Money! Money makes the world go round. Money also makes factories, fleets and armies that around that world and bash each other to bits, at least that’s according to Imperial 2030! But is it really all about war? Just because it looks like Risk and even smells like Risk, that doesn’t mean you should make risky assumptions. Paul has been learning the ever-twisting dance of the...
Thrower: The table is a wreck of cards, tokens and wads of cash. One player has collapsed on the sofa, eyes closed, exhausted. Another feverishly sorts their deck, cards held close to face, unable to understand what went wrong. Someone else has walked out, professing a desire for space and calm. I’m wondering where the last two hours went and how I didn’t notice we now have an audience...
There’s a faintly luddite spirit to the board game renaissance of recent years, perhaps a reaction to the heavy demands screens now make on our time. Yet there isn’t such a great divide between games built of cardboard and those spun from code. They explore similar themes and their designers frequently learn from one another.
In 2007, a simple web game, Pandemic, challenged players with spreading an infection across the world. Around the same time, an unrelated board game of the same name tasked its players with preventing the spread of disease and quickly assumed cult status. Soon after, a mobile game called Plague Inc reversed the goal again, making global epidemic a mainstay of many commutes, while happily crediting the original Pandemic web game as an inspiration. Now Plague Inc has been reimagined as a board game that looks much like a homage to the board game, completing a considerable circle over 10 years.
Continue reading...Quinns: As “escape rooms” continue to spread across the world like an architectural venereal disease (but a nice one!), you may or may not know that there are now lots of escape room board games. Yes! You can have (almost) all the fun of escaping a real room, but at a tidy fraction of the price. For the last few weeks I’ve been fretting and sweating against these games’ arbitrary countdowns...
Hoo baby! The profoundly beefy 2016 game of Great Western Trail is finally back in stock the world over. We’ve had ample time to test its systems, prodding its many rules from every conceivable angle, and today want to tell you that it lives up to the hype. And thank goodness for that! When was the last time your evenings contained a dose of cowboy magic? It was too long, wasn’t it?
Matt: Chucking Pandemic Legacy in the bin proved to be an uncomfortable day for my board game collection, causing a cardboard-flavoured existential wobble. As much as I love – had loved – Pandemic, experiencing the full-fat campaign spin-off had left me wondering if I’d ever bring myself to go back to the standard co-op game that had been such a household staple. I’ve spent a while...
Our monthly guide to new board games features a mysterious archipelago kingdom off the coast of Japan, a magical gardening game and a chance to play pizza
Welcome to our monthly roundup of the best new board games. This time around we’re building shrines and palaces in ancient Japan, stuffing ourselves with delicious pizza and growing magical flowers in a surprisingly cut-throat gardening contest.
Paul: Here are two things that are absolutely and irrefutably true: 1) I love art. 2) I hate getting up early. Here are two more things that are painful in their truth: 1) Sometimes you have to get up early in the service of your art. 2) This feels awful. Here are three other things that feel awful: 1) When the guy at the market has nothing to sell but combinations of the same sickly yellow paint...
Cynthia: The television show Firefly, one of Joss Whedon’s series, has wriggled deep into the shared geek consciousness since it aired in 2002-3. Phrases such as “Curse your sudden but inevitable betrayal”, “I can kill you with my brain”, and “Yessir Captain Tightpants” now serve as entry passwords into secret geek spaces, flashes of color that we use to...
It looks like Watson & Holmes isn’t the only game that wants to offer something different from Consulting Detective! Introducing Mythos Tales, a game of solving occult mysteries where if you’re not careful, you might become a victim yourself. Will Paul Dean crack the case of whether Mythos Tales is a worthy consumer product, or will this be his final review? We wish him luck.
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