06 Jan 2025
The primary way my board game playing expanded this year was due to conventions like GenCon and OrcaCon; generally I aim to play games before purchasing them and conventions are a great way to do that. On the whole I had fewer logged plays than 2023. I think 2025 needs to be a year of reestablishing a game playing community. But for now, here are the board games that I played in 2024 that I have something to say about.
Build an engine in reverse while drafting one card at a time. This game goes by wicked fast and through the whole thing you’ll be working out how to adapt your strategy. Play cards in ascending numeric order and you get you an enticing bonus card, so there’s this great tension of seeking the right play order. There are regular interesting decisions, a short play time, and it comes in an appropriately small package. Fantastic small box game.
2-6 players, 15-30 minutes
This is Venn diagrams as a party game (although can technically be played with as few as 2). One player knows the rules of the circles (for example “is a five letter word”, or “is made of organic material”) and the rest tentatively place cards in them to see if they have inferred the meanings. Make a mistake and draw more cards. Your goal is to play out all of your cards. I’ve only played it as a cooperatively puzzle but it does have a competitive mode. The art on the cards is charming, and playing with Venn diagrams in physical space is delightful.
2-6 players, 20 minutes
I wouldn’t have thought I’d have loved a memory game this much. But turns out storytelling with friends as a means to mitigate memory is very much my jam. This is a fun bonding activity that everyone can enjoy.
2-6 players, 30 minutes
This game aims to both teach and be fun, which is not easy. And I think it pulls it off. You have asymmetric nations doing work to address the climate crisis. And through the gameplay they will realize that they have to work together, leveraging each other’s strengths, or civilization is going to collapse. I’ve found that not everyone clicks with this game. Which is too bad, because I enjoy the puzzle and the very relevant storytelling that emerges from the mechanics.
1-4 players, 60-90 minutes
I’ve enjoyed the core gameplay ideas of past Evolution games, where you create and adapt species to compete for food and population growth. Oceans takes most of those ideas and adapts it for a dedicated aquatic environment with lovely colorful artwork. Then it mixes in a “deep” deck of crazy unique effects. So you combine some core heavily balanced traits with the spicy effects which creates an excellent blend of understandability with variety. Maybe you’re a predatory super shark, or a lurking bottom feeder, or a plankton-scooping anchor species… the confrontation between players feels like building an ecosystem. It works better than any of the other variants on the Evolution series.
2-4 players, 60 minutes
The first thing you’ll notice about Harvest is the absolutely adorable art and excellent production put on by Keymaster. Anthropomorphic animals farming, but is it fun? I think it is. It’s a worker placement game where you compete for the most productive spots and really feel that tension. You need to balance planting and harvesting crops, clearing more space on your farm, and layering together passive upgrades. It’s an engaging little puzzle in great packaging.
1-4 players, 30-60 minutes
Bright, snappy, and beautiful. Place tiles, buildings, and decorations while collecting the scoring conditions that make the most of all of those. The 4 category worker placement draft plays out well and quickly. So far this game has been a smooth teach and a pleasant time.
2-4 players, 30-40 minutes
Language is so nuanced that it provides a lot of space for games that are just about the confusions and collisions of words. So Clover is a word game where one player gives a set of clues to link word pairs. Each player takes a turn being the clue giver (and can do the prep part simultaneously) The gimmick is that the pairs are on individually rotatable cards, so there are many combinations that could play out. Additionally, a random card is thrown in after the clues are locked in, just to create unexpected associations the clue giver couldn’t plan on. The experience of play is either as a clue giver watching people misunderstand your inferences, or as players cooperatively solving a word puzzle; either role is fun in its own way. This is an easy game to recommend for pretty much anyone.
3-6 players, 30 minutes
As an IP, Dune has spawned many good games. This latest one is a deck building and worker placement hybrid. The deck building part is light compared to other games where that’s the focus. The worker placement takes much more of the focus, with varying spots becoming essential to land at the right moment. This all culminates in occasional battles where what you’ve accumulated gets thrown together with hopes to come ahead. It’s crunchy but thematic. It takes just the right mood to get to the table, and it certainly doesn’t resolve quickly, but there are many interesting decisions over its play time.
1-6 players, 60-120 minutes
Roll two six-sided dice, use the values either individually or as a sum to trigger your spread of 11 spaceship abilities. Gain currency, purchase new abilities to replace old ones, and transform old abilities into less powerful versions that trigger on other player’s turns. It’s a similar core formula as something like Machi Koro, but there’s a lot more depth of strategy to this one. I’ve mostly played this at 4 players, where the flip abilities (red) are far more important than what you roll on your own turn (blue). It’s a game where you care just enough about what’s happening on other player’s turns, the turns themselves are quick, and there’s enough game length to build a strategic arc. Over the past few years this game has had a ton of play in my friend group.
