Gameblog

Category: Reviews

  • Himalaya

    Review of Himalaya in Finnish. Himalaya appeared on many radars when it was nominated for Spiel des Jahres in 2005. The game was formerly known as Marchands d’Empire and available as print-and-play. The new edition, published by Tilsit and by Marektoy in Finland, is rethemed: medieval traders became yak caravans in Himalaya. The new theme…

  • Quackle! (Snorta!)

    Review of Quackle! in Finnish. Snorta! — or Quackle!, as it’s known in Finland — is a light party game. The rules are very simple, the components attractive, the game works for up to eight players and it’s easy enough for kids yet interesting enough for adults to enjoy it as well. The components are…

  • Combat Commander: Europe

    Review of Combat Commander: Europe in Finnish. I’m definitely an eurogamer — fond of fairly simple games that manage to create complex gameplay from a small ruleset. Yet sometimes I want more. This has been particularly true for war games: Memoir ’44 is fun, but ultimately not enough. In the other hand, Advanced Squad Leader…

  • Struggle for Rome (Kampf um Rom)

    Here’s a review of the latest historical Catan game. The same review in Finnish. Struggle for Rome is based on real-life history: it covers the time when the Roman empire was in decline and the eastern barbarian tribes came to loot and pillage Roman cities and then settled down and started their own kingdoms on…

  • Crystal Code

    Review of Crystal Code in Finnish. Crystal Code is designed by Grzegorz Rejchtman, the designer of Ubongo. The two games are similar: in both games, players race against time and each other to solve pattern recognition problems for rewards. What’s most important, both games manage to avoid the most common pitfall of speed games. Often…

  • Aqua Romana

    Review of Aqua Romana in Finnish. Aqua Romana is a tile-laying game where players build Roman aqueducts. Theme doesn’t make much sense, as usual — the players score points for the length of aqueducts, so efficiency flies out of the window. However, the Roman theme is used well in the art, and the board is…

  • Celtica

    Review of Celtica in Finnish Celtica, a game by well-known designer duo Wolfgang Kramer and Michael Kiesling was published recently in Finland. I was curious to try the game; for background, I had read the less-than-favourable comments from the Geek, combined with Bruno Faidutti’s recommendation. The game certainly looks delicious, from the beautiful box cover…

  • Memoir ’44: Pacific Theater

    Review in Finnish. Pacific Theater is the latest expansion for Memoir ’44. Like Eastern Front, it adds new figures, new rules and new scenarios to the basic game. This time the fighting is between the Japanese and the US Marine Corps. Japanese forces never surrender (that is, always ignore the first retreat flag), attack with…

  • 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…