Cornerstone
Winter 2009 Issue
Features
- From the Editors
- Craft Check: Bead Sprite Magnets
Interviews
- Industry Interview: Karen Clark, Project Manager at Bioware
- Industry Interview: Britney Brimhall, Himalaya Studios
Articles
- A Gaming Con for Tucson
Author: Robyn Fleming
- This Is Our World Too: Preventing Real Victims of Virtual Rape
Author: Casey Fiesler
- G.I.R.L. Power?
Author: Amy M Hopper
- Killing Grannies, Slaughtering Monsters and Leveling the F*** Up
Author: Oliver Saenz
- I Am a Gamer
Author: Kialio
Robyn reports on Tucson's first ever gaming convention, RinCon '08.
Casey reports on the ways in which virtual sexual assault can impact on gamers.
Amy investigates Sony Entertainment Online's new "G.I.R.L." scholarship program.
Oliver examines the ways in which games apply different moral and ethical philosophies.
Kialio discusses why the behavior of self-identified "gamers" had made her reluctant to embrace the label.
Gamer Stories
Reviews
Odds 'n Ends
Cornerstone, Good Company Games, 2008
My friend Brandy and I sat down at the Good Company Games booth at RinCon (see my con report in this issue), attracted by the brightly-colored pieces of their debut product, Cornerstone, and expecting to spend a few minutes playing a simple-looking game. We got up an hour or so later, and a few minutes after that I was purchasing my own copy.
Gameplay
The rules to Cornerstone are straightforward and easy to learn on the fly. Essentially, each player uses Tetris-like wooden shapes, which are composed of alternating neutral and colored blocks, to add to an increasingly precarious tower, attempting to advance their “Climber” higher than all the others. Dice rolled at the beginning of each turn to determine which blocks can be used add an element of chance, while the placement of the blocks allows for a great deal of strategy – especially since players are only allowed to stand on or move across neutral blocks and those of their own color, and the building must always proceed so that the blocks conform to a checkerboard pattern.
The gameplay can also be adapted for different groups of players, allowing for shorter games, team play or a more challenging game.
The Pieces
The Cornerstone box comes with an illustrated rule booklet, dice, colored Climber pieces, the “Cornerstone” game piece that kicks off the play, 24 game pieces for each of four players, and cloth bags to hold it all. The bags make it easy to keep the pieces separated and ready for a game, and help keep everything tidy in the box. Which is good, because once you’ve taken everything out of the box for the first time, it’s difficult to get it all tucked away again tightly enough to keep the lid on snugly. Fortunately, the bags have drawstring closures, so even if you manage to drop the box now and then (and I do! I manage to drop everything), it’s easy to keep all of the component parts of the game together.
The pieces are made of wooden cubes glued together, which adds a little variation in composition to pieces that theoretically should be identical. Personally, I really like this side-effect of the construction. It adds even more interest to the game, allowing for the occasional risky move that wouldn’t necessarily work if every piece was perfectly balanced and smooth.
All of the Cornerstone components are fairly sturdy and can stand up to frequent use. After several rounds of play on a granite countertop above a tile floor over the course of one weekend, I did manage to break one of the pieces right along the join where two cubes were glued together. Fortunately, this is the sort of damage that is very easy to repair, and it is the only time I’ve broken any of the pieces in two solid months of play.
Wait, Two Solid Months?
Cornerstone is really, really fun, and I’ve been playing it a lot. It’s a good game for my usual group of gaming friends, when we’re ready to take a break from console gaming and tabletop RPGs. It’s a good game to take along on a visit to my in-laws, to play with them and their friends. It’s a good game to play with my parents when I’m sneakily doing my laundry at their house (“I came over to visit, Mom! Look, here’s a game we can play together!”). I can’t actually think of a group of people I wouldn’t want to play Cornerstone with. I highly recommend this one.
