I Played It, Like, Twice... Of Monsters and Mortals: Playing Campy Creatures On a Dark and Spooky Night By Orrin Grey • October 21st, 2021 Campy Creatures is, as the box declares, a “Ghoulish Game of Deduction & Bluffing.”
I Played It, Like, Twice... Dead Ends: Learning Something About Myself with Cursed City By Orrin Grey • September 30th, 2021 I dove into Cursed City in the hopes that the familiarity of its similarities to Silver Tower would help to ease some of that intimidation fact, but Cursed City has more in common with Blackstone Fortress.
I Played It, Like, Twice... Candles Against the Dark: Surviving the Night (and Each Other) in Deranged By Orrin Grey • August 26th, 2021 A character who is Deranged is normal by day but becomes a monster by night.
I Played It, Like, Twice... Shelf Stability: Good Design Gets Out of the Way in Ex Libris By Orrin Grey • July 29th, 2021 Ex Libris looks complicated, but all the moving parts click together pretty seamlessly, and there are rarely any of those awkward moments where you’re left scratching your head over how one card mechanic interacts with another.
I Played It, Like, Twice... Rising Tension: The Odd and Appropriate Specificity of Resident Evil 2: The Board Game By Orrin Grey • May 13th, 2021 I decided it was high time for me to crack open my copy of Resident Evil 2: The Board Game and see how it stacked up against my memories of the real thing.
I Played It Like Twice Fearful Symmetry: Building the Best of All Possible Overworlds in Overboss By Orrin Grey • April 1st, 2021 In a world where plenty of board games at least claim to be playable with only one person it is, in my experience, rare to find one that actually plays well in solitaire mode.
I Played It, Like, Twice... Versus Mode – Arcadia Quest x Super Dungeon Explore By Orrin Grey • March 2nd, 2021 For the first installment of this periodic feature, we’ll be looking at Arcadia Quest and Super Dungeon Explore.
I Played It, Like, Twice… The Moorcock Connection: Sailors on the Seas of Warhammer Quest By Orrin Grey • February 2nd, 2021 I realized what Age of Sigmar really was: Games Workshop leaning hard into that Moorcockian strain of cosmic fantasy that had always been there.
I Played It, Like, Twice... Only Trust Your Fists: The Side-Scrolling Beat-‘em-Up Vibes of Streets of Steel By Orrin Grey • January 6th, 2021 When Streets of Steel is at its best, it is tapping into my fondness for these types of games in a way that makes for innovative tabletop play, rather than just nostalgia.
I Believe that My Scoring Potential Has Been Maximized By Levi Rubeck • February 20th, 2020 The game is called No Return because the one thing you must always remember is that there is no returning any pieces to the bag.
Hate the Empire, Love the Game By Levi Rubeck • January 28th, 2020 We were blown away by not only how easy It’s a Wonderful World was to pick up and learn, but by how much fun it was despite the lack of any deep interpersonal activity.
Feature Excerpt Two Hands Off the Wheel: Learning to Embrace the Chaos of Zweihander By R. M. Jansen-Parkes • October 24th, 2019 Most tabletop RPGs boil down to a roll of the dice.
Feature Excerpt Grim, Perilous and Inclusive By Adam Brown • October 24th, 2019 Zweihander: Grim & Perilous is a fresh take on dark fantasy and tabletop RPGs.
New Street Fighter for Old Hands By Levi Rubeck • March 7th, 2019 A lot of games try to replicate, if not exactly duplicate, the inherent friction and flow of what’s splayed on screens, but not Street Fighter Exceed.
In Memoriam: Keiji of Celene, Drow Ninja By Levi Rubeck • January 31st, 2019 I want to lower my head for all the dead and abandoned characters we’ve lost
Escape from the Sweet Board Game Bubble By Levi Rubeck • December 20th, 2018 There’s a bubble brewing around board games.
The Board Soul Let’s Get Physical By Jeremy Signor • May 24th, 2018 Catacombs may be a game about flicking discs, but it brings the action of dungeon crawling to life in surprising, intuitive ways.
Flamme Rouge Earns the Yellow Jersey By Sam Desatoff • April 12th, 2018 Racing games are a dime a dozen, but they usually involve cars. But Flamme Rouge feels fresh and new.
