Do you know that feeling when you see a crowd funding project and immediately fall in love with its visual presentation but at the same time get super skeptical regarding its game play? It just looks too good? There are positive and negative surprises when venturing into that territory. For example, I remember first seeing …
Grand Austria Hotel is a game I adore, much more than I rationally should do. It’s punishingly tight, can easily become multiplayer-solitaire, and I get it to the table way too infrequently. But that’s emotions for you, right? There doesn’t have to be a rational explantation why we feel attracted to certain games while we …
Read more “Review of High Season: Grand Hotel Roll & Write – Catering to an Audience”
Have you ever won a game by making your opponent laugh too hard? I have! We were playing Tokyo Highway and the absurd difficulty of the manoeuvre they were trying to pull off just to score one more tiny car simply got me. I couldn’t help myself and started laughing, they laughed, hands shook, and …
Read more “Review of Tokyo Highway – Tiny Traffic Traverses Tricky Tongue Depressors”
There are few auto-buys I have in my life: a new Matthew Reilly novel, a month of Disney Plus whenever a new season of the Mandalorien is on, … and Concordia expansions. I came to Concordia rather late and at that point, my group of friends had already moved on to other games. So it …
Read more “First Impressions of Concordia Roma / Sicilia – Location, Location, Location”
Standing in front of the soon to be opened gates of the world’s largest board game convention, I was ready. A large crowd had been building up, waiting. But I had arrived early, so I was towards the front and would be inside the halls among the very first. I had read the pre-fair coverage …
Read more “Review of Sky Team – Tower, we have a problem … or ten”
Aaah, Kickstarter, what a hodgepodge of emotions! From FOMO to buyer’s remorse, happy anticipation to the dread of something possibly never fulfilling, pride of having backed something amazing to the feeling of superiority when one has managed to miss a dud. Lately, I’ve noticed a new aspect of it which for lack of a better …
Read more “Review of Rolling Heights – True to Its Theme, Things Take Longer Than Planned”
You are a game designer and looking for a challenge? Well there is the holy grail of creating a true civilisation game that can be played in under two hours (and no, Mosaic isn’t it). There is the endless adventure game (Lands of Galzyr technically did it, but what is an adventure if there is …
Read more “Review of Paperback Adventures – Extreme Combative Solo Wordsmithing”
It’s quite remarkable how fast the initial buzz about Horseless Carriage has subsided. Simply by the fact of being another game from publisher Splotter Spellen, known for their innovative and often quirky games, many had anticipated it with great excitement. The theme also sounded interesting: building and selling cars in an early era of automobiles …
Read more “Review of Horseless Carriage – A Class of Its Own”
While Kickstarter and crowdfunding in general has allowed a lot of small designers and independent publishers a chance to fulfil their dream and turn their ideas into products, it has also taken on a life of its own. After the initial rush, there seems to have been an extended period where games were mostly sold …
Read more “Review of Tiwanaku – The Game That Should Not Work”
From time to time, I like to acquire a game for no other reason than to see what the buzz is. Throwing caution to the wind, not going into extensive research, and deciding to just try a game out myself. What’s the worst thing that can happen? I sell it off again and gain in …
Read more “Review of Shogun no Katana – Japanese Baroqueness”