Gen Con 2018: Jon Mietling – Portal Dragon Games

Jon Mietling from Portal Dragon Games talked to our roving reporter, Nick, at Gen Con.

Palm Island

Palm Island is a unique game that plays completely in the palm of your hand. Play solo, cooperatively, or competitively. Each card has 4 states (top & bottom on each side of the card), and there are only 17 cards in the entire game!

Upgrade cards by rotating or flipping, constantly deciding whether to focus on resources (for future upgrades) or victory points. Over the course of the game, you’ll go through the deck 8 times.

Some cards can only be used in certain ways, but some have multiple choices. For most people, the game plays in 15-20 minutes; but feats encourage solo players to work towards different goals, rewarding them with special powers.

In cooperative play, each player has their own deck, and prepare for a disaster that will strike (hurricane, famine, or volcanic eruption). At the end of the round, players pool their resources to try to move the co-op card towards its next state. If the co-op card is “completed” before 8 rounds have gone by, the players win!

There are two ways to play competitively. The first is a speed mode; whoever finishes the round first gets the right to buy first from a stack of diminishing points. The second method is a casual mode; players each try to fulfill requirements for specific bonuses, awarded at the end of each round.

Jon is aware that this game has special accessibility issues (you must have use of both hands), and is working on a way to mitigate that.

Planetoids

Coming soon to Kickstarter, this family-friendly strategy game should work well for many different skill levels. Players are space miners, recovering minerals from asteroids. When you take a resource from the map, it will expose all the resources around it, which may give your opponents an advantage. On Kickstarter in the first months of 2019.

Find Portal Dragon Games online

portaldragon.com
@theportaldragon (Twitter/Instagram)

 

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