Blog Archives
Auto Dominion
I believe Gricha German and Corentin Lebrat have cracked the code. Ever since the auto-battler was popularized way back in 2019, the format has seemed ripe for cardboardification. I mean, its alternate title is auto-chess, for heaven’s sake. But while plenty of titles have attempted to bring the genre to our tabletop, none of them have really captured the spirit of the thing.
Until now.
Boss Cells
I don’t envy the creative team tasked with adapting Dead Cells to cardboard. The video game is all twitch reflexes and light-speed assaults — a state I’ve heard called “submission,” more about submerging oneself within a game’s flow than about responding to any specific stimulus — which isn’t exactly the most conducive mode for taking turns or planning ahead. How does a designer transpose a video game that’s about subordinating one’s consciousness to sheer reactivity into a medium that generally works the other way around?
For the most part, the answer is that Dead Cells: The Board Game doesn’t bother.
Don’t get me wrong, there’s a living spring of talent behind this adaptation, a wundersquad that consists of Antoine Bauza (7 Wonders, Ghost Stories, Oltréé), Corentin Lebrat (Faraway, Draftosaurus), Ludovic Maublanc (Cyclades, Ca$n ‘n Gun$), and Théo Rivière (Sea Salt & Paper, The LOOP). For this collaboration, the squad approaches the original design like a fold-up snowflake, snipping around the edges of the video game for the stuff that’s easily ported to the game table and leaving the rest scattered on the carpet.
Lucy in the Floorboards with Shadows
Flashback: Lucy is designed to be impossible to talk about. Remember the first time anybody played a legacy game? How there were sealed envelopes and boxes? That moment players were instructed to look under the insert? Nowadays I reflexively check under there any time a game seems like it might be hiding something from me.
I won’t spill whether something lurks under the insert of Flashback: Lucy, but there are discoveries to be made. The phrase “delight and surprise” is overused, but that’s precisely the emotion the team behind Flashback: Lucy managed to dredge from this leathery old sack.
SPACE-BIFF! 