


Gem bombs have been around since the very first Gemcraft game, but I find myself using them a lot more in Frostborn Wrath. Maybe even without Tome Chambers, there’s a token shape that indicates a field where you can obtain a new skill - but if so, the connection is a lot harder to notice than it was in CS, where skills were always linked to permanent environmental features. Maybe they’re just assigned haphazardly, but I’m not quite willing to believe that. What does the shape indicate, then? I have no idea. Their function as dispensers of unlockables is taken by locked chests, but locked chests aren’t indicated by the shape of the token there are plenty of locked chests in fields with just the base token. But it doesn’t have Tome Chambers or Wizard Towers. Frostborn Wrath uses the three token shapes from Chasing Shadows (excluding the one for Vision fields), as well as a couple entirely new ones. (Usually adding more waves makes a field harder to beat, but in Wizard Tower fields, it buys you more time to destroy the locks.) I don’t think these meanings were ever explained explicitly, but it was an easy pattern to notice.įrostborn Wrath, now. Then there were trangular ones with a sort of spiral pattern to the slots, indicating a field with a Tome Chamber that teaches a new skill, and square ones with stripes, for Wizard Towers where you have to unlock certain mechanisms before the last monster wave to win and unlock other benefits. Vision fields had their special circular tokens with only one slot, shaped like flames. You had your standard triangular ones with a circular gem slot at each corner, for normal fields. How exactly a physical object grants you access to battlefields was left unexplained.Ĭhasing Shadows had four shapes of field tokens. But it also presented it as a literal token, a trinket that could be found in a locked chest or otherwise handed to you as part of your rewards on completing a level. Chasing Shadows turned these indicators into glowing gems held within holes in the frame. Gemcraft Chapter 0: Gem of Eternity, the second game, additionally used this frame to keep track of which play modes you had completed the field in, dividing it into segments and illuminating the ones completed. In every Gemcraft game except Labyrinth, battlefields are shown on the map as a sort of frame-like icon, usually in the same bulging triangle shape as a grade 1 gem.

# Labyrinth.I’ve mentioned “field tokens” a few times, so let me explain what I mean. This static image does not show that the arrows are blinking on and off. This game deserves an image to show what everyone is talking about here. A player's turn is over when he either captures the gem or he presses the DONE button.ĪK: I described the rules I know on the Shifting Maze page. A players turn consists of two parts, first sliding a tile to change the maze and then moving the piece to capture the gem. The objective is to be the first player to collect 15 gems. The next thing I knew I had a complete game.Įxcept that I still don't know how the game is officially played, so I used the rules that we use in our house. Initially it was just the sliding tiles (see also Shifting Maze), then stippling for the brick look, then moving players, then. This was one of those fun projects that started off small and incrementally grew bigger as I added just one more feature. I thought I'd try writing a tcl version of the game. We have a lot of fun playing it despite not having any instructions and lacking a few pieces. Keith Vetter : Somehow my family acquired the board game Junior Labyrinth.
