Board Game Reviews

Just when you thought you'd taken care of your furry herd of cats, you realize that some of them are missing. Lucky you've been trained for just this contingency so when you wake up many moons from home, you know what your task is: Find your cats, lure them out of...

The moon isn't a great place for rare minerals and Mars seems to be more a destination for colonization than exploitation of its ore and mineral wealth. Venus? Fuhgeddaboudit. But the asteroid belt, that's an interesting possibility and there are already companies...

I know, you live a stressful life and even board gaming can occasionally be more of a chore than a joyful adventure. Complex rules, opponents trying to defeat you, endless expansions to consider, it's not always so easy! That's why A Gentle Rain is such a nice change...

The path through the great and mysterious Shuffle Dungeon is never easy, but it can be pleasantly straightforward. Well, if you consider a dungeon where rooms keep moving, spinning, and sliding around to be straightforward. Designed by a team led by Jeremy Stark with...

Boblin is a persistent little goblin and he's determined to kick out the evil dungeon overlords and their troll guardians and retake the dungeon! To do so he's assembling a ragtag army of rebellious goblins, some of whom are trained in specific skills while others are...

The Starless Nights have returned and it's up to you, adventurer, to carry your Kinfire Lantern to the Well of Atios and solve the puzzles, overcome the obstacles, and win the combats in your quest to reach the bottom of the Well. Once you do, you will meet Scorn, the...

Every file, picture, video, and document on your computer's hard drive is composed of a chain of tiny blocks of data, spread across the storage device. Over time, these chains get interwoven with other file chains, making the file storage a spaghetti-like mess. Delete...

Ruh-Ro! The gang was heading along the road en route to their next mission when the Mystery Machine began to overheat! By the time they realized what was going on, the van had shuddered to a stop. Was it a beautiful, sunny afternoon? Of course not. It was a dark,...

Congratulations on your new MBA, you business expert! Now it's time to test your logistics savvy by helping out over at Express Route Delivery Service, a low-budget startup aiming to shake up the freight delivery industry. Unfortunately, the company's starting very...

It was only appropriate that I opened up the box to the solo-only tile placement game Snowfall Over Mountains while it was snowing outside. I live at about a mile elevation in Boulder, Colorado and we're no strangers to snowfall or, for that matter, mountains, with...

It's the near future and we humans have created another technological marvel without considering all the long-term implications. This time it's a mechanical behemoth, a sentient creature that can repair and even upgrade itself. It's also enormous, so big that people...

If you've never thought about the history of big cities you might be surprised just how many were designed for maximum density rather than livability, with narrow cobblestone streets just wide enough for a donkey cart rather than two lanes of vehicles plus parked cars...

You might be part of a peaceful llama herd but that's not enough to save you. Your prescient llama pal Esmerelda has seen the future and it's bleak: There's a meteor shower hurling towards your corner of the meadow and if you and your llama friends don't whip up some...

You're part of a team of archeologists who have discovered a secret temple deep in the El Salvadorian jungle. Getting there's tough enough, but once you arrive, you realize that you're going to have to carefully traverse long passages of stone slabs, lining up the...

It's tough being a gnome nowadays. Every mine has a dozen claims and the OG gnomes who already have a stake in the ground tend to be very possessive of their gem and mineral rights. Except one gnome who has thrown down the gauntlet: Whoever can mine the most gems in...

Our world runs on electricity, whether it's powering the lightbulbs that let you enjoy nighttime activities, the machines in a factory making tractors so we can eat, or any of a million other uses for this lifeblood of our modern era. Electricity has to come from...

There's something inherently appealing about undergrounds. The idea that you can move lots of people around a city with just a few doors on the surface is pretty magical, a rather sci-fi approach to transportation. And it works! Many cities are defined by their...

Three-in-a-row games date back to ancient Egypt with the earliest boards dating back to 1300 BCE. Three millennia later, have we figured out how to take a fundamentally simple game and make it complex? Yes, yes we have. Tic-tac-toe still has the benefit of requiring...

Poker is probably one of the most popular card games in the world. With its straightforward play, simple betting, and standardized - and very inexpensive - decks of playing cards, it's a solid option for people who want to have a game without table-size boards and...

Our planet is facing unprecedented changes in climate and while many of us are seeking to do what we can to help mitigate the crisis, others are plowing ahead with their industrial efforts, convinced that it's all cyclic and the Earth will heal itself. But we can't...

To Mrs. Saville, England, Dec. 11th, 17--: You will rejoice to hear that no disaster has accompanied the commencement of an enterprise which you have regarded with such evil forebodings. Yes, we have managed to create a spot for you in the Global Abomination...