Cyberion Review - Fix It or Fail!

[Music] hey everybody welcome back to the dice tower my name is z Garcia I'm Chris y today we're taking a look at the latest from the aniverse series of games uh this is siberon a one to two player Cooperative game or solo game in which you are in this one trying to repair some machines in a dream setting so that the world can continue to march on something artsy along those lines something like that yeah yeah don't don't quote me on all of that theme but it's just something like that um this series of games is now I think what six games deep they're all from the same designer um and they're all again one player games or two-player games you know you they have like little two-player variants that make it a little Cooperative game uh so we're going to go ahead and take a look at this one I'll explain how the game works they they're always sort of a core game and then a few modules I'm not going to go into the modules really we'll discuss them later on but you know I'll just show you kind of what's going on and we are going to be right back here we're going to be taking a look at the game in its most basic form be aware there are several modules and expansions and little ways to tweak the game that come right in the box so we're not going to be dealing with that right now so our objective is to fix all of these machines and we are going to have a selection of five here at the beginning of every one of our rounds so I'm going to go ahead and flip over five of those I'm also going to from this shuffled deck of robots flip over five of them I have two times through this deck to fix all of these up here and after this deck is depleted and I need to shuffle it up I am going to flip this over and then next time it runs out I do not Shuffle it I have whatever I have left to fix all of these if I manage to do that I win the game all right uh there's also going to be one of these that you begin with and you can make the game uh the game is modified the difficulty by how many of these you begin with and there's also one of these they suggest you begin with out of a few different ones I'll explain what that is in a second you can also again start with more or fewer of these based on the difficulty you're looking for every round is going to have two parts the intervention first and then the cleanup and during the Intervention which which is when I'm you know basically manipulating things trying to win I'm going to be able to do one of three things all right the first one is repair repair entails having the necessary symbols or numbers here in my area and discarding those cars in order to repair one of those so for example uh if I have uh this one here takes two fours I have a four here and a four here you'll notice every card has two things a symbol and a number I could discard both of these put them in my discard pile and this is repaired and I'll put that somewhere in a repaired pile that's the first option repair second option is triggering to trigger something means taking a card I have out here discarding that card and triggering the ability in the corner the ab abilities are over here right now these abilities are at their lowest level I.E they don't even do anything but throughout the game you'll be able to level these up and then the abilities as you discard these cards get better and better all right uh and in fact the third and final option is upgrading upgrading is taking one of these repaired machines removing it entirely from the game and then leveling up one of these things now you need to remove a number of these equal to the one you want to level up you see numbers across the top and so a single repaired machine can take any one of these in the First Column and move it up to the next one so it's the one that it's being repair that is being leveled up from you discard that many machines so one Machine gone I get to take one of these and I get to push it up to the next one next time if I want to level this up it takes two repaired machines and so there you go those are the three options I can repair I can trigger something or I can upgrade something I'll go ahead and go to the triggering now so you can see how that works I now have leveled up this one so I could discard this card or this card and Trigger that ability whenever you trigger one of these you can do it up to the level you are at or anything lower and you can also just discard one without any effect which is you know you could do for any of these right now so I'll go ahead and do that I'm going to discard this card and the blue ability this one here says that I can take cards in this case up to one that number would get better but right now it's just one from anywhere out here and put it on the bottom line now I have in front of me three lines of cards obviously right now I've only got cards in the middle one but I can have up to three lines of cards those lines are going to be called the platform in the middle here that's the one I've got right now and then on top of that is The Flash line and then the stock down here the difference between them is no cards just automatically show up down here in the stock but you can force some down there so for example by discarding this here I can take a card from either one of the two other lines and put it down here in the stock and then the flash line which is at the top some cards will put put some uh cards up here but they do not stick around at the end of a round if I have any left up here they'll go away all right so I've fixed one machine here I did a little manipulation uh whenever I'm ready to call it I can be done with my turn and now we go to the cleanup phase during the cleanup phase the first thing I need to check is did I fix any machines this round I did I fixed one right here if I had not fixed any of them then I lose one of these tokens and if I cannot lose one then I lose the entire game all right but I didn't I fixed one so I'm good now I'm going to replenish this line right here and I'm going to replenish my platform I am going to fill this back up to five and it'll be the top of my turnig again and so now once again I have all of my options available to me I can fix one of these I can trigger something and I can assuming I have some repaired machines I can upgrade something so taking a look here I can discard this one and this one together and I can fix that I'll go ahead and do that these two fix this one I can now eliminate this card and level up one of these so perhaps I'll do