If it had any other theme, over 4,000 backers (myself included) probably wouldn’t have even noticed Boss Monster, the first offering from indie developer-publishers Brotherwise Games. But the love Johnny and Chris O’Neal have for the retro video games of our shared youth had infused their creation with the right amount of nostalgia to catch the attention of enough to completely destroy their funding goal, earning nearly 18 times their desired target. The pixel-art aesthetic extends beyond mere card art, as even the box design, instruction manual and PDF “strategy guide” are reminiscent of old-school NES offerings. Playing Boss Monster might not feel like playing a tabletop version of a video game, but it certainly looks the part from head to toe. READ MORE
Dungeons & Dragons casts a large shadow over the modern gaming hobby, both as a gateway to paths beyond the usual Parker Brothers or Milton Bradley fare and as a high fantasy experience delivery vehicle. The “dungeon crawl” genre ranges from Munchkin-style parody to Descent: Journeys in the Dark epic missions, but few if any can be played in under an hour until now. Billed as “your lunch break dungeon crawl” on its Kickstarter page, Dungeon Heroes (from Michael Coe’s Gamelyn Games) pits one player as the dungeon versus another as the traditional group of four heroes (warrior, cleric, rogue, and wizard) searching the dungeon for treasure. READ MORE
A lot of party games ask players to test their artistic prowess while trying to get others to identify a word or phrase. From classic titles like Win, Lose or Draw and Pictionary to slightly more modern fare like Cranium variants, none of them endear themselves to those whose skills at putting words into images might be somewhat lacking. This hole is where Identik (originally known as Portrayal in its 2005 release) thrives. READ MORE
I have previously mentioned my taste for two-player abstract games. Sometimes these head-to-head strategic affairs are basic and themeless, but occasionally you can find solid abstract mechanics with unique coats of paint. Reiner Knizia’s Atlanteon is one of the unique ones. As a 2003 Fantasy Flight reissue of his 1992 design Revolution – not to be confused with the 2009 Steve Jackson title of the same name that I mentioned in my best-of column for that year and really should cover here one day – Atlanteon is a territorial tile-laying game that is easy to learn and quick to play. In its previous incarnation it was all about the French Revolution, but instead of Jacobians squaring off against Royalists in Paris, Atlanteon pits two warring tribe of merfolk against each other for control of Atlantis. READ MORE
Guillotine is a fast-moving filler designed by Paul Peterson back in 1998, when it won the Origins Award for Best Traditional Card Game. I had wanted to pick it up for a while, but never really got around to it. Honestly, I kind of forgot about it until last month, when the untimely death of Quinton Hoover (one of the game’s artists and my all-time favorite Magic: the Gathering artist) returned it to the forefront of my mind. Since Mr. Hoover hadn’t illustrated a Magic card in over four years, owning Guillotine gave me an opportunity to see some of his work more frequently than regular Magic play would allow. READ MORE