The Board Soul Nonsense By Jeremy Signor • February 19th, 2018 Not every board game’s mechanics have to make thematic sense to be a ton of fun.
The Board Soul Pieces By Jeremy Signor • February 8th, 2018 Game pieces are supposed to represent something specific, transcending their forms and letting us manipulate representations of objects and people. But what happens when a cube is just a cube?
Seeland and the Community of Economy By Sam Desatoff • January 18th, 2018 One of my favorite examples of game economy comes from a rather unassuming title. Seeland is a game about using windmills to reclaim land from the sea.
Best Board Games We Played in 2017 By Jeremy Signor and Team Unwinnable • January 4th, 2018 These are the board games that impressed the Unwinnable writers the most in 2017.
The Board Soul Skin Deep By Jeremy Signor • December 21st, 2017 Why do we deem judging a game based on how it looks as superficial? A game’s aesthetic beauty is every bit as integral to its quality as its gameplay.
Simplicity Rules in El Dorado By Sam Desatoff • December 14th, 2017 What makes El Dorado so good is its simplicity. A mashup of two different genres has the potential to become clunky and confusing, but that is not the case here.
The Board Soul The Board Soul: Feast or Famine By Jeremy Signor • December 14th, 2017 The Fallout board game can let you grasp greatness, but is just as likely to leave you out in the cold.
The Board Soul The Board Soul – Focus By Jeremy Signor • December 7th, 2017 Deck building games usually focus on the murky, random world of building up your own deck. Clank shifts that focus to something more tangible and communal.
Gunsword, Casual Repartee, Chess and Dragonlance By Levi Rubeck • November 28th, 2017 Gunsword whipped my head right over with delicious high fantasy visuals that brought to mind the Larry Elmore Dragonlance covers of my youth, and the only thing better than guns and swords is the fusion of the two.
Lazer Ryderz Bring Light Cycle Racing to Tabletop By Levi Rubeck • November 21st, 2017 Lazer Ryderz is loud: it blasts your eyes with glimmering color, and each surfer praises their luck for snatching glory and curses their competitors for sniping it away
The Board Soul Fuck Colonialism By Jeremy Signor • November 16th, 2017 Board gaming’s obsession with romanticizing colonialism is harmful and holding the medium back.
Snake Oil: The Only Party Game You’ll Ever Need By Sam Desatoff • November 9th, 2017 The pantheon of party games holds esteemed company, and Snake Oil assuredly belongs the upper echelons among Scattergories, Pictionary and Charades.
The Board Soul Manipulate Fate By Jeremy Signor • November 9th, 2017 Giving luck the finger never felt so good.
The Board Soul Food Wars By Jeremy Signor • November 2nd, 2017 Board games can be obsessed with war, but some themes are just as cutthroat.
The Board Soul Heavier Things By Jeremy Signor • October 26th, 2017 Heavy asymmetric wargames can be intimidating, but exploring their many layers can be extremely rewarding.
Cardboard for One: Embracing the Solo Game By Sam Desatoff • October 26th, 2017 Board games are a group activity, something that friends and family can use as a tool for bonding. At least traditionally.
The Board Soul Heroes’ Folly By Jeremy Signor • October 6th, 2017 Sometimes something in a game can feel like it doesn’t belong, an orphan lost within the tight clockwork of a game’s rules.
The Board Soul The Magic of Commander By Jeremy Signor • September 21st, 2017 When a game connects with us, we want to inhabit it completely. When a game recognizes this desire, the result is pure magic.
The Board Soul The Gathering By Jeremy Signor • September 14th, 2017 The Arkham Horror Card Game throws you head first into a strange, ghoul-filled story that’s one of the most immersive experiences for your tabletop.
The Board Soul Action/Reaction By Jeremy Signor • September 7th, 2017 What would you do if you knew your opponents’ moves before they executed them?
Secret Hitler is Painfully Relevant By Sam Desatoff • September 6th, 2017 Shouting accusations of “Fascist!” and “Hitler!” across the table was no longer a fun novelty, it was a gross and uncomfortable reality.
The Board Soul Between Two Worlds By Jeremy Signor • September 4th, 2017 Board and video games are from very different worlds. But what happens when the two intermingle?
