Queen Games has two new games hitting stores in June. The first is Escape: The Curse of the Temple, a real-time game. Instead of playing the game in rounds, each players rolls his five dice as quickly and as often as he can without waiting for his teammates. The second is Maharani, in which players compete to complete the most magnificent portion of the Taj Mahal.
From Queen:
Escape: The Curse of the Temple is a cooperative game in which players must escape (yes…) from a temple (yes…) which is cursed (yes…) before the temple collapses and kills one or more explorers, thereby causing everyone to lose. Escape is played in real-time, with all players rolling dice and taking actions simultaneously. You must roll the right symbols to enter a room, and if you’re at an open doorway, you can roll to reveal the next tile in the stack and add it to that doorway. The real-time aspect is enforced by a soundtrack to be played during the game. At certain points, a countdown starts, and if players aren’t back in the safe room when time is up, they lose one of their dice. Escape: The Curse of the Temple includes two expansion modules that can be used individually or together.
In Maharani, the players are architects helping the King to complete the Taj Mahal palace by placing beautiful mosaic tiles. These tiles come into play through a rotating rondel, which enables every player to place the tiles in different parts of the palace. Once the mosaic is complete, the best architect wins the game.
