"Hanabi" part 2 for real

"Hanabi," the Japanese word for Honeybee,
has to be one of the coolest games I've played. Even moreso than my favorite game from childhood, "Dig hole under the fence."

Honeybee is a cooperative, multiplayer card game. Each card shows a honeybee of a certain color, as well as a number from 1 to five. The point of the purpose of the objective of the goal is to go around in a circle and play cards of the same color in ascending order. You can have multiple stacks of honeybees going at the same time, building all the colors simultaneously. BUT THE FUCKIN AWESOME KICKER is you cant see your cards WHOA WHAT HOLD THE FUCKIN TELEFONO

Here is a red honeybee. Did you know that honeybees cannot see red? Wouldn't THAT suck.

During your turn, you have the option to do one of three things. You can play a card, discard a card and gain more time, or you can give a player a clue, but this costs a timeage token. You are limited in the kinds of clues you can give. You can only provide information, such as "this card are a three" or "deez cards is blue." At this point, the player has to remember / decipher what the clue giver wants you to do - maybe they want you to play it? or discard? HMMM

Despite all the hexes that are so ubiquitous in board games, this honeybee is not making a honeycomb. Instead, this honeybee is exploding.

Cool-ass games like these deserve to win the big ole shpeel daz jars award thingie, which this one did in twothousandthirteen. HANDS DOWN (bahaha get it??) love this game, 12 out of 10 dentists would play this game again. Easy to learn, small, portable, very social deductiony minus the permanent destruction of friendships thing that comes with so many of these games.

I don't think any specific elements from this game would be directly steal-able to use in ours, other than the fact that it's fuckin awesome. so yea, I guess we're gonna steal the awesomeness.

"Splendor" - more like Splenbore

Who cares.
Honest question doe.

Do I not understand the definition of "fun" that these board game designers use? According to the worldwide infobahn, the board game Splendor "war nominiert für das Spiel des Jahres 2014 Rammstein Bratwurst Volkswagen Beetle Wolfenstein 3D," therefore, some people in some place thought this game was good or is fun. Fuck 'em.

Let me stop drinking this hatorade for one second to show you a picture.

One of the many beautiful gems that perfectly rocksonifies the feelings you have when playing this game.

What do the gems even have to do with anything? If you want to be the least shittiest player, the goal is to collect the mostest gems, then use these gems to buy various engines that in turn generates mo gems. Relevance and theme? irrelevant and irthemed. The game might as well be called "splenfork," where each resource is some form of silverware and you can buy silverware factories with your extra spoons. Or maybe "forkdor" where you do the same thing.

Another one of the many ugly rocks that remind me of this game.

Now that I've been on this splendor-shaped toilet for the past few paragraphs, I'm completely out of poo and physically am unable to shit on this game any more. The redeeming elements of this game were few and far between, but were honestly gratifying. This game is a distillation of the Engine Building game mechanic, where you gather resources that can be used to purchase resource generators, some of which are worth points. The fun of building an engine is a truly satisfying experience, as your economy represents the progress that you the player makes as a result of your previous decisions. Halfway through the game, you find yourself picking up low level cards (and victory points) for free. And just like the "missed encounters" section of craigslist, everyone loves that shit.

 Look at this ugly. Also, there's an ugly rock in the background.

To kinda take a step back from the giant pile of dookie, I loved the totally radical chips that represented the gemstones. They feel SO GOOD. Like that perfectly smooth and shiny pebble that you picked up a couple weeks ago and tried to sell on etsy as "art," but it turns out that you don't know how to etsy. Nice game components are so clutch to me. The giant, uncontrollably and unintentionally destructive dice from King of Tokyo, the cute cuddly panda from Takenoko, or these kickass clay chips, these components helps immerse the player into the game world, which is a good thing duh.

Overall, this game deserves to be head-butted and sent to hell. To me, the idea of engine building is entertaining and allows for interesting strategic thinking, but should be a component of another game, not a game itself.