It’s been a while since I did a book review. I started a new job in January, and that really took up all of my reading time. But one of my best friends recommended How to Become the Dark Lord and Die Trying by Django Wexler to me. HtBtDLaDT is basically Groundhog Day meets Deadpool with a dash of Guardians of the Galaxy. It’s a darkly humourous fantasy romp about what happens when the hero decides she’s done playing nice.
Davi was summoned to another world to save it from the Dark Lord. Noble enough. Except she’s failed. Hundreds of times. Every death sends her right back to the beginning, waking up in the same pool or water, in the same damn forest, being exposited to by the same old man, doomed to repeat the same futile quest. After 277 tries and over a thousand cumulative years of dying in increasingly ridiculous, tragic, and stupid ways… she snaps.
Screw destiny. Screw the prophecy. If the Dark Lord always wins, it’s time she joined the winning side.
Armed with centuries of knowledge, a fraying sense of morality, and an immature brand of gallows humour, Davi sets out to become the next Dark Lord. First step, she just needs a horde to take her to the convocation where the Dark Lord is crowned. How hard could that be?
HtBtDLaDT is told in Davi’s unhinged first-person voice, often careening between swaggering confidence and total panic. This is a tale of necromancy, time loops, save-scumming, and what happens when the ‘chosen one’ decides she’s had enough of being chosen.
Let’s get this out of the way up front: I’m annoyed. Not because the book is necessarily bad, but because it ends on such a blatant cliffhanger that it feels like half a story. I don’t mind a good sequel hook, but I like a book to stand on its own, at least a little. This was written with a blinking “To Be Continued…” sign hanging over every major plot thread.
My second major complaint came early, and it stuck with me the whole way through. The narrator, Davi, offhandedly says something like “I think I’m from Earth? Like, I know Darth Vader is Luke’s father, or something?” and then proceeds to pepper the rest of the story with modern pop culture references like she just stepped out of a Reddit comment thread. It immediately gave me Ready Player One flashbacks, but without the contextual justification. In RPO, the character was raised on a steady diet of retro media, so it made sense within the context. In How to Become the Dark Lord and Die Trying, it felt jarring and out of place. A relentless stream of quips, one-liners, and pop culture references that constantly yanked me out of the high fantasy setting the book was trying to build.
And speaking of the setting, it had so much potential. The early parts, with the time loop playing a major role, and Davi experimenting with different outcomes, it felt sharp and fun. I loved the save-scumming vibes and the mild panic that crept into her narration when a time fork turned sour. But then… it just sort of softened. The world turned cozy. Characters were chipper. Consequences were few and far between. Even the main consequence of dying and having to start again feels flat. She says there’s no guarantee that she could make it back to the same spot a second time, but I don’t believe her complaints of having to redo a few months when she’s already lived for a thousand years.
Davi herself is chaotic, in that annoying terminally online young millennialhow kind of way. Very Deadpool-esque or Harley Quinn. She’s unhinged, quippy, and a bit of a jerk, which can work, but I didn’t find her particularly believable as a rising Dark Lord. She doesn’t lead so much as stumble into leadership, and her “horde” follows her with an ease that felt unearned. None of her captains challenge her authority in a meaningful way, and given how little she inspires, intimidates, or even organizes them, I couldn’t really buy that she was holding this would-be evil empire together. She’s woefully sincere and caring for someone aspiring to Dark Lord-om.
That said, HtBtDLaDT isn’t without its charms. I really enjoyed the initial worldbuilding, especially how the magic system was explained and used. The ending, in particular, where Davi overcomes a giant worm beast using the nuances of that magic system. Getting swallowed whole and then blowing it up from the inside? Genuinely me laugh
So, will I read the second book? Begrudgingly, yes. I’ve got it on hold at the library, and it’s the kind of story that’s decent to listen to while I’m working. But How to Become the Dark Lord and Die Trying isn’t cracking my top ten books anytime soon. It had a solid premise, flashes of brilliance, and a narrator who was fun in theory, but in execution, it all felt a bit too thin, too try-hard, and too sincere to really stick the landing of the “Dark Lord” moniker.
