In short, it’s a low-complexity game that you’ll appreciate especially if you want to escape from reality with your non-gamer family to an idyllic world like a Swiss chocolate commercial.
BGG rating: 7,3
NORTHGARD: UNCHARTED LANDS (2022)
The Northgard computer game is a 2018 real-time strategy game in which you could take on a Viking clan with its unique abilities and conquer a completely unexplored continent. In 2022, fans were treated to a reworking into a board game.
The core of boardgame Northgard is good old deckbuilding, and occupying territory on a strategic map. Each round, symbolizing one year, you take 4 cards from your deck into your hand. These allow you to take up to 6 different types of action – recruit new soldiers, build a building, move your warriors by a marked number of territories, go on an exploration, mine another card, or take any action.
Compared to the original draft, the economic system has been greatly reworked and simplified – all your food is provided by apples that grow in designated areas, you build buildings using your wood supply, and finally, knowledge allows you to use your tribe’s special abilities.
In your turn you are trying to recruit some warriors, occupy strategically important territories with them, and at the same time protect your territory until the end of the round. Buildings provide you with a supply of resources, help you recruit fighters, or give you an advantage in battle.
Once you move your army into the territory occupied by your opponent, the battle begins. Each of your warriors counts as 1 strength. If you feed your men, then you can add an extra attack point for each apple eaten. Then the attacker rolls the dice first and then the defender. If skulls are rolled on your roll, you kill one enemy for each one. The axes in turn symbolize attack power. Those with more axes drive the surviving opponents into retreat. This is to any adjacent territory. Battle dice in Northgard have different results on all sides, so it can never happen that your roll is completely without effect. One valid strategy may even be to count on defeat in advance – primarily so that your men can retreat where they wouldn’t normally move.
However, you may also encounter. The borders of some territories are covered by difficult terrain. And you can’t cross it during the retreat. If your opponent drives you into a corner from which there is no escape, your men will die irrevocably.
Once you have concluded that you no longer need to play in this round, you may pass. The first player to end their round this way is also the first player allowed to choose a card from the menu to upgrade their deck. Once the last player has decided to pass, the round ends and winter arrives. During this time, you must feed all your people. Remember, the bigger your army, the more it will eat. If you don’t have enough resources to feed your clan, you must take one Unrest card into your deck, which you can’t get rid of. For one thing, this card takes up space in your hand, but it also robs you of five victory points at the end of the game. After that, you get resources from all occupied territories.
The game ends either on the seventh year, in which scoring cards are taken instead of upgrade cards, or as soon as a player controls three territories with one large building.
That’s what the basic version of the game is about in a nutshell. In the box, you’ll find a few more monster figures and their respective deck, which you can use to upgrade the game. Then you’ll be flooded not only by opponents, but also by wolves, bears or fallen valkyries.
Compared to the computer strategy game, which at first glance looks rather bland, the board game Northgard: Uncharted Lands has shown itself in an excellent light. My only criticism would be the exuberantly colourful visuals. I think that a game with this theme would have deserved a much darker, grittier treatment, but on the other hand, it makes sense that it stuck to the existing template visually as well.
Either way, boardgame Northgard is a superb strategic experience gameplay-wise, coloring not coloring.
BGG rating: 8,3