2-5 players, 60 minutes
And the Rest
Here are some other games I dug into this year. Some of these might warrant a stronger recommendation in the future but I don’t have the repition of plays to back that up. Or they just might not be for everyone.
Cooperative
- Sleeping Gods: Primeval Peril: A misfit crew is mysteriously lost on a winding jungle river, with hazards and misfortune all around. Can you work together to escape? This is a storybook game (as in with a book with passages you read aloud), with randomized skill challenges, equipment, and monster combat. I’m not sure how much replayability there will be for the same scenario (you’re always going through the same map and the same story book), but I think enough for its value. A good option for a cooperative narrative evening.
- Marvel United: X-Men: Cooperatively match up a few of the X-Men against Magneto to save the city. Or maybe swap out Cyclops for Gwen Stacy and instead put them up against Loki. Mix and match to your heart’s content. Certainly some of the charm of this game is in combining the different character powers (and their miniatures) into your own fan fiction. The mechanics are actually very simple, and the differences between those characters are executed with a light touch. This ends up being a family friendly co-op that can be tailored to the specific character affinities of your family.
- Witchcraft!: An attractive and well themed solo game. As solo games should be it was challenging and often involved finding the lesser of two evils. I liked the tension between when you reveal your witches to get powerful effects versus sustaining for the longer marathon. As with many solo games, this works well played with a partner to help you work through the challenge.
Head to Head
- Land vs Sea: If you know me you know I like maps. This is a game about building a map competitively out of tiles, one player optimizing for land features and another player for sea features (and with more options at higher player counts, but I haven’t tried those). I do think it’s awkward that the game has two-sided tiles where the two tiles in your hand are actually four options but you can’t see them all at once. Space efficient but fussy. Other than that the game is pleasant if not terribly deep.
- Pagan: Fate of Roanoke: I’ve only had a learning game of this, and there was much learning to do. But I love the theme and I love the quirky Netrunner-esque gameplay. I’m eager to get in more games and see how it improves with better understanding.
Good to Play with Kids
- Captain Flip: Simple, colorful, and doesn’t overstay its welcome. You can push your luck on way to building your ideal chain of crew members, and maybe get burned.
- MicroMacro: Crime City – Full House: Solve a mystery by scrutinizing a map. It works. The art is inviting and the mysteries I’ve tried so far have been satisfying to solve. This is a delightful activity to pull out with kids.
- Hideous Abomination: Lots of high profile overblow Kickstarter funded games succeed based on artwork but fail in the end experience because art is only one slice of that. However if art is by design a large portion of the experience… well then that can be okay. In this tile laying game… it’s all about the art. You make crazy impossible creatures out of tiles and delight in how they look. There’s a game too… but that’s honestly very little of the focus. It works well enough to not get in the way of enjoying the look of your monster in the end.
Small Boxes
- Courtisans: A breezy card game where you draw three cards, take one for yourself, give one to another, and allocate one to the final scoring. Just a few power cards kept this an easy teach. Moves quickly and had plenty of mind games along the way.
- Moving Wild: A 3 stage draft where you are trying to match up animals to habitats. The challenge is that the animals might be picky and the habitats have limited space. I enjoyed trying to land that perfect balance, alongside planning from one draft round to the next. Plus Oink games are generally a win due to their extreme portability and gentle use of shelf space.
- Hitster: There’s a deck of cards, each of which has a QR code. Scan it, and a song plays with Spotify. Now you try to progressively place it in a timeline with other song cards. Which came out first, “Wonderwall” or “Wannabe”? If that sounds fun to you, it is. As a bonus you can challenge to name the artist and/or song title, serving as a “name that tune” type experience.
Medium Weight
- Middle Ages: What a delightful production. Puzzle piece cardboard tiles and positively adorable wooden pawns, all with gorgeous art. The drafting mechanism feels like Kingdomino but with more foresight. The attack buildings are sure to be polarizing (especially since the game punishes for you not dabbling in all building types).
- Bosa: Lightweight and colorful, in a very attractive box. Decidedly pleasant. Easy to teach.
- Forest Shuffle: By the end of the game what you’ve accumulated may feel a bit out of control with the compound complexity. But this is a satisfying blend of layering engine and scoring conditions from a mess of cards and hoping your opponent doesn’t take that care you really really need.
- Kronologic: Paris 1920: A clever deduction engine. I like how there is public information that has you paying attention on other player’s turns, but also private information that helps you race to solve the mystery. Attractive components, and enough variants in the box that it seems like a reasonable value. May be good with older kids, but I haven’t tested that yet.
