Photo-A-Day #4540

We received a copy of the new game Beasts of Balance for free to play with and review. Opinions are our own.

I saw Beasts of Balance for the first time at Blogger Bash and Sweet Suite 2017. I even got to play a little while and the game looked quite interesting to me. Today we played as a family (minus Eva, she was doing her own thing). But Andrew and Allison were interested in playing this game. There is much more to this game than merely stacking oddly shaped pieces. Each piece does something in the game and you quickly realize that you need to not only balance the physical items but also the world that you are creating in the app. Yes, this game is an augmented reality stacking game of dexterity, strategy and creation.

To play the game, you open the app, pick a piece and scan the glyph on the piece on the plinth. Scanning the glyph on the piece against the plinth then makes the app recognize exactly which piece you are trying to stack. When you stack the piece on the plinth the item then appears in the app. If it is one of the animals then the animal will appear on the land, in the air or in the water. The animals are warthog, bear, eagle, toucan, shark and octopus. However there are not just animals there are magical items that you place on as well. There are large X’s and those cause the animals to crossbreed and create new animals. You can also migrate the animals from one place to another. The animal may take to the air after being a land animal or an air animal to the water.

As you maintain the balance of the stack on the plinth you also have to maintain balance within the land that you create. If one animal becomes higher points than any other animal then the rest of the animals get sad and jealous and they lose points. So, for instance. You might put a bear on the plinth and a bear appears in the world on the land. Then you put an octopus on the plinth and the octopus appears in the water. A bear is worth 6 points an octopus is worth 3 points. The octopus will become sad and lose points. When they get to zero points they die and your world loses points. So you are trying to physically balance the items on the plinth while you are trying to maintain balance in your world and trying to get as many points as you can. There are also other things that you can add to the plinth like elements for water, earth and air and these give additional points to the animals in those places. sometimes here are enough points to keep them alive longer, sometimes there are not.

There are some other factors in the game but I want you to discover them for yourself. You can create and discover new species and they will appear in the bestiary. There are many beasts that can be discovered by cross breeding and migrating the animals.

If your stack falls you have a few seconds to put everything back on the plinth. And don’t go trying to put things on that weren’t on before, the game will know and you will lose.

Overall the game was a lot of fun to play, it does say that the game is for ages 7 and up but Andrew did a pretty good job playing with some guidance. I look forward to playing more of this game together as a family. There are also some additional animals and another version of the game with more animals coming soon so you can discover more species and try and balance even more.