Author Archives: Dan Thurot
Tube of Treachery
As popular as it is to make games about war, more and more I’m drawn to those that investigate peace. Specifically, those fraught peacetimes that can be lost as surely as war, that can demolish a country, a people, a future more surely than any cannonade.
John Hague’s forthcoming The Last Summit is one such examination. Like many of our cultural landscape’s speculations for the day after tomorrow, The Last Summit presumes the collapse of civilization and the advent of apocalypse. Unlike its peers, however, it also presumes that we’ve somehow waded through to the other side. Humanity’s leaders have come together to negotiate the shape of the new world. It’s a chance to work together to quell the excesses that pushed the globe over the brink — or to capitalize on everybody’s exhaustion to seize power for yourself.
Gussy Galore
Gussy Gorillas calls itself a negotiation game. That might be a function of marketing. Please note, that isn’t the same as calling it false advertising. True to its word, it features both trading and negotiating. Further, it’s double-billed with Zoo Vadis, the Reiner Knizia negotiation game we examined last week. They’ll appear together on Kickstarter later this month, less an Abbott and Costello pairing than, I dunno, Abbott and Franz Liszt.
Maybe you can see what I’m getting at. Side by side, there’s very little connective tissue between Zoo Vadis and Gussy Gorillas. Unlike its sister title, this is a negotiation game the way chimps with typewriters are Shakespeare. Not nearly as elegant or timeless, but much louder and messier, and, depending on the day (and the theater troupe), more interesting to watch. That’s because Gussy Gorillas isn’t really about negotiation. It belongs to that most cacophonic genre, the “hollering game.”
Quo Vadis, Zoo Vadis?
I’ve never played Quo Vadis?, Reiner Knizia’s long out-of-print cult title that, to my great surprise, is not actually about Jesus appearing to Peter on the Appian Way to egg him into martyrdom. Instead, it’s a catty perspective on the Roman cursus honorum. Way to commingle your Latin references, Doc.
Here’s the thing. I might have teased Quo Vadis? back in the ’90s. I might have even chuckled at the game’s new setting. But this remake is so pristinely crafted, so sharp in its social undertaking, that I really can’t do anything other than bask in its warmth. I love it when a good game gets a second chance. Even better when its second go-round is superior to the first. To commingle some references of my own: It is risen.
See Spots Roll
If there’s any criterion we can count on Jon Perry to include in his next design, it’s that it’ll be nothing like anything else he’s ever done before. Spots, co-designed by Perry, Justin Vickers, and Alex Hague, is a delightful press-your-luck dice game. Its one commonality with Time Barons, Scape Goat, and Air, Land, & Sea is that it’s deceptively simple.
Bios:Bugs
My daughter wants to be an entomologist. Normally we’d chalk it up to passing whimsy — she’s only eight, after all — but that’s been her consistent answer to “What do you want to be when you grow up?” for something like four years now. She loves the things. Potato bugs, caterpillars, earthworms, she’ll dig ’em out of the ground and care for them, but only for a while before insisting they need to be returned home lest they perish in a mason jar.
Bios: Mesofauna, designed by Phil Eklund (yes, that one), acts as a sister title to Bios: Megafauna, this time focusing on bugs rather than ten-meter sloths. It treats its insect playthings with significantly less gentleness than my kid.
Best Week 2022! The Index!
We do this for posterity. Presumably, posterity will care very much about which board games we liked best each year.
Below the jump you will find links to each day of Best Week 2022. It was an excellent year, filled with games that were playful, meaningful, intriguing, and (ugh) fun. Here’s to another. May it be brighter and more rewarding than the last.
Best Week 2022! Mind’s Eye!
Gimmicks. Brinkmanship. Trauma. Tradency. Little by little, board games have been growing up, encompassing new ideas and new spheres of empathy and expression. This year, Best Week has been a celebration of that expansiveness. It’s a grand time to be pushing cardboard.
Sometimes, though, a game is about sussing out an opponent’s move before even they know what they’ll do. Playing 4D chess. Wheels within wheels within wheels. Today we turn our inner eye toward the exemplars that let you get into your loved ones’ heads.
Best Week 2022! Corrective Tradency!
When it comes to the transmission of culture, board games are an uncommon medium. Partly literary, largely oral, and entirely ludic, we’ve yet to see many games leverage their particular strengths to communicate effectively. Every so often, though, one shows up: a game that uses its language of play to set the record straight.
Today is about the best titles of 2022 to act as tradents of culture and history, leaning on their unique advantages as playthings and tablebound artifacts to open a clearer window to the past.
Best Week 2022! The Traumatics!
We are all broken. As board games grow more ambitious and tackle more mature topics, it’s inevitable that the traumas that are an inseparable part of life will receive treatments of their own. This is to be expected. Maybe it’s also to be expected that such games will be dour and full of halfheartedly ingurgitated meaning. What’s notable is when the games produced by this impulse are worthy of engagement. When they’re playable, interesting, thought-provoking, and yes, even my most despised curse word, when they’re “fun.”
Gah. I need to get that taste out of my mouth before it settles in for the night. So let’s talk about some board games. Today, we’re celebrating the best titles of 2022 about trauma, whether personal or systemic, hidden or overt. These are the traumatics.
Best Week 2022! Seeking Thrills!
Press-your-luck. Brinkmanship. Good old-fashioned hassling. Whatever you call it, this past year featured a wealth of great games that were about seeing how far you could escalate a situation before it blew up in your face. Today, we’re celebrating our hobby’s thrill-seekers.
SPACE-BIFF! 