Unboxed the Board Game Blog

In Aquaretto, the players are managing the planning and selection of animals for their water themed zoo, in the hope of acquiring the most victory points. The players can expand the size of their water park and victory points can be earned in a number of ways. The most common way is to collect a large number of animals to your park in a variety of species.

Based on the award-winning Betrayal at House on the Hill board game, Betrayal at Mystery Mansion is the mash-up fans have been clamoring for! Play as Scooby-Doo, Shaggy, Velma, Daphne, or Fred as you explore the mansion and its grounds, finding clues, encountering strange occurrences, and maybe even catching sight of a monster! When you find enough clues to learn what's really going on, that's when the haunt starts, and one player will switch sides to play the role of the monster! Will you be able to stop them before they carry out their sinister plan? Betrayal at Mystery Mansion contains 25 new haunts based on popular episodes and movies from the Scooby-Doo oeuvre, with different monsters, items, events, and locations each time you play.

Burger Up is a card matching puzzle game about the art of burger making. Fill orders, earn prestige and be the best burger chef around! Players strive to become the most prestigious restaurant by building the biggest Burgers and by using the best ingredients. Players take turns, which consist of four phases: the Market phase where players may purchase ingredients from the market, the Building phase where players place up to 3 ingredients on their burgers, the Burger Up! phase where players may score their burgers if they satisfy an order and the clean-up phase where players draw back up to 4 cards. The game ends when no more Order cards can be revealed. A bonus is awarded to the Chef who built the most burgers and then the winner is determined, based on who has earned the most coins.

Up to two thousand pounds in weight and over ten feet tall, the bear is considered the biggest and heaviest terrestrial carnivore in the world. Of course, there is not just "one bear;" on the contrary, there are plenty of subspecies that differ from each other in various aspects. For instance, only the Kodiak bear (ursus arctos middendorffi) weighs about 2,000 lbs. The polar bear (ursus maritimus) weighs "only" 1,100 lbs., but gets much bigger than the Kodiak bear, being as much as 11 ft. tall! Bärenpark takes you into the world of bears, challenging you to build your own bear park. Would you like another polar bear enclosure or rather a koala* house? The park visitors are sure to get hungry on their tour through the park, so build them places to eat! Whatever your choices are, make sure you get the next building permit and use your land wisely! (* No, koalas aren't bears but they're so cute, we couldn't leave them out of this game!) In more detail, each player in Bärenpark builds their own bear park, attempting to make it as beautiful as they can, while also using every square meter possible. The park is created by combining polyomino tiles onto a grid, with players scoring for animal houses, outdoor areas, completed construction, and more. The sooner you build it, the better! Cover icons to get new tiles and park sections. The game ends as soon as one player has finished expanding their park, then players tally their points to see who has won.

Inspired by the medieval fortress in southern France of the same name, Carcassonne is a tile-laying game in which players fill in the countryside around the fortified city. Players choose from tiles that depict cities, roads, monasteries, and fields; each new tile placed creates an ever-expanding board on which players can then add their followers. Players score points by having followers on features as they're completed. The player who makes the most strategic placements of tiles and followers will score the most points and win the game.

You cultivate the forest in front of your cavern and dig deeper into the mountain throughout the game. By furnishing rooms in your caverns you make space to grow your tribe and and create new goods from your resources. Deeper into the mountain you will find fountains as well as ore and gem mines. It's on you to decide how much ore and gems you want to mine, giving you the opportunity to forge weapons and go on adventures; a new way to do things in the game instead of using actions with your workers. Outside your cavern you can clear the forest, cultivate fields, fence pastures and grow crops or breed animals. All this in order to increase your wealth and become the strongest and best tribe leader of them all! The game includes a solo mode, giving you the opportunity to make yourself familiar with the 48 different room tiles which are available to furnish your caverns.

Colour Chess and Lure are stand-alone games that can be combined. The game can be enjoyed by any level of ability, from kids (who enjoy focusing on the colours while they are learning the movement of the pieces), right through to Chess Grandmasters (who expertly incorporate the colour strategies into their existing skill-set). In both games the premise is similar: use the colours to control and predict your opponent’s movements. Each player takes two turns at a time, but on the first turn players must move onto the same colour tile that their opponent moved onto on their last turn. This allows you to bait pieces, force movement and control certain colours on the board. Strategies and skills learned through traditional Chess are directly applicable to Colour Chess, but you must learn to incorporate the use of colours in your strategy and adapt your skills to a new board every game. There is also a strong emphasis on creativity and exploration, whether it is in the construction of the board, the different pieces and game modes you can combine, or how to escape a seemingly impossible situation!

In DungeonQuest , you take on the role of a hero who sets out to explore Dragonfire Dungeon. Along the way, you’ll collect loot, evade traps, battle fearsome monsters, and wend your way through the sprawling catacombs that snake underneath the dungeon. If you are fortunate enough to find your way to the treasure chamber at the dungeon’s heart, you may attempt to plunder its riches. The hero who escapes with the most loot wins! However, there’s more to concern you than just rival heroes. You must be careful not to wake the cruel dragon, the dragon who sleeps upon the treasure hoard! When you have looted your fill, you must escape the treacherous, winding maze that makes up the dungeon in order to be victorious.

The inhabitants of the villages surrounding a dormant volcano were happily living in peace until — KABOOM! — the old volcano sprung back to life, unleashing rivers of molten lava in every direction and blasting volcanic rock into the sky. The villages, now faced with destruction, must do whatever they can to protect their homes from the incoming surge of lava. Your village is about to burn up — can you take the heat? Eruption is a competitive survival game in which each player struggles to save his or her own village from destruction caused by an onslaught of lava from an erupting volcano. As lava enters a village, its temperature increases until it has burned up completely. Players can protect their own villages by placing lava tiles defensively and strategically building walls of various materials to hold back the lava. They are also rewarded with action cards for directing lava to other villages. Action cards allow players to rotate, replace, or remove the hexagonal lava tiles as well as cool down and fortify their own villages. Once the volcano has fully unleashed its fury, the player whose village is at the lowest temperature wins.

Hive is an award winning board game with a difference. There is no board. The pieces are added to the playing area thus creating the board. As more and more pieces are added the game becomes a fight to see who can be the first to capture the opposing Queen Bee. The soldier ants battle to keep control of the outside of the hive, whilst the Beetles climb up to dominate the top. Spiders moving into holding positions as the Grass Hoppers jump in for the kill. Keeping one eye on the hive and the other on your opponents reserves, the tension builds as one wrong move will see your Queen Bee quickly engulfed; .... game over!

In Karak, each player will lead one of the six different characters into the labyrinth of Karak. Tile by tile they'll uncover what the labyrinth looks like — it will be different each time you play. They'll have to fight monsters, equip themselves with weapons and spells, and — most importantly — collect treasure. The player with the most treasure at the end of the game is the winner – a true champion of Karak!

Finally! After a long voyage, the treasure hunters have reached the island of Karuba and can start hunting for the hidden treasures. Who will lead their expedition team as cleverly as possible along the jungle paths, pay attention to the other players and keep their eyes open for gold and crystals along the way? Karuba by HABA is an excitingly different placement game for children and adults. All players simultaneously seek their way through the jungle. Who lays their path tiles the cleverest, finds the best route and still has enough time to walk the paths at the end? A game with a clear addictive factor!