Blog Archives
Calimala Olives
Sometimes I assume that everybody around me knows the same things that I know. To wit: when I began teaching the second edition of Calimala — the first edition of which was published in 2017 and launched Fabio Lopiano’s career as a game designer — everyone at the table started talking about Kalamata olives, and not, you know, the Arte di Calimala, the cloth finishers guild that was the economic backbone of Florence for two centuries.
Why would I assume that everybody knows about the Arte di Calimala? Don’t ask me. I’m in the assumptions business, not the understanding my assumptions business. At any rate, Calimala isn’t a game that requires much historical knowledge. Sure, Lopiano includes a number of nods to Florentine business practices and even city governance, but it’s too razor-toothed to matter. This one is sharp. But it may, perhaps, contain the seeds that would lead Lopiano to clutter his later designs with interlocking systems.
Fire Hazards
Alley Cat Games recently sent me three board games that have one thing in common: each one of them is about a different fire hazard. That’s right, kids. Only you can prevent forest fires.
I guess there are some other commonalities. Like the fact that each of these games is packaged in a mint tin, costs fifteen bucks at most, and knows exactly how to make a tiny board game look amazing. Take my hand as we kindle each fire one at a time — or douse them. It’s safety time!
Arbor Daze
After a disaster left much of the land uninhabitable, eco-pilgrims journey to faraway territories to restore both their village’s habitats and the creatures that once dwelled there. Dani Garcia’s Arborea joins the recent run of ecologically conscious board games; this time, its fantasy setting provides a colorful, almost trippy backdrop to the action. It’s conservation on acid, the Half-Earth Project on mushrooms.
If only it had embraced the trip.
Biting Off Too Many Bahnbahns
There’s something off about Autobahn, the heavy Eurogame by Fabio Lopiano and Nestore Mangone. The game wears its inspirations on its sleeve, both the historical, bound up in the division and eventual reunification of post-war Germany, and the mechanical, based on the interlocking incentives of other route-building games. It’s a game with a lot on its mind. Perhaps too much. Its gaze is larger than its stomach.
Skimping on Parchment
I’m a skeptic when it comes to roll-and-writes. For every one that hits, there are three or four others I’d rather never touch again. No, I won’t be giving examples. Whether that’s because I can’t remember any off the top of my head, I can neither confirm nor deny.
Paper Dungeons by Leandro Pires exemplifies the phenomenon. Per Space-Biff! policy, I’ve played it three times. In between each play, it managed to slip from my memory like fog through fingers.
Fighters in Spaaaaace
There are so many things in Jordan Nichols and Michael Dunsmore’s Star Fighters: Rapid Fire that ought to be my jam. This is a real-time game (check) about chucking dice (check) and assigning them to a starship’s dashboard (check) in order to blast your opponent out of the sky (check check check). That’s a lot of checks. An entire preflight checklist’s worth of checks.
Upon takeoff, however, the flight was turbulent. Or perhaps it wasn’t turbulent enough. There’s no turbulence in outer space. What I’m saying is that it didn’t go as I’d hoped. After giving it some thought, there are two reasons for Star Fighter’s failure to launch. Now there’s the right metaphor! One, this game doesn’t seem to know what to do with its dice. And two, it’s been done before with far greater panache.
Rome in a Quarter Hour
Despite being familiar to anybody who’s divided a last piece of cake, “I cut, you choose” doesn’t tend to attract much attention. It wouldn’t be accurate to say that Evgeny Petrov’s Rome in a Day is looking to change that. This is a quiet little game, such an embodiment of the filler category that it takes literally fifteen minutes to play. In spite of that, it’s an unexpectedly solid title that transforms its players into shrewd speculators of hexes and laser-cut structures.
SPACE-BIFF! 