For many people, board game nirvana is teams of finely-detailed miniatures beating the fluff out of each other. Godtear, from Steamforged Games, is a game which epitomises the idea, where warbands of humans, creatures and… rocks throw down the gauntlet and vie for domination of the battlefield.
The best kind of mystery is the one that doesn’t reveal the culprit at the start. It leaves you to work out whodunnit for yourself, either by pulling you along through a story with the protagonist, or giving you the clues to do it yourself. The Detective Society takes this concept and runs with it.
Do you know that feeling at the start of a game of Chess? Your opponent makes their first move and you immediately start trying to get into their head. What are they doing? What’s their plan? That’s how Senjutsu gets after just a game or two.
Spooky is a great word. It conjures up images of ghosts, ghouls, monsters and horror, but does it through the lens of something safe and fun. It’s kid-friendly, it’s all things Scooby-Doo, and it’s one of my favourite feelings. Vast: The Mysterious Manor aims to recreate that feeling in the poster child for all things spooky – a haunted mansion.
Arkosa, the new title from Toon Hammer, plonks you on the titular planet of Arkosa, and makes you try to get back off of it. You see, there’s an opportunity to get off this desert world, but only the most prestigious of colonies gets the ticket.
If you yearn to recreate the thrill of cubicle life of a brown-nosing office minion, then I have the game for you! Welcome To Sysifus Corp, from designer Wonmin Lee, is a highly interactive game, which sees the players take the roles of employees at the eponymous Sysifus Corp, in a cat-and-mouse race to be the first to their performance review.
Chip Theory Games, who make Too Many Bones, have a reputation for putting premium games with massive replayability out in the market. Was the hype justified? And maybe more importantly for my readers – is it a good game to get, even if you’re a die-hard Euro gamer? Can you still have fun without farming or running a fishery?
Did you wake up today, and suddenly have the urge to run a railway in the Philippines? No? What if I told you the railways are on Luzon, the largest and most-populous of the Philippine islands? Yeah, I knew it, I knew that’d swing it for you.
I recently reviewed Wingspan, a game about collecting birds and playing with tons of little plastic eggs. Its designer, Elizabeth Hargrave, was rocketed from “who’s that?” to a name that everyone in board games knows. So what’s for her follow-up to the birdy game? More birds? More delightful eggs? Nope. We’re still playing with animals that fly, but this time it’s butterflies.
When Raiders of Scythia landed in 2020, it caused a few heads to be scratched. Garphill Games already had a ‘Raiders of’ title with 2015’s Raiders of the North Sea. Unless you’d followed Scythia’s progress, you’d be forgiven for wondering if it was another game in the same vein, a spiritual sequel, or a remake
