Ambie and Crystal discuss a couple games they played recently, including Signal, Here Lies, and Awkward Guests 2. Then, we talk about colors in board games - both as a theme and as a mechanism.
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Transcript
[0:06] Crystal: Hello and welcome to episode 235 of Board Game Blitz, a podcast about all things board games that you can listen to in less time than it takes to fully understand why purple isn’t a real color. Board Game Blitz is sponsored by Grey Fox Games. This week, we’re talking about colors! First, we discuss a couple games we’ve played recently, Signal and Here Lies. Then, we talk about games that utilize color as their primary theme or game mechanism. And now, here are your hosts…
Ambie: Ambie
Crystal: and Crystal
[0:43] Crystal: For our recently played segment this week, we're going to do a quick follow up to our last episode. Ambie reviewed Signal from DVC Games. So Ambie had already played it, I got to play it. And unsurprisingly, I loved it. It was funny because when you were describing the gameplay, Ambie, I was having a hard time kind of understanding how some of it worked. And I imagine some of our viewers were probably in that same boat. It's one of those games that is kind of like even when you're looking at it on the table at first, you're like, wait, what? And then it makes sense. And once you get it, you get it. But yeah, like the way pieces move in relation to other pieces and how you have to form the signal, it's a little hard to understand without visually seeing it. So the puzzliness of it is so fun. And we did a few different ones and just I don't know, I loved it. I would say Rosetta is still my number one between them. Like Rosetta, it's hard to be Rosetta for me because I love it so much. But yeah, Signal is so fun and I cannot wait to play more of the aliens because there's a whole bunch more that I haven't done yet. There's a bunch.
Ambie: I'm glad you liked it.
Crystal: Me too.
[1:58] Ambie: And then I'm going to talk about Here Lies, which is the other one we got from DVC Games. We both got this and we were able to play it. So Here Lies is 2025 published by DVC Games designed by Jasper Beatrix, Jacob Maier, and Bobby West.
Crystal: And this one is also kind of a spiritual successor to Rosetta, right?
Ambie: It is, yes. And this felt more like Rosetta to me than Signal did.
Crystal: I would agree with that.
Ambie: The theme of Signal is aliens like Rosetta, but the theme of Here Lies is like a murder mystery. You're doing solving cases, but the gameplay felt more like Rosetta.
Ambie: So in the game, there's this mat with a skeleton and body and stuff on it. And then there's these dry erase cards that you're going to play on the mat that are going to have like different evidence notes on there. And then every player has a character that they're going to be. And one person is the lead investigator and they read this booklet that has like the case rules and certain underlined words that the other people are supposed to guess. So it's like a murder case. And then you're supposed to guess, oh, the weapon and the cause and like something else. I don't know. But they have different categories. And so they put them out on the table. And then the goal is for the people to guess those underlined words. So to give clues, first, the person picks one of a couple key evidence that are in the little case booklet, which sometimes are not helpful.
Crystal: Yeah.
Ambie: They range from maybe slightly related to it to like not helpful or like anti-helpful. I don't know. That's what we found. But then the main thing is that the other characters have these cards that they play that have different powers. So it will be like the lead investigator will draw a bird's eye view image of the case or something. And so each card costs a different amount of time and you have so many time tokens each round. And so like you're playing those cards and the lead investigator is all dry erase. All the cards are dry erase, which is nice.
Crystal: Right. Because then you can like people can make notes if they want or the card that my friends really liked was the one where you write out all of the consonants of a word. But you have to write them out in alphabetical order. And they actually were able to figure out the word. They were like, wait, yeah.
Ambie: Yeah, us too. So we played three cases. The first ones, the three are they're all tutorial cases, but it's like a campaign as you play more. But the first case only had two things you have to guess. And we ended up playing two cards or they ended up playing. I was the lead investigator. They ended up playing two cards that like spell out things. So like the consonants one and then there was another one where it's like you write some letters. And so they just figured out the thing just from that and not from the like thematic clues. And so like then we're like, that was pretty easy because it was a tutorial case. But then as we played later ones, we had more thematic clues first. And that was really neat because then you're like drawing a picture and like, oh, I think it was this kind of like getting the story of the case. And so we're saying the story and at any point we say like the whole story right. Then we get it.
