weekly board game reviews and thought pieces in written and audio format
Making a tabletop game takes a lot of effort and a lot of people. Everyone will think of game publishers and game designers, maybe even playtesters. There are also rulebook writers and editors, the manufacturers and distributors, as well as the marketing people, and many more. Who are often overlooked are the illustrators, even though it is their work that for many of us will be in our mind when we think about games.
GoodCritters by Arcane Wonders is an i-cut-you-choose sort of game with a twist. Players are members of a very successful gang of burglars and take turns to be the boss who divvies up the loot amongst everyone in whichever way they see fit. There is plenty of opportunity to be selfish or favour some players over others. Yet, it is up to the whole gang to vote on whether to accept the split or not. It's a bit like being a pirate really - but that's a different story.
For a lot of seasoned gamers only heavy games with a lot of complexity, many different mechanisms and that last at least two hours are worth playing. If you bring a light game to your weekly games group, chances are it will not be chosen and left on the pile. That is a real shame, because many of the recently released lighter games are a lot of fun and actually more tricky and demanding than you'd think.
Here is another review of a game that is quite a few years old. Bremerhaven by Lookout Spiele is from 2013, so over five years old, but it is probably the only game with a secret bidding mechanism that really works, and lots of player interaction without making you feel helpless if the other players gang up on you. There is also a huge time element in the game, that keeps you on your toes. To top it all off, the game also has a really fun theme, beautiful illustrations and a really tense gameplay. As you can see, I really like the game, so let me explain a bit more.
It's a new year and a new exhibition and event season. There are dozens upon dozens of tabletop game exhibitions each year around the world, from the giant, annual, international Essen Spiel, GenCon and UK Games Expo filling many exhibition halls held over several days, to the smallest local events held in a single room and running only for a single day - and of course many sizes of events in between. It's impossible to attend all of them, even though it would be very tempting. So here are some tips to help you choose which events to consider for yourself.
I know, Scythe by Stonemaier Games has been out since 2016 and has had a couple of expansions released as well, including promo packs with additional encounter cards. So chances are you have already heard plenty of reviews about this game and maybe own it yourself, but I still felt it's worth reviewing, because I am sometimes surprised by how many people still don't know Scythe.
I never thought I would write game reviews, but when given the opportunity to try out a couple of games on Steam for free by DigiDiced, I gave it a go and now publish one game review nearly every week. I wouldn't claim that I'm a brilliant reviewer or a tabletop game critic. My reviews focus on interesting mechanisms that introduce an interesting twist to a game, and they cover only what I feel are the positives parts of a game. I don't want to write negative reviews. For many people this probably feels wrong. In their mind a review must cover the pros as well as the cons, or it is one-sided and not useful.
Oliver KinnePost read time 4 min readLeave a Comment on KeyForge: Call of the Archons (Saturday Review)KeyForge: Call of the Archons by Fantasy Flight Games is the first Unique game - and the word "unique" has a very special meaning, but I will talk about this later. KeyForge, for short, is a competitive two-player-only card game where players aim to forge three keys, each costing six Æmber. As players draw and play cards, they can attack their opponent and collect Æmber. The player to first forge their third key is the winner. So far it's very much like any other card game of their kind, but it is the uniqueness of the decks that is new and is what interests me about this game.
Inspired by a recent #ThrowbackThursday tweet from Board Game Inquistion I thought it would be nice to write about one of my own game related memories from my childhood. Like probably most kids of my generation, I grew up with all the usual classic tabletop games, or boardgames as they were known then: Monopoly (of course), Game of Life (a friend had that one), Chess (I always lost, until one day), Checkers (when there was really nothing else), Ludo (the dice chucker), Stratego (chess on steroids) and probably a few more.
If you are looking for an easy-to-teach, easy-to-carry, quick, fun, co-operative card game, then The Mind by Coiledspring Games is the right game for you. However, let's start at the beginning. The game is really simply: there is a deck of cards numbered 1 to 100, every players is dealt a certain number randomly from the deck, there is no turn order and everyone plays when they feel the time is right, without co-ordinating with each other, and as long as all cards are played in ascending order everyone wins. That's pretty much all there is to it. Sounds easy enough - but it's actually really hard - and that's what makes this game so interesting in my view, as it creates a new gameplay mechanism that I have not come across before.
