Gameblog

Category: More about games

  • Musing on mahjong

    Musing on mahjong

    I had a delightful opportunity to play mahjong recently. My son has always been into the game, and my daughter also got into it recently. She’s been interested, but the game has been too hard for her. Now that she’s 12, she can play. We were visiting my mother, who also plays, and while I…

  • Blue Skies

    Blue Skies by Joe Huber, published Rio Grande Games in 2020. I’ve played this couple of times with a friend’s copy. Elevator pitch: This very plain-looking game offers an interesting mix of short-term point collection and long-term area majority in a very old-fashioned way. What’s in the box? There’s a big very plain-looking board full…

  • Lands of Galzyr

    Lands of Galzyr by Sami Laakso and Seppo Kuukasjärvi, launched on Gamefound by Snowdale Design in 2021. The campaign draft can be found here. Snowdale Design loaned me a preview copy. I’ve previewed all previous Snowdale Design games, but I’ve also purchased every one of them afterwards. Elevator pitch: Narrative adventuring in a persistent open…

  • Small city full of crime – Interview with Johannes Sich

    MicroMacro: Crime City has been one of the weird highlights of the 2020. It’s a puzzle played on a big black and white city map, full of detail. There’s a bunch of cases, a crime mysteries you have to figure out. Who was murdered, who did it, what was the motive? The key to these…

  • Unlock! Star Wars

    Unlock! Star Wars Escape Game by Cyril Demaegd and Jay Little, published by Space Cowboys in 2020. I received a review copy from Asmodee Nordics. Elevator pitch: Three Unlock! escape room puzzle scenarios set in the Star Wars universe. What’s in the box? This is a typical Unlock! three scenario box: there’s three decks of…

  • Copenhagen: Roll & Write

    Copenhagen: Roll & Write by Daniel Skjold Pedersen and Asger Harding Granerud, published by Queen Games in 2019. I received a review copy of the Nordic edition from Lautapelit.fi, the publisher of the Nordic edition of the game. Elevator pitch: The roll & write version of Copenhagen is a simpler, faster version of the original…

  • 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…

  • 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…