Co-op Case Study: Onirim

We analyzed co-op games small and large while working on Meeples Together. Onirim was one of the smallest: a 78-card game for just two players in a teeny little card box. But size can be deceiving …

This article originally appeared on the Meeples Together blog.


Onirim by Shadi Torbey

Publisher: Z-Man Games (2010, 2014)
Cooperative Style: True Co-op
Play Style: Card Management, Set Collection

Overview

Players wander the dream realms trying to find the oneiric doors and escape.

Actually, this is a pretty abstract card-management game with nice artwork. Each turn a player plays or discards a labyrinth card, then draws a new card. If a player plays three sequential cards of the same color or draws a door card while holding a key card of the same color, then he can take the door. The object is for each of the two partners playing the game to collect one door in each of the four colors.

However, the players are also bedeviled by nightmares, which are cards that each cause the loss of 1-5 cards. If the players can’t discover their eight doors before the deck of cards runs out, they’re lost forever in the dream realms. Continue reading

New to Me: Winter & Spring, 2012

Back in my earliest days of writing board game blogs, I opined upon the 70 new games I’d played in 2005 in an article full of mini-reviews.

I’ve decided to revisit this topic here in Mechanics & Meeples. Thus, this is the first of a series of mini-review articles where I’m going to give quick synopses and impressions of games that I played for the first time in the preceding months. This article covers the first half of this year, from January to June.

I was somewhat surprised when writing this to discover that only two of the new-to-me games dated from earlier than 2011 and only one from earlier than 2010. I generally feel like I’ve escaped the cult of the new, but clearly it’s still a major focus in my gameplaying.

I’ve generally listed games in descending order of my interest. That doesn’t mean a game is necessarily good or bad, just that it does or doesn’t fit my gaming tastes.

Continue reading