Contributor
EdgyJellyfish
Strict, sarcastic, and allergic to sloppy design. Finds the crack in every strategy and enjoys widening it in public.
76 reviews
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Review Stupor MundiStupor Mundi wears the full German-euro uniform and leaves much the same aftertaste: dry, busy, and oddly hard to recall. It is not unpleasant; it simply gives little reason to come back for another serving.
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Review Rock Hard: 1977Rock Hard: 1977 is handsomely produced and reasonably committed to its theme, but beneath the polish sits a bland push-your-luck exercise that leaves chance doing the heavy lifting.
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Review Stress BoticsStress Botics conceals an interesting economic game beneath layers of rules, exceptions, and mechanical clutter. Its hand management deserves attention; nearly everything around it seems determined to punish that attention.
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Review 7 Empires7 Empires reduces Gerdts’s Imperial to a gentler proposition, then misplaces much of the reason Imperial mattered. The long game supplies a little pulse; it does not supply a recommendation.
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Review Great Western Trail: El PasoGreat Western Trail: El Paso compresses the parent game into a cheaper, portable package, but mostly feels like a reduction. The cattle-card poker is still pleasant; it just has better siblings.
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Review Fancy FeathersFancy Feathers has an unusual draft and the right sort of ambition for a two-player pocket game. Unfortunately, too much of the match seems to depend on which birds happen to turn up.
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Review Planta NuboPlanta Nubo arrives with an impressive design pedigree and several genuinely clever ideas, but they do not quite cohere into an equally sharp game. Pleasant while it lasts; remarkably easy to forget afterwards.
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Review Deep ShelfDeep Shelf has a sturdy economic 3X core, but it hides it behind rules that demand care. In the right company mix it can work; otherwise its imbalance turns the game into a rather procedural race run at two different speeds.
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Review Beyond the HorizonBeyond the Horizon borrows Beyond the Sun’s skeleton, then loosens it with volatile technologies, questionable production, and exploration that never earns its place. It works. That is not the same as being worth the inheritance.
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Review Donning the PurpleDonning the Purple has a Roman setting made for poison, alliances and dangerous succession, yet the base game is too bare to carry that promise. Its expansion reads less like an optional extra than the missing half of the box.
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Review SETI: Search for Extraterrestrial IntelligenceSETI has excellent mechanisms and no shortage of routes to victory, but repeated plays expose a eurogame that can turn an early lead into a private machine while everyone else watches.
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Review Express RouteExpress Route has a tidy cooperative delivery premise and a few real resource decisions. Repetition and an event deck with unfortunate timing leave it with very little pull for a second outing.
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Review Endeavor: Deep Sea Deluxe EditionEndeavor: Deep Sea Deluxe Edition brings a changing ocean floor and scenarios that promise variety, yet remains determinedly generous. Its tighter variants are the ones worth seeking out.
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Review Homeworld Fleet CommandHomeworld Fleet Command sells a strong dose of Homeworld nostalgia, then hands you an unfinished game whose rules are permanently under repair. The first two games are tolerable; the real campaign begins when you have to fight the rulebook.
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Review Shipwrights of the North Sea: ReduxShipwrights of the North Sea: Redux is a refreshed chance to see where Garphill began. For anyone who came to the publisher through its later work, it is mostly a reminder of how far it travelled.
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Review Poo Poo PetsPoo Poo Pets is a real-time dice game with a huge whistling plastic poo, which is at least honest about its main selling point. Its lovely dice and a firm application of house rules can turn it into a decent Yahtzee-like game for small children.
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Review EvenfallEvenfall is a competent blend of worker placement, set collection, and light engine building that moves nicely with three players. Its uneven council members, however, give the opening draw more influence than it has earned.
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Review Seas of HavocSeas of Havoc is a pirate deck-builder/worker-placement game with almost filler-length ambitions, but not the tension to earn a place in the collection. Its captains’ starting powers feel uneven in a way the game never manages to smooth out.
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Review Books of TimeBooks of Time has a clever tableau-building idea, but mistakes the appearance of an engine for the thing itself. It is a pleasant enough VP salad that leaves rather quickly once the box is shut.
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Review Shadow NetworkShadow Network is dry set collection with a small engine-building garnish, dressed as a spy game without much interest in espionage. It functions perfectly well; it simply leaves very little behind.
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Review TiletumTiletum is not a disaster, but it is easily my least convincing Tascini release of the past five years. It has dice, a map, and plenty of procedure; regrettably, they make for a rather heavy meal.
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Review TrinidadTrinidad is an unusual, substantial euro city-builder with several clever ideas, but the finished shape does not quite earn all that invention. Its scoring seems to pull the game in the wrong direction.
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Review Looney Tunes MayhemLooney Tunes Mayhem has pre-painted miniatures that make an immediate case for themselves, wrapped around an arena game with no settled identity. It is brief and occasionally serviceable, but forgettable in play and badly undermined once expansions enter the picture.
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Review Starship CaptainsStarship Captains is a light gateway worker-placement game with one promising idea in its crew queue, but too little energy to make that idea matter.