Matthew Smail 505 posts 46 comments

When my kids ask me to play a new board game, I’m often forced to make excuses not to until at some point, they back me into a corner and I have to sigh my way through some turgid variant on Snakes and Ladders. With Outfoxed in their…

It’s hard for me to believe that Oddworld: Strangers Wrath was first released almost twenty years ago. It’s just another painful reminder that many, many years have now passed since those halcyon days of my youth. However, just as my…

In Godtear, the old Gods have fallen — and their tears crash to the ground for mortals to claim; but only a select few (known as champions) have the fortitude to withstand their power. Godtear is a head to head miniatures game in which two…

I don’t know how, but somehow the original Stanley Parable game completely passed me by back in 2013, despite receiving rave reviews from critics both within the video game industry and beyond. That might not be such terrible news though,…

You wouldn’t think that 17th century subsistence farming would make for an interesting game setting, would you? Yet somehow, Agricola manages to not only be interesting — but also extremely compelling and ridiculously tense. Why, you ask?…

As regular readers will know, I am at least as big of a board game fan as I am a fan of video games. In fact, whilst I probably spend more hours actually playing video games, I cherish the time sitting around my table with friends as more…

It’s very unlikely that you can have been involved in hobby board games for long without at least encountering Terra Mystica. This ten-year-old game of terraforming, worker placement and pseudo-area control was designed by Jens Drögemüller…

If you asked me to take the mythos and style of the legendary Thief games (excluding the crap 200X remake) and build an isometric Desperados style stealth game out of it, I’d bite your hand off at the chance to see the outcome. And so here…

Imagine if anyone actually knew much more about the legend of King Arthur besides something about knights and a round table? Imagine if the legendary wizard Merlin were the original Doctor Strange? Well friends, imagine no more — because in…

Having recently reviewed Crusader Kings III on Xbox One via GamePass, my appetite for console-based grand strategy simply cannot be sated. With the modern political landscape as tumultuous as it is, I’ve been seeking something a little more…