Unplugged: One Page Monster Hunt (Boardgame)
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Posted on May 27th, 2024 by
Roll and write games continue to permeate the boardgame market. We’ve come a long way from the days of Yahtzee, where a player would make repeated die rolls and then mark up their scorepad. Current trends still have players marking up their private sheets, but now die rolls are shared by all players, keeping everyone involved in each roll. In a somewhat recent trend, designers have reasoned that if a single sheet of paper has now taken the place of a game board, can’t we also get rid of the game box? The result is a minor explosion of designers publishing their own games in a print and play format. I am happy to stand behind this trend as this style of game is almost always beginner-friendly and, better yet, the game doesn’t take up space on my gaming shelves! One of the recent projects I’ve stumbled across is One Page Monster Hunt, currently finishing up a Kickstarter run, ending May 27th. It has players filling up a dungeon using Tetris-like shapes while trying to manage the attacks of the dungeon’s villainous monster.
Let’s Rate the Paper Mario Games!
Posted on May 10th, 2024 by
With the Paper Mario: The Thousand Year Door remake coming out on Switch this month, I thought it would be fun to go back and rate all the games in the Paper Mario series. We’ll do this from worst to best, and only games in the Paper series are going to be on this list. Well, with one exception. OK, let’s begin!
Unplugged: Euthia: Torment of Resurrection (Boardgame)
Posted on May 9th, 2024 by
If there are any Holy Grails in the boardgaming world, it is to find the perfect civilization-building boardgame and the perfect dungeon-crawl/RPG boardgame. Euthia has nothing to do with civilization-building but is a worthy attempt at an RPG style adventure boardgame. Players take on the role of one of several possible heroes and explore a world created by revealing modular map tiles. Over the course of the game heroes will search (or mine) for treasure, go on minor quests, enlist the help of elementals, and (of course) fight monsters. Unlike many games in the genre, each game of Euthia is a one-and-done experience with no need to pack away bits and bobs in order to preserve a specific character for the next exploration. It is nice to have a nice, epic arc of character progression in a single sitting but that does mean a single game can take a good amount of time. There are several scenarios included with the game varying in length from 30 to 100+ minutes PER PLAYER. Thankfully, a 2 player game is quite do-able. For those willing to put in the time, Euthia provides a great, complete RPG/exploration experience in a single sitting, unlike the modern trend of stringing out a good bit of hero/character development over the course of a half-dozen (or more) individual, but linked, plays of a game. An expansion/continuation of the game is currently on Kickstarter until May 16th.
Euthia: Torment of Resurrection
Publisher: Steamforged Games
Players: 1-4
Ages: 14+
Time: 60-480 min
(review copy provided by publisher)
Welcome to the Princess Peach Showtime Fashion Show!
Posted on April 26th, 2024 by
Princess Peach Showtime is out and in the game, Peach gets a starring role as she dons new outfits in stage plays. So I thought it might be neat to go through all the outfits she has and what they are like. But keep in mind there may be some spoilers here and there, so watch out for that. OK, let’s pull back the curtain and start the show!
Unplugged: Mystery Detective: The Crime Solving Party Game
Posted on April 25th, 2024 by
Before there were these funny electronic devices that seem to be everywhere, I remember road trips where we had to make our own entertainment. One “20 questions”-style game that we played focused on solving a mystery. Players would be given a somewhat obtuse prompt of a situation and must then figure out what happened and why by asking a series of yes/no questions. Mystery Detective collects many of those mystery puzzles, printing a title and subtle picture/clue on one side with the explanation on the back. It currently comes in two flavors: a collection of 100 “classic” riddles (many of which I remember from my childhood) and one based on “Funny Deaths” – a mix of made-up and real-life cases where things went terribly wrong.
Mystery Detective (Vol 1 & 2)
Publisher: Add-A-Game
Players: 2-20
Ages: 14+
Time: 15 min
(review copy provided by publisher)
Unplugged: Monkey Business (Boardgame)
Posted on April 23rd, 2024 by
Monkey Business is a bit of a mash-up of the classic games of charades (where you pantomime something) and werewolf (where you’re trying to discover the odd person out in the mix. All but one player (or all but two, if there’s more than 6 players) are given the same activity to perform while the odd ones out, the “scammers” have to just play it by ear to cover up the fact that they don’t know what they should be doing. After a few moments of acting, players then all must accuse a player to be the “scammer” – the one who was just copying everyone else. Players who are correct keep their card, scammers win half of the remaining cards. After six rounds of play the game ends and the player with the most cards is the winner. Monkey Business is a fun little party game that gets people moving. It won’t carry an entire evening of gaming but is good for a short distraction, perhaps to loosen up a group of people who may be taking themselves too seriously.
Monkey Business
Publisher: Add-A-Game
Players: 4-12
Ages: 8+
Time: 15 min
(review copy provided by publisher)
“The Video Game Chef” Cookbook
Posted on April 12th, 2024 by
For Christmas last year I got a video game themed cookbook. It’s hardcover and pretty nice and has some interesting recipes in it, so I thought I’d go over a few of them here. I won’t go over ALL the recipes in the book, just some notes I jotted down on the ones I found more interesting.
Best of Princess Peach
Posted on April 5th, 2024 by
Princess Peach is one of the most popular Mario characters and she’s recently getting her own game on the Switch called Princess Peach Showtime! And that’s not even the first time she’s gotten her own game either! And even though she spends much of her time as a damsel in distress waiting for Mario to save her, there are plenty of other times when Nintendo lets her shine and be a hero. So in honor of her new game, I thought I’d go back and look at Princess Peach’s best moments.
Sora amiibo
Posted on March 29th, 2024 by
The last new character Nintendo announced for Smash was Sora from Kingdom Hearts. So of course they made an amiibo figure out of him. I got it so let’s take a look!
{Star || Hero} Realms Digital Sale!
Posted on March 27th, 2024 by
One of the earliest deckbuilding card games, Star Realms has players attacking with space ships in a head to head battle to defeat their opponent. Designed by professional Magic:the Gathering player, Robert Dougherty, the game maintains a large following and has also made the jump into digital space. Not only can one play against the AI or an online opponent, there is an excellent series of solo challenges linked together to form a bit of a story-based campaign. By now, there are oodles of expansions available and each expansion has additional campaigns to play. Expansion cards are usable in regular games too, of course. The app has been out for a long time but I wanted to mention it today as, for the next few days, almost all the content is at a 50% discount. They have also managed to set things up so that any expansion purchase on one platform (iOS, Android, Steam) unlocks the same expansion everywhere else. Something I’d love to see happen in other digital games. Wise Wizard Games also has a spin-off game called Hero Realms that uses very similar mechanics but spins it into a full on RPG-style campaign game where one’s deck and abilities change and improve from game to game. It can be played head to head or cooperatively against set encounter challenges. Most of the Hero Realms expansions are also on sale. Be sure to check them out. More details on both games below (along with a note on the deckbuilder boardgame – Robot Quest Arena…)
