I have been thinking about the following on and off for a while now: what was the year 2024 as a whole like when it comes to new releases? Was it good, average, bad? And what are the outstanding games we’ll still be playing many years down the line? Perhaps it’s just me, but it …
I was always curious how well my BGG blog (which is basically a cross-post of this website minus the reviews) is doing. Granted, it’s a bit childish and this isn’t a competition, but putting hours upon hours into writing makes you wonder if anybody is reading it. So far, there hadn’t been a good way to …
So I did a post around this time last year that was quite popular about the behind the scenes financial stuff when it comes to me writing reviews. It also contained some high level reflections on my gaming year. This is basically the same but for 2024. For those that don’t know me, I usually …
Read more “Financials of a Hobby Board Game Reviewer – 2024 Edition”
Since the beginning, I’ve been fortunate that my reviews became popular on BGG quite quickly. My assumption has always been that it’s a mixture of the format (long form, in-depth), having lots of pictures that help to illustrate points, and that I don’t write fluff pieces. I don’t accept review copies and can thus write …
Read more “The Thumbs-Economy – Looking at the Data Behind a Review’s Popularity”
Essen-time is soon upon us! This year, the kind folks of SPIEL have provided me with a press pass, which is a huge milestone for an independent reviewer like me. For all the years – or shall I say decades – I’ve been going to Essen, I’ve always wondered what it would be like to …
I’ve published my Recommendations For Solo Board Games in 2023 over a year ago and it has been surprisingly popular. So I guess it’s time to do an update and throw out some new recommendations based on games I reviewed, new additions to the collection, and classics I got back to the table in the …
Hi y’all, I’ve crossed the milestone of 50 published reviews a couple of weeks ago. If you know my style of writing, it probably doesn’t come as a surprise that this took me almost 2 1/2 years! To celebrate, I thought it might be nice to do a “where are they now”. I always like …
We’re in an interesting part of the year when it comes to the board gaming world. The lull of Christmas time and all those end-year recaps is over, crowd funding is only slowly picking up pace again, and fulfillments are still a bit out. The two most interesting things that have happened lately for me …
Hi everyone! Hope you’re having a lovely weekend! I’m not sure where I heard it first, but someone once said that in the first two weeks after releasing an anticipated game, it gets played more often than during all of the months and years of playtesting combined. It’s shocking to hear at first but makes …
I was playing I C E yesterday, which is just about as gorgeous as games can get. Great table presence, lovely theme, … and it has an unfortunately pretty mediocre solo mode. It’s an efficiency puzzle without competition in a game that’s all about player interaction and stealing stuff from under another player’s nose. So in the …