Islet FR-EN-DE-ES

"War is merely the continuation of policy by other means." —Carl von Clausewitz, On War, published 1832

Your goal in The March of Progress is to control countries through the playing of action cards so that you generate victory points (VPs) during scoring. Whoever has the most VPs at the end of the game wins.

Petris is a game about bacterial control for 2-3 players, 10 + years old and about 10 minutes of playing time.

Each player embodies a scientist who should control the propagation of the bacteria under their supervision. Those bacteria are hungry and they are always looking for food in the adjacent Petri dishes. Watch out! The bacteria that remain alone in a Petri dish will eat a lot and they will reproduce… making it more complicated to control them!

During the game you must manage the propagation of your bacteria, for them to reproduce less, thus not to risk the culture in the Petri dishes. At each phase of contamination, you will get contamination points for each Petri dish where you have more bacteria than your opponent. At the end of the game, the player with fewer contamination points will be the winner!

—description from the publisher

Rocódromo is a climbing game for 2-4 players, 7+ years old and about 10 minutes of playing time.

Rocódromo is a game in which we compete to be the first to reach the top of a climbing wall. As if it was a race, we combine colour sticks of different lengths which simulate the routes of the wall that was built at the beginning of the game. Who will be the first to conquer the climbing wall?

Rocódromo has two game modes: Basic and Advanced. The differences between them are the difficulty and the levels of the wall that we set to climb:

In Basic mode, the wall to be climbed will have three levels.
In Advanced mode, the wall can have more levels, a different shape or it can include some special settings.


If it’s the first time you play, we recommend the Basic mode; once you know the mechanics, we encourage you to follow the rules to set up the game in Advanced mode.

—description from the publisher

In Pax Pamir, players assume the role of nineteenth century Afghan leaders attempting to forge a new state after the collapse of the Durrani Empire. Western histories often call this period "The Great Game" because of the role played by the Europeans who attempted to use central Asia as a theater for their own rivalries. In this game, those empires are viewed strictly from the perspective of the Afghans who sought to manipulate the interloping ferengi (foreigners) for their own purposes.

In terms of game play, Pax Pamir is a pretty straightforward tableau builder. Players spend most of their turns purchasing cards from a central market, then playing those cards in front of them in a single row called a court. Playing cards adds units to the game's map and grants access to additional actions that can be taken to disrupt other players and influence the course of the game. That last point is worth emphasizing. Though everyone is building their own row of cards, the game offers many ways for players to interfere with each other directly and indirectly.

To survive, players will organize into coalitions. Throughout the game, the dominance of the different coalitions will be evaluated by the players when a special card, called a "Dominance Check", is resolved. If a single coalition has a commanding lead during one of these checks, those players loyal to that coalition will receive victory points based on their influence in their coalition. However, if Afghanistan remains fragmented during one of these checks, players instead will receive victory points based on their personal power base.

After each Dominance Check, victory is checked and the game will be partially reset, offering players a fresh attempt to realize their ambitions. The game ends when a single player is able to achieve a lead of four or more victory points or after the fourth and final Dominance Check is resolved.

Stress Botics is a sci-fi adventure in which four easily-stressable robots (known as Beta Bots) are sent to an exoplanet by their corporation Cubebotics CORP®, in order to mine its resources. Once those resources are extracted, the Beta Bots' task is to deliver them to the corporation's ships.

It won't be a piece of cake. To start with, the exoplanet is unstable, so the Beta Bots will have to adapt to a constantly changing environment. On top of that, each corporation ship requires different resources, and each payload delivery requires perfect timing & alignment with the orbiting trajectory of the matching ship. And last, but not least, the rival corporation Cylindroids INC® has sent its own bots to snatch resources and interfere with your bots.

But do not fret! Beta Bots can count on Alpha Bot’s help, a support robot with a (very) short-tempered AI. Alpha Bot will unlock new places to mine, give the Beta Bots more actions and generally make their life easier...but keep an eye on those pesky Cylindroid bots, since they won't pass up the opportunity to damage your guardian!

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Mechanical overview:

The game is organized in rounds. In each round, an event takes place (which might involve trouble for the Beta Bots!) and the players will program actions to interact with the planet's resource-laden chambers, with enemies, with Alpha Bot, or with each other. Actions are chosen in secret and players commit to them before any are revealed. The stress level of each bot determines the turn order as well as its possible resource deliveries. Then players take turns to reveal their programmed actions, and execute them.

Each player has their own robot's blueprint, where they store resources using multiple containers of limited size. Those resources can be delivered to the passing ships, or they can be transformed or spent to enhance the robot's capabilities.

During the adventure, the autonomous Alpha Bot will advance through the planet's chambers until it reaches the surface. Players can interact with Alpha Bot to obtain advantages or to steer it out of harm's way, since it is vulnerable to enemy attacks and the planet's adversities.

At the end of each round, there's a maintenance step that includes the activation of enemy robots (Cylindroids). They can move, attack, or occupy resource chambers. Additionally, players will receive benefits or penalties (stress) according to their distance to Alpha Bot.

The game ends when Alpha Bot reaches the last chamber. The players tally the victory points, which can be earned in different ways: Through successful resource deliveries, by upgrades on their robot, by fulfilling other objectives, etc. Then, each player's victory points is reduced by the amount of stress they incurred during gameplay, and the player with most remaining points wins the game.