When I started this Final Fantasy Project, my challenge to play through every single player mainline entry in the series, it was mostly just an excuse to replay Final Fantasy IV again, if I’m being honest. That game was my first true JRPG, played on my SNES in the mid-90s, and it became my gold standard for the entire series. The bar to which I’ve held every Final Fantasy entry against. I’ve long claimed it’s my favourite Final Fantasy, but, truth be told, I hadn’t actually finished many of them. So this project is equal parts nostalgia trip and a chance to give the whole series a fair shot.
Nostalgia can be a fickle mistress sometimes, but in this section of my play through, it worked to each game’s advantage. I am a shameless fanboy of the Super Nintendo Entertainment System. Some of my earliest memories are of me holding that grey and purple controller while sitting cross-legged on my living room floor, the CRT screen glowing in the dim morning light. I’m sure it’s this experience during my formative years that has given me such a love for pixel art graphics over high-res or 3D games, even to this day.
The SNES Final Fantasy games are amazing. Each one is special in its own way, and each one is such an impressive step up from the games that came before it. It’s at this point in the series where you can see those who were working at Square in 1987 have been improving their skills at crafting amazing games. It’s during this 3 game era on the SNES that I think Final Fantasy really distills and cements what makes a Final Fantasy game, a Final Fantasy game.
Going from the relative mechanical freedom of the NES Final Fantasy games, Final Fantasy IV is a stark shift for the series. Starting with an opening cutscene showing the main character, the Dark Knight Cecil, slaying innocent people to acquire the water crystal as ordered by his king, is quite the tonal change from the simple 4 warriors of light narrative that was featured in games I and III. It also took away a lot of mechanical freedom that was present in the past games, railroading your party to specific members for specific parts of the game, and each character being a firm archetype with no customization options for the player to mess around with. That said, the ATB system introduced dynamism and fluidity to the combat, that would become a mainstay for the next 6 entries of the franchise. Its story was also laser focused on Cecil, and his redemption.
Final Fantasy V on the other hand, returned to the static cast, and blew open the character customization options wide open with the overhauled job system. The story had its heavy moments, but was generally light-hearted and genuinely funny. The goofy character sprites bounced around manically, conveying as much emotion as you can squeeze into a 16-bit pixel art game.
Final Fantasy VI strikes balance between IV and V, telling a grand tale with a wide cast, and offering a decent amount of freedom to the player. It comes with its own mechanical shortfalls and frustrations, as I covered in depth before, but it does an incredibly good job in telling a story with some heavy narrative beats.
I think ultimately, which game is your favourite will come down to which characters or stories resonate with you, specifically. Final Fantasy VI is often lauded as the very best game in the series, but mechanically, V was much more fun to play. Personally, I love the character driven twists in IV more, from Cecil shedding his dark knight moniker to become a paladin, to the narrative influencing the gameplay, like how Rydia doesn’t learn the Fire spell until she overcomes her fear of fire, due to her hometown burning down around her. I also appreciate how the gameplay challenges and rewards are tailored to what characters are in your party. I can’t tell you how frustrated I would get chasing down a chest at the end of a long dungeon, only to pull a weapon for a character or class that I wasn’t using, a feeling which was particularly exacerbated at the end of Final Fantasy V when 8 of the 12 ultimate weapons didn’t mesh with my party.
I loved all 3 of these games. It was an absolute treat to replay IV, and experience V and VI fully for the first time. While I played the GBA remakes for each of these entries, each game absolutely holds up today. That’s kind of the joy of pixel art now that I think about it, it really holds up. At the time of writing this, I’m about a dozen hours into Final Fantasy VII, and I have to say, the rudimentary 3D polygons have not aged well. I recognize that in 1997, the graphics were absolutely cutting edge and mind-blowing, but in 2025, it’s a bit of an eye-sore. But this isn’t the time to start talking about Final Fantasy VII.