- Mezen: What a striking production with sharp intentional color and art. And with it, a puzzle of adapting your every changing grid to match slowly unfolding scoring conditions. I like that you are rewarded for planning a couple turns ahead but don’t need to sweat compound complexity from more goals. I also like the exchange of resources to other players when you need to mitigate a bad situation.
Main Events
- Libertalia: Winds of Galecrest: Use pirate crew cards to determine how you divide up the loot. Everyone has the same crew cards, so you know what your opponents are capable of. But who is going to play that one card first? Or are you going to hold onto that crew member for one of the next rounds when everyone has forgotten they’re still a possibility? There’s a bunch of mind games to be played here.
- Rock Hard: 1977: The theme does it for me here. It is thoroughly cooked into this game, and benefits from players who want to tell stories of their aspiring rock stars. The actual play is much simpler than the board makes it look. Perhaps the whole progression is a bit on rails, but I enjoyed those rails. I don’t know how many times I need to actually play this game, but I enjoy that I have.
- Arcs: Root wasn’t for everyone, but I really like it. Arcs has a similar lineage to root, but the asymmetry isn’t baked into each player faction, but rather into the cards you’ll accumulate (or optional starting cards). Which I think makes it more approachable. But I’m a bad judge of this, because Root feels more straightforward to me that it does to others. As it stands, I still haven’t had a full sized game of Arcs, but I’m very eager to. I’m someone who generally hears “trick taking” and runs the other direction, but it’s used to great effect in this game. I’m very much down for an epic game of spatial conquest. And the art is just so so great. Now… who wants to play this with me?
- Wyrmspan: While best summarized as “Wingspan but with dragons,” the game actually differs in more ways than you might expect. There’s more choice in delving out your various caves, and in getting dragons that get along, and in deciding whether parenting young hatchlings is going to be worth it. I think I enjoyed the strategic puzzle of this more than Wingspan, but I’d need more plays to be sure.
- The Fox Experiment: Inspired by the real science behind the domestication of foxes and dogs, this game shines when it lets you customize dice pools from foxes to breed your perfect new pup. And then you get to name it! That’s pretty delightful. All the other things around that are… pretty gamey. I think it’s a bit too much of a board game, and the presentation is a bit uneven for me personally, but also there’s some great moments in this too.
- Harmonies: The biggest problem with this game is that I already have Reef and and I already have Cascadia. It feels like a blend of those two, a really pleasing blend. I like creating three dimensional terrain. I like having the animal scoring conditions direct the way I shape my terrain. The main downside is that the open ended up building can lead to slow turns with nothing to do in between (I wouldn’t be excited to play this at 4).
Maybes
- Bad Company: Space Base got so much play in my friend group that I was interested in seeking something different that was similar, and Bad Company came up as an option. In this one you’re pulling a heist and there’s fun art to go with that, so that thematic change definitely works. And there’s a race track of sorts where you’re trying to get to the end first, be tempted by bonuses off the path, and don’t fall behind enough for the police to catch you. In practice it all falls a bit flat compared to Space Base, and I’m working on putting my finger on why. The choices around which cards you pick up seem more random and less strategic. Also there’s a definite runaway leader problem with some passive income. And the turn to turn flow is slower and more awkward, with decisions made around 4 dice instead of just resolving 2 dice as they lay (either as separate or as sum). In total, it just doesn’t hit as hard and isn’t going to take the place of Space Base.
- Gnome Hollow: This game feels like it should be a smidge more streamlined, particularly for the theme. I’m generally pretty good with rules but misplayed a surprising number of them (not in ways that hugely affected the outcome). I like making mushroom rings and the kitsch gnome vibe. At least in a 2 player game it was a little too easy to get stalled on unhelpful tile pieces. And I wish the cute signs in the middle of mushroom rings were more relevant. This game feels like an almost, in need of just bit more polish, but it’s promising.
Meh
- River Valley Glassworks: I think this game might be broken. A 2 player game consistently took us less than 10 minutes. There isn’t enough time to really build up any strategy. You have a few hopefully tactical plays and then… final scoring. I don’t know if the game would be better if it were longer though. It’s the first time I’ve really been disappointed with a game for being to short (most overstay their welcome instead).
- Tribes of the Wind: This game commits a cardinal design sin. There’s this mechanic where based on whether you have more or fewer of certain suits of cards compared to your neighbors/market determines what actions you can take on each of your cards. And the very last thing your opponent does on their turn is choose a card to draw from the central market. It’s a off-the-cuff decision for them but the result can completely divert the viability of your planned turn. It’s direct sabotage of your ability to plan your turn. Even setting that aside, the game presents a puzzle and in my first playthrough I felt like I played optimally and wouldn’t change anything on a following play, which is never a good sign. So the game didn’t land for me in other ways.
