Board Games crafted by the Britain based mathematician, Reiner Krizia are renowned for their intensely addictive nature. Lost Cities, a two to four player card game on the Xbox Live is bears further proof of this man’s immense creative skills. The gameplay mechanics are pretty straightforward and has a hint of solitaire and rummy. The object of the game is to build up a suit of five different colors which depict an archaeological outing, to lost cities in the corners of the world. Each suit features 60 cards which are numbered within 2 to 10, there exists three investment cards for each color, and these are the scoring multipliers. You have to play the cards in an ascending order from the respective suits, much like solitaire, this makes the game pretty easy to grasp. Depth is rendered by the multiplier cards, these needs to be laid down first, if they are to have any effect on the score which your numbered cards earns you.
A multiplier cards raises your score by a multiplier of two, put down two and your scores gets multiplied three and three multiplier card earns you a whopping factor of four. Unfortunately you can’t toss card around like crazy, this is because you lose points for funding every time you start an expedition. If you start off with a numbered card, then you begin with an easy to adjust -20 minus the number on your card which you played. For instance if you start off with a red two, you instigate a red run of cards at -18. Start with a blue three and you start a blue run with -17 and so on. Every multiplier card you play pulls you deeper into -40 , two for -60 and three for -80. This means you will have to commit to cards which you can built up before the round ends due to the deck running out, other wise you stand to lose major points. To further perplex things, you are allowed to hold a maximum of eight cards at any given time; this means you’ll have to throw off the extras to their respective color piles.
Players will often find themselves gambling whether they are going to draw enough colored cards so that it’s worthwhile to play the investment cards or two. Besides players will have to watch that they don’t discard cards which their opponents can capitalize on to make massive points. You cannot carelessly dump unneeded investment cards, your foes would be more than happy to scoop them up and play it against you. Gameplay is a tricky balance between reward and perils; you’ll constantly find yourself in a situation where you’ll have to make a hard situation. This makes the game tremendously addictive and tense, especially when it comes to deciding when to play a good run of cards or to hold back and wait for an expedition card which will boost their value. If you are willing to overlook a few minor mistakes, Lost Cities is arguably the best game to hit Xbox Live since its launch.
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