Board Game Review - Those Pesky Humans

I've been giving my life a lot of thought recently, and I think I've finally decided what I want to be when I grow up - an ogre. And not metaphorically, in the sense that people think of crotchety old bastards who punch people in the face and urinate in their lunch boxes as ogres. I mean I want to be an actual ogre, a big, tough bruiser, and I want to run a dungeon.Sure, it sounds like a ton of work, running a dungeon, and my co-workers are likely...

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Card Game Review - Bhazum

When I was preparing to write this review, I was a little bit torn on which joke to use. My options were to either mock the name of this game, or to do the entire thing 'in character' as Borat. I've decided on a mix of the two, and I may be bouncing back and forth a little.Bhazum is a game about a city, apparently located somewhere in Turkey, but potentially part of Kazakhstan. Whether or not they export high-quality potassium is unclear. What is...

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Card Games Review - Insyllium

One of the reasons I like small-press publishers as much as I do is because they've got a ton of heart. They may not have the persistence or business savvy to sell their creations to actual, successful publishers, and they may not have the resources to make games that don't look like they were created by a fifth-grade art class using Elmer's Glue and erasable markers, but they believe in their own work to such a high degree that they're actually...

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Trivia Game Review - Fictionaire

It’s tough to improve on the standard trivia game format. Trivial Pursuit pretty much nailed it - you ask a question, and if the other guy can answer it, he gets ahead. It’s straight-forward and simple, and fun for people who know a hell of a lot more than I do.But when an idea does really well, copycats are inevitable. If you start shopping for trivia games today, you’ve got a huge variety of options, most of which totally suck, because the really...

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Board Game Review - Incursion

If you're like me, your favorite games are combinations of really exciting stories wrapped around really fun rules. Not always, of course - I play the hell out of Dominion, and the theme in that game could literally be anything at all. But most of my other favorites, stuff like Warhammer Quest or Railways of the World or Last Night on Earth, combine a good story with good rules to make a great game. Games like Agricola prove that you can still have...

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Drawing Game Review - Identik

I must be on a roll. Last night, party games, and tonight, drawing games. If this is where Drake's Flames is heading, I may as well just start writing about games you can play while sitting on the toilet.I shouldn't have a problem with a drawing game. I'm an artist for a living. But anyone who ever played Pictionary knows that drawing games have virtually nothing to do with actually knowing how to draw. Identik, for example, is all about drawing...

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Party Game Review - Buzz It!

One day I'm going to figure out why people think party games are fun. For the most part, they're stupid. They're essentially a tiny handful of largely nonsensical rules meant to force social interaction for people without enough creativity to simply talk to each other. Half of them are centered around knowing something about the other people in the room, and most of the rest are irritating wordplay.But I must confess that every now and then, I find...

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Board Game Review - Charon Inc.

If publishers were athletes, Fantasy Flight would be some NFL star who occasionally gets caught in motel rooms doing cocaine off a hooker's ass. Rio Grande would be a Major League Baseball superstar who rarely does interviews, but always manages to hit the homer when the team needs it to finish off the series. And Gryphon Games would be a minor-league batter with a respectable hitting average, for the minors.Gryphon Games doesn't make those games...

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Board Game Review - Alien Frontiers

I think it's time I raved all about the brilliance of small-press games. Specifically, I want to rave about Alien Frontiers, one of those incredibly rare cases where a pint-size publisher proves to have some serious staying power. The first game from Clever Mojo Games, called Ogre Castle, was fun, but it smacked of small-press corner-cutting (a cloth game board seems like a neat idea, but it's really just a neon sign that says, 'we can't afford to...

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Board Game Review - U-Build Battleship

I have got to revisit my policy regarding review copies. I've always said that if you send me a game, I'll review it, period. This has resulted in an awful lot of very bad games arriving at my house, to the point that sometimes, I think someone is pranking me. It's like that gag where you sign up your boss at a bunch of gay porn websites. But without that policy, I may never have received review copies of some of my favorite games, like Caladea or...

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Board Game Review - Horus Heresy

Here's a short list of some things I like:Pralines and Cream Ice CreamScotch WhiskeyVideo GamesBackpacking in the MountainsWoodworkingStrippersIf you offer me any one of those things, I will like you more. Many of these things would even go well together, like ice cream and video games. Some of them would not go well together, like scotch and woodworking. And some go great with anything (strippers make nearly anything more entertaining).But if you...

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Word Game Review - Scrabble Flash

Recently, a reader asked me what I thought about the future of board games, especially as related to the progress of technology. Being something of a dirty old man, I immediately began to wonder if in the future, blow-up dolls would be hooked to USB ports so you could watch videos of yourself banging a porn star while you pretended to bang a porn star. After all, nearly any innovation in technology is first utilized by the adult film industry, and...

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