- Wild Gardens: There’s certainly a lovely production of little bits for this one (especially the tiny books!). And I did like the ability to augment the core actions to create super powerful customized actions later on. I wasn’t exactly engaged by the motion around the board with the limited set of move distances tokens. And the set of dishes to cook and guests to serve seemed way too random rather than strategic. Plus the broad set of options each turn made this a very slow play. So while everything was visually colorful and pleasant this one didn’t really hang together for me.
04 Jan 2025
Following up on the pattern set by my 2023 end of year wrap up, here are the movies that I watched in 2024 that warranted commentary.
Watching this in the theater, it was very clear that the little kids around me were having a very different experience than I was. To them, brightly colored characters did silly things. To me, it was incredibly triggering. Usually we talk about movies together right after; but this one I couldn’t for a while. Don’t get me wrong, it’s good. It’s just that the subject matter was a bit too real. It tackled losing friendship and had a particularly accurate portrayal of a panic attack… lots of material not exactly directed at super young kids. I was more expecting the gut punch of Bing Bong from the first Inside Out, but Pixar outmaneuvered and managed to knock me flat in a new way.
Watched in the theater, now streaming on Disney+
This is a very weird movie. It’s also incredibly creative, visually so and in many other ways. It’s also more than a little uncomfortable to watch. Be prepared for a story that explores sexuality and consent. It’s the journey of a woman who starts as a creation, treated as a possession, and ends up as her own free spirit. But halfway through the movie it’s not so clear if it’s going to work out or not. The whole experience is surreal and challenging and incredible.
Watched in the theater, now streaming on Hulu
An intense and beautiful story of duplicitous social climbing that ends with you questioning everything you just saw.
Now streaming on Amazon
I listened to the audiobook of The Wild Robot on a family road trip. It’s a pleasant story of a robot adapting to live with animals and becoming more “human” (not the right term here, but I think you get me). The book started out feeling maybe a bit too young in tone but hit its stride by the end. The movie adaptation is great and visually stunning.
Watched in the theater, now available to rent
It’s absolutely a Deadpool movie, which means it isn’t for everyone. It certainly isn’t for my tween daughter who knows exactly who the Immportal Mr. Murderhands is standing as a the cardboard cutout in the theater lobby. But if you’re adult, and you’re in for some crass, and you’re in for some cameos (like… a lot of cameos), then this movie is a good time. Deadpool as a character is really improved by having Wolverine as a straight man to contrast his antics. And opening the movie with a macabre dance number set to the Backstreet Boys was a great choice.
Watched in the theater, now streaming on Disney+
I’m very much enjoying these latest movie adaptions of Dune, and the second film continues to be a visual and auditory delight. In particular this one doesn’t pull its punches on whether Paul is a problematic messiah figure. It gets messy and weird, as it should.
Watched in the theater, now streaming on Netflix
Do you want to watch a bunch of 20-somethings in a vacation rental make terrible decisions, unravel, and mostly end up dead? The experience was very much enhanced by the way the characters employ therapy-speak as seemingly-self-aware but also incredibly flawed.
Not streaming anywhere, but available to rent
You’ll know if this bromance action movie featuring Nick Cage (as himself) and Pedro Pascal (not as himself) appeals to you or not based on the trailer. It’s funny, it’s charming.
Not streaming anywhere, but available to rent
And the Rest
Here are some other movies I had thoughts on.
- Furiosa: A Mad Max Saga: Fury Road is a perfect movie, and this is perhaps less perfect. But it’s still a high energy trip of crazy action with great set pieces in the wasteland. I had a good time.
- Fall Guy: I love this movie’s dedication to working spectacular stunts into the plot, winking at the audienc the whole time. Which can happen because the plot is about a stunt man and his romantic relationship with the director.
- Godzilla Minus One: I watched a bunch of movies when I got COVID, most of which I experienced in a half-dazed state (and thus won’t be judging here). But this one was the best of them. For a giant monster movie, this feels very grounded and very human.
- American Fiction: The story of a writer with a too-real premise, where primarily it’s a dry comedy about life, family, and relationships.
- Warcraft: Okay, maybe I’ll indulge in some bedridden commentary. I also took on Warcraft. It’s not a great movie. But is it wrong that I wanted them to continue to cover many of the other Wacraft III/World of Warcraft storylines that I’m fond of? What I’m saying is they made a Murloc reference and I just want more of that.
