Burning Rome is a game I’ve had a very difficult time contextualizing. It comes in this saturated blood-red box with the subtitle “Rome’s Nightmare”. The cards have attractive, but realistic depictions of Roman, Carthaginian, Celtic, and Gaelic soldiers on them. … Continued
Warning: Very light and mostly non-specific spoilers for the first 4 games of Charterstone. Lots of spoilers for stuff you’ll find out pretty quickly in game 1. If you know you’re sensitive to any and all spoiler material, you probably … Continued
The Supertall Kickstarter is online until 6/30 Straight off their rousing success with Sprawlopolis, a genuinely great cooperative puzzle game, Button Shy is now kickstarting Supertall, a game of strategically building up skyscrapers and card manipulation. Like all of their … Continued
One summer in my childhood my friend and I got obsessed with Soul Calibur 2 for the Gamecube. It was my first true experience with a 2D (style) fighting game. I’d grown up playing PC games and didn’t go to … Continued
Lisboa, Portuguese eurogame master Vital Lacerda’s newest design, is a visual and mechanical smorgasboard–a hodgepodge of player incentives, feedback loops, and iconography teetering on the brink of “too much!” Until, of course, you play through your first game. Then, thinking … Continued
I just spent the weekend down in Connecticut at “Connclave” playing games non-stop. I know you’re all immensely jealous about that fact, so I’m here to spread the love. Here are some mini-reviews of every single game I played that … Continued
You stare at the grid of faces. Some are human. Others–robots. It doesn’t matter. All that matters are the faces, and the names. Is the killer next to you? You’ve been investigating hard, and you’ve narrowed down the killer’s identity … Continued
How can this not be a first impression? Has anyone ever finished Gloomhaven? It’s so big and so immense in its scope that I fear that it can’t live up to the expectations I’ve created in my mind. I still … Continued
I’ve been learning and playing a lot of new games recently, but none of them have made the impression that Concordia has after only one play. It’s been a few days and I’m still thinking about strategic possibilities and how … Continued
I have this theory, supported by some evidence, that game designers have to harbor a bit of cruelty for the participants in their games in order to make great games. We see this with Uwe Rosenberg, who built a punishing … Continued