Real-time games come with an allure. No matter the gameplay or theme they always come with the potential to be amazing once the timer starts. Often though, they fall short on reaching this promise because in order to have a real-time element, designers need to sacrifice a lot of complexity as the onus of the […]
Tag: Board Games
Board Game News! – 06/11/2018
This week marks my 1st full year as a board game blogger, and the existence of Roll to Review. It’s been an exciting journey, both in my real life, and in my writing on this blog. Like most I’ve had my doubts on continuing at points, especially when work picked up, but I kept on […]
Letters from Whitechapel: Do not open!
It’s Halloween. By now everyone has had their fill of pumpkin spice lattes and reviews and playthroughs of Mysterium. For me, I’m opening a blood drenched box holding a half-eaten human kidney and a letter that reads: From hell. Mr Lusk, Sor I send you half the Kidne I took from one women prasarved it […]
Stay Awhile and Listen to the Tales of the Arabian Nights
I don’t know if they’re still a thing, but I used to enjoy “Choose Your Own Adventure” books. When I was young there was something novel about interacting with your media. Time replaced this with text-based video games, and now story-based video games. In this review, we go back in time and look at a […]
Deck-Building is Dead. Long live Deck-Building! A Dale of Merchants Review.
I grew up in the golden era of massively multiplayer online games. The biggest being World of Warcraft. It was fantastic. I lost years to the game. It also ruined the industry. No other company could come close to recreating something so irreverent and genre defining. In board gaming, Dominion did the same for deck-building. […]
Board Game News – 9/10/2018
The most exciting news this week is the late addition to the Essen SPIEL line up: Blackout: Hong Kong. Designed by Alexander Pfister – known for the two well regarded games Broom Service and Great Western Trail. Player’s attempt to regain control of their lives after a blackout within Hong Kong leaves everyone powerless. It’s […]
Board Game News! – 23/09/2018
This week there have been a few big game announcements I’ve been dying to talk about. The first, and most important, is Arkham Horror 3rd Edition from Fantasy Flight Games. I’ve played a lot of Eldritch Horror, and while it’s a great game, it loses something being a world wide affair. I’m really looking forward […]
Raiders of the North Sea – A board game to play before Ragnarok!
Not so long ago there were two schools of design within board games. On one hand, the uninteresting theme, no luck, all strategy games that came primarily from Germany – called Euro games or Euros. On the other hand, we had American style games where it was all randomness all the time, extremely high player […]
What goes Clank! in the night?
It’s the end of a Scooby Doo episode. The gangs been split up, they’ve run through Escher’s hallway, and Scooby’s eaten his snacks. They’re together again with the local sheriff, and they’ve got Clank!’s core mechanic, deck-building, all tied up. Fred and Velma give some rousing exposition before they rip off the suspect’s mask revealing […]
Tips on Writing Board Game Reviews
This article strongly references my website, though I think it contains a few nuggets of gold for those interested in reviewing board games, or anything else. When I started Roll to Review it was on the ambitious premise of fixing the three big issues that I saw within board game media: Reviewers spending too much […]
