Category Archives: Board Game
Space-Cast! #32. The Mirroring of Jenna Felli
Jenna Felli is the well-known designer of some truly unique board games, among them Shadows of Malice, Zimby Mojo, Bemused, Dûhr: The Lesser Houses, Cosmic Frog, and The Mirroring of Mary King. Despite having designed some recognizable games, however, Jenna is appearing for the first time on today’s episode. Join us as we discuss chaos, identity, and authenticity in board games and in life.
Listen here or download here. Timestamps can be found after the jump.
Roadside Picnicking
There’s always been a bit of an identity crisis rattling around the copper-bottomed hull of Scythe. Jamey Stegmaier and Jakub Rozalski’s alt-history speak to one thing, those continental hamlets shaking at the approach of smoke-belching combat mechs. Then you play it and it’s about moving logs. And I say this as somebody with an above-average appreciation for the thing.
After multiple expansions and a spin-off for kids, Stegmaier and Rozalski are back at it with a proper sequel. It’s called Expeditions, and it swaps the battle-torn countryside for the barren tundras of Siberia, where a recent meteor fall has kicked off a series of otherworldly events. It’s a tantalizing excuse to groom your animal companion, check the bolt of your rifle, and hop into the old mech for one last adventure. It’s too bad the winter air doesn’t work any miracles on the series’ neuroses.
Roll-and-Aright
The roll-and-write craze kinda fizzled, huh? Apart from one or two exceptions, the genre never developed much past the bijou phase. Maybe it’s for the best. Even though it hasn’t been all that long since we were playing dozens of the things, Nao Shimamura’s Mind Space carries itself with the air of a throwback. It’s crisp and elegant and even, dare I say it, thematic.
Fashion Is Danger
I had a revelation yesterday. After publishing my review of fashion game Couture, one reader asked if I had mentioned my ignorance of the topic as a form of hedging, perhaps to distance myself from something that might be considered “girly.” After all, one recalls how Prêt-à-Porter, the fashion industry game by Ignacy Trzewiczek and Piotr Haraszczak, was derided by some as unworthy of attention because it wasn’t “serious.” Serious, of course, meaning manly. Like war, trains, stock trading, and painstakingly accessorizing a paper doll cutout for a dungeon dive.
But when I think back, I’m not sure I’ve ever thought of fashion as dominated by women. To me, dressing women in outfits and having them glide down the runway for a crowd’s viewing pleasure always seemed rather male-oriented. Still, the question made me realize something. While fashion has never struck me as inherently feminine, I have always thought of it as frivolous. Much like Anne Hathaway’s character in The Devil Wears Prada scoffing over the false choice of two near-identical belts, fashion inhabited my mind as an expensive pursuit for people with more money than sense.
Until I played The Battle of Versailles.
Larger than Life with Just a Hint of Lace
Everything I know about fashion came from either Zoolander or my friend Geoff, so it’s a safe bet to say I don’t know the first thing about fashion. Yasuke Sato’s Couture portrays fashion models as globe-trotting influencers, assembling a portfolio of dresses, poses, and glam squads. As auction games go, it shows glimmers of brilliance behind its workmanlike façade.
Salmonella
In the United States, around four percent of all packaged chicken is contaminated with salmonella.
Just thought you might want to know that.
Anyway, Chicken! by the ever-prolific Scott Almes is all about backing out of a bad bet. You know, playing chicken. Supposedly.
Those Darn Kittens
Speaking as someone who regularly plays games filled with questionable content, I’m not sure I’ve ever witnessed stakes quite as high as those in Frank West’s Race to the Raft. The Isle of Cats has caught fire and it’s your task to herd these disoriented kittens to safety. Because they are cats, they are the opposite of ruly. My nine-year-old is invested. So invested, in fact, that I have been prohibited from playing it without her.
One Minute to Stationfall
I don’t remember how it came up. Andy Mesa, the principal developer on Matt Eklund’s Stationfall, mentioned that this was the logical endpoint of all those fancy patented techs in Pax Transhumanity. I can see it. All these advances, yet we still cut corners on the station’s construction codes. This is a place where heavily armed security bots brush elbows with sentient chimps and telepathic rats, where botanists and schizophrenic doctors chase patents of their own via research most unethical, where a billionaire has taken up residence across the corridor from the maintenance clones. And it’s falling out of the sky.
That billionaire, by the way, is the source of Stationfall’s least-subtle but best joke. But to understand it, you first need to onboard some basics. And what better way to do that than by hearing the tale of the time my best buddy was kidnapped?
Charmed!
Taiki Shinzawa has designed no fewer than three of my favorite trick-takers: American Bookshop, 9 Lives, and Ghosts of Christmas. Now two more of his designs are getting wider distribution thanks to New Mill Industries. There’s Inflation!, formerly known as Zimbabwe Trick, and Charms, née Dois. Both titles very much want to punish you for making grave counting errors.
Sounds Swedish
I’m one of those nerds who insists that board games “get Star Trek right.” Just ask my reviews of Star Trek: Ascendancy, which offers a longue durée telling of the series’ civilizations, or even Star Trek: Super-Skill Pinball, with its emphasis on weird situations and problem-solving.
But it matters. Star Trek was the formative science fiction of my childhood. It was never as polished as Star Wars. Maybe more importantly, its collectible card game wasn’t nearly as interesting. But it was a series that celebrated doubt and skepticism rather than positing that its in-universe religion was the font of truth. In Star Wars, success was a question of believing hard enough. In Star Trek, it was a question of breaking down the problem into its constituent pieces and then working through them. For a kid grappling with existential questions in a culture that offered too many glib answers, Star Trek was a promise.
So when three sets of Star Trek: Away Missions appeared unbidden on my doorstep, I was skeptical. Hey, that’s the Star Trek way. Maybe I shouldn’t have been. Although Away Missions has plenty of problems, getting Star Trek right isn’t one of them.
SPACE-BIFF! 