Matthew Smail 416 posts 39 comments

My review for Mandala was originally taken on alongside a number of other two-player games, with the intention of including it in a piece about games that cater specifically for couples. Somehow, though, the suffocatingly thematic language…

When I think of movies like Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom or The Mummy, I tend to be drawn towards the swashbuckling elements of those movies, and the protracted and exciting action scenes. The fantastical archaeological and…

Whilst I admit that I’ve been something of an evangelist towards two-player board games recently, I couldn’t help but feel disappointed that the new 7 Wonders: Second Edition strips out all two-player variants entirely. That is only…

As the second — of at least three, but maybe more — games that make up The Dark Pictures Anthology, Little Hope faces the tough task of addressing the challenges levelled at the first, whilst also living in the shadow of developer…

If times were different and board-games were being played as normal — between a mixture of players who do and don’t know each other, often in dedicated cafes or spaces in public areas — then Baron Voodoo is the kind of game that would make…

With one of the most horrific opening sequences in any game that I’ve played, Visage sets out its stall early on. This is a game designed to shock and scare you to your very core — especially if you have the stomach to play it for long…

Continuing our recent run of two player only games, Kahuna is a small box standalone game from publisher Kosmos and designer Gunter Cornett, in which the players act as deities vying for dominion of an archipelago in the South Pacific.…

I could think of more loveable heroine’s than the Velociraptor, yet there’s something about Bruno Cathala and Bruno Faidutti’s Raptor that invokes a primal instinct to protect, and leaves the players in no doubt about who the bad guys are.…

Since the second quarter of 2020, I’ve been playing more and more games with just two players — primarily with my wife and one of our children. Whilst many games work with two players, relatively few multiplayer games scale down well, and…

When it comes to choosing board and card games, I’m always on the lookout for options that might appeal to me, my wife and our kids equally. This is a heck of a challenge, and so far only the likes of Jurassic Snack and Zoo Run have managed…