Gameblog

Category: More about games

  • Cosmic Eidex

    There’s a review of Cosmic Eidex up at the Finnish site. Cosmic Eidex is a trick-taking game for three players. It’s not the easiest game to learn, particularly for players with no earlier experience of Central European trick-taking games. It’s based on Swiss Jass (and few other games), which brings some peculiarities to the fold.…

  • DVD Sudoku preview

    My entry on DVD Sudoku puzzled Alfred in one his Best of Blogosphere reports (I’m seeing my entries mentioned often enough, by the way — thanks for that, Alfred). So, maybe I should give more details, now that I was able to try the game? The box contains a board, 81 cardboard tiles, two-page rules…

  • The Future of Board Games?

    I have seen the future of board games and it looks… interesting? Well, not actually — I just got a copy of Tactic’s DVD Sudoku and I just opened the box and punched the tiles, I haven’t tried it yet. But it certainly looks interesting. The gist of the game is solving sudokus (well, yeah),…

  • Pünct

    A review of Pünct in Finnish. After trying Pünct in Essen and knowing I probably won’t play again, I thought I’d write a review since my opinion is already well-formed. Pünct is a great addition to the Project GIPF line. It extends the set to connection games, a fairly important subgenre of abstract two-player games.…

  • John Bohrer on Age of Steam expansions

    In a Geek thread called Italy is for AoS experts and France is for AoS beginners John Bohrer ranks the different Age of Steam expansion maps in this order by the level of their difficulty (from easy to difficult): France, US Rust Belt (basic map), England, Scandinavia, Germany, Western US, Ireland, Korea and Italy. The…

  • Designers write about their games

    It’s always interesting when designers step up and discuss their games. There have been two great examples of that recently: Gathering of Engineers: Daddy, Where Did Havoc Come From?, written by KC Humphrey, the designer of Havoc: The Hundred Years War and the input from Mac Gerdts, the designer of Antike; for example, this thread…

  • Fettnapf

    First of the Essen games reviewed! A Finnish review of Fettnapf is up on the Finnish site. I went to the fair looking for a good Amigo card game. I had tagged Fettnapf and played it the first chance I got. It wasn’t a disappointment, but a rather pleasing little game. It’s basically a game…

  • Through the Desert vs Go

    There’s a long rant at the Game Table about Through the Desert vs Go, where he goes to show that Through the Desert has absolutely nothing to do with Go, and thus the games shouldn’t be compared. I agree — his analysis makes sense. In the ways he describes, Go and Through the Desert have…

  • Dvonn

    After a big silence on the game review front, I wrote two reviews yesterday. The second one was Dvonn. Dvonn is neat, like most of the GIPF series. Well, at least Zèrtz and Yinsh. The games are close to perfection, when it comes to modern abstract board games: the rules are simple, yet the games…

  • Gone Fishing!

    I’ve written a review of Gone Fishing!, in Finnish as usual. I like the game, though it’s clearly best suited for kids and families. For gamer, its appeal is definitely smaller. There’s too much guessing and probably not enough bluffing and strategies for a serious gamer. However, I like the game: it’s pretty, it’s exciting,…