Starship Interstellar has the parts that usually pique my interest in a game. It’s a murderer’s row of absolute bangers: abysmal graphic design, comically overlarge pieces, cubes of every shape, size, and color, and space exploration! That might sound sarcastic, but my too-cool-for-school brain is almost immediately titillated when I encounter something that looks like a terrible product on its face. It made it to publication, so surely, there must be something to it, right? I often hit more than I miss with this assessment, but this time it was a dramatic strikeout. My wager that goofy-looki ..read more

About two years ago, my buddy Johnivan showed up at a game night with a copy of the 2015 co-op game Healthy Heart Hospital. The cover looks like a newspaper ad out of the 1950s, right down to the game’s tagline, “Don’t miss a beat!” written in script just below the title. We didn’t get to play Healthy Heart Hospital that night, but Johnivan still opened up the box and showed me the components. It was basic-looking stuff but I loved the retro-style art, and the package looked like something that could use an upgrade. When Tabletop Tycoon reached out to offer a review copy of the new version of ..read more

I can trace my love of abstracts to Score Four. The game was released in 1967, and based on the cover art (seen in the header, above), my mother must have bought me a copy shortly thereafter. The box was an off-white, with a charcoal-like drawing of the board and containers for the wooden beads. (Tubes that were too small to work well.) Score Four is a 3D, four-in-a-row game played on a 4x4 grid with thin metal rods at each of the 16 points. On your turn, you’ll place a wooden bead in your color (light or dark) on any one of the rods. Each rod can hold up to four beads.  You win if you c ..read more

“Daddy, you KNOW I’m always down to play more Disney Lorcana.” This was the introduction from my 10-year-old when the newest Lorcana decks from our partners at Ravensburger, Into the Inklands, arrived at my home a few weeks ago. My kids are massive Pokémon fans, so anything with the words “trading card game” splashed on the cover is going to work. Just like the cards in the inaugural set (The First Chapter), the two newest starter decks are playable as a card game but are just as delightful to look at for the amazing artwork. Disney Lorcana: Into the Inklands clearly has a story and a path for ..read more

I adore ROVE: Results-Oriented Versatile Explorer, the solo spatial puzzle published by Button Shy back in 2021. I don’t play it often, but each time I do, I’m charmed anew. The combination of adorable illustrations and nesting puzzles makes for a brisk and deeply satisfying experience. Each of the numerous expansions adds something straightforwardly devious to the mix. The complete ROVE is a remarkably robust puzzle game, even setting aside its petite package. Aqua ROVE is not, it bears clarifying, an expansion, though a module exists to combine the two. Designers Dustin Dobson and Milan Zivk ..read more

I love ROVE. Big fan. I don’t play it often—I don’t play any solo games often—but I always enjoy it when I do. The puzzles are tricky without being complicated, and reward good planning in a way that most puzzle games don’t require. Now, in tandem with their crowdfunding campaign for Aqua ROVE, publisher Button Shy is presenting the world with ROVE Jr, a ROVE for the 8+ crowd. I, personally, am delighted. Given that ROVE reminds me of the ThinkFun—née Binary Arts—toys I spent hundreds of hours with as a child, the existence of ROVE Jr feels entirely correct. If you know how to play ROVE, you m ..read more

As family boxes go, Flashback: Zombie Kidz was a load of fun. Building on the world and story of the similarly enjoyable Zombie Kidz Evolution, the mystery box breathed even more life into an already fantastic intellectual property.  The team from Le Scorpion Masque is at it again, this time with an entirely new story, an entirely new heroine, and a few new tricks with Flashback: Lucy. This time around, we meet Lucy, a girl with strange powers who moves into an inherited family home with her father. But the home is riddled with a few dark secrets and a questionable past. Of course, this ..read more

Cosmic Encounter is a classic. It is a bright and shining star in the history of board game design. When I introduce the game to new players, I have encountered a few who hear ‘variable player powers’ and begin to doze off. I get it. The idea of an asymmetric game allowing players to break the rules in unique ways is fairly common these days. These days. Set the wayback machine to 1977, however, and this game is nothing short of revolutionary. It’s like the film Citizen Cane. Kids watching it for the first time today look at how the story unfolds, how it was filmed, what it does, and they hav ..read more

[caption id="attachment_298713" width="500"] City of Crowns: The Box[/caption] Shem Phillips is a remarkable game designer. Since 2014, he has published 17 games, not to mention the many expansions for some of those games. That the majority of these are well-respected, challenging games makes his output even more impressive.  One of his best games is Paladins of the West Kingdom, a 2019 title my friend and colleague David McMillan reviewed here on Meeple Mountain. To sum up his feelings about the game, I’ll quote from the review where he relates his first time playing: “Paladins was, ha ..read more

“Can I speak with you for a moment?” I was at Gen Con last year when someone from the CrowD Games booth grabbed me; he saw that I had a media badge on. I was at the booth because CrowD had released City of the Great Machine and reviews were spectacular for the one-versus-many steampunk game. I was anxious to meet someone from the team to see what else they had up their sleeve. One conversation led to another, which took me on a ten-minute walk to a completely different booth with a completely different person, then back to the CrowD booth to talk to a third person. I got my steps in, then I go ..read more