uh this one right here there we go now I have access to that ability and this again continues until I want to stop maybe I'll re-trigger one of these I'll go go ahead and do this one and again you saw that ability already it's take a card and put it down here once I level this up some more I'll be able to do it two more cards so there we go I think I'm done for now I fixed something so I'm good put a new one out replenish my platform and I am up again uh again this continues until I complete all these or I I'm done I run out of cards and can't finish it I run out of these and need one more that sort of thing so let me explain what these abilities do uh and you'll know pretty much everything you need to know about these cards over here so uh the top one here is the one these that is going to put some cards into the Flash and they come from the deck that's the benefit you get to see a bunch of new cards that just might not stick around and it'll be assuming this for example was way up here if I discard one of these cards I'm going to take three from the deck and put them up here in my flashline all right the next one you've already seen it is take cards from the play area and take them down here and they will stick around if I don't use them I don't I don't lose those cards the next one over here lets me recycle cards from the discard pile it can either be its own symbol or a different symbol and any any symbol really and then if you level this up enough the card that you recycle doesn't just go on top of your deck you'll actually bring it into play if this is high up enough for example this next one over here lets me look at the top of my deck of cards uh the number of cards I look at is what changes as I level up and then I can take those cards say take a look at two put them up on the top or the bottom and then bring one into play like that and then this last one over here lets me discount one of these machines to be fixed and making it easier to fix but I have to pay a penalty in in burnt cards uh very severe penalty at first I need to just kind of burn five cards from either the deck or the play but I get to sort of select one of these and say well one of the cards needed for this is already taken care of so I just need the other thing uh and so that's one way to get around the limitations now these you've only seen level ones up here they're only two symbols but as we go through the stack you get to level twos and they will have more symbols across the bottom there and there might even be some tricky ones that require that you have low values like this one is three cards that are at most six together and things of that nature so there you go that's how the game works uh these tokens over here which I told you I'd come back to you begin with one or more of these or possibly even none and they give you a free ability that is basically one of these it's it all of them are one of the abilities in column three over here and so you begin with it already though so you can just discard the token without having to burn a card for that ability or even get the token up to that level you just have a little wiggle room for managing everything you have to manage so there you go that's how the game works let's go ahead and go back up top all right there we go so the last one of these which was called Starion yeah um we reviewed uh we us two and Mike reviewed that one together last year about a year ago actually because it came out uh at at Essence spel last year and we all felt it was I think okay yeah it was fun but it needed those extra modules to make the core Loop of the game um for me something worth kind of coming back to and I I honestly haven't played that one too much right the the first one of the series onm is the is I think by and far the most popular right of that line it started with a with a solid One MH you've played more of these than I have but the ones that I've played there are some good ones there are some you know not not as good ones right um but cast is probably my least favorite I think stallion is also probably my least favorite um but I think right after that and in fact I might rate these at some rank rather these at some point so I won't give you a whole breakdown or anything but I think right after that from the bottom to the top might be starian I really thought it was all right I did not give it a negative review I just thought it was um a bit of a space hog it didn't quite it was hard to Gro and manipul at in a fun way and these games are all about manipulating stuff be a dice cards tiles whatever and having fun and puzzly sort of moments with that I thought Stellan wasn't quite you know up to up to Snuff when it came to the other ones however the only reason we keep bringing this up is and I think Chris agrees with me I think Siberian here is solidly in the top half maybe even top third of the games in this series I think this is an excellent excellent game um the management of what you are doing here the push your look the special abilities that you need to not just improve but unlock in the first place are really fun and and they are all sensical and they're easy to understand and give you a lot of manipulation and a lot of control really and as you mentioned uh a lot of fun they're very fun to do uh and this is not going to be a comparison to the previous game by any means right but but your point being some of these games the manipulation is more fun and this is one in which it ramps up the the fun the I read a little bit of the designer's designer diary where he said he wanted to try to manage to within a single game a single small little game session have the idea of a um of a constant addictive drip right I think he compared it almost like Marvel snap or those types of games the of you unlock new and you're exited about it so within one game you kind move up these little Tech tracks and that is exciting you accomplish an objective you finish a machine card and now that machine card is a potential upgrade to your already neat little card manipulation system that's that's uh that's exciting to jump into it really works well I love that the five or so different powers the your estimation of which ones are the better ones which ones you kind of ignore is going to change as you play the game more you're going to I've had games where I don't even unlock one of them where I'm just like oh these are my my my two favorite ones and then in I I remember the first time I played in fact I just did like you know a few