Crystal: Yeah, you're just looking for either the underlined words or something very close to the underlined words, basically. And my friends were like coming up with their own story for like what they thought. It was so fun to listen to them be like and then they were kind of like half joking about it, too. I like the reasons for why someone may have been murdered. They were coming up with ridiculous stuff.
Ambie: I know we would sometimes do that too. And then, oh, and then another mechanic is so there's multiple rounds. And then at the end of each round, the lead investigator will put out check marks to say if you've gotten the word or not. So they listen to you the whole time. And if you at any point you said the word, they put a green check mark. If you said something close to it or you're getting close to it, they put a yellow slash. And then if you haven't said anything close to it, they put a red X. So like in one of our plays after the first round, there was a green check marks on like five out of the six ones or something. Almost all of them were like, oh, we said a lot of stuff. Like what is it?
Crystal: I will say that when I was the lead investigator, I did like I was thinking about kind of future cases and I was like the yellow slash feels like a difficult kind of thing to use because how you determine if something is close but not close enough. And like when giving them the yellow slash would be beneficial is I think like that's definitely subjective and it's very nuanced. And I think that is going to be determined by who you're playing with. And you kind of have to know the people you're playing with to some degree for some of the information you're passing there, because technically the lead investigator is not supposed to talk basically at all, which obviously I did not do. I talked because it's so like I mean, I wasn't like telling them the answers, but I talked more than I think I probably should have. But yeah, I was like, I don't ever want to put out a yellow slash because that feels like how are they going to know what thing they said is kind of close to this thing. Like it's hard to understand that.
Ambie: I guess. Yeah, I don't think we had yellow slashes show up in ours, but I guess it feels like if we started doing more story and like you're kind of get close there on the story or something. It's hard to give examples because like I'm thinking of the cases specifically.
Crystal: Yeah, in the example, we don't want to spoil anything because these are similar to Signal. These are one time play cases. And I would say in many instances, like if enough time is passed, you might be able to come back to some of these. But in many instances, you're going to remember a lot of the details. And so if you've played any of the cases before, you basically would need to be the lead investigator if you played them again and have some people that haven't played.
Ambie: Yeah, and especially with these, it's like you're kind of telling a story to with the case. So that's easier for me to remember than like specific. Yeah, the underlined words. But yeah, there's 25 cases in this case booklet. And also, as the cases go on, you get these ally cards. So there are certain cards that give you power. So at the end of each round, you can use spend an ally and they do different things. So you can you kind of upgrade your characters with allies as the cases go on in a campaign mode. Like you don't have to do a campaign or but there is that. Yeah. So I liked this. As I mentioned before, it had a similar feeling to Rosetta the Lost Language. But this one with Rosetta, it's more creative, I think this one was more structured. So like with Rosetta, it's very stressful being the alien because you're yet to come up with everything on your own and it can be kind of hard. And then also like when you're the people trying to figure it out, you have to come up with words on your own. But here you like have the cards to play and it has prompts and stuff. So it's more structured and easier. It like helps you along. So if you're not like super creative or not in the mood to come up with everything on your own, then this helps with that.
Crystal: Yeah, absolutely. It's a really neat game that is similar and also very different. And I enjoyed it quite a bit and I'm excited to play more of the cases.
Ambie: So that was Here Lies from DVC Games.
[8:54] Crystal: Speaking of murder investigations, I also recently finally got to the table, a game that I actually backed on Kickstarter back in 2023, I think. I don't know. It was it was a little while ago and I hadn't gotten it to the table yet. But, Ambie, I know you're going to want to hear about this. It is Awkward Guests 2, the Berwick cases.
Crystal: So this is the sequel to Awkward Guests, which we have talked about on the show before. Awkward Guests goes up to a total of either seven or eight players, where Awkward Guests 2 is a maximum two player game. And what is significantly different about this one in comparison to the original is in the original, everybody is trying to solve the same case, the same murder. In this game, you are not only solving the murder of one of the Berwick sisters, but you are also orchestrating the murder of the other Berwick sister. So at the beginning of the game, you set up the murder for one of the sisters for the other.
Ambie: Like a battleship type thing.
