I spend a lot of time playing games whose existence is attributable to a trend. Certain titles like The Crew and Ganz Schön Clever created cracks in the pavement for others to sprout from and flourish. Robo Run is the latest germination, a seedling fighting for some of the light established by the Spiel des…
Takashi Ishida’s 2003 edition of Magical Athlete is so far in the rearview mirror that it’s become a fleck of indistinguishable color on the horizon. CMYK’s vision for this game has completely outdone the chintzy but lovable Z-Man publication, and Second Wind cements that newfound legacy. When someone mentions Puerto Rico or Concordia, my mind…
There are moments in life that are intractably written into my consciousness like images chiseled into bedrock. These are important things like the day I married my wife and the first time I saw my child. Some are less important – but still meaningful – like the first time I watched The Matrix or held…
Wavelength is an elite party game. It features energetic team play, interesting discussion, and a monolithic plastic dial that generates a random position along a spectrum. All of these contribute to its success. I was intrigued when I heard that publisher CMYK was issuing a diminutive card-based version of this game. I wondered how it…
Abroad gives off a vibe. It presents as a pleasant little outing, maybe something akin to Parks or Trekking the World. This is deceiving. It is not a cozy travel game. It’s a stout mid-weight fella that’s more robust than it appears. In fact, it wanders in the region of burgeoning modern tableau builders like…
Grabble sounds dumb. You take it off the shelf, remove the lid, and put the game box in the middle of the table. The box is the playing arena, so yes, I’m hitting you with the “place the board in the center of the table” instruction. In the box is a bunch of junk. Shiny…
Ivan Turner is digging deep to bring us the third installment in his This Game is KILLER franchise. I was pleased with the initial offering, a riff on Ridley Scott’s Alien that took the form of a half hour semi-cooperative party game. Players slink about their ship, attempting to stave off death and kill the…
You can pinpoint moments where things change, where ripples meet ripples and creativity shifts. Dominion concocted deckbuilding. Love Letter gave the microgame sex appeal. The Crew pulled trick-takers from the ground like a necromancer. Now, Balatro is whispering in the minds of designers, calling forth Ace of Spades, Rolling Deep, and the subject of this…
Kasper Lapp, Voight-Kampff test, 10-minute social deduction game is the kind of pitch I hope to hear when riding the elevator. Lapp previously designed quirky hits like Magic Maze and That’s Not a Hat, so his brand of silly seems uniquely appropriate for this sort of nonsense. When it works the playful interrogation is both…
You’re stuck in a foreign place. It’s a prison of walls and darkness and fear manifest. Do you trust the unknown formless hand? Do you expose your vulnerability for a glimpse of truth? Do you recoil or do you meet The Presence? The Presence is a ghost story. It’s an indie work that draws obvious…
