Blog Archives
The Man DeLorean
Here’s what I’ve gleaned from watching one episode of The Mandalorian. It’s Star Wars, all right. Boba Fett is taking petty bounties to reforge his armor after it was melted by that sandworm on Arrakis. He learns how to ride a bipedal potato, shoots up a town populated by four hundred gungoons, and saves Small Yoda from his old nemesis IG-88.
This is me blinking in bewilderment. People like this stuff?
The Mandalorian: Adventures is a board game adaptation of the entire first season by Corey Konieczka. It isn’t about to persuade me to watch more Star Wars. But in a huge twist worthy of a montage about riding a potato, I wouldn’t mind seeing an expansion with more shootouts, heists, and general buffoonery.
Walk the (Slack) Line
Peacemakers: Horrors of War fascinates me. This is my third visit to Sami Laakso’s Daimyria, a world not dissimilar to ours but populated by countless species of fur and scale and feather. Like humans, as we saw in Dale of Merchants, these creatures engage in mercantile exchange. In Lands of Galzyr, they wander off on continent-spanning adventures. And in Peacemakers: Horrors of War, they expend a great deal of energy on killing one another.
But not all of them. Horrors of War is a second stab at the system Laakso introduced in Dawn of Peacemakers, which cast characters not only as negotiators and mediators determined to cease hostilities between neighboring belligerents, but also sometimes as manipulators and poisoners. The art of peace, Peacemakers argues, is as fraught as battle itself. As a result, it walks multiple fine lines, both ludically and morally.
Sinking Buckets
How can I put this tactfully? PICKUP wasn’t designed for me. I can’t say with any confidence that it was designed for anyone. The production is sloppy, with flimsy cards and poorly cut edges that dust your table and fingers with abrasive flakes of paper. The design and art are uncredited. For a dice game, I’m not sure it understands what makes dice interesting. The game doesn’t even come with rules. Not all of them. There are three modes, starter, party, and classic. Only the rules for the party mode are included in the box. And let me tell you, “party” is a misnomer.
Classic, though? Classic isn’t awful.
Space-Cast! #40. Heading Flint
Politics! There’s no avoiding them. In today’s space-cast, we’re joined by John du Bois to talk about two of his designs that encourage political awareness and human empathy: Heading Forward, about recovering from a traumatic head injury, and Striking Flint, focused on the 1936 General Motors sit-down strike. Along the way, we cover topics ranging from triggers and spoons to the banning of Matteo Menapace from the Spiel des Jahres.
Listen here or download here. Timestamps can be found after the jump.
Ars Wilmot
Meet Wilmot’s Warehouse. Based on the video game by Richard Hogg and Ricky Haggett, and designed by David King — creator of browser-based roll-and-write Tiny Islands — Wilmot’s Warehouse is a memory game. Let me finish! Wilmot’s Warehouse is a memory game but good. But great. But excellent. But a minor miracle, a religious experience, a paean to human creativity in an era where tech grifters believe the species ought to be replaced by expensive imitation engines.
Hearts Adrift
Not many things sound as terrifying as drifting through outer space. Remember that scene in Alfonso Cuarón’s Gravity where Sandra Bullock was sent spinning head over heels, alone but for the stars in her visor and the percussion of her own panicked breathing? My heart. That was scarier than any thorny alien.
Mark McGee’s Tether isn’t terrifying — quite the opposite! — but it leans into the disorientation of not knowing up from down. A crew of retrofuturist astronauts has been set adrift. It’s your task to bind them into secure clusters. Prepare for brain burn, because this thing is hotter than rocket fuel.
Ogling the Seers Catalog
Of the three recent trick-takers from Bézier Games — the others being Xylotar and Sandbag — far and away my favorite is Taylor Reiner’s Seers Catalog. Yes, the name is a strained riff on the Sears-Roebuck mail-order empire, one that proposes that oracles, augurs, and all manner of prognosticators also like to thumb through a heavy paper volume of mostly useless products. But that’s also part of what makes the game so effective. Scratch the surface of the pun and you’ll find a critique of American commercial identity.
Not that you need to care about that part, of course. But it’s nice all the same.
Snack Packs
AAAHHH! Too many games! I didn’t ask for this. Literally, I did not ask for this. I requested A Message from the Stars, and Allplay sent me these four tiny boxes. That’s one way to manage your warehouse overfill.
Fortunately, I wouldn’t call them half-bad. One or two might even be quite good. But since they’re all tiny, it seemed appropriate to write about them all at once. I’ll tackle them in alphabetical order so as to avoid the appearance of favoritism.
You’re the Duke! You’re the Duke!
Because I play so many board games, sometimes this funny thing happens where I’ll experience a game and its source material out of order. Last night, for example, I watched my first episode of The Mandalorian as research for Corey Konieczka’s latest adventure title. This is always an interesting process. Rather than approaching the game with my own assumptions about what a proper adaptation might entail, everything is flipped on its head as my feelings toward the source material are filtered through the lens of the of the adaptation. I’m peering through the telescope in reverse.
A few weeks back, I watched Escape from New York for the first time. The reason? That same evening, I’d conducted my inaugural play of Kevin Wilson’s version of John Carpenter’s cult classic. My main takeaway was that the film, like the game, is sublime trash. But here’s the kicker: I think I prefer the game.
I’ve Got Callouses on My Fingers
After the first two sets in Kevin Wilson’s Kinfire Delve, Vainglory’s Grotto and Scorn’s Stockade, it remained to be seen whether there was much reason to return for a third (and final?) outing.
The short version? Callous’ Lab offers more of the same, with the anticipated adjustments and extras that aficionados may want to pick up. But it would be a lie to say I wasn’t getting a little strained at the prospect of any further quests.
SPACE-BIFF! 