Gameblog

Tag: nice bits

  • Impulsive shopping — Hive and Looping Louie

    Got some games, on a whim. Despite my cool initial feelings towards Hive, I couldn’t resist the new bakelite edition. Just too cool, you can’t beat big, chunky pieces of plastic when it comes to board game pieces. I also bought the new edition of Looping Louie. I’m not sure if I would’ve bought it…

  • 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…

  • 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…

  • Quick touch with Pentago

    I played Pentago, the Finnish game of the year, yesterday with Johanna. My darling wife was amazed when she heard that was the winner. She may not be a hardcore gamer, but she isn’t clueless either! The game sucks, simply put. It’s your typical naughts-and-crosses on six by six board; one board quadrant is rotated…

  • Celtica

    I got a review copy of Celtica, the much-dismissed game from Kramer and Kiesling. I don’t get the really bad ratings; the game has an average of 5.2 now, I’d expect something above 6 (like the 6.4 for That’s Life! — I think the games are on pretty equal level). We played with Johanna, and…

  • 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…

  • Mice and a cat

    I got this year’s Marektoy children’s games lineup. It’s a nice bunch of games from Drei Magier and Selecta, mostly. Selecta games impressed me: like Haba, Selecta is a producer of wooden toys and the games have great components. I played two rounds of Viva Topo! with Johanna yesterday. The game is the Kinderspiel des…

  • Niagara

    Next up in my Finnish review site: Niagara. While Zoch is well-known for games with good presentation, Niagara is an extremely pretty game. From the first pictures I saw from the Essen fair 2004 I knew I had to see this game in action. I was not disappointed: the clever board (go see the pictures…

  • Pirate’s Cove

    I wrote a review of Pirate’s Cove (in Finnish; review number 92!). I like Pirate’s Cove. I like the fancy bits (I think it’s one of the prettiest games I’ve ever seen), the theme is great and the game is simply a blast to play. However, I’m still rating it as 7. The game’s main…