- Moana 2: This sequel didn’t hit the highs of Moana, but I didn’t really expect that. Mostly it suffered for reminding me of a better movie. It was an engaging spectacle, but it never fully came together. There were songs, they didn’t hit as hard as the previous ones. There are new characters, and some were nice but mostly the repetition made me feel like the world was smaller, not bigger.
- Lisa Frankenstein: This movie was an almost. It tells the story of a woman befriending and unintentionally befriending a corpse. She from there turns a bit vengeful and… murdery. There’s a big dose of quirk and 80’s camp here… but it doesn’t quite have the nuance to take you on its journey. Sometimes it lands and sometimes it’s funny, I wouldn’t wave anyone away from it, but neither would I recommend it.
- Ghostbusters: Frozen Empire: I thought the new cast in Afterlife actually did a decent job of giving us a new Ghostbusters story. Steeped in nostalgia, sure. But it also brought things forward. Frozen Empire feels like it indulges in that nostalgia well a bit too heartily, crowding things and not focusing on letting the new cast stand on its own. The end result was middling.
- Migration: For all the time I spent in theaters in 2023, I saw the trailer for this far too many times. We went to see it with kids and… well that’s who it’s for. It’s brightly colored and there are gags and it’s… fine. Safe. Perfectly acceptible family entertainment.
- Orion and the Dark: I know we watched this. I looked up the trailers and some reviews to jog my memory. Still fuzzy. Either I feel asleep or it’s just thoroughly forgettable. Not sure which is worse.
03 Jan 2025
While 2024 was a challenging year for me overall, there were some good shows to watch (either new or new to me). Continuing on from my 2023 coverage of television, below you’ll find the shows I watched in 2024 that I want to highlight.
My daughter and I led up to this by watching all 5 seasons of the original X-Men animated series from the 90s. Which was an uneven experience, but better than I had feared and my daughter really enjoyed it. Most of the classic X-Men storylines are covered here, and this led us to also explore the comics and movies together which was really fun. It was a good time right until the end of the animated series’ run where there were sudden changes to voice actors and a severe degradation of quality. Yikes it ended in a rough way. Thankfully, almost 30 years later the show was picked up to continue with a new season. And it’s great! I have no idea if it’s something you can jump into without the context of everything that preceded it. But being confused about history you missed is part of the comic experience, right? If you like the X-Men in any form, I’d recommend this one.
Watched on Disney+
It’s widely agreed that we exist in a time of superhero fatigue. It’s interesting then to go back now and watch the Marvel movies with my daughter and realize that when the movies are good there is no fatigue; good superhero stories are still good. Invincible is absolutely a show I cannot watch with my daughterl it’s an adult take on superhero stories, with moments of acute violence and gore. Which immediately draws comparisons to The Boys, particularly with a “what if Superman is bad?” plotline. I found Invincible to have just so much more heart than The Boys (which was so bleak that I had to tap out) or Robert Kirkman’s other successful comic/television creation The Walking Dead. _Invincible__ knows how to sit in a poignant moment with well-paired music and feel its feelings. It also indulges in “superheroes are wacky” vibes that evoke Rick and Morty or The Venture Bros. It is creatively referential to other famous superhero stories (e.g. “Monster Girl”, who is basically the Hulk but gets younger every time she transforms). It’s playful, it’s heartful, it’s sometimes extremely violent, but it also has something more to say than “let’s celebrate adult nihilism.”
Watched Seasons 1-2 on Amazon Prime
This show is so much more interesting than the 2005 movie that spawned it, which was a competent flick of beautiful spies trying to blow each other up. Instead this show has time to explore the strange dynamic of two people thrown together to have a mock relationship while holding a secretive and dangerous job. It’s a great setting to tell what is at its core a grounded relationship story.
Watched on Amazon Prime
This isn’t split up into episodes on YouTube, but as a 6 hour monilithic video I don’t think anyone is going to consume this in one sitting so I classify it as “television”. The video walks through key moments in video game history from the very beginning to modern times. If you want to reflect on how we got from Pong to Fortnite, this documentary is for you. I watched it with my daughter and she found it incredibly interesting. The narrator is a bit dry, but the content here is engaging enough to stand on its own. Whether it’s a trip through nostalgia or learning something new, this is a good watch.
Watched on YouTube
Twisting the definition of a television show even further, this is legit just a YouTube channel. One that covers guitar effects pedals. I found it in my journey to my first pedalboard, but then I continued to absolutely devour the large backlog of content. The primary reason this channel exists is that JHS is a pedal manufacturer, and they promote their own products on the show. But they also just as readily celebrate other manufacturer’s pedals, and particularly the history of evolution of guitar effects. They do this all with humor, enthusiasm, authenticity, and good jams. I’ve learned a ton from the channel. And yes, it has persuaded me to make many more purchases of both JHS pedals and other pedals (leading to a larger pedalboard).
