Last week the last spielbox issue of the noughties arrived. As usual, the main feature at this time of the year is the report on the games fair in Essen. But not as usual, the game in the magazine is neither an expansion nor just a board to which you have to supply your own dice and counters: it’s a full, self-contained game. The issue’s contents is as follows, with underlined games receiving great reviews:
Read more… »
Archives for the year 2009
Gosh, two issues arriving within weeks! I barely finished reading the previous issue, when I got the new one yesterday. This time, there is a special section of short reviews of game expansions; most don’t fare too well in the reviewers’ opinions. Also, Friedemann Friese’s game Die 3 Gebote received two 3/10 scores! I have never seen such low scores in spielbox.
The magazine comes with a small expansion for Carcassonne, by one of the magazine’s regular reviewers. Moreover, thinking of the future generation of gamers, the children’s section looks at games for 2-year olds. The issue’s contents is as follows, with underlined games receiving great reviews: Read more… »
Yesterday I had to miss the games club night due to work-related travel to Lancaster. It was nice to see familiar names on the way there, like Stockport, Manchester, Wigan, Bolton, and Preston, and remembering laying tracks between those cities when playing Brass (click on the image to enlarge). My hosts were intrigued when I told them about the game and asked me to bring it next time I go there. The trip was too short to do any sight-seeing, so I definitely must go up Lancashire some other time.
Coincidentally, a Brass tournament game took place yesterday, won by Steve. He played only 3 tournament games so far, winning also Princes of Florence and coming second in Age of Steam. Impressive! No wonder he’s currently second in the ranking, behind David, who has 9 points (and 2 games) more. My Brass tournament game is due in a couple of weeks. Fingers crossed…
Last Friday issue 5/2009 arrived, with a reader survey. Respondents enter a draw of free tickets and accommodation for Spiel 2010! Fingers crossed… The online web form allows to add our own comments, so I took the opportunity to tell the publishers that what I like most about the magazine are the historical articles, the interviews and the reports, not the game reviews. There is no review that can replace the plurality of opinions on BoardGameGeek and the spielbox reviews are actually 80% rule summary and 20% opinion. Not very helpful. Moreover, certain reviewers have a rather convoluted way of writing (to add on top of the convoluted sentence structure in German), which means I can sometimes hardly parse their sentences, let alone understand how the game works. I doubt a 25 year old magazine will change their structure, but I wish they reduce the number of pages dedicated to reviews and increase those with the kind of articles I can’t get anywhere else. One of the survey questions was whether we felt the reviews were too detailed, so there’s hope…
Moving on to the issue’s contents, it is as follows, with underlined games receiving great reviews: Read more… »
No, we didn’t move our games venue to a sauna last week — we played Martin Wallace’s simplified version of his Age of Steam. Keith brought his copy and explained the rules to Damen, Graham, Sam and myself. It was again one of those evenings where I did some of my trademark stupid mistakes, this time right in the first round. While in many other games I would have plenty of time to recover into, say, 3rd position, Steam is absolutely unforgiving and I would remain last throughout the game… Read more… »
After two months of waiting, I got yesterday a letter from the Open University saying that I passed the computer games course (Digital worlds: designing games, creating alternative realities) with score 80%. Not bad. I’m sure I got marks deducted for going over the word count limit in the description of my charity game design; and in other questions I was probably too terse. It’s always a fine balancing act of return for time invested.
The important thing is I enjoyed the course. It covers a wide range of topics, from the economic impact of the game industry and the social perception of videogames culture, to how modern games are produced and getting a small taste of it by designing and implementing our own little maze or platform game with GameMaker. Topics like serious games and games with a purpose were also included. The assessment’s questions were as wide-ranging as the course, but I can’t give any further details without getting into serious trouble. I can safely recommend this short course, but then, being an OU employee, I’m obviously biased. 
I spent the past 4 days in Cambridge, for professional reasons. I looked in advance for shops in the city and came across MNG-AJM Games and Collectibles, Andy Merritt’s business. He has a mind-boggling variety of games in stock, mostly used and little known, but also several in shrink, besides some books and magazines. Andy produces a monthly catalog of a small subset of his stock (see e.g. this month’s list) but the easiest is to e-mail him a list of the games you’re looking for. That’s what I did and he had La Strada and King Me! in excellent condition and at very reasonable prices. He even delivered them in person at the college I was staying in. I’ll certainly keep Andy in mind for future acquisitions of out-of-print games.
Yesterday was double tournament session: Manuela, Ester and Keith played Caylus (in the absence of Paul B.), while Nick Baldyworthy, Dan and I played Stone Age. Interestingly, it was Dan’s first face-to-face game: so far, he only played on BrettSpielWelt. With Nick and Dan having each several games under their belt, and I having only played once before, it was no surprise I lost. Badly. The final score says it all: Read more… »
If video games existed at the time historical figures lived, who would you like to have designed one? And which kind of game would they design? Some curious suggestions at the Guardian’s game blog. I especially like the proposal for a one-level platform game by Escher. Something along the picture on the left, I imagine. A single level would be mind-boggling enough, let alone having to face further levels if you manage to escape this building!
Last night five of us were due to play Princes of Florence for our Eurogames tournament. Before the holidays, Richard couldn’t come in the last minute; this time it was Paul B. So we decided it was only fair to postpone again. Will we be third time lucky?
Fortunately, many other people had no pre-arranged game and hence there was no lack of choice of which games to play and with whom. In the end, I decided to join Ester, Julian and Pete for a game of Bison, which I had never heard of before. It turned out to be another K&K (Kramer & Kiesling) area control game, with a dash of Knizia and Carcassonne. It was Pete’s game but he couldn’t remember the rules, so we had to endure a painfully slow and confusing rule explanation process, in which Pete half read the rules aloud and half re-explained them. After half an hour we got it (except Julian, who got the basic cost mechanism only half-way through the game). The rules are actually quite clever and put together familiar mechanisms.