Fancy Feathers is online

Sunday, June 15, 2025 by Zzrxes

Hello Yucata friends, there's another game to add to your playlists:

Fluff up your feathers, folks, flighty pheasants flock the footpaths, and your employer would like some to fancy up their faculty!
Watch out for sneaky foxes and feisty dogs!

Yucata.de introduces to us another fine game from the indefatigable Friedemann Friese. Thanks go to the designer, publisher 2F and illustrator for allowing us to enjoy this fun card game here, and special thanks to Watno for bringing it to us.

The game info page for Fancy feathers can be found here

Paris: La Cité de la Lumière now available!

Saturday, May 31, 2025 by coastliner

Build the beautiful nocturnal Parisian streets

Try Paris:  La Cité de la Lumière, the latest game available on Yucata!  We have a complete implementation here, that also includes the Eiffel expansion and a couple of promotional add-ons.  This is a quick, highly interactive two player tile placement game.  The game is played over two phases, and you'll need to do some clever planning from the very beginning of the game if you want to find success.

I'm Craig (coastliner), the implementer of this game along with eight others here.  I've been playing and coding  and having a blast on this site for almost seven years now.  After trying many of the games we have available here, I've started to get a good feel for the kinds of games that I enjoy playing digitally.  And this is the main reason I chose to implement Paris -- it has that feeling of the kind of game that I'll enjoy playing here for many years.

It was great fun to implement this game, but towards the end of the process, I started to have some doubts.  I'd heard so much about the beautiful nighttime Parisian streets.  Was the online implementation doing it justice?  Clearly some on-site research was required. 😃  So, after a wonderful trip where I was able to visit many of the landmarks from the game's postcards, I felt a lot better.  I managed to capture six of the postcard sites in one photo, can you find them?  (To be fair, two of those six are perhaps questionable.)

There's one unusual aspect of this implementation I'd like to call out.  I discovered early in playtesting the online version that this planning aspect could be challenging in an asynchronous game.  While you place your tiles in phase 1, you will be creating spaces for the polyomino building tiles that you'll place in phase 2.  But when you return to an asynchronous game after several hours, it's not always obvious what those plans were.  I normally like to use the fantastic "Notes" feature on Yucata to track these kinds of things, but in this case that was becoming tedious.  Writing notes like "Place the zig-zag building along the left side of the board, one row from the bottom, aligned like a staircase leading up off the left side of the board" again and again was draining some of the fun out of the game.

So I created some planning functionality that lets you privately track those plans.  It's totally optional, and probably those with a better memory capacity than I might not need it at all.  But for the rest of us, I think it really improves the playability of this game, especially if you start multiple games at the same time, so check it out!  Click on the blue "i" icon next to the game/plan switch in the top left of the board for more information, or see the "Hints for Handling" section of the rules.

If you still need convincing to give the game a try, I created a short (less than 5 minutes) video that demonstrates the game.  It's not a complete rules explanation, but it does show how the game works on Yucata.

Many thanks to the publisher Devir, who have been very involved in bringing some of their games to Yucata recently.  I'm also grateful for the efforts of the translators and testers (whose suggestions have had a very positive impact on the final product).

Enjoy!

Instinct just went online

Saturday, March 22, 2025 by Sparhawk

Enter the duel in a gloomy forest full of mystical creatures. 

Instinct is a tactical tile laying game for two players. Battle it out in a gloomy forest full of mystical creatures! Take turns placing cards in a 4x4 display. Make your choices carefully to score points. Sometimes it‘s all about the right timing! The player with the most points at the end of the game wins.

Instinkt is a pure 2-player game and plays fast — about 20 minutes on the table. It’s our first game by Udo Peise, but already our third release by publisher Board Game Circus, the other two being CuBirds and Rollecate.

We’ve worked closely with Michiel de Wit from Gam’inBIZ, who handled the Dutch localization of the game. Here’s what he had to say about Instinkt:

The first time Daniel from Board Game Circus showed me Instinkt, I was completely blown away. I instantly fell for its art and slick gameplay. Instinkt is a cracking little puzzle that plays out in just 10 minutes and really challenges you. The rules are simple, the choices pretty straightforward, but every game has surprised me with some sneaky move or clever twist.

Gameplay-wise, Instinkt kinda reminds me of Hive, that classic abstract game with hex tiles. In Instinkt, the play area's just a 4-by-4 grid, but during the game, this grid can shift about, which is really cool and one of the reasons I find Instinkt so fascinating to play. Everything’s well balanced—never gets dull, though. Like the artwork, there's sharp contrasts between moves, scoring chances, and strategies. I absolutely adore that about the game.

The rules of Instinkt are super easy: each player starts with the same 12 square cards. Each turn, they chuck down one of their 3 hand cards. The numbers on the cards sort out who goes when, but going first isn’t always a bonus. Most cards (9 of them) offer a specific scoring chance, usually needing a certain placement. The other 3 cards don’t score points but give you a one-off special move that can shake things up. I’m especially fond of the Stag, as it can really flip the game on its head, keeping everyone on their toes.

The digital version of Instinkt on Yucata is super sleek. While the gameplay is smooth in both versions, scoring in the tabletop game requires a bit more attention to track. Yucata handles that beautifully by offering intermediate scoring updates, giving you a clear idea of where you and your opponent stand. This feature makes the digital game even more addictive than the tabletop version already is. I can totally see loads of folks playing Instinkt during their lunch breaks and over a coffee, both online and off.

This is the 22nd board game implementation by be_com4. Since each developer spends many hours implementing a game, it might be interesting to hear how they choose their next project. Here's what Bart shared:

Since we got the license before the game was even announced or published, I couldn’t rely on player reviews. But the rules are very short and easy to grasp — and that’s what drew me in.

It’s a very short game where each player has the same 12 animals. In each game, you’ll only play 8 of them on the board. The goal is to position your animals more strategically than your opponent. But watch out for the Deer, Raccoon, and Snake! These animals — when played at just the right moment — can cause havoc!

I found the game especially interesting after a few plays, once I understood the different characteristics of each animal and where they should be placed to score points.

As always you'll find all information here: Game information

We thank Board Game Circus and Gam’inBIZ for the permission to host their game!

This is the first post in our new blog. It’s still pretty rudimentary and will improve over time. You’re welcome to leave comments — but please post bugs and feature requests in the appropriate forums.