Crystal: Yeah. Oh, my gosh. It's and the book is really good about step by step, how you set that up, like determining the murder weapon, their favorite weapon type and the evidence that is against them and all the other stuff like they're passing through the house, which room they started in. All of the things that you would expect from Awkward Guests are all still there. But yeah, you're making it up. There's no predetermined cases and you don't have to pull a bunch of cards out of a card catalog this time. The sheets are double sided. So I think these were Kickstarter exclusives, but I'm not certain. I have dry erase versions of the sheets. Both players have a double sided sheet that has Beatrice on one side and Bernice on the other. So on one side, it's the details of the case that you set up. And on the other side, it's your notes for the case that you are solving. And during a round, you do the investigation phases of one player, then the other. And then you have the phase where people can make a guess if they want to. Another difference between that game to the original in this one is you actually roll dice to choose actions. So you roll three dice during the investigation phase and then you assign dice to a community board. And you can reroll the dice up to one time and you can throw away a die to modify another die. But those dice will allow you to do different actions. Like you can draw cards from a deck to eliminate some of the passing options from the house or pick two of the characters and see if either one has been talking about the other one. Because at the end of the day, the person who committed the murder will have checkmarks basically down a straight line on their section of the character sheet. And so you can start eliminating stuff that way.
Crystal: It's so fun. It feels very similar to Awkward Guests. But again, that setup is less arduous. And my friend and I were already like thinking of kind of the meta game of some of it. Because like one of the clues that you can get during the investigative phase, you can put a die on a certain area and the other player can tell you three of the six people that did not pass through that room. So in theory, if the murderer went through that room as part of their path, obviously you wouldn't say them. But you get to choose which other three people you say. And so we were already like, oh, my gosh, once we get good at this, like which people we say here and like we were already like and then we can metagame things like, OK, so if you picked this murder weapon last time, are you going to pick a different one this time or the same like, oh, I'm enamored with it. I really enjoy it. I think if people have played awkward guests and loved it, this is a no brainer. And if you like deduction games, also kind of a no brainer. The box is small, like a lot smaller than regular awkward guests and a lot lighter than regular awkward guests. I don't know what to liken it to. It's really thin
Ambie: like Irish Gage or something.
Crystal: Yeah, maybe
Ambie: it looks a little smaller.
Crystal: It's pretty small. So, yeah, this one is also an easy one to pack into a bag to take with you wherever you're going. So I really liked it. I'm very happy with it. Kind of sad I didn't play it sooner, honestly, because it's just been sitting in my game room. But yeah, awkward guest two was designed by Ron Gonzalo García and Paz Navarro Moreno and published by Megacorpin Games. So yeah, I'm very happy with this one.
Ambie: Yeah, so I didn't actually like Awkward Guests 1, but I haven't been playing this one.
Crystal: Oh, you didn't?
Ambie: No, I didn't.
Crystal: Oh, I can't - I should have remembered that.
Ambie: I don't know if I've said it that much, but like, yeah, I played it once at like two players and once at four players. I didn't like two players. It's kind of boring because like I mean, a lot of two player deduction games where you're figuring out the same thing and you get like we ended up just passing information back and forth and had like mostly the same stuff and like, OK, whoever just draws that card that they need first or something. And then at more players, it was like I didn't like the card draw and like they're very luck dependent on asking the people and stuff like if everyone else asked something and you don't have that card, like you can never get any information and that happened. Yeah, like so I don't like that. But yeah, this one sounds like it would fix both of those because it's just a two player. So like you're going to be getting information and then also it's not like you're not just going for the same thing. So it doesn't have a boring part of two player deduction games. So I do want to play it.
Ambie: Awesome.
[14:13] Crystal: I like colors, Ambie. And there are a lot of games that utilize color in more than just the artwork that is part of the game's like literal graphic design. Sometimes color plays a much larger role in the scope of the game.
Ambie: Yeah, there are some games that are like themed around color. Actually, like I remember, I guess it was a long time ago now, it seems like a few years ago, but there was like a year or two where like there were a bunch of art themed games that came out and like
Crystal: I think I remember what you're talking about. Yeah, it did kind of feel like there was a little bit of a time where that was happening.
