I write about LOK and related games a lot around here, with very good reason. The original puzzle book (and its digital follow-up) from designer Blaž Urban Gracar is pretty much a universal favorite in our scene: it's charming illustrations have way more character than a typical Sudoku-style puzzle grid, it explains barely anything to you and yet you start having big realizations almost immediately, and somehow the whole thing is also kept extremely elegant and minimal.
After LOK, Abdec and the fairly recent Workworkwork, all of which could be described similarly, the multi-talented Blaž is back now with HERD after a long delay due mostly to production issues. This latest entry in the catalogue feels both familiar and different: we're still flipping through a book of puzzles one at a time, running into and creating our own rule discoveries and realizations as we go, but this time there are more physical pieces involved.
HERD is advertised as a "puzzle board game" and it definitely looks like an accurate descriptor: the puzzle book is larger than ever before, with lots of room for the little plastic figurines included in the box that you'll be sliding and bumping and stacking all around the levels.
The book has over 124 pages containing more than 65 puzzles, and from what the previews have shown us, I expect there will be as many satisfying deductions here as we've come to expect. These games aren't thrown together: there's a subtle art in the way that the puzzle design alone acts as an invisible guide, never overbearing but ensuring that players stumble into exactly the knowledge they need to be learning.
HERD is available in two formats: if buying and shipping a bulky boardgame box doesn't sound reasonable to you, you can alternatively purchase it in digital PDF form for a cheaper price. Either to play digitally using your own software to mark the puzzles, or to print out and find your own pieces to slide around the boards. Both the boxed version and the PDF version are available through Blaž's official site. (There's also a bundle deal running right now which includes all 4 games, and sounds like a pretty incredible holiday gift...)
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