Matthew Smail

The relationship between board games and video games is a strange one. Obviously board games came first, and have inspired many a digital conversion — yet sometimes, the opposite is true. Taking the immediacy of video games and translating…

When I think back to my review for Chronicles of Crime, it was obvious at the time that the game was designed with expansion content in mind. After all, several add-on scenarios were available on day one, and, most tellingly, the box…

If you’ve never heard of Pax Pamir, then you’re probably not a fan of war games or political simulations — and you know what, that’s totally fine. For those who are fans however, the return of Pax Pamir is something that has been long…

Up until now, I think that every drinking related board game I’ve played has been strictly a party game, usually with a real focus on drinking and very little actual game. Drunkgeon, whilst undoubtedly linked to the consumption of alcohol…

In Ryan Laukat’s The Ancient World: Second Edition, each player will take control of a city state vying for the attention of five migratory tribes, fleeing from rampaging titans. To do this, each city must be bigger, better equipped and…

Senshi, from Arcane Wonders, is a small box, very low key design from Dan Manfredi. The game centres around the idea that each player is one of the titular Senshi — a trainee monk under study from an ailing master. With the master fading…

Until Dawn was one of the five or six Sony exclusive games that first made me invest in a shiny new PS4. Supermassive Games' blockbusting horror game featured an all-star cast, incredible visuals and, most importantly, a heart pounding…

If you stare into the looking glass back through tabletop history, you’ll spot that we once reviewed Hotshots, a firefighting themed cooperative game from Fireside Games. Hotshots was not the first game to riff on the idea of firefighters…