Ambie: And that was really neat because I like color too! Like the color wheel and mixing colors and stuff. I like that. Yeah. So there were some games that are about that. Like I think Pastiche was one.
Crystal: Yeah, I've played Pastiche. Oh gosh, it's been a while since I've played that one.
Ambie: But yeah, I think in that one you like get colors and mix them and make new colors.
Crystal: Yes, you do. Yeah. And it's- I wonder it has to be to me. I wonder if it harkens back to childhood in some way, because like coloring or mixing paints or all like all of that to me is kind of evocative of childhood and like
Ambie: the color wheel.
Crystal: Yeah, like it just kind of feels and it's also like there's no like emotional weight associated with color. And for the record, I think games that handle emotional topics or themes can be really wonderful. I love like narrative heavy games, but color is it's not divisive, right? Like it is it is what it is. It's just color. And so I think there's something simple and enjoyable about color as a theme.
Ambie: Yeah. But you mentioning emotion with color and children made me think of The Color Monster, which is
Crystal: Oh yeah!
Ambie: a game about emotions for children. And like each color is a different emotion. And my kids still say like they feel yellow or something when they're happy. Sometimes they're like they feel blue and there's well, blue actually is another way to say sad.
Crystal: But that had to come around at some point. Right. Somebody determined that blue equals sad. And it's one of those things where I think if you said like what emotion does red evoke, I think most people would say anger. Right. And is that because of the Disney Pixar Inside Out movies or is it because your face turns red when you're angry or like there's so many different reasons why it's just like it's this weird kind of subconscious bond. I think that we all share when it comes to like color. I've played a number of games where color factors in heavily. Some of my favorites. I really enjoy the Color Brain games mostly because it makes you realize that you all the things you've seen in your life, you don't remember what they look like. So the Color Brain games basically the Disney edition is actually the only one that I've gotten to play. But you see a card and the color is removed and you have to remember what color the thing was. And you would think like, oh, Disney characters, somebody's dress. I know what color that is until it's removed and sitting in front of you. And then you're like, wait, is that dress blue or purple or like the things that you think, you know, you do not know. And the Disney one is easier, I think, than regular color brain. But it's so fun to watch everybody struggle to remember things that we feel like we know so well.
Ambie: I still haven't played this one.
Crystal: And you said after I talked about it, I know you wanted to play it.
Ambie: Yeah, but I just I mean, I don't I don't want to buy it.
Crystal: Right.
Ambie: Another party game with colors is Pantone. And that's kind of like a Pictionary game, but with cards of colors kind of like, you know, you go to the paint store and you get all those free samples of color cards. So it's like you have a bunch of those of different colors and you're supposed you're trying to get people to guess a character by just like putting the color cards out. You can put them in a shape or something, but they're still just rectangles. It's amazing how much characters can be recognizable by like blobs of color.
Crystal: Now, that's OK. I want to state that I know that I've seen a lot of people talk about this game online and love it. I think universally people enjoy this game. I want to make that clear before I say how much I hate it. Because I have played Pantone and the thing is the game is fully reliant on your knowledge of pop culture. Yeah. So and it's not just really popular pop culture. Like there's some niche stuff in there, too. So when we were playing this, we struggled because there were people who just didn't even know the characters that they were supposed to be making out of the cards. Yeah, I think you're trying to guess. Yeah, see, that's the thing. Like I don't like I mean, with a game like Disney Color Brain, you kind of know what you're getting into, right? Like if you know Disney, you're probably not even going to open that box. But with a game like Pantone,
Ambie: you need a Disney Pantone.
Crystal: Yes, that might be. I don't know. I- I just like I had a bad time playing it because we just got frustrated. So when we were playing, I very specifically remember that I was the person that had to make a character and I got the Wicked Witch of the West. And I tell you, I think we cheated because you're only allowed to use like so many cards in depending on what like level or what round you're in or something. We cheated because nobody was guessing anything. And I used all of the cards that I could. And I was like, green, black. Here's some flying monkeys over on the side with the blues. And-
Ambie: my kids would have gotten it.
