As is tradition come mid June, my wife and I venture off to Origins Game Fair down in Columbus. This is our local show so it’s always nice to have a big show right in our backyard. The past few years we’ve attended and worked for Unpub, helping staff the desk and run the events in the prototyping area. This year was the same, though because we had so many more volunteers it left us with two whole days just for us which was nice. We spent that mostly playing games though we did walk the vendor hall and do a few other events. Here’s my recap of the show.
Wednesday
We had a shift duty to help set up the Unpub room on Wednesday. It was my first time going on Wednesday which is mostly for industry folks to get set up in the vendor hall, have meetings with retailers, and do other industry stuff. That said the game library was open, so we talked that maybe next year we’d make more of a day of it and play some games before the crowds arrived. We did a few exchanges from the Flea Market that we got out of the way, but in general hung out, talked to people, and organized our things.
Thursday
Here’s the first full day of our show. As is usual, we hit up the vendor hall as soon as it opens. Origins has been having less unique releases over the last couple years as some of the bigger names stop attending and publishers get a bit more selective on releases. Which is fine with me. I don’t feel the need to rush the hall to get that one specific thing. This year I rushed the hall to sell off some games that I was giving to people working booths. Once that was done we just went aisle to aisle looking at what there was to see. We picked up a few games at 25th Century Games and said hi to Chad while we were there. We also grabbed Honk, a simple little goose themed game that I think our kid will enjoy.
On the way to the hall that morning I did pick up my copy of Walking in Burano from someone on the flea market, and after we finished the hall after lunch we sat down to play it. It’s a pretty simple game but it’s a lot of fun. You’re painting houses and they have different features. As you fill a house fully you get to claim a scoring card that will benefit you based on the different features on that house.
We also sat down to play a demo game of Chicken! from Keymaster Games. This was a fun little push your luck dice roller, but the dice pool builds over time and so does your risk. But that risk is then also passed onto the other players until one of them “chickens out” and resets the dice pool to a less risky set of dice.
Sometime last year I realized I don’t like playing Dungeons and Dragons and bowed out of my RPG group which admittedly kind of killed the group. I don’t think they’ve gotten back together to play anything since. So feeling kind of guilty about it, I’ve been exploring some other systems and seeing what I can find that we could keep going as a group but pivot our setting or system to something else.
We picked up a good amount of RPG systems for hopeful things to try. One of them being a really dumb one that was 100% an impulse purchase called A Quarter Mile at a Time. It’s a Fast & Furious themed RPG based on the Laser and Feelings system. I bought it without a second thought and I’m looking forward to trying it out sometime soon as a fun afternoon goof.
Thursday night was the speed pitching event. We help out with this every year as we get 12 designers looking to publish their games and pair them up with 12 publishers looking to sign games. The publishers get 10 minutes to hear the pitch before moving on to the next game. I’ve been on both sides of it pitching and helping run the event and the in person ones are always a bit harder to pull off than the virtual ones, but this one got into a groove pretty quickly. Hopefully something gets signed out of this event.
Friday
Friday was our first day of just playing a lot of games. After wandering the hall on Thursday there were a couple of games we wanted to try and we had a list of games that I wanted to see what they were like in person that I’d played online only. Luckily, these days access to the game library is included in the price of the badge so we went and camped a good portion of the day in the Open Gaming area.
First up was In the Footsteps of Darwin. This is a game I saw mentioned on BGG and I’ve heard people talk about it. We got the quick run down at the Hachette booth on Thursday but didn’t get the chance to play it. Luckily the game library had one in stock so we grabbed it. This is a neat game. The central board area has a 3×3 grid of tiles and the ship moves around it. You only get to choose from the three tiles the ship points to and then can layer matching tile types to gain bonus scoring options. I lost this one pretty badly. I just didn’t get the tiles I needed to utilize the scoring I had chosen. But it was really neat and I’d like to try it some more.
