Gameblog

Category: More about games

  • Da Vinci’s Challenge

    Review in Finnish here DaVinci’s Challenge is yet another game trying to milk the popularity of Dan Brown’s books. Once again, any connection between this game and Leonardo Da Vinci is fairly thin and based on art alone (and even the art is mangled: let’s just say the Vitruvian Man is less of a man…

  • Pentago

    This review in Finnish Pentago, the Finnish Adult Game of the year for 2006, is a twist on good old naughts and crosses. Players try to form five in a row on a 6×6 grid. That’s fairly boring, but fortunately that’s not all. The twist is in the board, which is divided into quadrants of…

  • Viva Topo!

    Finnish edition of this review It’s easy to dismiss Viva Topo! as a simple game for kids. That’s what it is, but it’s also more! It’s become the current favourite of me and my wife. We play it together, as our son is still way too young for board games. Viva Topo! is a simple…

  • BGG ratings correlation

    I miss the ratings correlation tool from BoardGameGeek. Actually, I miss it so much, I went and built my own: BGG ratings correlation. Type in two usernames and you’ll get the correlation between the ratings. The tool will cache the collections to reduce the strain to Geek servers (not that it’s a huge problem), and…

  • Finnish Players’ Picks 2006

    Finnish Players’ Picks have been chosen for 2006! The winner is Caylus. Nice surprise, I’d say. I wonder how much the fast release of the Finnish edition helped… A GeekList of top 25 games is once again available, as are the complete results.

  • Terra Nova

    Review of Terra Nova in Finnish. Terra Nova is a fairly abstract game of fence-building. Players try to move their men on the board and fence off as much land for themselves as possible. If the land features just one landscape, it’s even better. The game reminds me a lot of Amazonas, but there are…

  • Finnish Game of the Year awards

    Finnish Game of the Year awards for 2006 are out now, and what a huge disappointment they are! Best children’s game is Build-a-Burger (I would’ve given the award to Das kleine Gespenst, but I don’t know anything about Build-a-Burger). Best family game is Quackle, which seems to be a clone of Snorta!, or at least…

  • New Age of Steam maps

    Like I need more temptations: Bézier Games has published two new Age of Steam maps: London and Sun. Both are designed by JC Lawrence, one of the more interesting people in the web board game scene. The maps seem fabulous, both offering tough, challenging games. Looks like there might an Essen courier available to avoid…

  • Hacienda

    Another review up: Hacienda. Hacienda is a solo work from Wolfgang Kramer, published by Hans im Glück. That’s quite a combo: one of the esteemed professional designers and one of the most appreciated publishers known for quality games. This definitely sets up the expectations. While Hacienda isn’t a particularly great game, it’s good. What Kramer…

  • Children’s games — Das kleine Gespenst and Geisterwäldchen

    I tried some children’s games with Johanna. These are always pretty hard to evaluate when you don’t have children to try them with. Both games are not very good for adult use, so they’ll end up in storage, waiting for Nooa to grow up. Das kleine Gespenst is based on a classic children’s book by…