Inhuman Conditions is an unfortunate game. It’s a brave idea that just doesn’t, at least in my experience, work often enough to be worth playing. It got one and a half stars in our review. But there’s ambition there – a two player social deduction experience was always going to…
Category: Board Game Accessibility
Lost Ruins of Arnak (2020) – Accessibility Teardown
Lost Ruins of Arnak, despite being constructed from ‘weel-kent’ parts, was a breath of fresh air to me. A game that felt new because of how well it was put together as opposed to being built from unique components. That’s not to say it had no innovation – I think…
Nusfjord (2017) – Accessibility Teardown
We liked Nusfjord a lot. Its design is clever in a subtle way, encoding some darkly comic capitalism hidden within a palimpset of relatively sedate Norwegian agriculture. You may spend the game hiring specialists and erecting buidings, but there is a drum-beat signalling your inevitable end beating away in the…
Medium (2019) – Accessibility Teardown
Medium is a fine game – at least, in its wild form as the energetic folk-game that has been a staple of improv groups and school camps since the early 90s. This actual boxed product though feels exploitative in a way that makes me unwilling to recommend it your way. …
Prisma Arena (2020) – Accessibility Teardown
We liked Prisma Arena, but move set considerations and an overly smooth team topography mean that we don’t love it. Oodles of potential though – we gave it three and a half stars in our review. But I have saved some of my most positive comments for this teardown, because…
Architects of the West Kingdom (2018) – Accessibility Teardown
We gave Architects of the West Kingdom four stars in our review. It’s not awash in new ideas, but the central one it does have is wonderful – it truly reinvigorates a formula that I absolutely would not have enjoyed otherwise. It’s a really nice game and it’s well worth…
Trial by Trolley (2020) – Accessibility Teardown
Trial by Trolley is pretty much as good as any other party game, but it has an odd premise that makes it an uncomfortable fit for a lot of scenarios. It offers a more literate take on social gaming, but those that would appreciate it most are also the ones…
Spell Smashers (2018) – Accessibility Teardown
For me, Spell Smashers is an instructive case study in the idea that ‘When the Gods wish to punish us, they first grant our prayers’. It’s almost exactly a game I asked for someone to make, and yet all I feel when playing it is frustration. There’s just too much…
Sanctum (2019) – Accessibility Teardown
We liked Sanctum a lot. While noting it has a couple of significant problems in its combat systems and its upgrade path feasibility we also gave it a four star review because it’s very satisfying to play. It’s Diablo in a box. It’s a board game with the soul of…
Legacy of Dragonholt (2017) – Accessibility Teardown
While Legacy of Dragonholt may be more book than game, it’s certainly a well produced piece of entertainment and one that I enjoyed frittering about with for a while. We gave it three and a half stars in our review, noting that while it certainly won’t appeal to everyone it…
Targi (2012) – Accessibility Teardown
Targi is a genuinely excellent game that, if we’re honest with ourselves, would have been a much better and more positive choice with which to break our hiatus. What’s done is done though and there’s no use crying about it now. We gave Targi four and a half stars in…
Corinth (2019) – Accessibility Teardown
Urgh, you’d think after a four month break I wouldn’t be so grumpy coming back to this site. Despite giving Corinth three stars in our review I also managed to wrap that up in some of the most fiercely negative commentary this site has given in quite some time. Having…
Parks (2019) – Accessibility Teardown
It seems mean to say it, but I sort of wish that Parks, rather than Wingspan, was getting all the mainstream attention. It’s not just a better game, it’s a better game for the specific niche that Wingspan seems to have dominated – something endearing enough to bring non-gamers organically…
Bang! The Dice Game (2013) – Accessibility Teardown
Bang the Dice Game is a perfectly okay game about banging and dice. It’s inoffensive to an extreme. Briefly amusing with a social cost for playing that can’t really be at all justified in comparison to what its required player count would otherwise let you do of an evening. We…
Wavelength (2019) – Accessibility Teardown
Wavelength is a fascinating, interesting game of staring into the bleak abyss that exists in the gulf between inside and outside of our heads. It’s a solipsist horror story of abject isolation. A game of learning what it means to truly be alone in a universe vast beyond all human…
Joking Hazard (2016) – Accessibility Teardown (NSFW)
Games like Joking Hazard often get treated with casual disdain in the hobbyist game reviewer space. ‘Not really for us’, we sniff while quaffing vintage meeples from a plastic goblet. ‘Gauche. Vulgar. Base. Low art’, we sneer while liberally loading refined d20 pate onto cardboard crackers. And yet, these games…
The Castles of Mad King Ludwig (2014) – Accessibility Teardown
While I don’t think Castles of Mad King Ludwig is quite as fascinating a design as Suburbia, it might well be a more fun game. It depends really on what you want out of a box like this – an emergent story of compromise and consequence, or something that sacrifices…
The Estates (2018) – Accessibility Teardown
The Estates got a pretty rough ride in our review. It’s undeniably a well designed game, but one that leaves me so unhappy at the end of play that I just want no part of it. I’m not opposed to a streak of meanness in my game. I just don’t…
No Thanks (2004) – Accessibility Teardown
No Thanks is a marvellous design for a game. It’s like a behavioural economics experiment in a box, teaching you which of your friends will jump on a grenade to save the group. Spoiler – it’s probably none of them. We gave it four stars in our review, although it…
Archaeology: The New Expedition (2016) – Accessibility Teardown
We like Archaeology: The New Expedition a lot. It got four stars in our review, each of them unilaterally removed from the temple of an ancient sky god in a faraway land. It’s not looting. It’s preservation. They belonged in a museum. Provided that museum had massive amounts of cash…