The steps this set of games takes into the modern age of Final Fantasy aren’t perfect, but they show that the team take great care in telling a great, character driven story. This is the era where I learned that I loved JRPGs, that I could emotionally connect with digital characters, and it’s something that’s been a part of my identity for my entire life. The SNES Final Fantasy games may be 30 years old, but all 3 are still great games, even to this very day.
I generally don’t like bluffing games. They’re hard to start, as it usually requires everyone at the table to have such a firm grasp on the rules and potential outcomes, that I don’t think they’re worth overcoming that barrier to entry. Also, I just don’t like lying to people. Trying to keep a poker face, or convince someone else that I’m telling the truth or lying, just does not bring me joy. So let me tell you about Cockroach Poker.
Cockroach Poker is a deck of 64 cards. 8 different insects have 8 cards each. At the start of the game, the whole deck is dealt out to all players. Sometimes players won’t have the same number of cards in their hand, and that’s okay. Someone will argue that having an extra card gives that player a modicum more information, and therefore the games balance is totally thrown off, but I’m not that person.
In Cockroach Poker, the active player has to pick a card from their hand, put it face down on the table, and slide it to someone else. They make a declaration of which critter is on the other side, and the chosen player has to make a choice. They can either engage with the active player, can say that the active player is telling the truth, or lying about what card they presented. Once they’ve made their declaration, they reveal the card, and if the chosen player was correct, that card lives face up in front of the active player. If the chosen player was incorrect about the active players assertion, then the revealed card lives face up in front of the chosen player. The other thing the chosen player can do, is choose not to engage the active player, and instead look at the card. At this point, they become the active player, they then must put that card face down on the table, and slide it to someone else, and make an assertion about what critter is on that card. It can be the same assertion as the previous player, or it can be different.
Cockroach Poker ends when one player has 4 of the same critter face up in front of them. They are the closer of the game, and must buy the next round. At least, that’s what I tell my friends the consequence for losing is, no matter what context we’re playing this game in.
It can feel like players have no control over their fate in cockroach poker. When a card gets slid towards you, and your parter says “bat”. You either say true or false with no further information, and reveal your choice. Of course, there’s always the chance that there are already 5 bats on the table, and you happen to be holding 3 in your hand, in which case you can catch them in their bold faced lie, but that situation happens so rarely it’s almost not worth mentioning.
Players at the table can gang up on a specific player, sliding them every card, trying to dump all manner of critters onto their lap. It can feel unfair, and pointless. But Cockroach Poker excels at providing players genuinely exciting moments. The glee you have when you catch someone in a lie makes the whole table oooooh and ahhh. The tension builds like a pot of water coming to a boil. At first, nothing happens, but when two players have two of the same critter in their lap, and someone slides them a card that would give them a third, is it a gambit? If you look at it and slide it to the other unfortunate soul, someone is going to walk away with another face up card, potentially bringing them one step closer to utter ruin.
Or consider the audacity of someone with 3 face up spiders, and then sliding a card to someone, claiming it’s a spider. Did they just hand you the key to their own defeat? Would they be so bold? They’re usually so reserved and careful, it seems completely out of character for them to do something so daring. But maybe that’s what they want you to think. Clearly, you can’t choose the wine in front of you, and clearly you can’t choose the wine in front of them!
-ahem- Sorry. I slipped into Vizzini Mode for a second there.
Cockroach Poker excels at building tension, and when that tension snaps and someone is left holding the bag, it’s utter joy. Every game of Cockroach Poker I’ve played has ended with someone shouting with glee. It’s a raucous good time, a perfect pub game, and one that is especially good when you have a guilt-tripping aunty over for dinner. Highly recommend.
I love listening/watching the videos by Tea and Games. Her enthusiasm for board games is so genuine and her joy is infectious. So when she posted her mid year Tabletop Challenge video, I was interested in playing along. Then when Kovray posted their video, I knew I had to get in on this action.
