You've got to blame the 360 for this. Specifically it's Arcade service. Small games that are budget priced, available to download and there's new ones every Wednesday. Some are awesome remakes (Rez HD, Sensible Soccer, Prince of Persia), and some are originals. It was Microsoft's idea of a service for Daddy, when his kids aren't shooting 'hos down in GTA, he can play his Hexic and his Frogger.
Unsurprisingly the service has taken off hugely, and has proven to be a major source of sales and distribution on the network. It has been imitated by the other manufacturers, and even the PC has it's own versions with Steam and Gametap and others. Still, the 360 remains the original, and to date the best experience IMHO.
Which takes me on to Lost Cities. This beauty was released last week. It's an Arcade creation of a popular (or so I'm told) card game of the same name. As always with Arcade releases, a limited demo comes out for free along with the full release. I downloaded the demo to see what the game was all about. 2 hours later and I'd bought the full version, having never even heard of the game in real life before!
Lost Cities is a 2 player only card game. The deck consists of 5 colours, each colour has 12 cards: the numbers 2 to 10, and 3 "investment" cards. There is also a board that isn't really needed, which has 5 "cities" on it, each one a different colour in tandem with the cards.
The purpose of the game is simple: you have to play your cards on the same-coloured city in order of small to large, and end up with the most points.
Each turn you can either:
a\ Play a card on a city.
b\ discard a card you don't want/need
Either way, you have to then draw a card, either from the deck, or from the cards discarded earlier.
To play a card, you have to put it on the same coloured city, and it has to be larger than the card you're putting it on. So if you have a 4 on a city, you can't put a 2 or 3 on top of it.
Investment cards can only be played if they are the first cards on a city. If you've already started playing on a city with a number card, you can't put an investment card on it at all. Therefore, investment cards have to be used early on and wisely.
And that's about it. The game finishes when the deck runs out.
Now all this sounds boring and stupid. And definitely not fun. It would have been all those and more were it not for the ingenious scoring system. Before I go in to that, it's worth mentioning that in the game's terminology, when you play any card on a city for the first time, it's called an "expedition", I guess in keeping with the Lost Cities theme.
Back to scoring: The game scores you as follows:
1\ Start of Expedition: -20 points
2\ Number cards 2-10: face value
3\ Investment card: x2 of total city score.
Simple? yes. Clever? definitely. To start an expedition costs you -20 points, hence say you want to start a green city, you had better make sure that you've at least got 20 points worth of number cards to just break even. Of course, your opponent is going to see your play and will make sure he or she doesn't discard any green cards for you to pick up!
An investment card is a great risk: it doubles all the score of the city, INCLUDING THE NEGATIVE SCORE!! As I mentioned earlier, you have to invest in a city from the very beginning. So if you start an expedition with an investment card, you're already -20x2 (-40) points down!! Investment cards can accumulate, so if you're feeling daring and brave you can put all 3 of them together, giving you a total city multiplier of x4, hence you'll have a deficit of 80 from the start!
Of course any number cards played after that are multiplied by the same factor, so an investment is worth it if you play enough cards to fill the deficit and make some points.
Again your opponent is watching all this, and when you see someone playing an investment card, you make damn sure that any cards in your hand of the same colour stay there, so as to minimise their profits!
As you see scoring is very simple, as is the game itself. It is very easy to understand the game, as those are the only rules needed. But the complexity in it is amazing! Do you start an expedition and lose 20 points? Do you discard a card that you know your opponent might need and use? And do you play an investment in the hope that you'll draw some big numbers to fill the deficit with?
These are all questions that you'll have to answer in a typical game session, and a single wrong move can cost the match!
Games don't last long which is another great factor. Board games traditionally take ages, remember Monopoly and Risk? But Lost Cities finishes a lot quicker because the deck of cards isn't too big, and the game finishes when the deck is empty. A nice tactic I learnt the other day is you can semi-control the flow of the game by drawing cards from the discard pile, rather than the deck itself. As the game doesn't finish till the deck is empty, you can slow the game down by not drawing from the deck. This can be used for great advantage, especially when you're rushing to play the big cards you've been holding on to all game long!
It really is a great, simple game. It's very easy to grasp, difficult to master (cliche I know, but true!). The 360 version also features online play which is great, there's always some one willing to play you're geeky little game with you!
If you own a 360 you'd do much worse not getting this little gem. If you're that inspired you can buy the proper game (the cards are apparently big and beautiful in real life!), or you can check the link above for further links to online versions of the game.
And finally, I found out today that the awesome dude that's on the Monopoly cards and box (fat guy with moustache) was officially known as Rich Uncle Pennybags up until 1998, when Hasbro renamed him as the rather boring Mr Monopoly ;)
