Gameblog

Author: Mikko

  • Dale of Merchants 3

    Dale of Merchants 3 by Sami Laakso, coming to Kickstarter on May 1st 2020. Sami Laakso was kind enough to send me a preview version of the game. I know Sami and have helped promote his games before, but I’ve also bought the published versions of all his games and will buy this one as…

  • Top 10 tile laying games

    I did a list of top 10 tile-laying games. I’ve defined tile laying much more strictly than the BoardGameGeek tile placement game mechanism list does. I’m looking for games where tile laying or tile placement is the main mechanism. The game should be about laying tiles, with spatial relationships between tiles being important: either connections…

  • Staying Power

    On a GCL Amoeba discussion, Eric Brosius started a discussion on his Staying Power metric he calculates for the games he has played. That interested me enough that I implemented the same metric in my own game stats. The way it works is that for a start, it’s an average of number of times a…

  • Best 30 years of games – Jan 2020 edition

    I wanted to take a look at the best years of games, but didn’t feel like going through everything and ordering it manually. Fortunately, I was able to come up with an automatic solution. I have logs of all my game plays since 2001 and could use that data to rank the years. The solution…

  • Gaming Year 2019

    2019 was a solid year of games. Updating my game stats app. A major project this year was updating my game stats app. I’ve been keeping my stats in a DIY web app, built with PHP and MySQL some fifteen years ago. I’ve been updating it and adding new features, but I’ve had some problems…

  • Escape from the Starline Express

    Escape from the Starline Express by Alessandro Deriu, published by Professor Puzzle in 2019. I bought a used copy myself, because this was a new escape room game series for me – I’ve never tried one of these before. Elevator pitch: An escape room puzzle game where you hunt down diamond thiefs in a 1920s…

  • My top 20 games

    Here’s a top 20 list of games I like. This is based on my annual top 100 lists. I’ve been doing those since 2014, so I thought there’s some history there I could use. Here’s the latest edition on BGG. I scored each list: the first game gets 100 points, next one 99 points and…

  • GM free roleplaying

    I’ve had some interest in roleplaying games before. It’s my first hobby gaming interest, really: my tabletop gaming hobby began with roleplaying games, before Magic or hobby board games. I’ve never played much, though. Most of the time my interest has been fairly theoretical. I played D&D as a kid and some Changeling in university.…

  • Freezing Death: Finnish Winter War

    Freezing Death: Finnish Winter War by Antti Lehmusjärvi and Olli Kleemola, published by Linden Lake Games after a successful Kickstarter campaign in 2019. I got a review copy on loan from Linden Lake Games. I know Antti and have a professional relationship with him: I have used his services as a lawyer and have built…

  • Tapestry

    The game: Tapestry by Jamey Stegmaier, published by Stonemaier Games in 2019. I got a review copy from Stonemaier Games. Originally they told me no, but when a local gamer who had preordered the game got a dented box, Stonemaier had him pass the damaged copy to me, while he got a brand new game…