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…
Category: Board Game Accessibility
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…
Second Chance (2019) – Accessibility Teardown
Second Chance was… well, a kind of second chance for polyomino placement games on Meeple Like Us. Until they start getting meaner, our interest will remain muted at best. Interestingly, this game is actually worth your attention because of how aggressively it moves away from the obvious goal and into…
Inis (2016) – Accessibility Teardown
While we can only review Inis as a two-player game, I have no doubt that when you try it out with a bigger group of people it’s going to shine like a damn diamond. Even at the (occasionally bumpy) two player mode it’s a gem of a game. Four stars…
Doppelt So Clever (2019) – Accessibility Teardown
Every so often I have a kind of a ‘cheat’ teardown. It doesn’t happen regularly, but occasionally there is a game that is so similar to another that I can get along with saying ‘check out this other teardown, with the following changes’. Doppelt So Clever is sufficiently close to…
Mint Delivery (2018) – Accessibility Teardown
We didn’t have much positive to say about Mint Delivery, which at least means our view is consistent since we also didn’t have much positive to say about Mint Works. ‘They are games that function’. ‘Full components in the tin’. Neither of those are blurbs likely to appear gracing the…