of them and I ignored one or two and then the next time I play it I flipped that and I thought why was I sleeping on this one power this is amazing like my favorite Power now so I really like that I like what it's doing and I I find the games engagement the sort of all of these games are kind of at their very very core good old kind of clondike solitire is you know there's something about him that is sort of classic in that way with a regular deck of cards I think this one manages to give me that same feeling of um kind of Shuffle up and play again you know that feeling of O I'm doing fun things I'm things are getting close the deck is running out again and I haven't quite finished the game's fairly easy I will say I think it's pretty it's it's one of the easier ones in the series but I'm enjoying that I'm I'm liking that tension of of seeing your deck of cards dwindle and the machines you still have to fix aren't going away and you are running out of time you're running out of you know movable Parts I really enjoy the way this plays out comes together when you say easy like easy to win or easy to upkeep I think easy to win yeah okay yeah I I would say it's easier to win than some of the other games in the series for sure uh but then another great thing that shotti torby the designer does is he always includes here's 3 four five extra modules if you do find this one easy throw some stuff in that some of them make it I think just objectively harder right some of them don't necessarily make it harder but just make it different so you're prescribed um strategies and things that you unlock you might all of a sudden say that doesn't work when I'm playing with these little additions yeah I really like the expansions in this one the little modules uh my favorite one is the babies the Baby Bots um they have this feeling of and and I love this like you said this isn't necessarily harder it sort of it puts pressure on one point and then releases at a different place but you have to burn cards out of your potential show a pool in order to get these little baby robots and shuffle them into the deck they do nothing when you do that you're you're wasting Cards doing nothing however when that baby shows up you immediately remove it from play do yourself a new card and the matching track levels up automatically and it is such a good feeling you're like oh my goodness I got a free bump up on that track no matter what level it's at that could be that could save you three four fixed machines I mean it's insanely good so I really like that one but they're all interesting you're going to have some you like some you don't but they're all interesting I really like the one that has the uh multi-use or the multi they wild cards almost right right it's an orange but any number or any or it's a four but any machine color right you think these are great but then you shuffled level three difficulty machines into the deck yeah and you thinko okay once again right those are harder but it also gives me more right I love the way you described it ease up pressure one spot put more pressure in a different and that's a great Dynamic for all of these modules they all I mean it's it's brilliant the the very simple sort of skeletal structure of these games and then the designer goes in and presses here and releases over here and then in a different one he like puts pressure over here and oh you thought that you had a lot of time you have no time now and you thought it was easy to make connections well now you have to do it across the entire map and these things that just sort of he takes the variables the knobs and tweaks them and I just find that fascinating even just from a an appreciation of game design looking at that and going oh I see what the base game is and I see how these little micro expansions affect that and tweak it and change it and make me re-evaluate things I thought I understood right I really like that whereas in the in some of these games I feel like those modules are necessary this one I think is just very fun Straight Out The Gate I agree and then those modules are just you know whipped cream cherries sprinkles on top of already a great ice cream sunde I agree I agree with that also I'm hungry now I am all right so folks as far as final thoughts here go I'm coming in very high on this one like I said I like this series quite a bit this is near the top for me I'm giving Siberian a nine I think it is a fantastic solitire game one I am absolutely going to keep playing for a long time to come I think I love the the setting the vibe the look but the game play is just ice cream sunday is a good way to put it I'm loving it so that's a nine for me I'm giving an 8.5 and I think that I I think it with time could kind of move up it's one of those that I want to play with some of the modules more and see if there's ways to to mix them and stuff as well that's something I have not done is try to play you know what happens if I do these two together because I don't even know if they're necessar meant to uh but can throw in whatever you want to you can mix them I'm I'm going to and so that's the thing I can see this moving up in the future the your first exposure to it it's sounds strange with these three rows with the different names and then you start to learn how they behave differently right why they behave differently and then it becomes a very fun puzzle to manipulate plenty of content in the Box this is a home run it's an 8.5 for me I agree all right so there we go folks that is a seal of Excellence for siberon uh check out the game check out the series of games the Universe games and of course our reviews of the previous ones as well so that's going to do it thanks very much for watching my name is z Garcia I'm Chris y watch out for robots grabbing you in your dreams [Music] [Applause] [Music] you n

Channel: The Dice Tower

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Keywords: board game, board, game, dice, card game, cards, catan, monopoly, tower, dice tower, vasel, review, tom vasel, vassel, settlers, gaming, board game review, boardgame, uno, ticket to ride, apples to apples, educational games, educational, top 10, juegosdemesa, Brettspiele, ボードゲーム, brädspel, jeuxdesociété, משחקילוח, 보드게임, deskováhra, graplanszowa, bordspel, 棋盘游戏, gioco da tavolo, desková hra, gra planszowa, настольная игра, trò chơi trên bàn cờ, jogo de tabuleiro, لعبة اللوحة, GeekUsername: ZeeGarcia

Id: QWQHEA047Rc

Length: 21min 32sec (1292 seconds)

Published: Sat Oct 28 2023