Crystal: Oh, my gosh, like red ruby slippers over here. I was basically animating the entire Wizard of Oz on the table and nobody could figure out what I was doing. And I I promise you, I did a good job and they still couldn't figure it out. And to me, that's just like they did know the Wicked Witch of the West. They didn't they weren't not familiar with the character. And so I was just like I walked away from that game and I was like, I'm never going to play this again.
Ambie: Yeah, it's been a long- like I just played it once a long time ago. My experience was not that bad, but I was reminded of it because actually in a discord recently in a video game discord that I'm in, ThinkyGames, they were talking about like mascots and characters that are recognizable by just their colors and stuff. And so like someone just did a rectangle of stripes of lines and they were like making it. So there's like red and then like skin color and then I don't know if they had a brown thing and then like more red and then blue and then red again or something. And it's like, oh, that's Mario.
Crystal: Oh, OK.
Ambie: It looks like Mario. I don't remember exactly like the order, but it looks like Mario. And then like they had other ones. I don't remember all of them, but like a lot of them are recognizable. And it's just like a rectangle of stripes of color. And like, oh, it's interesting
Crystal: yeah, I would I would imagine that certain characters are probably easier to represent in that fashion than others. Like Mario has been an eight bit character, right? Yeah, he's been represented in a 2D fashion. So I wonder if that's easier to kind of clock or spot. Whereas the Wicked Witch of the West usually isn't depicted in color layers.
Ambie: Yeah, I think like cartoons are generally easier. So like Winnie the Pooh, I think would be easy to do like that.
Crystal: Yeah, maybe.
Ambie: But color is big in some characters and mascots and stuff.
Crystal: Yeah. Well, then you get into games where people think colors are different depending on what their experiences are, like Hues and Cues where you are given a color. And you have to say a word that you think represents that color. And everybody else is putting a pawn onto a giant board filled with just about every color you can imagine. I have played this game with lots of different groups of people. And there is always one person whose pawn is like off the grid compared to everybody else. Like everybody will kind of be grouped in one area. And then there's usually one person, Amanda Panda, that is like way outside the realm. Of everybody else. And sometimes they're right, but usually not. And I just it's so fascinating to me. Like if you right now, if I I'm going to say a word and then you tell me what color comes to mind immediately. So if I say grape, what color comes to mind?
Ambie: Purple.
Crystal: But for some people, it might be like a green. Right. Because grapes are not only purp-
Ambie: I just had green- I just had green grapes today.
Crystal: Oh, interesting.
Ambie: But I know like grape candy is usually purple. So if you're saying grape to be a color, it's probably purple.
Crystal: Yeah. So but what's interesting is like in theory, since there's multiple rounds in the game, if you had given maybe grass as your first clue and then you said grape as your second, that could be like, okay,
Ambie: it's like a lighter green.
Crystal: Right. So that's where I love the nuance of color because then you're you're directing people toward a shade rather than a specific color at that point. And seeing where people's brains align is really fun.
Ambie: Yeah, I still haven't played this, but I'd like to at some point.
Crystal: Oh, yeah, it's it's a good one. So it does actually bring us into the topic of games where color is a big factor or less accessible for a lot of people because color blindness is a relatively common issue amongst the general populace. People have varying degrees of different types of color blindness. And I know that over the years, game publishers have become much more aware of this and have factored that into like regular board games in a number of ways. And that's from choosing different player colors to making sure that the artwork on the board is more distinct and things like that. But when it comes to games where the color is the thing, I honestly like for the most part, I think these games can be given, quote unquote, a pass, so to speak, because the core mechanism involves delineating colors. And in fact, we recently talked about Figment, which is the reprint of Illusion. And I looked on the board game geek forums and someone actually asked about the upcoming Figment, is it colorblind friendly? And I don't remember whether it was the designer or the publisher responded. And they said, you know, we thought about this a lot, like when we were making the new design of the game and we ultimately decided that this is a game where delineating colors from one another is the core mechanism of the game. Therefore, making it colorblind friendly, it can't be our number one priority here. I'm probably wording this poorly, but they had, I thought, a very thoughtful response where, like, we thought about this, we considered it, but it doesn't make sense for this game in particular. And I can appreciate that. And I like that publishers at least are being more thoughtful about it.
