I Played It Like Twice... Archives - Page 4 of 7 - Unwinnable

crop of the box cover for King of Monster Island with a big four-armed lava guy in the center getting shot at by a boat while volcanoes rage in the background

Collaborative Chaos: Being on the Top of the Heap in King of Monster Island

By Orrin Grey • August 13th, 2023

This bigger kaiju is trying to open a portal with the help of a variety of adorable minions, and the “good” kaiju need to put a stop to it.

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Close-up of the cover for Scooby-Doo The Board Game with the whole gang sitting in the front of the Mystery Machine van. From left to right we have beatnik poet, anxious dog, rational map-reader, equally smart friend, and ascot driver

Wacky Hijinks: Similarities and Differences in Scooby-Doo: The Board Game

By Orrin Grey • July 6th, 2023

It is also ironic that, in many ways, Scooby-Doo: The Board Game feels less like Scooby-Doo and more like a board game than Betrayal at Mystery Mansion, which was already repurposing the mechanics of another game and yet managed, in so doing, to create an almost perfect evocation of a Scooby-Doo episode.

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A photo from Orrin featuring a few of the mixed up monsters from Fearsome Floors, with a fancy lad with an eyeball for a head and a top hat on the left, a melty jawn in the middle, and a skinless skull with milky eyes on the right, all pointing at leach other like three spidermen

Fleeing Fast from Freaky Fiends: Finding Fun with Fearsome Floors

By Orrin Grey • June 7th, 2023

Indeed, Fearsome Floors is one of those European imports, hailing from eccentric German game designer Friedemann Friese, whose fixation on the color green and massive use of alliteration of the letter F can sometimes get lost in translation but certainly helps to set his games apart.

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Box art for the board game 13 Dead End Drive, featuring cartoon depictions of a sour old man as the butler and a shifty-eyed maid, as well as a swinging chandelier over a nervous chef, a bumbling tennis nephew, spooked librarian, worried psychic, and other money-hungry family folks

A Dark and Stormy Night: The Old Dark House Vibes of 13 Dead End Drive

By Orrin Grey • May 2nd, 2023

The traps are pretty much the game’s whole gimmick but, ironically, you don’t need any of them to play.

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Crop from the box cover for Legend of Drizzt the Adventure Series Board Game, with an angry Drizzt with long hair and fur mantle and flowing cape as he slices through some enemies with his trademark scimitars and his black panther companion and best friend growling in the background

A Maze of Twisty Little Passages, All Alike: Navigating the D&D Adventure System Board Games

By Orrin Grey • April 4th, 2023

Anyone who has been following along here for very long knows that dungeon tiles are one of my very favorite parts of any dungeon crawl game, and the ones for the various D&D Adventure System games have their distinctive pluses.

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Keeping the Flame: Flamecraft and the Pleasing Complexity of Resource Management

By Orrin Grey • March 8th, 2023

Naturally, that’s a bit like judging a book by its cover but, as I have discussed before, the look and feel of a game is actually every bit as important as how it plays.

I Played It, Like, Twice...