For the most part, zombies seem like the most benign of monsters. The classic zombie is dumb, falling apart, and shambles without much cognitive processing involved. The problem arises when there are lots of them or, in more recent imaginings of zombies, they’re fast or smart. Still, since we all know at least one person who might just be an actual zombie, at least early in the morning, it’s a popular theme for media and…Read More

I drink a lot of coffee and spend a lot of time in coffee shops and local cafés. Even now, some of my local favorites have a few tables open and plenty of outdoor seating while the weather permits. It’s no surprise then that I write about coffee and think about how to make a great cup of coffee both, trying different brews, making different mixups at home and even dabbling in coffee + alcohol…Read More

Every parent knows the frustration of their children eagerly jumping into an elevator and promptly pushing every button to get all the numbers to light up. So pretty. So frustrating, and doubly so for the next passengers in the elevator who undoubtedly have some choice words for the “souvenir” of kids on the lift. That’s just the beginning, though. There’s something magical about elevators too, and they feature in films as far ranging as The…Read More

It always starts out in a village tavern. While the locals are yelling and swigging at the bar, you and your heroic compatriots are huddled by the roaring fire, sipping mead, enjoying the local mystery stew and planning your next adventure. You’re all so darn wonderful with your noble intentions and backpacks that can store much more than physics would suggest. You’re armed, you’re wearing chain mail and yes, you’re all attractive too when the…Read More

I really enjoy puzzle games where you can spend more time looking and thinking than actually manipulating pieces on the board. Tangrams are an old school example, as is the popular traffic management puzzle Rush Hour and all its variants. Jigsaw puzzles are also manipulation puzzles, though that’s all about finding the right piece, not a more strategic planning of piece movement order. In all cases, good gamers can plan a half-dozen or more moves…Read More

First there was the blockbuster success Cards Against Humanity, then there were a zillion expansion card decks from the company, then expansion decks from a variety of other companies with names like Crabs Adjust Humidity, Cows Grilling Hamburgers, Clones Attack Hilarity, Cads Against Disney and Kids Against Maturity. Yes, they’re all real third party expansions for a rather crass card game that will simultaneously amuse and appall you. Often in the very same round. For…Read More

I have to admit, I have a bit of a love-hate relationship with jigsaw puzzles. I enjoy when I can find a piece and place it in the puzzle, but I hate when I look and look and just can’t find the one I seek. Puzzlers know that “I think this is the one piece missing from the puzzle!” angst of doing a jigsaw puzzle, even as the other voice in your head assures you…Read More

From the outside it might look like the board gaming world is just a big melange of different ideas, concepts, and game settings, but it turns out there quite a few different well known categories and types of games. For example there are push your luck games, deck building games and worker placement games. I’ve played quite a few different types but I realize that I had never played what’s known as a “roll and…Read More

I imagine that most gamers have played chess at some point in their lives. It’s a complex game with millions of possible scenarios. It’s also complicated to learn because you have a variety of pieces and each has its own specific movement and attack patterns. A bishop can move one way, but a pawn is stuck plodding forward, unless there’s a piece to take, in which case it can jitter at an angle. Chess is…Read More

Let me just start out by saying that it’s rare I acquire a game and immediately fall in love with it, but Sprawlopolis is just that sort of game. It’s a card game without any tokens, chits, scoreboards, inserts, folding boards, miniatures or dice. You know, all the accoutrements of modern board game design that require big boxes and a substantial price tag. Sprawlopolis is representative of a different class of game known in the…Read More

The life of a mercenary soldier in medieval times might have been harsh and tough, but even before the publication of Le Morte d’Arthur in 1485 the mythos of knights in shining armor has been a part of our culture. You know what I mean, the noble King Arthur, his lovely Queen Guinevere, the Knights of the Round Table, Sir Gawain, Sir Galahad, the evil Morgan le Fay, the kingdom of Camelot, and on and…Read More

Classic board games took up about three square feet of table space. Think LIFE, or Monopoly. Card games? Generally quite a bit less, unless it involved laying out sets or building chains (e.g., Rummy or Solitaire). But modern games have become bigger and bigger affairs, and a monster like Massive Darkness or even Shadows Over Camelot can end up requiring a sizeable play surface, possibly bigger than your current dining table! If you follow me…Read More

You’re ready, you have weapons, expertise, supplies, a few magical keys and hopefully luck on your side. But do you really dare to enter the Forgotten Depths and explore a monster-infested dungeon while seeking both treasure and the staircase out? I had a chance to review a late prototype of the 1-3 player co-op dungeon crawler game Forgotten Depths from Void Knight Games and here’s how it went… First off, there’s a lot of setup for…Read More

It was in the late 1970’s that a curious series of paperback books hit the shelf and completely changed how people thought of adventure stories. These stories didn’t need to be consumed in a linear fashion, heck you didn’t even need to read every page in the book. Instead, you were presented with a sequence of decisions at certain points and turned to page X or page Y based on your choice. Attack the monster?…Read More

I’m a big fan of cinema and have always had a special spot in my heart for monster films and creature features. That’s why when I got wind of a new board game called Horrified that was themed around the classic Universal monsters, I was definitely interested. It’s not H.P.Lovecraft and Cthulhu, a personal favorite mythos, but there’s something to be said for the archetypal monsters from 1930’s cinema. You know who I mean; Dracula,…Read More

Imagine running a bakery and it’s crazy complicated. The employees want to unionize, the city health regulations mean that you have to redo all your recipes, your oven’s not working correctly and that guy you just hired to deliver to the local coffee shops seems more than a bit flakey. You’re also trying to master 78 different recipes while keeping your kitchen nut, dairy and gluten free. Fun? No. And that’s why it’s not the…Read More

While I love the social aspect of multi-player gaming, and even more so when it’s a cooperative game, there’s a lot of logistics involved in getting a group together for some gaming. I’m not alone in this, so there’s a whole world of solo board and card games for people who want to solve a puzzle or overcome a challenging scenario without a video controller in their hand. And then there’s the toughest category of…Read More

First Jonathan Strange & Mr. Norrell was a terrific book written by Susanna Clarke then the BBC picked it up and created a highly entertaining and engaging series with the same name that’s available on Netflix. Great. Why not turn this rich Victorian world of gentlemen magicians and strange characters into a board game? Game designers Marco Maggi and Francesco Nepitello joined up with game publisher Osprey Games and created A Board Game of English…Read More

Compared to modern tech, the computers of the 1970’s were crude, with chunky graphics, slow performance and almost no storage capacity. Still, people love games and programmers wrote games, from text-based adventure games like Zork and Rogue to interactive graphic games like Breakout and Space Invaders. Originally created as an educational program, one of the most famous games from that era is The Oregon Trail. Developed by Don Rawitsch, Bill Heinemann, and Paul Dillenberger in…Read More

My Mum used to do jigsaw puzzles and I can remember as a kid thinking it was odd, but being pulled into the challenge of visual identification every time I’d walk past and glance at the table. Whether it’s the 20-piece puzzles for infants that help build a sense of image identification, continuity and shape recognition or the hundreds – or thousands – of puzzle pieces that make up a full size puzzle, there’s a…Read More

I know, the phrase “learn economics” or, for that matter, “learn entrepreneurship” sounds like the worst possible foundation for a fun game. And yet, if you think about it, quite a few games, from Monopoly to Settlers of Catan, are built around basic economic principles of scarcity, supply and demand, and investment risk assessment. Ironically, Monopoly was originally created to show the evils and dangers of capitalism and monopolies, but that’s not really the game…Read More