Watched on YouTube
Okay, if I’m being honest I’d already watched this back in 2021. But the introduction of a second season (which I haven’t started yet) prompted me to rewatch the first season with my partner. And damn this show is good. The quality of the art direction is phenomenal. The animation, particularly of the character-driven fight scenes, is on its own level. This is one of the best things you can put in your eyeballs. I’m eager to start the second season.
Watched Season 1 on Netflix
This show tells the story of a man’s inappropriate obsession with a woman, his deception to woo her, and waiting for all the lies to inevitably come crashing down. It’s at times uncomfortable to watch. And at other times I found myself empathizing with this guy who has done horrific things to maneuver into someone’s life. We are conditioned to root for our protagonists, and it becomes easy to forget for a moment that just because they are the focus they do not deserve to “win”. That wiring runs deep and this show really toys with that in a way that I found engaging. There’s more to this show but after 2 seasons I’d had enough intentional discomfort, at least until someone tells me it has somewhere narratively to go from here.
Watched Seasons 1-2 on Netflix
And the Rest
There were many great shows to choose from. Here are some other shows that are also worth a mention.
- Agatha All Along: Of all the Marvel television stories, Wandavision has been the best. Agatha All Along is a show that connects back to that storyline from an unexpected angle and thematically isn’t anywhere near a superhero story. The tale of Agatha putting together a coven and walking the witches road works well when so many of these other Marvel shows have struggled. Also it has an incredibly catchy song that’s narratively important.
- Shrinking: Seasons 1 and 2: Three therapists share a practice together, and this show covers them handling grief and aging and relationships and all that. It’s a comedy, obviously. The cast is great.
- House of the Dragon: Season 2: This Game of Thrones prequel’s intrigue continues to build, and holy crap there are some epic dragon-fueled moments. At this point I can upgrade this show from “maybe this is going to be okay” to “I’m enjoying this.”
- True Detective: Night Country: This murder mystery takes place in a frigid sunless Alaska. Jodie Foster absolutely crushes it as a self-destructive small town sheriff. The mystery feels mystical but stays just this side of realism. Somewhat like shadows feeling more sinister when you’re sleep deprived and cold. It’s good.
- Fallout: By all rights this show should have been terrible, as video game adaptations often are. Fallout isn’t a game series I haven’t managed to bond with, mainly for mehanical reasons we won’t get into here. But this adaptation of the setting into a show works. It successfully captures the quirks of vault dwelling and the sinister anarchy of the post-apocalyptic surface.
- Silo: Season 1: I’m in the middle of reading book 3 of this series. This television adaptation is quite good. It’s a bit funny to have both this and Fallout in the same year, just to make sure we have enough stories about what happens when civilization goes into a bunker for generations. In contrast, Silo is the story of a mystery and rebellion. I enjoyed the first season of it and am eager to so how they adapt the rest.
- The Franchise: Want to watch the behind the scenes dumpster fire of making movies for something very similar to the Marvel Cinematic Universe? That’s the concept of this show. It’s dry and funny.
- Ted Lasso: Season 3: If I’m being honest, I have a hard time here at the end of the year remembering specifically what happened in this final season of Ted Lasso. Loose ends got wrapped up, probably. But on the whole it continued the Lasso vibe. Positive, heartfelt, funny. What actually happened matters less than that.
Maybe
- Percy Jackson and the Olympians: The Percy Jackson movies were not great, either as adaptations or movies on their own. But now we get another attempt at bringing this popular book series to the screen, and this show fares so much better. It stays more faithful to the original book and the maintains the right age for the characters, which is important to the overall vibe.
- Avatar: the Last Airbender: I’m not sure who decided that a much beloved animated show needed a live action remake. It’s not even a proper change of form like the universally disliked movie adaptation; this is still an episodic television series. I guess it’s for people who can’t take animation seriously? Why are we catering to such cretins? Because of the piles of money this strategy has made for Disney with its live action remakes? Ugh. Anyway, for what it’s worth this adaptation isn’t bad. It’s cast well, and hits many of the highlights of the original show. It’s not as good as the original, but I also don’t regret watching it and when the rest comes out we’ll watch that too.
- The Fall of the House of Usher: This show follows in the horror series footsteps of the Haunting of Hill House and the Haunting of Bly Manor. The Fall of the House of Usher is competent, but not nearly as good as its excellent predecessors. It starts strong, but its rigid formula leads to predictability as it progresses through the episodes. Nothing quite takes the bite out of the tension like knowing what’s going to happen. And horror needs tension.
