Bringing you board game reviews and thought pieces every week in written and audio form.
If you have played plenty of tabletop games, you will probably have come across many different times of game components of varying quality. Some games go all out and the components are amazing, really bringing the game to life. Other games only come with basic components. So what are your options to take these games to the next level and improve your game experience?
Some of us will have been avid computer gamers before coming round to playing tabletop games - and of course there will have found digital versions of tabletop games and then started playing more computer games. In this article I want to focus on tabletop games that were inspired by computer games. These games have been coming out sporadically over the last few years and some are of course better than others. However, I will not be reviewing any of them, but instead highlight the different types of tabletop games that are available or soon to be released.
As an avid tabletop gamer you will know that new games come out all the time, but what is not always clear is how much testing time has gone into creating a new game. There are many things that get tested when a new game is developed, but in this article I want to focus on play testing. In fact, this is my second article on the topic, but I think it is worth writing about it again, because play testing is such a critical and time consuming part of bringing new games to the market. A lot of smaller game designers rely on play tester volunteers to achieve an adequate amount of play testing time. So if you want to play a game that hasn't been released yet and provide some constructive feedback, then play testing is for you.
If you host a regular games night, you probably know the feeling of getting everything ready in time before everyone arrives. Set up the games table, make sure the drinks are chilled, glasses and coasters are put out, crisps and other snacks put in bowls and the games is set up - and this is often the crux. Some games take a long time to set up and sometimes even longer to put away again. It can feel like the setting up and putting away takes longer than playing the game. It's such a chore.
If you love tabletop games, you probably end up buying new games all the time. That's great, but it also means you have to learn how to play it and then teach it to your games group or your partner. Mind you, if you play solo, the teaching part isn't an issue of course - but in this article I want to focus on the teaching, rather than the learning.
Tabletop games come in a huge variety with many different mechanics - and in this article I want to focus on a number of action selection mechanism which I think are interesting. I am not talking about things like worker placement or dice rolling specifically, but how these general mechanics allow you to choose an action and sometimes affect what other players can do or how effective the action is.
We all know classic dice rolling games, like Yahtzee, or games using dice to decide the outcome of battles or events. You may also have heard of, and probably even played, roll and write games, such as Roll to the Top, Avenue, The Castles of Burgundy: The Dice Game and many more. However, more recent games use dice in quite different ways, creating interesting game mechanics that I want to talk about.
If you like buying tabletop games, you probably have either read or watched reviews or even playthroughs, so you can make a more informed decision about what you want to spend your money on. However, how much information is there actually in reviews - and how much is just opinion? Can we trust some reviews more than others? Are positive reviews more objective than negative ones? So many questions.
A lot of games are aimed at three or more players, even though most state a player count of two and up. That makes sense, because there is a large market for games aimed at games groups. Many of us enjoy playing tabletop games with friends, so it is easy to get three or more of you together. However, there is an ever growing number of games at single players - because there is an increasing demand for solo play.
We all prefer different types of tabletop games, but there is now a trend towards games that take longer to play - and we are talking several hours. These games aren't necessarily heavy or difficult to play, but use simple mechanisms to tell a story that simply takes a long time to explore.
