Category: Podcasts

Adventure Games: The Dungeon (Saturday Review)

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Waking up from an uneasy sleep, you look around. You aren't quite sure where you are or how you got here. There is moonlight streaming through the small, barred window. It looks like you're in some sort of cell, but you're not chained up or otherwise restrained unlike the skeleton opposite you. There is only one thing for it. You have to find a way to escape Adventure Games: The Dungeon by Phil Walker-Harding and Matthew Dunstan from Kosmos.

Immersive resources (Topic Discussion)

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As you probably know by now, I'm a very visual person. I love great illustrations in board games, hence my series "Let me illustrate" highlighting board game artists in the industry. At the same time, a board game with an amazing look alone is not enough. The gameplay needs to be great too and the rules must not be more complicated than necessary for the weight of the game. So in this article, I want to look at how important realistic resources are to me in games.

Nemesis (Saturday Review)

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Waking up from years of hibernation, all of us were a bit dazed and confused. Temporary amnesia was very common and while we all knew our names, we only had some basic memories of what had happened before or what we were meant to do. We weren't even sure which ship we were on, let alone its layout. When we saw that one of our colleagues was dead and had a gaping hole in their chest, we knew something was seriously wrong. Nobody was sure what caused our colleague's death. We knew we had to work together to get out of this nightmare, but the trust in each other had evaporated. So we set about exploring the ship and finding our Nemesis by Adam Kwapiński from Awaken Realms.

Roll and wrong (Topic Discussion)

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The genre of roll-and-something or something-and-write or whatever else there is these days has really grown in the last few years. To start with, there was a deluge of Yahtzee-style games, but soon the genre added themes and settings to try and draw people in and make them feel like they were exploring a map or fighting monsters. In this article, I want to talk about my experiences with roll-and-write games, as I will call them from here on in for the purpose of simplicity.

UK Games Expo 2022 (Saturday Review)

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The UK Games Expo is the largest hobby games convention in the United Kingdom. It covers all types of hobby games, including board games, card games, RPGs, war games and many, many more. After a break of a couple of years, I was finally ready to make my way up to the NEC, Birmingham again in 2022. However, this time, a friend from my games group joined me. I was really looking forward to finally meeting many of the people I only knew via social media. I also wanted to introduce myself to some of the publishers exhibiting there. My schedule was really full. It was going to be exhausting, but also a huge amount of fun.

Boardgame backlog (Topic Discussion)

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I know this is a First World problem, but I currently have a number of games sitting on my shelves that I haven't played yet. I also know that I'm not the only one with a "shelf of opportunity" that seems to be growing, rather than shrinking. I basically have too many board games. It seems to be something that's quite common in the board game hobby. In this article, I want to look at a number of reasons why my game pile has increased, rather than gotten smaller.

Turing (Saturday Review)

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The game, it's a test of sorts, for determining whether something is a machine or a human being. There's a judge and a subject. The judge asks questions and based on the subject's answers they determine who they are speaking with - what they are speaking with. All you have to do is ask a question. So, now it's your turn to ask Turing by Glenn Ford from Man O' Kent Games.

First time teach (Topic Discussion)

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I have now spoken quite a bit about how to teach board games to people. Those articles were about teaching games that you have already played yourself and therefore know relatively well. However, when you buy a game, you will be faced with the difficult task of teaching the rules for the first time, before having played it yourself even once.

We Can Play (Saturday Review)

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From ancient times to the present day, women have never been recognised for their contributions to the world. Yet, throughout history, there have always been women who were strong leaders, who fought for better conditions and equal rights, and not just for themselves, who made significant scientific breakthroughs, were trendsetting artists and did everything their male contemporaries did. So it is time for all women around the world to say: We Can Play by Julia Johansson and Albert Pinilla by Julibert.

Looking ahead at UK Games Expo 2022 (Topic Discussion)

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The last UK Games Expo I attended was 2019. It was an amazing event and I came back from it buzzing, full of ideas and the energy you get after you've been able to catch up with good friends again. We all know what happened soon after the 2019 event. So when UKGE came back as an in-person event in 2021, I decided to give it a miss. However, now it's 2022 I'm ready to dive into the crowds again and meet lovely board game people at UK Games Expo 2022.