The rules may seem daunting, but the rule book is very well laid out and understanding Mage Knight seems to be mostly about retaining a lot of data (and of course the pertinent exceptions) more than anything being unclear or hard to comprehend, though the combat is cluttered and my least favorite thing about the game. The variables in each turn are cool and the limited progress on the board and the acknowledgement of terrains and time of day give nice sense of scope. At it worst, which is the combat part, this game has the same problem of playing a high level character in an RPG: too much time dealing with modifiers and not enough time in the world making character-driven decisions.
Yet ideas like wounds limiting a player's options (hand size) and resurfacing if not properly tended (in the next round in a new deck) and the alteration of day and night and the handling of the units are all very good conceits, as is the ability to explore certain sites deeper or chose to forego such explorations while sticking to a different agendum.
Mage Knight is not as good as my favorite game, which is Cave Evil by a significant margin, but I appreciate the well conceived solo mode of this thing. Grand, patient fantasy from Vlaada Chvátil when things aren't getting too bogged down with modifier accounting.
Space Alert (2008) Review
A lot of cool variables at play here. Complicated but always logical and not too difficult to comprehend, though very hard to succeed. (I wish the combat was this clean in Mage Knight, a good game by the same designer, Vlaada Chvatil). Perhaps the color coordination of meeples should be different from the zones--at least this might help figuring things in the crazy (and somewhat dubious) solo variant--but this is a satisfying and frenzied game that seems like a bonkers confluence of Galaxy Trucker and Robo Rally shot through with a espresso.
Tiny Epic Galaxies (2015) Review
A large part of the appeal of Tiny Epic Galaxies is the juxtaposition of large and small. The concepts and meeples really help make this fun little dice game seem like quite a bit more than the sum of it's few components, parameters, and variables. At this scale it is adorable, but out of a huge box and with full size elements, it would seem somehow less inventive. It would be cool to have a magnetized version, since this seems well suited for plane and train and (of course) space travel.
Talisman (Revised 4th Edition) (2007) Review
I wish this game was either a lot shorter or had more strategy. This is a very long game for something so largely determined by randomly acquired dice and cards, though the deck building and spells make it almost two dimensional.