You can tell that a designer is crushing it when I start mentally checking other games against theirs. Case in point, Jasper Beatrix — a design collective, not a singular person — has now crafted one of my favorite word games in Typeset, one of my favorite tableau-builders via Scream Park, and a pair of deduction titles, Signal and Here Lies, which have more or less ruined other detective games for me. Also, there’s Corvids. There aren’t enough games like Corvids for me to name-check it against.

Thing Thing is Jasper Beatrix’s attempt at a party game. As these things go, it displays the collective’s trademark good humor and cleverness. But it’s also the first of their titles that doesn’t fill me with a desperate need to share it with as many people as possible.

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