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The Quacks of Quedlinburg (2018) – Accessibility Teardown
Quacks of Quedlinburg is a push your luck game where fortune winks and says ‘Oh wow, you’re so brave, good for you kiddo!’. This, despite knowing full well, that this is gambling with the training wheels on. The risk built into its mechanisms is illusory, and as a result…
The Quacks of Quedlinburg (2018)
I have a number of things that aggravate me about Quacks of Quedlinburg but none are quite so intense as my hatred for whoever named it. I have never once written it down correctly the first, second or even third time. It’s given my spell-checker a stress headache. Whenever I…
Walking in Burano (2018) – Accessibility Teardown
I didn’t really get a lot of joy out of Walking in Burano. It’s one of an awkward class of games to review – ‘games that don’t give you a lot to talk about’. Those that do this kind of work professionally – or even just more diligently than I…
Walking in Burano (2018)
I love the art of Maisherly Chan so much that I will buy a game on its presence alone. Shadows in Kyoto was one such game, although its link to the dense extended universe of the Hanamikoji franchise certainly didn’t hurt. And so we find ourselves here, with Walking In…
Fallout Shelter (2020) – Accessibility Teardown
Fallout Shelter is about as shallow an implementation of the franchise as you can get and still meaningfully be worth the description. It’s a perfectly okay game – three stars of okay – but it feels like such a missed opportunity when far more exciting usages of the licence would…
Fallout Shelter (2020)
For a lot of people, the Fallout franchise is defined by high adventure. It’s about striding out into a broken world and finding ways to change it for the better – or for the worse. For me though, the real magic of Fallout has always been in the Vaults. For…
Inhuman Conditions (2018) – Accessibility Teardown
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…
Inhuman Conditions (2018)
One of the problems that comes from revealing a review score right at the top of the text is that it’s hard to maintain an element of surprise. One of the first things you’ll have seen upon scrolling down the page is the sombre star rating, stamped at the top…
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…
Lost Ruins of Arnak (2020)
Merry Christmas everyone! I bet you weren’t expecting the surprise gift of a Meeple Like Us review, but that’s only because you haven’t kept an eye on the Advent celebrational calendar. Friday is always Review Day, except when we’re on hiatus. And the times in the past when it wasn’t. …
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…
Nusfjord (2017)
Uwe Rosenerg’s legacy as a game designer is remarkable. His curriculum vitae of releases shows outstanding versatility as well as a surety of touch that has a consistency that borders on supernatural. There are very few designers that show a range that can encompass Patchwork, Agricola and Bohnanza. He has…