Recently I’ve been trawling through the basement of Boardgamegeek, determined to find a treasure in the form of print-and-play games it’s worth spending time on.
For every hugely complicated game I’ll never have the time, skill or patience to complete, there is a Weilong. Continue reading
What is Hey, that’s my Fish?
Hey, that’s my Fish on Android is a mobile adaptation of a popular little family game from Fantasy Flight Games.
In the physical version of the game, players build a board from tiles, and play as penguins hungry for fish. I’ve heard this game mentioned as among the most time consuming to set up due to the number of tiles to lay out. No need to worry about this on Android.
What is Roll For It?
Roll For It! is one of the simplest games I’ve ever played. So why is it so much fun?
Described as the Roll It! Match It! Score It! game, this was a Kickstarter project from designer (and very friendly Twitter-user) Chris Leder, and Calliope Games, the good folks behind one of the first tabletop games I ever bought, Tsuro.
There are two versions, purple and red, which come with different cards and different coloured dice so it will go from a 2-4 player game to a 2-8 player game when both sets are combined. I went for the purple edition, as it’s my wife’s favourite colour, and do you need a better reason than that? Continue reading
Being someone who doesn’t have a lot of free cash yet really wants to keep up this hobby I’ve discovered, I’ve spent time recently looking at ‘print and play’ games.
These are exactly what they seem. Usually pdf versions of games – cards and instructions, you supply your own dice and counters – that can be printed, mounted and played.
There are many websites which offer these, and Boardgamegeek has a great collection with plenty of free files to download at your leisure once you’re logged in. More and more Kickstarter games are offering these as a reward option for those who don’t have a big budget to invest but would still like to get involved. I’ve picked up a few for between $1 and $5 dollars. Some projects are even free, I guess as a way of encouraging people to play-test your game.
But is it worth the time and effort that is involved in building up a game for yourself? Why not just save up for the game and buy the full version?
What is Carcassonne for Android?
Recently I’ve been checking out Android versions of tabletop games.
The first, by a twist of fate, being Carcassonne. This was also the first tabletop game I ever bought.
The mobile version has been around for a while on both iOS and Android, but currently it’s available for just 99p on the Amazon app store. At that price it was a no-brainer. EDIT it’s no longer at that price.
It’s a neat little translation of the game that’s very faithful to the real version.
In 2012 my wife and I lost a daughter to a rare genetic condition which affects around 1 in 100,000 births, or doing the maths, just 10 in every 1 million.
The trauma of reliving these events every day, and imagining what kind of a life our little girl would have had, was – and remains – absolutely crushing.
The best way I’ve come across to explain it is through this short lullaby which Neil Gaiman, one of my favourite authors, wrote for The Graveyard Book.
Recently I backed my first Kickstarter project.
For those readers who haven’t heard of Kickstarter, it’s a really simple concept. Crowdsourced funding for projects that don’t have much in the way of financial backing.
There are thousands of projects on Kickstarter, all looking for generous backers who will donate (‘pledge’) a small amount of money to projects they like the look of. If enough people pledge, and the project reaches its funding target, then the project goes ahead and your pledge is taken from your bank account. Not enough pledges? Nothing happens.
In some cases your pledge may get you nothing more than a warm fuzzy feeling for helping an enthusiastic project and perhaps an emailed ‘thankyou.’
In others, you may pledge enough to entitle you to share in the success of the project. This is where Kickstarter is a useful tool for discovering new games.
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