Workshop Wednesday: Dog Park, Stop Thief & Forbidden Island

This Workshop Wednesday we are teaching and playing Dog Park, Stop Thief & Forbidden Island.

Dog Park: 7.5

Welcome to Dog Park, a mid-weight, competitive set-collection and point-to-point movement game in which players take on the role of dog walkers who recruit, walk, and care for their dogs over four rounds. Each round is split into four phases:

Recruitment Phase: Players compete in two rounds of offers to add dogs to their kennels. Offers are made with players' reputations (victory points), so must be placed wisely.

Selection Phase: Players decide which dogs to place on their lead to walk this round.

Walking Phase: Players journey through the dog park with their fellow walkers, collecting resources, earning a reputation, and interacting with other walkers.

Home Time Phase: Players earn a reputation for their walked dogs, and lose reputation for any unwalked dogs in their kennel.

Players must choose their routes and dogs carefully to earn the best reputation and prove they are the most accomplished walker of them all. At the end of the game, the player with the most reputation wins.

Stop Thief: 7.0

An alert pops up on your smartphone: A crime has just been committed! Grab your investigator's license and your keen powers of deduction and hunt down the suspect. But watch out because you're not the only private eye on the hunt, and only one of you can slap the cuffs on the suspect and claim the reward. Get enough reward money, and you can finally leave this rat race behind and retire to a sunny tropical beach in the Caribbean.

Stop Thief is a family game of logical deduction for 2-4 players. An invisible suspect commits a crime. Only the sounds they make give them away. Listen to the clues and figure out where they are hiding. Play cards from your unique deck to move around the board, sneak through a window, or even get a private tip. Once you have the suspect pinned down, swoop in and make the arrest.

The obvious first step in this restoration was taking the electronic device and turning it into an app. Doing that allows for better sound quality and a more dynamic platform for different modes of play. The next step was ditching the roll-and-move mechanism and, in general, stripping out some of the luck and adding in a healthy dose of strategy.

Replacing the dice with decks of movement cards, also allows asymmetrical decks, which increases the fun and replayability. Game effects were also added to the suspect cards to further spice things up.

Forbidden Island: 6.8

Forbidden Island is a visually stunning cooperative board game. Instead of winning by competing with other players like in most games, everyone must work together to win the game. Players take turns moving their pawns around the 'island', which is built by arranging the many beautifully screen-printed tiles before play begins. As the game progresses, more and more island tiles sink, becoming unavailable, and the pace increases. Players use strategies to keep the island from sinking while trying to collect treasures and items. As the water level rises, it gets more difficult- sacrifices must be made.

What causes this game to truly stand out among co-op and competitive games alike is the extreme detail that has been paid to the physical components of the game. It comes in a sturdy and organized tin of good shelf storage size. The plastic treasure pieces and wooden pawns are well-crafted and they fit just right into the box. The cards are durable, well-printed, and easy to understand. The island tiles are the real gem: they are screen-printed with vibrant colors, each with a unique and pleasing image.

Come join us on Wednesday, January 11th @ 6:00 pm to learn any of these games for Workshop Wednesday. See ya soon!

*This event requires a 1 - Day Membership, credit will be applied back for qualifying purchases. Current Members are always free for this event.*