Ambie: Yeah. And with that one, you can at least like look, you can see there's only four colors, right, or something? So hopefully, I can like see if you can tell what the colors are when you look at the box. I think it has all four colors on the box, hopefully. But yeah, I guess it's similar to like other mechanisms where like some people just like can't do social deduction or something because if they have like anxiety or something.
Crystal: So yeah, we want to make sure that as many games are playable by as many people as possible, but it's never going to be 100% for everybody. And I think caring and trying are kind of the important part. And that I think a lot of publishers have started doing better. And that really, to me, matters the most because, you know, 20, 30 years ago, I don't even think accessibility was even a point of consideration for most game publishers. Like they weren't thinking about these kinds of things at all. I mean, hence red, blue, green, yellow as the player colors for every single game, even though red, green colorblindness is the most common kind of colorblindness. So like that is obviously not a good choice for player colors.
Ambie: Yeah, I was thinking like a lot of old games that have like just different colored cubes for different resources.
Crystal: Red, green, yellow, blue. I also hate when games have resources that are like brown, tan, gray. I'm like, I'm not colorblind at all. And why? Why have you done this to me? I don't care if it's rock, stone, dirt, like making a different color. The dirt can be red or whatever. The earth tones can just go away because they're so like when they're next to each other, especially if they're far away from you on the table. No, nope.
Ambie: I guess another thing with color is like the type of lighting you have because like sometimes in yellow light versus white light, it'll look a lot different. White will look more yellow in yellow light.
Crystal: Yeah. Well, and like LED lighting specifically, yeah, like in fluorescent lighting, like it's going to make things show up a little bit differently. And that's a whole other. Yeah. Like how do you account for people's different lighting? Like you can't really, I guess, do that. But there have been times where I'll turn on a different lamp and I'm like, oh my gosh, this is way easier to see. Maybe that's just me getting old.
Ambie: But yeah if you're playing like Hues and Cues. And then what if you like change the light after you give the clue in Hues and Cues and change everything?
Crystal: Oh my gosh, it's a different color.
Ambie: Give the hint, change the light. That's like hard mode.
Crystal: Some other color themed games that I enjoy. Color It! is a kids game from HABA where you, I think you're rolling a die. It's been a while since I've played this one. And then you're coloring in sections of a coloring sheet and you can't put the same color next to itself. Like you can't put blue next to blue. And so it's definitely a kids game. It's like more of an activity, but it's very cute. And so if you have little ones, it's a great one for them. Do you have any others that you enjoy?
Ambie: Well, all the ones that I listed are ones that I played a long time ago. So I don't-
Crystal: Am I the one that taught you starving artists?
Ambie: I think so. Yeah. I remember you used to talk about it too.
Crystal: Yeah. Like that. Oh my gosh.
Ambie: That had mixing colors too, right?
Crystal: No, you don't mix colors, but you can like trade colors in for other colors basically.
Ambie: Oh, okay. Okay. Yeah. You're trying to get like certain colors to make paintings. Yeah.
Crystal: Yeah. You are literally a starving artist and you have very little food in any given day. And you're just trying to get enough food to survive and to make paintings. And yeah, I have always stanned Starving Artists. I've loved that game since I first got it. And it's gotten, I think a couple of printings since I originally got it, but it's a cute little game. It utilizes real artwork that is in the public domain. And I think I've said this before, but it's been a long time. When I see my favorite paintings come up in the game, it always makes me happy. And I usually take them even if it's not advantageous to be scoring wise. Like if Gustav Klimt's The Kiss shows up, I'm like, "Mine. Gimme, gimme, gimme." Because it's my favorite painting. Well, we would love to hear from you all what your favorite color themed games are. So hit us up on social media or in the Blitz discord and let us know what your favorites are.
[29:30] Ambie: And that’s it for this week’s Board Game Blitz. Visit our website, boardgameblitz.com for more content and links.
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Until next time,
I play games with colors
Shining through
This game has bright colors
And that’s why it’s so cool
Bye everyone!
Crystal: Bye!
[30:25] Crystal: Hello and welcome to episode 235 of Board Game Bli- Okay, I'm going to say it sounded weird. I don't know why.
Ambie: It didn't sound weird to me.
Crystal: I don't know what. Something happened in my mouth. I can't explain it.