Blog Archives
Dive, Evade, Scrawl, Erase
There’s something special about real-time games. Whether it’s the team-on-team action of Space Cadets: Dice Duel, the brisk cooperation of Meteor or FUSE, or the nigh-impossible machinations of current reigning champion Space Alert, nothing gets the heart drumming like a game where minutes count. Where seconds count. Stripped out is the freedom to analyze or negotiate or stall. Gone is the mathy higher brain function that dominates so many games. All that remains is panic and reflex.
Captain Sonar grasps what makes real-time games such a thrill. And, calling it right now, it’s not only one of the best real-time games ever made, it’s also one of the best games. Full stop.
Not Exactly an Al Swearengen Simulator
For those of us who fit into the Venn diagram encompassing both those who love board games and those who love Deadwood, Saloon Tycoon seems like a no-brainer. Not only could we get up to our elbows in all the brutality, back-stabbing, and profiteering that goes with the territory, it would also go a long way towards legitimizing our extensive Al Swearengen vocabulary. Ya hoopleheads.
Unfortunately, while I wrote earlier this week about a Kickstarter title that could have used some more publisher oversight but still turned out okay in the end, Saloon Tycoon provides the opposite example. As in, this particular batch of cornbread needed a few more minutes on the stove.
Networkcrawler
Everything I know about running a broadcast television network I pretty much learned from broadcast television. Which is great! Who better to learn from than the creators of content themselves, after all. Thus, I went into The Networks expecting to totally 30 Rock it.
We’ll All Float On Okay
If I were forced to identify the unifying “aesthetic” of a Ryan Laukat game — and avoided using actual, you know, aesthetics, the bold colors and whimsical fantasy creations that populate his worlds — it would be that the creator of Red Raven Games has carved a niche out for himself by making games that seem a lot like other games, but look and play almost nothing like anything else. City of Iron announces itself as a cube-pusher and deck-builder, then merges those systems in a way that’s reminiscent of precisely nothing. Eight-Minute Empire is a study in minimalism that avoids feeling restrictive. Even Laukat’s forays into worker placement, The Ancient World and Above and Below — which itself echoes older storytelling games like Tales of the Arabian Nights — step to the beat of their own drummer. It’s almost as though Laukat knows these systems exist, but has only read about them in old newspaper articles or printed-out scraps of blog posts that happened to wash up on his desert island.
And to be clear, that’s a good thing. It’s what makes something like Islebound work so well.
Man-Made Climate
Evolution has always been a game of counting calories, though in a different sense than most of us are accustomed to. It’s anything goes all the time, with everyone consuming every last leaf, berry, and scrap of meat they can clamp their jaws around. I’ve both written and spoken about my love for Evolution in the past, but now it’s time to explain why Climate is the pinnacle of the series thus far.
Vale of Transparency
The land is rotten: the grass brown and brittle, the trees bare and splintered, the fields less fertile than ever before. Unseemly dog-swirls mar the once-spotless walking paths. As one of the druid clans of the Valley of Life, it is your duty to cleanse the land by—
—building decks and playing blackjack, mostly. Sort of. Mostly.
Sickle of the Hype
If there are two things I’m wary of, it’s hype and Eurogames. Scratch that, three things: also moths. I hate those dusty-winged buggers.
Those first two reasons are why, in spite of my love for Jamey Stegmaier’s earlier Euphoria: Build a Better Dystopia, I was so wary of his newest title, Scythe. The early previews received it with such breathless ecstasy, as though this game of mechs-and-agriculture were some rapturous merger of religion and boardgamery. Not only would Scythe cure world hunger through mechanization and make cube-pushing fun again, it would also look good at the same time. It was all a bit much, honestly.
So imagine my surprise that Scythe is actually one rattlesnake of a game, tightly coiled and packing enough bite to back up all that noise.
Through the Long Night
Dead of Winter was one of the best games of 2014. For one thing, it managed to weave a zombie yarn that didn’t feel stale, but beyond that it was also about as good as narrative-driven games get, full of deception and hidden motives, the nagging threat of betrayal, and plenty of do-or-die moments that could make or break the most stalwart colony of survivors. It was good stuff.
The Long Night isn’t just any old expansion. It’s right there on the box: nothing else required, stand-alone, everything you need to play. In essence, it’s Dead of Winter plus more, with any significant duplicate matter vacuumed out so that those who own the original game will find a reason to return to relive what is largely the same game. Perfect for new players and old-timers alike — or is it? In a package so packed to the rafters with stuff, let’s take a look at what The Long Night is really all about.
Mud, Smoke, and Friendship
They wrote in the old days that it is sweet and fitting to die for one’s country. But in modern war there is nothing sweet nor fitting in your dying. You will die like a dog for no good reason.
_____—Ernest Hemingway
In general, I’ve heard two broad complaints about The Grizzled — which, as I wrote last year, I consider an important title. This is probably overselling the matter; after all, it has been accepted rather warmly considering it’s a crab-apple of a game, tough and sour all the way to the core, with only the tiniest seeds of hope at the center. Still, there’s a new expansion available, called At Your Orders!, and it seeks to ameliorate some of the complaints with the base game. So let’s talk.
(Steam) Engine Builder
What do luminaries George Washington Carver, Alexander Graham Bell, Marie Curie, and Guglielmo Marconi have in common? Their love of contraption racing, naturally.
If nothing else, Steampunk Rally, which comes with sixteen characters to select from, makes for a serviceable who’s who of inventors. Slap down Sakichi Toyoda, ask what he invented, then shake your head in resignation when everyone guesses Toyota. That’s the man’s company, not one of his inventions. Depending on the way you say it, you either sound doubly smart or doubly pedantic.
SPACE-BIFF! 