weekly board game reviews and thought pieces in written and audio format
The sky suddenly darkened above me. As I looked up, I saw the giant spaceship that was filling up more and more of my view. It towered above the skyscrapers like a huge saucer, dotted in lights and what seemed like openings. It was hard to make out, but it seemed to be bigger than downtown. Suddenly, small aircraft emerged from the spaceship's openings and started to descend. It felt like we were suddenly living Under Falling Skies by Czech Games Edition.
Let's face it. The pandemic has made a huge impact on the world overall, including, of course, board games, which is what I want to focus on in this article. Without being able to meet in person, many of us have changed how we play games, while others have stopped playing board games altogether and turned to other forms of entertainment. All of that has directly impacted the design and development of new games and I want to try and evaluate what that impact is. (This topic was inspired by the always wonderful Bez.)
I had to get my message to the Princess. It was vitally important that she would hear this, but I had to be extremely careful. Many people were plotting against her, and against me, so nobody could be trusted. I had to try and get past the guards, the handmaiden and others to reach her. My heart was beating in my throat and my emotions were welling up. I tried to keep it together, because I was so close to delivering to her my Love Letter by Z-Man Games.
Nikita Sullivan has always been a techie and surrounded by nerds. She has a BSc in Computer Science: Artificial Intelligence and after working as a software engineer, she became a freelance graphic designer. She always loved being creative, so decided to become a board game designer. It allowed her to learn a lot of new things while being creative every single day. Her games Tri To Win and Mini Memory Mischief were self-published and she has more coming up. Nikita also publishes The Indie Tabletop Newsletter and generally enjoys sharing her experiences with the online board game community, supporting them however she can.
It is nice when you have a regular games group, be it friends or family or a mix of both. You get to play games regularly, you can share each others' collections, you can maybe even decide to buy games together and split the cost and there are many other positives when you have a group of people to play games with. What I want to talk about in this article, is why I think it's so wonderful to learn a new game together with a group of people you regularly play with.
The crowds were gathering outside, asking difficult questions, asking to be let in, not sure if we still had any control over them - but we fobbed them off with excuses, sent them to a different office and generally put up a smokescreen. We hadn't finished our final project yet. There was so much left to do, so much evidence to destroy or get out of the back door. We didn't know how much time we might have left, when we finally heard the chanting outside: "Stasi raus, es ist aus!" by DDR Museum.
Some games just click. There are very few rules and you can basically start playing after reading a couple of paragraphs. Other games take longer to learn, with pages upon pages of rules, turns that consist of multiple phases or maybe some sort of conflict resolution steps that take a while to grasp. In fact, even seemingly simple games can take a long time to master. So in this article, I want to look at how patient we are with games and why some games deserve our perseverance.
I could hear screeching tyres and gunshots coming from video game machines, the melodic sounds of fruit machines and some general hubbub of laughter, talking and other noise. I was standing at one end of the air hockey table, with my opponent on the other side. Yet, even though it felt like we were at some sort of amusement arcade, we were both at home and hadn't left the house. We were just about to play a game of Klask.
Madeleine Fjäll is a 2D-artist who loves to make artwork inspired by history and fantasy. She has a bachelor's degree in Game Design and Graphics and has a Higher Vocational Education Degree in 2D-graphics, which helps her a lot as an artist in the board game industry. Right now she's working at Ion Game Design and is an artist for the games Pax Viking, Bios:Mesofauna and Dawn on Titan.
I think like pretty much every hobby, playing board games is about having fun. You might prefer to play solo, you might like to play with your partner or you have a group of friends you play with. You probably play different types of games with different people. Maybe you play lighter games with your loved one in the evenings, because you're both tired after work and want to have some relaxing time together, but when you play with your games group you want something complex and thinky to really stretch your brain. Ultimately though, I think it's all about having fun.