The midyear challenge has been initiated for the past 3 years by Rolling Reggie on his social media channels, so if you want to see what other creators have gotten in on this challenge, be sure to give Rolling Reggie a follow! Without further ado, let’s do this!
What is your favourite game so far this year?
Slay the Spire is the one that springs to mind. Now granted, I’ve played the living hell out of the video game, and I even played the TTS mod when STS was on crowdfunding. But actually sitting down and playing a 4 player game was probably the most fun I’ve had all year.
What is your most played game?
Technically, Solar Storm has been my most played game, but that’s just from sheer tenacity of my Board Game Arena group bashing our heads against the wall of the cooperative challenge. My most played game on the table so far in 2025 has been The Gang.
For those who haven’t played The Gang yet, it’s cooperative Poker. You deal out cards, Texas Hold’em style, and between each card reveal, you silently take chips to determine who has the best hand. When the final card is revealed, all players reveal their hands. If you managed to sort yourselves properly, you win!
It doesn’t sound like much, but it’s surprisingly engaging, and has been a hit with everyone I’ve introduced it to. I think I’m the least enthuastic amongst my friends about it, but even I still have a great time when The Gang hits the table.
What was your biggest surprise?
I think Bomb Busters was the biggest surprise. After reading the rulebook and playing the first introductory game, I was sure it was going to be Minesweeper, but boring. A baby game for babies, the options were either going to be obtuse, or obvious.
Well if it’s recent Spiel des Jahres win hadn’t convinced me, actually sitting down and playing the game turned me into a fan. I loved the experience, and I can’t wait to keep playing through the 60+ missions that come in the box.
What game’s production/art has impressed you the most?
I think most recently Vladamir Suchy’s Shipyard surprised me with its sheer amount of cardboard engineering, from assembling a crane to hold all the tiles, to stickering parts of the cardboard sprue to the player board to simulate a dual layered experience.
Beyond that, Re;Act: The Arts of War had gorgeous anime artwork and stunning acrylic standees for it’s grid based tactical duel game that left me totally charmed.
What has been your most reliable introductory board game?
Cockroach Poker has been a huge hit with me this year, and I’ve been successful in getting my aunt and cousin to sit down and enjoy a game. It’s so simple to deal out the whole deck of cards, explain the concept of lying, and then just letting the drama unfold.
What game do you want to get off of your Shelf of Shame in the second half of the year?
I have two that I’ve been been eyeing for a while now. Tragedy Looper by BakaFire is a 1 vs many scenario based deduction game that looks to be unique and exciting, but I’m just haven’t been in the mood to essentially GM a game for my friends. The other one is Argent: The Consortiumby Level 99 Games. This one is a competitive worker placement game, and the only thing holding me back from this one is its sheer complexity. At a weight of 3.77, it’s generally more than I’m willing to commit to on a Wednesday night. Perhaps when I host my annual birthday board game day I’ll break the seal on both of these games.
Which game from 10+ years ago did you discover this year?
Mountain Goats is the one that comes to mind, thanks to the new edition by AllPlay, but if we want to talk about OLD GAMES, then in Janurary I was introduced to Evo. This was a charming little dinosaur evolution game. In Evo, you spend rounds evolving a dinosaur species, roaming your tribe through the ecosystems to content with global warming and cooling. The art is whimsical and charming in the 2001 edition, and I felt like it held up surprisingly well for being published around 24 years ago.
Which anticipated releases are you most excited about for the second half of the year?
As someone who doesn’t look forward very much, this is a hard question to answer. I’m intrigued by Recall, simply to see what the designers of Revive (another one of my most played games this year) have cooked up this time. Burgle Bros. 3is somewhere on the horizon, and I implicitly trust Tim Fowers to put out great games. Vantageby Jamey Stegmier is currently delivering, and I feel the deep pangs of regret for not pre-ordering it months ago.