02 Jan 2025
I received a lot of positive feedback to my 2023 end of year wrap up on games and other media. While 2024 wasn’t as prolific for me, there were still many solid games. Here are some of the key video game experiences I had in 2024.
This pixel art side-scrolling game has incredibly simply controls (left/right direction and one button) but somehow contains an engaging real-time-strategy game. You move around and spend coins at contextual prompts to build walls, recruit subjects, and assign jobs… all to prepare for the monsters that strike in the night. It totally works. Despite the fact that game also doesn’t directly teach you how to play it; it mostly trusts that you’ll experiment with the simple verbs it offers and that everything will work out. Which is mostly true. This is an easy game to recommend on pretty much any platform (including mobile, although I played it on Xbox and Switch). Interestingly it comes in a variety of mostly-aesthetic variants, so you can play it as classic castle, Norse, shogun, 80’s kids on bikes, or Greek mythology. It also works really well as 2 player local co-op, as you can work together to defend the two edges of your kingdom.
Played on Xbox, Switch
Back in 2017 Slay the Spire hit the scene and brought together the deckbuilding and roguelike genres. Since then there have been many games to follow in its footsteps (Monster Train, Griftlands, Inscryption, and Cobalt Core, to name some I’ve played). I’ve enjoyed every entry in this genre that I’ve tried. This year we got Balatro, which instead of delving into the fantasy/sci-fi elements of those other games is just… poker. But poker were you’re cheating real hard and can never lose. By leaning into the more widely understood backbone of poker Balatro is more accessible. And it layers its gameplay crazy and “let’s go to combo town” vibe on that framework. I played it on Switch but I hear the cool kids have moved to the mobile version so they can have Balatro in their pocket all the time.
Played on Xbox, Switch
This year at PAX my daughter took a renewed interest in classic consoles and video game history, which led me to bringing out the NES and SNES mini classic consoles. One thing led to another, and I’m revisiting some JRPG classics including a full run of Final Fantasy 1 and 4. That left me wondering what modern expressions of the JRPG genre were out there, which in turn led to Octopath Traveler II, conveniently on GamePass. I absolutely love the look of this game, with its blend of classic character sprites and modern techniques like depth of field, particle effects, and dynamic lighting. The story is that of 8 different characters, each with their own individual story arc and you have freedom to move between these as you like. The combat has great tension of tactical decisions with its vulnerability/break mechanic and the rhythm of spending boost points for big flashy turns. It’s a really nostalgic yet modern JRPG, which is a bit of nice interest but absolutely something I was looking for.
Played on Xbox GamePass
I do so love a good metroidvania. This one follows in the legacy of recent games like Hollow Knight and Ori, with many modern trimmings. For example it has an amulet system like the charms of Hollow Knight to let you customize a build of interesting upgrades, but here you can spend currency to improve each one. In each area you find a person who can sell you a map and later locations of hidden upgrades, letting you explore the unknown at first, but not waste time later in with fruitless searching. Overall it’s not as difficult as Hollow Knight (no significant currency loss on death, for example)… unless you take on the many optional platforming sequences that are brutal even to experienced hands like mine. The presentation is solid, with vibrant colors and cool cinematic moments. The combat is kinetic and deep, not letting you entirely get by mashing buttons; good use of parry and combos get you much better results. The rate of exploration is fast, letting you feel like you’re running through and racing against time… until you get the hankering to slow down and scrub for all those little secrets and power up. The Lost Crown also is the first Prince of Persia game in a long time to invoke the vibes of the excellent Sands of Time, playing with time manipulation and a storybook quality. This is a solid game that I saved for winter break so I could really dig into it.
Played on Xbox
In last year’s wrap-up I mentioned I had just started Rogue Legacy 2 while on holiday break. Well I kept with it and got significantly deeper. It’s a bit of a roguelite metroidvania, which is to say you have many runs of a randomized environment with some amount of incremental progression (roguelite) but progress to those areas is gated on traversal abilities (metroidvania). You definitely get a consistent sense of small progress here as you can spend coin on upgrading your castle for various bonuses. Each run is randomized by a choice of descendants, each with quirks that make them more powerful or less powerful (in trade for gold bonuses). And during each run there’s an interesting risk/reward tradeoffs of trading health for upgrades. I found it very enjoyable, until I hit a key milestone, ran into the next very tough boss, couldn’t decide between grinding out more bonuses or learning the boss’ patterns, set the game down and forgot to come back to it. But my time with it was good.
Played on Xbox GamePass
In this game you’ve traveled to a Bavarian-esque vacation destination that specializes in monster slaying and dungeon running (“Enjoy your slay!” say the local staff). In the evenings after your adventure you can spend time with various people in the village to build relationships (and get mechanical bonuses for doing so). It’s got a mix of 3rd person action melee and Zelda-like puzzle solving. All wrapped in pleasant cell shaded package.