After that one we tried out Wandering Towers from Capstone. We saw it at their booth on Thursday and once again had the chance to play it. There’s a memory element to it as you’re trying to capture the other wizards while getting yours to score by moving the towers and the wizards individually. This one was neat and I won it pretty well with some good planning. I don’t think I need to play this one again, though a game at full player count would be a very different beast.
We continued on with a few other games. I heard Gizmos talked about online and I wanted to give it a shot. I think it was on Shut Up and Sit Down they said it was a better Wingspan which is a game I don’t really like and wanted to see if they’re right. I get it from the concept that it’s an engine building card game, but they’re not a 1:1 comparison. That said I did like it much more than Wingspan and would like to play this some more. It’s on BGA so I might give it some more tries here soon.
We then tried out Pollen, a new release from Allplay. This has you playing cards with different insects on them and when they meet a card of another player, a scoring disc comes out. Then once the disc is surrounded fully the cards are assessed to see who has majority. I won this one really easily. There was a point where Rachael looked at things and didn’t see how to make a come back and that was true. I think more players might shift that balance a bit, but it’s not one we’re looking to play again at 2 players.
Our next game was Tenpenny Parks. I love amusement park games, partly because I’m designing one and always want to see what others have done. But I also like polyomino games. I played a solo game of this on Tabletopia right when it was up for preorder and didn’t enjoy it. But it’s been nagging at me ever since. I found this on the shelf of the game library and we gave it a go. In person I enjoyed it a lot more. I could see things better, I could visualize what I needed to do better, and I think playing against someone else gave me the tension I needed as I had to get all these actions to line up perfectly. I don’t know if I’d buy it, but I would certainly play it again.
Our next game was one I’ve looked at for a long time and that’s Space Explorers. I also started designing a space agency game years ago, so I tend to look at any game that’s in that genre as well. This one has a neat set collection vibe to it, and resource management layout with how you can pay to acquire cards. We both think we could have played more optimally by better utilizing the shared resource pool than we did. I enjoyed it so much I ordered it and the expansion from the company’s website because they had sold out at the show already. I’m eager to dive into this one more and kind of sad I didn’t aim for this one sooner.
Continuing my trend of playing games in person that I played online, we tried Space Station Phoenix. I wasn’t sure how this would go over as it was getting later and Rachael was zoning out a bit during the teach, but we got through it and got playing. Now when I say I’ve played this online, that’s kind of true. I’m still currently playing my first game of it on BGA. So it was interesting to play a whole game of a game I’m slowly playing during it. I also now have a better feel for what I need to do in the game online to move things along and hopefully win that one.
I do love the way this game is adaptable, the actions, the station pieces, and the other bits that are all different from game to game. But that said, I don’t know if this is one I would likely play that often if I owned it. There’s a lot of set up for a lot of moving little gems around on cards. It falls in that, happy to play again, but I think I can easily live without it.
Our last game of the evening was the previously mentioned Honk! We went back to the hotel and hung out in the lobby for a few minutes while we punched out the pieces. We got to playing and Rachael took a quick lead. As you take geese from the pile, you reveal golden eggs that are worth a lot of points comparatively. What we learned from this game is you want to spread those out a bit more than I did, otherwise it’s easy for one player to snag 2 of them at the same time. It’s a simple game, but it’s a good one to chat over or to play with our kid so I’m happy with it.
Saturday
Saturday morning means one thing, the flea market and math trade. My tendency for years is to buy a lot of games at Origins, and a few years ago we learned about the virtual flea market leading up to the show. Here is now my ability to offload a decent selection of my collection each year to keep our game shelf fresh, relevant to what we enjoy playing, and just make room for new games coming in. I should write a post one day about my thoughts on game collections. But as usual the chaos of the event was worth it as we all swarmed around holding signs and making trades.
After the math trade was settled and our new games were back in our room we wandered down to the floor. We had talked about Habitats and wanted to stop by the Allplay booth to try it out. but despite demoing about 20 games, that wasn’t one of them. So we walked over to the Allplay ticketed area to look at the game and just learn how it works. Turns out as we were walking up there were two spots left for people who didn’t show up and we were able to jump in on the game.
