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Flapjacks, Magic Tricks, & Sputtering Torches
All I play anymore is trick-taking games. Fortunately, it’s an uncommonly smart genre. Today I’m covering three titles that highlight both the format’s breadth and what makes trick-taking one of tabletop’s most enduring pastimes — and one of its meanest.
In other words, these are trick-takers for jerkwads. Compliment intended.
Nebulae, Medusae… Crownae?
Yesterday on BlueSky, Marceline Leiman asked a great question. Using only one or two extremely vague words, how would I describe the titles on offer at this year’s Indie Games Night Market?
Now that I’ve given it some thought, I think I have an answer, although perhaps it’s more concrete than she was looking for. More even than last year, these games seem like they’re pushing boundaries. They capture the spirit of what it means to be “indie.” Not only in the sense that they don’t have publishers. Rather, that they see the hobby from a perspective apart. They know board games; they love board games; they’re in conversation with board games. But more than that, they’re board games as lenses through which one might behold the entirety of the hobby. Its past. Its present. Its future.
How’s that for a wanky answer? Oh well. What follows are three games I love for different reasons, but perhaps love even better for the same reason — because they’re outsiders paying homage to their hobby, but doing so in a way that’s so defiantly indie.
Intertidal Zone
High Tide is wonderful. Designed by Marceline Leiman and currently only slated to be sold in limited quantities at the forthcoming Indie Games Night Market in December, its petite format conceals surprising breadth, the way a seashell might contain a mollusk or hermit crab or the whole rounded cacophony of the ocean.
SPACE-BIFF! 