Played on Xbox
And the Rest
Here are some other games that are worth a little mention.
- Cobalt Core: This game is another deckbuilding roguelite, but with you piloting a spaceship going through 1:1 ship battles. Positioning matters, where you can line up shots to specific weak points or dodge incoming missiles. You seed your deck of possible actions by choosing your crew (and unlocking alternate crew with new mechanics by succeeding in runs). It’s cute in its presentation and I’ve enjoyed the time I’ve spent with it so far, but it didn’t exactly create the crazy addictive draw of something like Balatro.
- Steamworld Dig 2: Digging through sand and earth in a video game readily evokes the likes of Dig Dug or Super Mario 2, but for some the best match for this one to me is a little indie XBLA game Miner Dig Deep. Just like that, Steamworld Dig has you increasingly delve into the earth, mining resources that let you buy upgrades to get deeper and more lucrative gains. Except this one looks a lot better. And tries to squeeze in a plot, but I was much more satisfied by the simple digging loop. Which is limited by how much lantern light you have… until you buy an upgrade that removes that mechanic and with it all of the tension. You do get a sweet grappling hook for navigation at some point though which is really great. I wandered off from this game at some point when it strayed too far from the simple digging roots, but it was fun until then.
16 Aug 2024
My friend Cody has been pitching a replacement for the granular 10 point BGG rating scale:
1 - bad won’t ever play again
2 - didn’t care for it, won’t actively try and play it again
3 - liked it, would definitely play again, maybe even buy it
4 - actively want to play again and would like to buy so I can play as much as often as possible
To avoid confusion with BGG number ratings, I’m going to use ⭐️ for the Cody scale. Sorry, didn’t pitch it as a star system, but it’s hard to compare without some different indicator.
My suggested rough mapping:
- BGG 8-10 maps to 4 (⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️)
- BGG 6-7 maps to 3 (⭐️⭐️⭐️)
- BGG 4-5 maps to 2 (⭐️⭐️)
- BGG 1-3 maps to 1 (⭐️)
⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️
Anything BGG 8 and up is something that as a board game person (someone with a collection) I want to own. These are all great. So… smoosh them all together into a single ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️ rating, sure. I’d lose a bit of definition in what are my greatest of all time, but that’s fine. I’m still heartily recommending any here.
⭐️⭐️⭐️
To me the BGG 6s and 7s map to “would play again and maybe own”. I own plenty of 7s. I also own 6s, but something at a 6 is asking to be phased out of my collection. Famously, the BGG 7 rating is the most crowded, with 7.0 being borderline okay and 7.9 being amazing. So having all these (plus the decidedly situational 6s) as ⭐️⭐️⭐️ is similarly covering a lot of ground and I’d guess this is the most dominant rating and lacking in clearer signal.
⭐️⭐️
The summary of ⭐️⭐️ is “yeah, if someone else is pushing to play it I will, but I’m not going to be the one asking for it.” Which is not something I want in my collection (otherwise people will see it on the shelf, ask “can we play that?” And I’ll go “uh… sure?”). That maps to the BGG 4s and 5s, the mediocre to reluctant.
⭐️
Anything BGG 3 and under is different flavors of garbage. I have no love lost lumping that into ⭐️. It’s not like I’m going to walk someone through the nuance of why one is slightly less terrible than another. They’re all bad, run away.
Thoughts
Overall, what the Cody scale asks is “what extra are you communicating by letting people rate on a 10 point scale? I do think it’s overkill for most people, and that the extremes aren’t providing critical information. However with this system I do think you’re going to have a crowded set of ⭐️⭐️⭐️ just like you had crowded 7s. And I do think people want to know if a title is more trending towards ⭐️⭐️ or ⭐️⭐️⭐️. The question is whether individual raters communicate that or whether that’s the job of review aggregation to add in the decimal point.
Would it get more casual folks to rate things and overcome the BGG hardcore’s oversized influence of the top games? Maybe a little. But honestly, who other than the hardcore rates anything? Am I in any way contributing to the ratings on Amazon items, or what gets rolled up into MetaCritic for video games or Rotten Tomatoes for movies? Nope. I give zero input to those systems. Most of the ratings systems I’m coerced to interacting with are of the variety of “give 5 stars or you are sabotaging someone’s livelihood,” which is its own problem and leads us down the path of that Black Mirror episode with Bryce Dallas Howard. Yikes.
Thankfully that’s not the vibe here. A 4 point scale seems fine. If you can make it happen, go for it Cody. In the meantime I’m going to stick to the BGG scale because that’s the only place I know people actually look at ratings.