Habitats was a fun game. You’re moving your car around a set of tiles, adding them into your preserve, and scoring animals and other features as you do so. It was pretty snappy, 5 players finished in an hour. Overall I really liked it and would likely put it on my list of games to get for the library’s collection. However, I don’t think I need to own it. I did exceptionally well at the game, and usually when I do that, my interest in a game dwindles quickly. I want to be able to find the best strategy over multiple plays and better learn the way the game works. If I just nail it on the first go, then I feel there’s nothing left for me. The same thing happened with Zooloretto. As fun as the wooden animal tokens are, it wasn’t worth the money for us.
About this time we went to lunch and got a text from a friend asking if we were still at the show. We were and headed back and walked around a bit with them. They mentioned being curious about Cat in the Box so we went over to give it a demo. After the explanation, we sat down for a game and I won the hand very easily. Kind of the best I’ve ever done at the game which I attribute to luck and playing against newbies. It was fun, but after that he bounced to meet up with his brothers who had arrived so we went back to open gaming.
I have been enjoying Spots on BGA and the game was finally in at the game library to borrow so we did. We played two games of it, of which I lost both. The second game though, we used the Off the Leash variant where you use every tile in stacks and as you use them they get put to the bottom of the stack and a new trick comes out. It was a very interesting game as you couldn’t rely on any one strategy to last for too long and I think it might be my favorite way to play the game. We are definitely going to buy this at some point because it’s a prefect little dice game for us.
Right around this point Rachael went to watch a panel and so I was left to wander alone. As I was doing so, I noticed an old contact I had that liked my card game but the company he worked for didn’t take it. I saw he was at the booth for another company so I went and talked to him. We caught up but then mentioned my game and when I told him about some of the recent changes he asked to see it. He told me where he would be hanging out that night and invited me to bring it over.
So after Rachael got back from her event we realized we should probably test the new version with someone other than myself. We played a quick game of Amusement Architect. The change to use clear cards instead of square ones leads to some really interesting design possibilities. I’m really looking forward to what I could do with this and so are some publishers I talked to. Hopefully something good comes out of this redesign and I get to sign the game.
After family dinner at Unpub, we went to meet my contact and talk to him. The talking to him didn’t happen for a good while later, but in the meantime we got to play MonDRAWsity which I had always been curious about. I think we did pretty good at interpreting the clues being given to us and drawing recognizably correct monsters and robots. It’s a fun game, and I’ll probably order a copy for the library though it falls outside my usual player count range for one I’d get myself.
After that everyone was starting to show up to the area and we pulled out a game I had never heard of called Trails of Tucana. This is a flip and write game where you’re drawing paths around an island trying to connect towns with points of interest and score points.
This is another game I did incredibly well at beating everyone’s scores hands down. That said, unlike Habitats, this one didn’t feel like I had seen everything. The randomized starting points, the way things come up, and how I choose to draw the map were all something that could be very different next time. that said, I do think I had a pretty good strategy, so it’s also in the pile of games I’d gladly play again, but I’m not looking to buy for myself.
Sunday
Sunday morning was the time to pack up the car and head in for our last shift at the Unpub table. We welcomed the designers, cleaned up the room a bit, and just camped out answering questions and chatting with people. I took a quick break to go talk to some publishers about my game and show them a quick look at the components before heading back. Shortly after that we said our goodbyes and wandered home for the end of a busy long weekend. Origins is my favorite holiday week of the year and I miss it already. It feels like home and it’s always great seeing my friends I don’t hear from as much since leaving Twitter. As uncertain as it is, we are now debating whether we can make it to PAX Unplugged in December or not.
The full list of (published) games we played at Origins:
- Spots
- Space Station Phoenix
- Habitats
- Trails of Tucana
- Walking in Burano
- Pollen
- Wandering Towers
- MonsDRAWsity
- Tenpenny Parks
- Space Explorers
- Gizmos
- In the Footsteps of Darwin
- Chicken!
- Honk!
- Cat in the Box