There are additional actions, such as building more cities or killing off a single troop count of an opponent, which can easily turn the tide of the war. The first game took about a half-hour since there was 2 of us that didn't know how to play. Classic Reviews: Eight Minute Empire. We take a look at the fast playing, empire building board game Eight Minute Empire. Aesthetically and audibly the game is pleasing and easily well read and played, supporting both on the fly Joy-Con controls or touch controls making interactions a breeze in however you like to play. This uses your static action points that are extremely beneficial during your match, so it’s best to bet wisely and not overspend them or you’ll have less to use during your 13 rounds of actual gameplay. Things get particularly interesting towards the end of play, when you're trying to out-manoeuvre and consolidate at the same time. If you are interested in getting a copy for yourself, it’s about $28. You score one point per continent where you control more regions than your opponents. While you will still fight other players for control, there is no attacking. Final Score: 4 Stars – A strategic area control game that plays incredibly quickly. Eight-Minute Empire (Switch) Review. Critic Reviews With only 14 troops available during the game, do you really want to commit 3 of them to one region to beat your opponent for it? Each card gives you some resources, as well as letting you complete one action. Most of the reviews on Board Game Quest are from review copies of a game provided by the publisher. Does this game truly play in only eight minutes? Eight Minute Empire comes with both online multiplayer through a lobby system as well as pass and play. Eight-Minute Empire brings a solid digital adaptation of a quick board game to the platform. Single player can be played with up to 4 AI players up to 3 difficulty levels. The PS1 & PS2 are celebrating their 25th and 20th anniversaries! When coupled digitally on the Nintendo Switch it’s a pretty solid fit for many as there’s no reason I couldn’t play several rounds on a short trip or over a lunch break with friends. ™ and © for all products, characters, and indicia related thereto which are contained herein are owned by the companies who market or license those products. While the easy AI was a bit of a pushover the medium and hard proved a nice challenge. While nothing here is going to blow you away in the looks department, it really doesn’t need to, after all you’ll be in and out of a game before you’ve had a chance to sit down and enjoy the scenery. You can play with up to five players on one TV, and this seems to be a good representation of playing the physical board game. Back then it wasn’t a wide spanning genre as it is today, and so you relied on the good ol’ classics like Monopoly and Risk. Then the next player takes their turn. The objective was much the same as Risk, which was to conquer as many of the continent(s) as possible. Is this a short lived area control game or will Eight Minute Empire turn into an eight hour gaming session? Just as my armies are getting spread out and I have a new city founded, the game is over. Yet it’s also one of the more strategic filler games you will find and is still a fantastic game with some hard decisions that have to be made. Does that make it a weak, filler game? All of the movement points must be exhausted before I can end my turn. For those that want a change against the CPU opponents or their own friends, the game also includes an online game mode that requires a quick account creation, however at the time of this review, we were informed this feature was being finalized, and so some improvements to that mode were on the way. This site is not affiliated with Nintendo and is for entertainment purposes only. This means that you can break out Eight Minute Empire with just about anyone: gamer or non-gamer. So players are not only just trying to control areas on the board, they are also trying to collect sets of the five resources. The limited number of turns and actions for each game means you don’t actually do that much before the game ends. Eight-Minute Empire is a perfect bite sized strategy board game adaptation brought to a befit on-the go platform with the Nintendo Switch. Read of to find out! The deck of action cards is placed at the top of the map and six cards are dealt face up along the top of the board. That’s usually the case with many of filler games I find. Everything fits well inside the small box. I am able to immediately attest that you can indeed play this game in 8 minutes or less depending on player count. Nintendo Times Radio 124: PlayStation Anniversaries, Nintendo Times Radio 123.5: PS5 Launch Details Revealed, Nintendo Times Radio 123: Stellar Graphics, Nintendo Times Radio 122: Grab A Buddy And Play Some Co-Op, Super Nintendo World Japan Now Set To Open Spring 2021, Steve & Alex From Minecraft Are The Next Super Smash Bros. Nintendo Switch game provided by the publisher. Every action you take is dictated by a card that you and your opponents take turns drawing from a selection of six displayed at the bottom of the screen. For players that reach certain resource thresholds by playing corresponding cards, they’ll be rewarded with end game points that can also sway the winner pretty decisively. Each player has a set of wooden army cubes and city discs. Let’s look at the Good, Bad, and Neutral points around Eight-Minute Empire. Sorry, your blog cannot share posts by email. So yes, Eight Minute Empire is a lot deeper of a game then you standard filler game (Skyline, Martian Dice, No Thanks! So, with very short game times, an important aspect would be how replayability is managed as a game like this can easily become stale rather quickly. Hits: Each action limits you to a certain number of these actions for instance, recruit 3 units, move 5 units by land or by sea etc. While it would have been cooler for the troops to be miniatures instead of wooden cubes, it doesn’t diminish the enjoyment of the game any. 2. It's a game that's specifically designed to be fast and simple, yet still give the feeling of expansive strategy games in its condensed package. I really like Eight Minute Empire much more than I expected too. The double-sided board of Eight-Minute Empire is small for an empire and depicts fictional continents comprised of territories and separated by water. Eight-Minute Empire, by Ryan Laukat, is a quick Civilization/Exploration game using card-driven area control. Reproduction in whole or in part in any form without consent from NINWR, LLC is prohibited. Area control is also such an easy concept to understand (it’s been in gaming since I was playing Risk as a child), that most people shouldn’t have any problems picking up the rules. Plus: Super Mario 3D All-Stars, Call of Duty Black Ops Cold War Alpha, Marvel’s Avengers, Hades, August 2020 NPD, Microsoft Buys Bethesda, Anniversary Trivia, and so much more! Do you take the card that lets you move a troop across the ocean or do you grab that third gem resource card for the extra victory points? I like that I can explain the rules to Eight Minute Empire in a short period of time. Grade: B-Tags: acram digital, eight-minute empire, mobo studio, nintendo switch. - Finally a number of cardboard tokens are included. Discuss in talkback! I personally would have loved to have seen a custom game option taken even further to allow players to toggle some of these custom rules seen in some of the maps at will instead of being forced into them only on those specific regions. Every card also has a resource symbol attached to it as well, which ties into a more meta/end game reward. The actions range from moving troops to adding more troops to founding cities.