Oh, how I want to love Clacks. I want to love any game that looks to expand the Discworld franchise that I so adore. As I write this I’m contemplating the logistics of moving to Sweden as a result of a job offer. I’ve separated out my thousands of books…
Category: Accessibility Teardown
6 Nimmt! (1994) – Accessibility Teardown
I described 6 Nimmt in our review as being ‘The Mind for people that didn’t like the Mind’ and I think that’s a decent frame to understand its appeal. Released in 1994, it’s still the best ‘putting cards in an order’ game I’ve played. Despite the inherent chaos of what…
Planet (2018) – Accessibility Teardown
Planet is a visually striking game that is perhaps an ideal starter for newbies to the modern hobby. It’s pleasingly tactile, straightforward to play, and has such a distinctive hook that it’s hard to not want to play. We gave it three and a half stars in our review, noting…
Terra Mystica (2012) – Accessibility Teardown
Terra Mystica is an overbearing monster of a game – one of those jovial pub psychopaths that is your best buddy one minute and then glassing you in the face the next. It’s a properly great game… for those that can ride the shockwaves of its design. For everyone else…
When I Dream (2016) – Accessibility Teardown
When I Dream has a great elevator pitch and a weirdly compelling and transgressive hook. Slipping on that eye-mask is an adoption of vulnerability you rarely see in board games. It’s a shame really the game itself fails to be particularly satisfying – the ‘hidden traitor’ mechanisms just don’t work,…
Buffy the Vampire Slayer: The Board Game (2016) – Accessibility Teardown
The Buffy board game wasn’t much of a hit with us here at Meeple Like Us. All in all we’d rather just watch the DVDs, really. The game had a couple of major problems. The inconsistent design that liberally mixed heavy randomness with algorithmic optimisation undercut its effectiveness as a…
Junk Art (2016) – Accessibility Teardown
We made the argument in the review that all stacking games are basically the same game, and that fundamentally they were more about the collapse than they were about the building up. Junk Art is a great game and I’d recommend it to your attention, but I’d be hard pressed…
Viticulture: Essential Edition (2015) – Accessibility Teardown
I actually thought my review of Viticulture was going to be a good deal more positive when I sat down to write it. The more I thought about it though the more I realised the fun I had was heavily influenced by the very factors that make it such an…
Discworld: Ankh Morpork (2011) – Accessibility Teardown
My love of Discworld was a big factor in how the Discworld: Ankh Morpork review went – it’s a perfectly fine game set in Discworld, but fails as a Discworld game because it doesn’t capture any of the things that actually matter about the setting. The problem when chaining a…
Nudge (2019) – Accessibility Teardown
I didn’t feel like the game of Nudge had enough development in the design to really make the most of an interesting mechanism. Lacking the tools that are necessary for exerting control on a game state, it’s mostly an exercise of mirroring an opponent until one of you make a…
Mechs vs Minions (2016) – Accessibility Teardown
If you broke Mechs vs Minions in two you’d have equally weighted chunks of what seem like high quality game. You’d expect if you brought them back together you’d get a kind of Fun Fusion that generated energy from the critical mass. You’d be wrong though – Mechs vs Minions…
Above and Below (2015) – Accessibility Teardown
We liked Above and Below enough to give it three and a half stars in our review – a good game teetering precariously on the edge of genuine greatness. It would only take a comparatively small push to send it into the abyss of being amazing. Wow, those are some…
Secret Hitler (2016) – Accessibility Teardown
It’s easy to dismiss Secret Hitler as yet another shock product from the makers of Cards Against Humanity. I think that does a disservice to the genuinely insightful sociological storytelling that can be found during play. The name does inspire a lot of strong feelings, but the game is something…
Champions of Midgard (2015) – Accessibility Teardown
Champions of Midgard didn’t exactly get our blood boiling with berserker rage. Fundamentally it’s a version of Lords of Waterdeep that sacrifices the nuance and intricacy of an evolving cityscape for the uncertainty of dice rolls. It’s competent but there are so many excellent worker placement games out there that…
Railroad Ink (2018) – Blazing Red Edition – Accessibility Teardown
Railroad Ink is a game that is made up compelling parts, but it doesn’t cohere together in a way that made it feel particularly impactful to me. We gave it three stars in our review – I don’t begrudge anyone’s affection for it but I’m never going to be able…
Pit (1903) – Accessibility Teardown
Pit isn’t so much a game as it is an excuse for people to get together and have a good ol’ shout. Sometimes that’s all that’s need to have fun – to provide people a reason to do something they can’t normally do in real life and just pretend there’s…
Castles of Burgundy (2011) – Accessibility Teardown
I’m not going into this teardown with a great deal of optimism. While Castles of Burgundy is a genuinely great game it is also one that is renowned for being an aesthetic mess. However, it’s not as simple as saying ‘This is a game that needs a new edition’ because…
Monopoly (1933) – Accessibility Teardown
I feel it’s important for a site like this to offer occasional points of auditability – reviews that don’t get written because they were needed but rather because they let readers calibrate their tastes against the arguments made. For a long time now I have reflexively dismissed Monopoly in many…
Perudo (1800) – Accessibility Teardown
Perudo is a difficult and interesting game to approach from the perspective of a teardown. Most of us have the components for a Perudo set at home but there are actual versions you can buy with coloured dice and coloured cups. You can even buy ‘perudo dice sets’ that contain…
Tigris and Euphrates (1997) – Accessibility Teardown
We gave Tigris and Euphrates four and a half stars in our review. It’s a stern and uncompromising game that happens to a masterclass in picking the right level of abstraction for the experience you expect to have. It’s absolutely not going to be for everyone, as empty a phrase…