Bonus: What’s your personal favourite video that you’ve posted to your channel?
It’s not board game related, but I’ve been most proud of the work I put into my Final Fantasy Project, where I play through all the single player mainline Final Fantasy games. I’m almost finished playing through Final Fantasy VII, which is the first time I’ve ever even made it out of Midgar before. It’s been a fascinating journey, playing video games from 1987, and seeing how the series has evolved over each of its entries.
Cryo starts with a disaster. A mission gone wrong. A colony ship crash landing onto a desolate, frozen planet. The ship utterly broken with crew in cryostasis pods strewn about the mountainside. Players take on the role of separate, hostile factions, competing to accrue resources and shuttle their tribes stasis pods into the nearby caverns before the sun sets and everything left on the surface is lost to the unsurvivable cold.
The actions you take are via drones, flying off your personal player board and landing on the various docks around the planet, either gaining or consuming resources to gain other benefits, such as better resources, energy, cards, or resource chips that you can slot into your player board to create your own resource generation spots that get activated when you recall your drones.
At its heart, Cryo is about sending drones out to collect resources and recalling them to trigger bonuses and upgrades, gradually transforming your platform into a more efficient rescue operation. The game is medium weight in complexity, there are only 4 resources, and 4 main sections where you can place your workers. Half the actions on the board do the same thing, just in different locations, and the other half of the actions convert one of the 3 main resources into the other 2 special resources, or cards. The section off to the right is a bit special in what it can do, but even it all makes sense after just a minute of explanation. Despite the simplicity of the gameplay, the setup feels unnecessarily fiddly for a medium-weight euro: separating sunset tokens, organizing player-count-based stacks of resource chips, and sorting multiple tile types adds an early layer of tedium that contrasts with the otherwise smooth turns.
Unlike many other engine building point scoring eurogames, Cryo has a distinct arc. You aren’t swelling and deflating with resources like a pufferfish. Instead, the whole game has you shuffling your cubes up and down in service of slowly shuttling the pods containing your crew into the caverns. The majority of your points will come from that, both from just existing underground, and from the area majority aspect of the caves.
Cryo is probably the perfect name for the game, because the pacing can feel glacial. One of the things I complained about when reviewing Rajas of the Ganges, was that I get annoyed when the growth of an engine is just trading one resource for 2 others. Giving up a green resource to earn a pink and a grey resource is not what I find exciting in a board game. Cryo , is a little better than Rajas in doling out bonus resources that enable you to take just one extra action before needing to recall, but it’s a tiny step forward that still leaves me a bit frustrated.
As I said, Cryo has a distinct arc. At first, you’ll spend your time playing cards as upgrades to give you a bit of a leg up, and you’ll take the resource tokens from the main board and slot them into the little formulas on your player board, so when you recall your drones, you can activate those resource conversions. Then, later on during the game, you really need to focus on playing your cards as ships, dismantling those formulas you built earlier in the game for a bonus resource, and shuttling full loads of your workers into the underground. You aren’t doing the same thing at the end of the game as you were doing at the beginning of the game.
The production of Cryo is pretty excellent. The dual layer player boards help players see how to build their platform, the plastic drones stack together very satisfyingly (although there’s never a reason to stack the drones). The art direction is excellent, with thick lines and flat pastel colours, I’m reminded of landscapes of Moebius’ sci-fi comic strips, or Scavengers Reign. The premise of the game should be applauded too. Instead of the same old boring story of economics and wealth generation, we’re treated to a bit of a sci-fi struggle. A tiny bit of tension, pushing you to get your pods underground before the sun sets, is something I enjoy much more than the generic game plot of earning money for the sake of earning money.
There’s nothing wrong with Cryo, but also nothing that makes me want to return. It’s a solid game with a cool theme and competent design, but in a hobby packed with engine-builders, Cryo doesn’t give me a reason to reach for it again. If someone eagerly brought it to the table, I’d play. But it’s not one I’ll be suggesting anytime soon.
