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We did it, folks. Humanity has invented—nay, perfected—time travel. They said it couldn’t be done. They were wrong. The scientists at publisher Plaid Hat Games figured it out. It’s less complicated than I’d have expected time travel to be, requiring only that you set up a copy of The Monolith and sit down. The technology also seems to be fairly limited in its applications, since The Monolith only…
Inca Empire: The Card Game - Thomas Wells At some point I’ll have to review Inca Empire , as it’s a pretty neat take on a cube rail, shared incentive track-building game. Inca Empire: The Card Game , in the storied tradition of X: The Card Game , is less than a pale imitation of its predecessor. It’s a game with some novel mechanisms, but because of turn order problems and really uninteresting…
I’ve spent much of my time with Gazebo , publisher Bitewing Games’s update of Reiner Knizia’s cult release Qin , appreciating the humble domino. Why is it so good? Is it the heft? Unexpectedly heavy tiny objects are disarming, after all. There’s the abnormally smooth texture and the rounded corners, the clack—not a click, but a clack—every time you put one down on a hard surface. Maybe it’s a…
Human memory is a funny thing. Every time I sit down to play Gingham , the latest collaboration between designer Robert Hovakimyan and publisher Bitewing Games, the song “Teddy Bears’ Picnic” rises like a leviathan from the depths of my memory. “If you go down to the woods today, you’re sure for a big surprise,” I sing as I lay out the checkerboard picnic blanket and organize the ants. “If you go…
Imported from Abroad It’s nice to see a foreign game company pop its head up, especially when it comes from a country not often represented in the gaming community. Mozaic Games, from India, made its convention debut at Gen Con last year, bringing over numerous titles centered around the country’s rich heritage and culture. The company had sold out of nearly all its inventory by the show’s end,…
Out of Sorts is now the second memory game I’ve played in the last few years that isn’t really a memory game at all. Like Wilmot’s Warehouse , which uses the façade of memorization to trick players into collaborating on a story, the memorization in Out of Sorts is a distraction, a means to an end rather than the end itself. Do you want to spend twenty or thirty minutes memorizing the order of…
My view of criticism is that, when done well, it is generative and contextualizing to the form it critiques. Having the privilege of reviewing and analyzing games comes with a degree of responsibility. Don’t misunderstand me—there is zero responsibility to a corporation, a designer, and anyone else who has made the business of games their business. My responsibility is to the mysterious and…
Euphoria Essential Edition (2026, Stonemaier Games) is the updated version of 2013’s Euphoria: Build a Better Dystopia , a game that I had heard about over the years but never played myself. That’s not because the game isn’t easy to understand; featuring a rulebook with a linen finish and lots of clear ways to understand the game’s mechanics (both in multiplayer and for its automa rules), Euphoria…
The new game Revenant (2026, Mindclash Games) arrived about a month ago, and it took me a couple weeks to get the game to the table for my review plays. Between the ruleset (complex) and the playtime (substantial), tabling any game from Mindclash is typically a big endeavor. Now that I’ve finished four plays—once at three players, twice at four players, then once solo—I have a lot of thoughts. For…
About four years ago, I wrote a negative review of the game Lacrimosa . I’d never written a major pan before and, while I stand by the diagnoses in that review, I have come to believe that the review itself was too much. In trying to capture the feelings of exasperation and bloat that Lacrimosa brought up in me, the review itself became exasperating and bloated. I’ve played more than my share of…
The Old King’s Crown - Will Hare As we put away The Old King’s Crown , there were two seemingly incongruent but true sentiments coming from my play group. The first is simply… that first play was a mess. Total mess. Constant takebacks and missed triggers, being blindsided by some shocking thing you didn’t know your opponents could do, or having your carefully planned turn totally upended by some…
It’s Sort of Like… The majority of my friends are non-gamers. While we do all kinds of other hobby activities together, gaming simply isn’t one of them. I stopped bringing games to gatherings a long time ago because we all know they won’t get played, and that’s okay. The key to a balanced social life is knowing which friends are good for which activities. Every so often, though, I’ll get my hands…
