Greetings, puzzlers and gamers! October is going to be an exciting month.
Three new Holiday Hijinks games are coming your way! We’re offering the three upcoming titles at a discount, and the full set of 12 at a deep discount, both in a collector’s box. But the part I’m most jazzed about is the Hijinks Hunt: an online puzzle adventure that will be released to all backers.
What’s the Hijinks Hunt about? Well, over 13 days you will get a puzzle a day, each of which is more involved than a typical card in a Holiday Hijinks game. Some of them are quite difficult, so you’ll want a team! The puzzles will be in PDFs you can print out, and many of them offer an optional online solving interface.
Be sure to sign up to sign up to be notified when the campaign launches, October 15!
Congratulations
Our best puzzle score this month was from Matt & Laurie Philips this month, putting their communication skills to the test in The Marriage Mix-Up. Great job!
Podcasts
I’ve been doing the rounds in advance of the Hijinks Hunt! Check out my appearances on upcoming episodes of Board Game Blitz, Five Games for Doomsday, Ludology, and Building the Game!
What I’ve Been Playing
This month’s feature is Ovation by Kirsten Lunde.
Ovation is a light engine-building game about classical music composers. It is reminiscent of Gizmos in that there is a small menu of main actions, and over the course of the game you can acquire bonus actions triggered as side effects of each one.
The wrinkle here is that your capacity to execute those bonuses is throttled by the number of performances you’ve done. So you can’t just build your engine for 90% of the game and pivot to points; you need to keep a balance throughout.
Your Monthly Puzzle Treat
This month’s puzzle genre is just as fun to say as it is to play: Shakashaka.
The rules
Shade a triangle in some empty cells, so that:
Each unshaded area is a rectangle (either upright or rotated 45°).
If a cell contains a number, that is how many of the (up to) 4 adjacent cells contain triangles.
This is a bit tricky to get your head around at first, but produces really pleasing results! I’ve recorded a solution video for the above example (taken from the puzz.link rules page) so you can get an idea of how to go about solving one.
This next one is small, but has a tricky deduction:
More Puzzles
If you’re hungry for more, I’ve got you covered! Join the Discord server where I’m posting puzzles of all sorts every few days. It’s also a great place to get hints, and to discuss games, puzzles, and anything else that strikes your fancy.
Happy puzzling!