Matthew Smail 308 posts 39 comments

With so much praise lavished on the first two games and such a simple game concept to work with, I couldn’t imagine how Azul: Summer Pavilion could possibly have improved on the first two games, yet somehow, it has. After all, just a…

When it comes to choosing board games that fit Big Boss Battle and what I think our readers are interested in, I always look for bright, accessible games that have deep, competitive hooks to grab the players attention. Following a second…

Warhammer Quest II — The End Times is the provocatively named sequel to, erm, Warhammer Quest and much like the board game it is based upon, it presents a combat-focused  dungeon crawling experience with light RPG elements. Sounds good…

Crimson Company is a small box card game that centres around wagering cash and recruiting troops in order to secure control of two out of three central castles. The version you see in these pictures is the Deluxe Edition which features…

Dawn of Man is an ambitious and relatively serious simulation about the earliest stages of the development of humankind that is an unusual fit for consoles. Despite its muddy colours and slow gameplay, however, there’s an addictiveness to…

Whilst I don’t play tons of party games, I tend to favour those which rank as at least “mid-tier” in terms of the complexity. I’d much rather invest a bit more time and effort into a crunchier game, and I suppose in general that’s why I…

Mad Games Tycoon is like Game Dev Story but for grown-ups, so how well will it live up to the more immediate demands of a targeted console audience?  Personally, I love an economic management simulator, and to be honest, the more depth the…

Once upon a time a designer called Martin Wallace decided that every game should be card driven, and once he had made war games, area control games and deception games thus, he rested. After pondering for a while, he thought “miniatures…

Sometimes it seems that games of a similar theme come in runs. I assume this is because of a particular theme across popular culture, but I’ve never been able to put my finger on it. One theme that we’ve seen a lot of in board gaming…

From a literal walk in the park to delivering some of the most frightening experiences in video games, the humble walking simulator has demonstrated its longevity to become much more than a niche genre. Close to the Sun, from Italian…