[peetee]

Samurai Spirit was released a couple months ago! it was designed by Antoine Bauza, who did Ghost Stories (one of my favorite games of all time) and Hanabi, interestingly enough.

(he also did 7 wonders and a number of other games)

Samurai Spirit skews closer to Ghost Stories in its co-op style, in that there aren't rules that limit the information the players can discuss with each other, but rather, the puzzle the game presents is so complex that the players are almost forced to collaborate. it's an interesting way to "solve" the problem of the Experienced Player, but it definitely only works if your group supports that style of play

when it works it works SUPER well though -- Ghost Stories always had those moments of dramatic reversals against difficult odds, and Samurai Spirit, by being a kind of cooperative blackjack game, distills those moments further by changing the way the players engage with the antagonists. blackjack is already pretty dramatic, so Bauza upped the tension by making that moment where you "beat the dealer" really important for the players' success and then structured the player interactions around getting someone to beat the dealer over and over again

and it comes in such a cute small box! which makes setup/teardown super easy and makes it really easy for me to carry the game around! that's super underrated imo

[peetee]

I'm also not the biggest fan of Bauza's "Asian themes", and I've definitely had moments where I wonder whether the designs he comes up with are independent of the theme or not

it's almost like a chicken-or-the-egg conundrum where I question the themes' role in the ruleset designs -- if he didn't think about play experiences in terms of ninjas and samurai, would he have come up with designs as compelling? I hope so. and 7 Wonders and Hanabi seem to indicate that I needn't worry too much